5 ms·

Ultimately this leads to my dream of only carrying a phone with all my stuff on,going to work, place it in a dock and start working with the phone as my PC repl

by buster 14y ago

Ultimately this leads to my dream of only carrying a phone with all my stuff on,going to work, place it in a dock and start working with the phone as my PC replacement.

msh 14y ago
My dream too, like this http://philip.greenspun.com/business/mobile-phone-as-home-computer http://philip.greenspun.com/business/mobile-phone-as-home-co...
mladenkovacevic 14y ago
I agree this is the dream. Just one small device with a super-CPU that you carry around and it interfaces with displays all around you. Perhaps with Miracast and Airplay this future is not that far off. I also can't wait until the day we don't have to charge our mobile devices (solar + kinetic charging in every phone)
- webjprgm 14y ago
  Or wireless tesla-coil charging. Or just inductive charging, but put the inductive chargers in desktop and office chairs so that it's a fairly automatic and invisible process.
webjprgm 14y ago
So what's the difference between having cloud-based accounts and documents that sync between phone, tablet, and desktop? Then you can go to work and without even taking your phone out of your pocket (or even if you forgot it on your bed stand) you can start working with all your same stuff. I believe Apple looks at the problem this way. Rather than have one piece of hardware act as all devices, they have multiple pieces of hardware that share the needed parts. (Though they haven't finished making it quite as useful as I'd like it to be.) One of my concerns has been privacy. In this case what I mean is that I don't want Apple or Dropbox or Google or Canonical to own my data in it's cloud. I would probably be satisfied with a solution that only stored encrypted data in the cloud so that those data storage providers could not possibly access my data (so they couldn't be allowed to have my encryption key). I would also be satisfied with a way of hosting a cloud storage platform on my own servers (which would likely be a VPS, so I'd have to encrypt it anyway or else Linode etc. would have my data). If we go the route of using the phone as the center, then we also need to add the capability into the Linux kernel to connect to external computing resources, like CPUs and GPUs. Then we're not limited to just a "thin client" type of desktop, but could have a full powered one.
- FrojoS 14y ago
  > So what's the difference between having cloud-based accounts and documents that sync between phone, tablet, and desktop? No internet required.
  - webjprgm 14y ago
    "The network is the computer." Who uses a computer without the internet? I suppose the same thing is possible using local wifi synching, like how Dropbox shares content over a LAN when it can vs. downloading it from the cloud.
    - rdtsc 14y ago
      > "The network is the computer." With the network this bad (cost and performance wise) in US (due to legal and monopolistic reasons, not necessarily technical), that makes a pretty shitty computer. So I would rather have a computer that can be divorced from the network if need be.
- socceroos 14y ago
  You don't need two computers.
  - lttlrck 14y ago
    But this thing will need two window managers to be useful and applications optimized for touch AND mouse/keyboard. Is rather have two computers. It's not like carrying a phone is a hardship.
    - buster 14y ago
      I don't care about two window managers (besides, Enlightenment seems to run on phones as well as PCs). Why would you like to carry a second computer when it's not needed anymore!? I don't get that argument..
- buster 14y ago

by buster 14y ago

Ultimately this leads to my dream of only carrying a phone with all my stuff on,going to work, place it in a dock and start working with the phone as my PC replacement.

msh 14y ago

My dream too, like this http://philip.greenspun.com/business/mobile-phone-as-home-computer http://philip.greenspun.com/business/mobile-phone-as-home-co...

mladenkovacevic 14y ago

I agree this is the dream. Just one small device with a super-CPU that you carry around and it interfaces with displays all around you. Perhaps with Miracast and Airplay this future is not that far off. I also can't wait until the day we don't have to charge our mobile devices (solar + kinetic charging in every phone)

webjprgm 14y ago
Or wireless tesla-coil charging. Or just inductive charging, but put the inductive chargers in desktop and office chairs so that it's a fairly automatic and invisible process.

webjprgm 14y ago

So what's the difference between having cloud-based accounts and documents that sync between phone, tablet, and desktop? Then you can go to work and without even taking your phone out of your pocket (or even if you forgot it on your bed stand) you can start working with all your same stuff. I believe Apple looks at the problem this way. Rather than have one piece of hardware act as all devices, they have multiple pieces of hardware that share the needed parts. (Though they haven't finished making it quite as useful as I'd like it to be.) One of my concerns has been privacy. In this case what I mean is that I don't want Apple or Dropbox or Google or Canonical to own my data in it's cloud. I would probably be satisfied with a solution that only stored encrypted data in the cloud so that those data storage providers could not possibly access my data (so they couldn't be allowed to have my encryption key). I would also be satisfied with a way of hosting a cloud storage platform on my own servers (which would likely be a VPS, so I'd have to encrypt it anyway or else Linode etc. would have my data). If we go the route of using the phone as the center, then we also need to add the capability into the Linux kernel to connect to external computing resources, like CPUs and GPUs. Then we're not limited to just a "thin client" type of desktop, but could have a full powered one.

FrojoS 14y ago
> So what's the difference between having cloud-based accounts and documents that sync between phone, tablet, and desktop? No internet required.
- webjprgm 14y ago
  "The network is the computer." Who uses a computer without the internet? I suppose the same thing is possible using local wifi synching, like how Dropbox shares content over a LAN when it can vs. downloading it from the cloud.
  - rdtsc 14y ago
    > "The network is the computer." With the network this bad (cost and performance wise) in US (due to legal and monopolistic reasons, not necessarily technical), that makes a pretty shitty computer. So I would rather have a computer that can be divorced from the network if need be.
socceroos 14y ago
You don't need two computers.
- lttlrck 14y ago
  But this thing will need two window managers to be useful and applications optimized for touch AND mouse/keyboard. Is rather have two computers. It's not like carrying a phone is a hardship.
  - buster 14y ago
    I don't care about two window managers (besides, Enlightenment seems to run on phones as well as PCs). Why would you like to carry a second computer when it's not needed anymore!? I don't get that argument..
buster 14y ago