[1st-mile-nm] [FRIAM] Kicking the Internet up a notch

Owen Densmore owen at backspaces.net
Sun Apr 6 21:07:50 PDT 2008 

On Apr 6, 2008, at 9:16 PM, Bob Knight wrote:
> Am I missing something or does this dovetail nicely with something  
> like LTSP or Sun Rays?

Bingo, right on!  Both are *extreme* thin clients with nothing on the  
"desktop" other than a keyboard, mouse, display, and server-connection.

The Sun Ray goes to the extreme of actually having the frame buffer on  
the server, and the "server-connection" literally streaming the video  
between the thin-client and the server.

I used one of these for 4 years at Sun.  At first folks were concerned  
-- where's my *data*. Well, they then realized it was where it always  
was .. backed up on the network.

It has a great other facility.  It was "logged into" via a credit-card  
sorta thing .. a Java Card.  I could pop mine out, run down the hall,  
pop it into a friends system, and we'd be looking at my system!  Talk  
about virtual desktops!

> For various reasons, I am very enamored of thin clients: if you have  
> access to bandwidth via 3g, wireless or wire, they give you the  
> ability to move your workspace with you without carrying your actual  
> bits.
>
> Why is this good? What happens if your laptop or computers at home  
> get ripped off? Massive ID theft? Perhaps not, if you're fastidious  
> about using things like encryption. If you're not doing heavy gaming  
> or graphics, they are lightweight enough bandwidth-wise so that  
> things are not too annoying.
>
> Couple them with what Owen's talking about and ... you don't have to  
> have a roomful of confusers at home, you have great bandwidth to  
> your computing and someone else is worrying about security and HVAC.
>
> Or is this completely tangential?

No, its absolutely spot on.

> FWIW.
>
> Bob


    -- Owen

> Owen Densmore wrote:
>> Finally!  This is a good intro to what Don and I have been working  
>> on  the last couple of weeks.  The network is the computer ..  
>> wait .. Sun?
>>
>> Here's step one, the cloud:
>>   http://www.joyent.com/accelerator
>> Basically we're tracing the newest "hosting" technologies, and  
>> believe  me, they are changing at light speed.
>>
>> Cloud computing is a brilliant combination of hardware/server   
>> advancement .. where small fractions of a "blade" can have its own  
>> IP  address, to software that "virtualizes" these fractions into  
>> dozens of  "sites".  And when I say "virtualize", I DEFINITELY do  
>> NOT mean VMWare  or Parallels.  I mean a fascinating combination of  
>> DNS stunts with  name-based sub-servers on every "site".  And yes,  
>> these services offer  clustered systems so you can go from a  
>> fraction of a server to  multiple servers.
>>
>> Basically Torrents are going to replace streams, and Virtual  
>> Servers  are going to replace hosting services as we once knew  
>> them.  Currently  the torrent part is weakest, but we believe we'll  
>> see "torrent url's"  soon .. stunts where the torrent technology  
>> will not be limited to  file sharing, but will be a "transport" for  
>> any layer in the Internet.
>>
>> To be specific, Don and I have an architecture for hosting that   
>> includes two "computers" .. one the typical shared hosting  
>> service ..  but with GREAT programmer oriented services, an the  
>> other a dedicated  fraction of a "blade" (with root access).. which  
>> bursts up to the full  blade, or can advance to clustered.
>>
>> Managing this is a "DNS Management Service" .. yet another web  
>> hosting  service that lets some of the requests for our domain go  
>> to the shared  system, and others to the shared .. i.e. a form of  
>> load balancing.   And for storage, the service has a Network  
>> Storage System (Joyent  Bingo Disks) that is completely scalable,  
>> and on a 100Mb pipe.  All  facilities interoperable.
>>
>> Managing all this is a fantastic web based administration package   
>> called Virtualmin .. virtual computing administration.  And we can   
>> move our Virtualmin system from Joyent to Amazon (S3/EC2) in a  
>> day,  with Virtualmin's migration facilities.
>>
>> Its not your father's internet any more!
>>
>> See these:
>>   http://www.joyent.com/
>>   http://www.virtualmin.com/
>>   https://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/
>>
>> So Tom, the answer to:
>>
>>> Let's see now: what are the odds we in New Mexico -- hell, in the   
>>> U.S. --
>>> will ever see a fraction of this in our home?
>>>
>> .. is very high if we in The Complex decide to work on this.  The   
>> pieces are in place.
>>
>>    -- Owen
>>
>>
>> On Apr 6, 2008, at 8:33 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Let's see now: what are the odds we in New Mexico -- hell, in the   
>>> U.S. --
>>> will ever see a fraction of this in our home?
>>>
>>> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece?print=yes&randnum=1207538948023---
>>>
>>> -- tj
>>>
>>> ==========================================
>>> J. T. Johnson
>>> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
>>> www.analyticjournalism.com
>>> 505.577.6482(c)                                    505.473.9646(h)
>>> http://www.jtjohnson.com                 tom at jtjohnson.com
>>>
>>> "You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
>>> To change something, build a new model that makes the
>>> existing model obsolete."
>>> -- Buckminster Fuller
>>> ==========================================
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 1st-mile-nm mailing list
>> 1st-mile-nm at mailman.dcn.org
>> http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/1st-mile-nm
>>

More information about the 1st-mile-nm mailing list