3 ms·

I can see dropbox turning into a service that stores and connects you to your whole "environment" so you can access it from any device.

naner 15y ago
I remember reading an article a few years ago by (I think) a novelist who envisioned that in the future we'd store our entire computing system online and just switch between devices, always having access to our environment and files. Whether you're on a smart phone, your home computer, or at a terminal in the library, etc. I don't believe dropbox is going to do that, but it is an interesting idea.
- moocow01 15y ago
  Isn't that what a web application is? Or I suppose taken to even more of an extreme what OnLive is?
  - naner 15y ago
    No. Everything is synced (apps, settings) and there is still native-run code.
- there 15y ago
  that is pretty much what google is doing with the chromebook. a local terminal with not much state storage, keeping all of the important data in the cloud. they're trying to do the same thing with android (which is why the google nexus phones keep coming out with such small amounts of flash storage). mobile devices are powerful enough and desktops/laptops are cheap enough now that the computation can be done locally, with the data still being stored on a central server. a decade or two ago, the computation was also done on the servers. microsoft did it with windows terminal server, sun did it with the ray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray), but the concept was basically like vnc'ing into a central server and having your entire session preserved, no matter where you logged in from. and of course, before graphical desktops were big, unix and dumb terminals did the same thing. you could use a vt100 connected to a modem from anywhere, run 'screen -r' and restore your saved session to access all of your applications, data, and email stored on the server.
tikhonj 15y ago
I can see that too. But I can also see somebody like VMWare getting there first--a gigantic, centralized cloud VM repository is not difficult to imagine, and they already have a bunch of technology needed to move a VM from a server to a computer (I think).

naner 15y ago

I remember reading an article a few years ago by (I think) a novelist who envisioned that in the future we'd store our entire computing system online and just switch between devices, always having access to our environment and files. Whether you're on a smart phone, your home computer, or at a terminal in the library, etc. I don't believe dropbox is going to do that, but it is an interesting idea.

moocow01 15y ago
Isn't that what a web application is? Or I suppose taken to even more of an extreme what OnLive is?
- naner 15y ago
  No. Everything is synced (apps, settings) and there is still native-run code.
there 15y ago
that is pretty much what google is doing with the chromebook. a local terminal with not much state storage, keeping all of the important data in the cloud. they're trying to do the same thing with android (which is why the google nexus phones keep coming out with such small amounts of flash storage). mobile devices are powerful enough and desktops/laptops are cheap enough now that the computation can be done locally, with the data still being stored on a central server. a decade or two ago, the computation was also done on the servers. microsoft did it with windows terminal server, sun did it with the ray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray), but the concept was basically like vnc'ing into a central server and having your entire session preserved, no matter where you logged in from. and of course, before graphical desktops were big, unix and dumb terminals did the same thing. you could use a vt100 connected to a modem from anywhere, run 'screen -r' and restore your saved session to access all of your applications, data, and email stored on the server.

tikhonj 15y ago

I can see that too. But I can also see somebody like VMWare getting there first--a gigantic, centralized cloud VM repository is not difficult to imagine, and they already have a bunch of technology needed to move a VM from a server to a computer (I think).