9 ms·

Aside: How far off are we from renting our PCs in the cloud, and just having a local terminal? I know it's an old Failed Dream (mainframe-terminal, client-serve

by 10ren 16y ago

Aside: How far off are we from renting our PCs in the cloud, and just having a local terminal? I know it's an old Failed Dream (mainframe-terminal, client-server, settop box etc), but maybe we're getting closer... It seems a bit ridiculous, because you still need a bit of local power for display and fast reactions, and current iPhones/netbooks could do with more power. But desktop PC's have been fast enough in that respect for a while. An advantage of the cloud is that as RAM, cycle prices etc drop, you get it (more of them or cheaper) without the hassle of physically upgrading. And bursty usage is available too, eg. when compiling. There's solid economics here: it's a sort of timesharing idea, instead of cycles being wasted while you type, someone else uses them to compile. Even more compelling globally - someone else uses them while you sleep. The same argument works for sharing your desktop's own cycles, p2p, but a centralized cloud has admin advantages and other economies of scale.

tibbon 16y ago
OnLive has gotten pretty close with their gaming platform. They've shown demos of Autocad software and I believe Photoshop running with it.
- 10ren 16y ago
  OnLive sounds cool, but it's a little hard to believe, since latency is a common issue in regular gaming already. Demos are invariably carefully orchestrated. The other thing that gives me pause is that it is such a compelling vision for publishers. It's an absolutely magic idea. However, this enthusiasm is not technology-driven: it's not about what has become possible, but what would be really amazingly cool if it was possible. But latency isn't such an issue for compiling etc. Someone was saying in the instant google thread that 250ms is imperceptible for search (and I've heard 200ms for the command line, from Rob Pike on Go). That's much lower hanging fruit than for gaming, where 250ms latency is far from instant but unplayable.
  - tibbon 16y ago
    I had a similar reaction to you on Slashdot a few years ago when it was first announced. I thought it was completely made up. Yet, it works. Shockingly well. Better for FPS games than strategy games actually (you notice lag on a mouse cursor more than anywhere else).
  - rbranson 16y ago
    How is it hard to believe? They are essentially doing what Akamai did and locating server farms very "close" to end users on the network. I have a 20ms ping from the closest Akamai CDN server.
  - sv123 16y ago
    I thought there was no way it would work, got a beta invite a few months back and was blown away. My brain still insists that the game had to be installed on my local system to be able to be working so well.
miyabo 16y ago
I regularly use a cheap netbook as a terminal to an m1.large instance for development work. My scripts use spot instances to keep the price low--typically around $0.13/hr. Not for everyone, but it's saved me maybe $500 over buying a fast laptop. Unlike a laptop I can easily let others log into the system, leave it on for long compute jobs when I'm out of town, and don't have to worry as much about losing important data.
JoeAltmaier 16y ago
The "failed dream" been successfull but never for long. As disk bandwidth and network bandwidth increase irregularly and leapfrog one another, it goes in and out of fashion.
- eru 16y ago
  Yes, but network bandwith (and latency) may become cheaper than local maintenance one day.
  - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
    The user experience is a very sensitive variable. "Cheaper" matters to Enterprise folks but lag will make the rest of us pay a little more. In fact local maintenance is the driving force behind web apps already. They generally lag like a mother, have lame controls and update in whole-page flashes, but I see more every day.
javery 16y ago
If you take a look at the sad state of this countries broadband infrastructure we are a long way off. I live in a "tech" city, I have two internet connections (Time Warner and ClearWire) patched together on a high-end router and I still wait for things I shouldn't have to.
- blhack 16y ago
  How much of a speed increase do you see because of this setup? Are these actually redundant carriers, or is the last leg owned by qwest and just leased to Time Warner and ClearWire?
- pw 16y ago
  I'd also be interested in hearing how and why you do this.
dedward 16y ago
You can do it right now, as long as you aren't after video and gaming.
- ewald 16y ago
  http://www.onlive.com/ http://www.onlive.com/
blhack 16y ago
We already do. My pictures are all stored "in the cloud" (on facebook, or flickr, or photobucket). "My" music doesn't even really exist anymore, it is playlists on grooveshark, or stations on pandora. Documets? Google documents. I do all of my web development on VIM running VPSs. The only stuff that doesn't happen "in the cloud" is specialized, media-creation type things, an activity that I would be surprised if more than 5% of the population participates in.
- peterwwillis 16y ago
  so you don't have a backup of any of your data?
  - blhack 16y ago
    What do you mean? There isn't really any data to be backed up here, except for the web dev things. For that, there are three servers that all exchange rsyncs every night. One is prod, one dev, and one that is just using some spare disk space on one of the arrays at work. For the photos, the online stuff is the backup. The originals still live either on their negatives, or on SD cards.
    - whatusername 16y ago
      You fit your photos on SD cards? wow. my 8GB card fills up pretty frequently.
      - blhack 16y ago
        8GB sd cards are cheap, much cheaper than it would cost me to buy 1000 frames of film.
        whatusername 16y ago
        oh sure. But TB hard-drives are cheaper still.
    - 16y ago

