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Jon 'Maddog' Hall On Project Cauã: a Server In Every Highrise

Posted by timothy on from the cafeterias-and-slaughterhouses-too dept.

Qedward writes with an excerpt at TechWorld about a new project from Jon "Maddog" Hall, which is about to launch in Brazil: "The vision of Project Cauã is to promote more efficient computing following the thin client/server model, while creating up to two million privately-funded high-tech jobs in Brazil, and another three to four million in the rest of Latin America. Hall explained that Sao Paolo in Brazil is the second largest city in the Western Hemisphere and has about twelve times the population density of New York City. As a result, there are a lot of people living and working in very tall buildings. Project Cauã will aim to put a server system in the basement of all of these tall buildings and thin clients throughout the building, so that residents and businesses can run all of their data and applications remotely."

13 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Thin clients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Now I know you're making a jobs program. Replacing this crap will cost even more money.

    1. Re:Thin clients by skids · · Score: 4, Informative

      What is wrong with thin clients?

      You spend the same amount of money on screen and UI hardware, and then shave a sliver of the total system cost off by skimping on CPU and RAM, then spend much more than what you saved on beefed up network infrastructure to accomodate the larger payload. Thats what.

      Thin clients only make sense as a way to salvage older thick clients when you just happen to have next to no money to spend, and already for some reason have an overpowered network and server infrastructure. Or if your user base is so supid that they cannot be trusted not to throw them in the dishwasher.

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      Someone had to do it.
    2. Re:Thin clients by BitZtream · · Score: 2

      The problem is that you're using the wrong thin client technology.

      The thin client shouldn't give a damn what you do to generate the desktop, just its just a physical interface to a virtual world. There is absolutely no reason this can not be standardized.

      Thin Keyboards should be using Thin USB, and Thin pointing devices using Thin PointDevice connections. ThinHDMI ...

      Stop buying 'solutions' from vendors and by actual solutions better known as standards.

      Would you buy a PC that required a specialized video cable and monitor, keyboards with their own unique plugs that only fit into that one specific model? Would you accept it if it required you to buy a special OEM adapter to plug in your speakers?

      You aren't looking at the right problem. You're still buying proprietary systems which are DESIGNED TO LOCK YOU IN TO THEIR PROFIT CENTER and then expecting it to work as if its some sort of standard.

      The technology is there, but vendors don't want anything to do with it as that turns the whole thing into a race to the bottom, and kills profit margins overnight.

      Someone is going to have to create a OSS (not copyleft, something everyone can use) reference implementation of the system for everyone to copy. We need another BSD sockets library kind of solution. It doesn't matter who makes proprietary crap extensions 20 years down the road once the basics are covered WELL, and that everyone does them WELL because thats the minimum expectation.

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      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  2. Who's going to administer that? by jandrese · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is the landlord going to run the server farm? This sounds like a support nightmare to me.

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    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:Who's going to administer that? by rjlouro · · Score: 2, Informative

      According to the article:

      "Each server system will need a systems administrator, who will be the point of contact for any technical issues, and who will be able to change and manage the programs to meet the needs of his or her customers in the building.

      People interested in becoming a systems administrator will be able to do their training online and, once they have been certified, receive a license from the government that will enable them to get a bank loan for equipment and installation."

  3. DEAR GOD WHY? by Gothmolly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would you ever want to do this, as opposed to letting the people choose what to run?
    What possible benefit is there to this plan, other than to centralize and monitor user activity?

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  4. No, really. by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

    Would be useful in the US. Just don't forget the hardline feed into a secret room controlled by the NSA with "trust us" on the locked door.

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    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  5. Subscribe! by AdamThor · · Score: 2

    Subscribe Subscribe Subscribe! Everything a subscription! Everything an ongoing revenue stream! Lock people in, charge them forever, everything, everywhere, everywhen! Keep them paying! Continue to innovate? That's just not a practical ongoing business model.

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    -- "Oh. This guy again."
  6. Linguistics bugs by allandouglas · · Score: 2

    It's amazing how often Sao Paulo (or, better: São Paulo) is misspelled as Sao Paolo. I think it is a bug in the linguistic engine of the people. The same that causes Python to be written as Phyton. Ignorance alone can't explain it all because educated people also make this error.

  7. DON'T PUT SERVERS IN BASEMENTS by Medievalist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, wtf? Maddog knows better than that.

    In any really tall building, servers belong in the middle floor - which is probably already a service floor, if it's an intelligently designed high-rise building.

    Cable runs decrease in density, thickness, and length when you put the servers in the center of the served area. It's also the safest single place in regards to disasters such as floods, hurricanes, civic unrest, and lightning strikes.

    It's cheaper and more reliable to put servers in the middle of the middle floor.

  8. Re:HCF explained by jfengel · · Score: 2

    Presumably he meant Halt and Catch Fire, a joke assembly language instruction from the good old days when (a) people wrote in assembly language and (b) catching fire was something done by the CPU rather than the battery (and the idea that such a device could be powered by a battery that didn't require a truck to carry it would have been a joke of its own).

  9. Why a server rather than a router? by jfengel · · Score: 2

    The only thing that the building has in common is geography. If you're going to take those responsibilities outside of your own device, why not just stick them in a remote data center and be done with it? Why should the building manager want to do anything other than route the bits between you and that center?

    If the distance is too great and creates latencies, the solution isn't some server for the building, but some local CDN installation. Perhaps it would be in the building itself, or just in the neighborhood. It wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to have my Google Drive or Netflix Instant cache or some AWS instance. But let the professionals manage that, which is a whole massive headache of its own.

    The only hardware a building manager should need is the part that is geographic, the hard wire that leads to the rest of the Internet.

  10. or give everyone a fucking ipad by decora · · Score: 2

    thin clients are the pet projects of totalitarian, control obsessed douchebags the world over. the thin client always fails, in the end, because it represents the 'abesntee landlord' school of it management.

    let people own their own shit. let people fuck with their own shit however they want. let people have their own little outpost in cyberspace. dont try to fucking control everything.