4 ms·

Isn't this the decades-old idea of Plan9?

socceroos 9y ago
I see distributed computing as a slightly lower-level concept in the more generalised field of ubiquitous computing.
Someone 9y ago
IIRC, it's what he had at NeXT (in the office and on the machine(s) in his home). Plan 9 may have existed at AT&T, but first shipped in 1992 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#History)
Sharlin 9y ago
It's the decades-old idea of thin clients.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  No, it's not, because the CPU is still local, so you're not just using your device as a terminal to a remote server. We don't have the infrastructure for this yet. The absolutely open version - even if it was just storing apps centrally and downloading them on demand, and not downloading everything - would still require something like 100 times more bandwidth than we have now to be usably fast. A workable version, with local storage providing device accounts for a small number of users, would still need more local storage than we have now, and storage isn't cheap enough yet to make this fully affordable. 256/512GB devices could possibly handle family needs, just about, but would struggle at work.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    IMO network bandwidth and latency is a bigger problem than storage. Right now, I can stream [1] HD movies from my homeserver to wherever my notebook is right now, because the upstream at home is wide enough (6 megabits per sec). But that application only works because it has quite predictable bandwidth requirements and can cope with latency quite well. Many other applications would be horribly slow if every file access had a second-long roundtrip. [1] via sshfs
catwell 9y ago
It is certainly something Rob Pike wants. Read the "What would be your dream setup?" paragraph here: https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/ A lot of people have had that idea over the years (remember John Gage's "the network is the computer"?) You could even argue The Shockwave Rider, a 1975 Science Fiction novel, described it pretty well. I don't know about the Steve Jobs quote though, do you have a link?
rwmj 9y ago
The first time I saw this implemented was in 1996 at Olivetti Research Lab in Cambridge UK. Everyone had an IR badge, and when you walked up to a machine it recognized you and popped up your desktop (no login, and it was exactly how you left it). Technology-wise it was a bit of a dead end. However the underlying protocol was VNC which they invented for this purpose.

I see distributed computing as a slightly lower-level concept in the more generalised field of ubiquitous computing.

IIRC, it's what he had at NeXT (in the office and on the machine(s) in his home). Plan 9 may have existed at AT&T, but first shipped in 1992 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#History)

Sharlin 9y ago

It's the decades-old idea of thin clients.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
No, it's not, because the CPU is still local, so you're not just using your device as a terminal to a remote server. We don't have the infrastructure for this yet. The absolutely open version - even if it was just storing apps centrally and downloading them on demand, and not downloading everything - would still require something like 100 times more bandwidth than we have now to be usably fast. A workable version, with local storage providing device accounts for a small number of users, would still need more local storage than we have now, and storage isn't cheap enough yet to make this fully affordable. 256/512GB devices could possibly handle family needs, just about, but would struggle at work.
- majewsky 9y ago
  IMO network bandwidth and latency is a bigger problem than storage. Right now, I can stream [1] HD movies from my homeserver to wherever my notebook is right now, because the upstream at home is wide enough (6 megabits per sec). But that application only works because it has quite predictable bandwidth requirements and can cope with latency quite well. Many other applications would be horribly slow if every file access had a second-long roundtrip. [1] via sshfs

catwell 9y ago

It is certainly something Rob Pike wants. Read the "What would be your dream setup?" paragraph here: https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/ A lot of people have had that idea over the years (remember John Gage's "the network is the computer"?) You could even argue The Shockwave Rider, a 1975 Science Fiction novel, described it pretty well. I don't know about the Steve Jobs quote though, do you have a link?

rwmj 9y ago

The first time I saw this implemented was in 1996 at Olivetti Research Lab in Cambridge UK. Everyone had an IR badge, and when you walked up to a machine it recognized you and popped up your desktop (no login, and it was exactly how you left it). Technology-wise it was a bit of a dead end. However the underlying protocol was VNC which they invented for this purpose.