by 10ren 16y ago

tibbon 16y ago

OnLive has gotten pretty close with their gaming platform. They've shown demos of Autocad software and I believe Photoshop running with it.

10ren 16y ago
OnLive sounds cool, but it's a little hard to believe, since latency is a common issue in regular gaming already. Demos are invariably carefully orchestrated. The other thing that gives me pause is that it is such a compelling vision for publishers. It's an absolutely magic idea. However, this enthusiasm is not technology-driven: it's not about what has become possible, but what would be really amazingly cool if it was possible. But latency isn't such an issue for compiling etc. Someone was saying in the instant google thread that 250ms is imperceptible for search (and I've heard 200ms for the command line, from Rob Pike on Go). That's much lower hanging fruit than for gaming, where 250ms latency is far from instant but unplayable.
- tibbon 16y ago
  I had a similar reaction to you on Slashdot a few years ago when it was first announced. I thought it was completely made up. Yet, it works. Shockingly well. Better for FPS games than strategy games actually (you notice lag on a mouse cursor more than anywhere else).
- rbranson 16y ago
  How is it hard to believe? They are essentially doing what Akamai did and locating server farms very "close" to end users on the network. I have a 20ms ping from the closest Akamai CDN server.
- sv123 16y ago
  I thought there was no way it would work, got a beta invite a few months back and was blown away. My brain still insists that the game had to be installed on my local system to be able to be working so well.

miyabo 16y ago

I regularly use a cheap netbook as a terminal to an m1.large instance for development work. My scripts use spot instances to keep the price low--typically around $0.13/hr. Not for everyone, but it's saved me maybe $500 over buying a fast laptop. Unlike a laptop I can easily let others log into the system, leave it on for long compute jobs when I'm out of town, and don't have to worry as much about losing important data.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago

The "failed dream" been successfull but never for long. As disk bandwidth and network bandwidth increase irregularly and leapfrog one another, it goes in and out of fashion.

eru 16y ago
Yes, but network bandwith (and latency) may become cheaper than local maintenance one day.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  The user experience is a very sensitive variable. "Cheaper" matters to Enterprise folks but lag will make the rest of us pay a little more. In fact local maintenance is the driving force behind web apps already. They generally lag like a mother, have lame controls and update in whole-page flashes, but I see more every day.

javery 16y ago

If you take a look at the sad state of this countries broadband infrastructure we are a long way off. I live in a "tech" city, I have two internet connections (Time Warner and ClearWire) patched together on a high-end router and I still wait for things I shouldn't have to.

blhack 16y ago
How much of a speed increase do you see because of this setup? Are these actually redundant carriers, or is the last leg owned by qwest and just leased to Time Warner and ClearWire?
pw 16y ago
I'd also be interested in hearing how and why you do this.

dedward 16y ago

You can do it right now, as long as you aren't after video and gaming.

ewald 16y ago
http://www.onlive.com/ http://www.onlive.com/

blhack 16y ago

We already do. My pictures are all stored "in the cloud" (on facebook, or flickr, or photobucket). "My" music doesn't even really exist anymore, it is playlists on grooveshark, or stations on pandora. Documets? Google documents. I do all of my web development on VIM running VPSs. The only stuff that doesn't happen "in the cloud" is specialized, media-creation type things, an activity that I would be surprised if more than 5% of the population participates in.

peterwwillis 16y ago
so you don't have a backup of any of your data?
- blhack 16y ago
  What do you mean? There isn't really any data to be backed up here, except for the web dev things. For that, there are three servers that all exchange rsyncs every night. One is prod, one dev, and one that is just using some spare disk space on one of the arrays at work. For the photos, the online stuff is the backup. The originals still live either on their negatives, or on SD cards.
  - whatusername 16y ago
    You fit your photos on SD cards? wow. my 8GB card fills up pretty frequently.
    - blhack 16y ago
      8GB sd cards are cheap, much cheaper than it would cost me to buy 1000 frames of film.
      - whatusername 16y ago
        oh sure. But TB hard-drives are cheaper still.
  - 16y ago