What is Digg?196 Comments
- Xeppo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+293I am personally not looking forward to the day that all of my information is stored on the server of a company I do not work for. Call me paranoid, but I don't feel comfortable having my essential data anywhere other than my home server, my desktop, my laptop, or the pen drive in my pocket.
- chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -7/+216I can't wait for 3ds max web version. That's gonna be so......... impossible
People do more on computers than send some emails and write on their crappy little blogs. - jackyyll, on 10/12/2007, -3/+137Google OS ... Codename "Internet"
- nicolaihel, on 10/12/2007, -19/+148Online apps have a long way to go before they can meet most people's needs. But the article is right -- this is the direction things are headed. Skate to where the puck is going to be.
- MackPrime, on 10/12/2007, -17/+121why doesnt he just ***** marry google?
- Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -14/+107*sniffs*
Ahh, the sweet smell of hype machine *****. - yacks, on 10/12/2007, -3/+91Until Online speeds are as fast as harddrive transfer rates and the connection is more stable, the OS is around to stay.. not to mention all these programs will be running on some os on the other side..
- biochem, on 10/12/2007, -16/+69Sorry, but is this a story or a Google add?
- lpcustom, on 10/12/2007, -6/+58"ad"
- unknamed, on 10/12/2007, -3/+46Gimme a "G" ... Gimme an "O" ... Gimme another "O" ...
Seriously, someone buy this guy a Google sweater and some pom poms.
I even use a lot of Google's services but have you ever heard the saying "Putting all your eggs in one basket"? - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+45This Web 2.0 nonsense is farcical. What the experts here are clearly failing to recognise is that bandwidth isn't the limiting factor. Latency is. Right now signals travel across the web at about 1.7 * 10 ^ 8 m/s. The natural limit is the 3 * 10 ^ 8 m/s (i.e. the speed of light). This means that minimum latency can only be half of what it currently is at best. So the very best you can do is half the response time of things like Google Docs. This still isn't fast enough to come anywhere near client side expectations. OTOH things like .Net and Java will become more useful since the speed of CPU's will continue to increase making their overheads negligible. This will allow cross platform *and* fully featured apps to be run at desktop response times. The best bit is bandwidth will continue to increase making delivery of large applications possible (it already is as anyone who runs Steam knows but we are talking about fast delivery of MSO type apps). All you need do is tie them into web based file spaces to allow the current cool stuff Google Docs allows, there is *nothing* a client side application can't do that a web based on can given a huge stack of bandwidth and increasing computing power both of which are certainties in the future. They also do not suffer from the 0 latency fallacy.
For those who don't know WTF I'm talking about. Latency is the minimum response time for a signal over the web. It is entirely unrelated to bandwidth, more bandwidth doesn't necessarily mean lower latency. In the end many functions of a real web app are going to send a series of discrete signals over the web, this brings it right into the latency being the limiting factor realm, the lowest ping time you are ever going to get over the web is 1 - 10ms which is greatly slower than a function call on a computer now forget then. Note that this is not a matter of technology but one of physics, faster than light is impossible but is needed for a serious Web 2.0 world. - omatsei, on 10/12/2007, -5/+43Given the number of Google things he mentions, it might as well be the long-rumored and highly anticipated Google OS.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+40When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.
This article is vastly overstated and totally myopic. - schnuck, on 10/12/2007, -11/+44ok, online apps need a browser, here: firefox. firefox needs an OS to run... oh wait!
- netdroid9, on 10/12/2007, -1/+32This is all just a pipe dream. Sure, I can use Google Spreadsheets to do spreadsheet stuff, but I can grab OpenOffice and do it faster, easier, with more stablity, more control and no reliance on an active internet connection.
Why would the end user even bother? - dtd00d, on 10/12/2007, -16/+46http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3.0
It's only a matter of time. - kazimir34, on 10/12/2007, -2/+32Nice "tiny OS" to do "tiny stuff".
You better never have any network issue though - Gizza, on 10/12/2007, -3/+30OSs wont die any time soon. Things like this might be OK for basic users. But like you said, there has to still be an OS at the other end. Plus professional software is a LONG way off being online. Any 3D graphics software, or Photoshop, development environments and compilers like Visual Studio. It's just not going to happen, and while Internet speeds are getting faster and more stable, so are computer components. The speed of a Internet connection will almost never be able to match that of a hard drive.
- themajor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26www.google.com then "define:myopic" or just type it in the google search bar in your browser to save yourself some time.
- rally25rs, on 10/12/2007, -3/+27@orangysb
Putting money in the bank is not the same as trusting a 3rd party company, because banks are federally insured to replace your lost funds if the bank is robbed, goes out of business, or spontaneously cumbusts.
What does Firefox or any other web-based OS company have? - estvir, on 10/12/2007, -11/+32- You don't control your files
- Your files will be along as long as Google (Or whomever) pleases
- You're relying on others an awful amount
- Your data is less secure (Let's see, I could either rely on Google or I could have my own secure PC/network, etc)
- Good luck doing intensive work (As in, not just writing an email or a simple document)
- You have little/no control over the software/service (As in, upgrading, downgrading, etc)
Etc.. there are just so many reasons I will -never- (Or not for a long time) rely on online-only apps, file storage, etc. I think anyone who actually does what this blog (One big Google ad ?) is foolish too. - VenTatsu, on 10/12/2007, -7/+24Network Computing
Push
Thin Clients
Web Services
Web 2.0
So now we can add Firefox OS to the list of 'the direction things are headed' technologies that will fail or at the very least fail to live up to the hype? - SteveMax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Sounds like a nice bubble to me.
- Darkestblaze, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16@Omatsei
I control my files plenty right now. In fact, they're all sitting on my hard drives less than a foot away from me, not on some server owned by a random company who could look through them/make a "backup"/etc on a whim. If I wanted my files gone I could simply take my RAID apart, format them a dozen times, incinerate them, and dump the ashes into the ocean. I guarantee that no third party is going to burn their servers just because you want your sensitive data to be gone forever. Just look at recent MPAA/RIAA lawsuit tactics, go straight to the ISP and demand information. If all your information was stored on a server, who's to say it's not an international server? At least here in the US, the "man" needs a warrant to come into my house and take my computers to search for "illegal" downloads. If it were all web-based, they wouldn't even have to let me *know* they're looking through my stuff, they'd just subpoena whoever owns the servers my stuff is on and mail me a summons. I don't know about other people, but I like the *only* copy of my files within arms reach where I know there's no one snooping through my *****. - DeskFlyer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17You'll have to pry XP and Photoshop from my cold, dead hands.
Oh, and nice Google advert. - Philluminati, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18There isn't a browser with a rich enough experience to provide 3D gaming, easy to use multimedia including HD DVD playback capabilities etc to make a web browser become more important than the OS. Bandwidth constraints, peoples desire to use P2P and write their own software, cross platform compatability (for those who choose not to be dependant on a single supplier)
It all makes this unfeasable. Atleast for 7 or 8 years. THEN we'll see.
But it will never be a HTML rendering browser like firefox, I promise you. - dadrew1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16@jav1231
I agree with you on the thin client analogy. We have 6 thin clients here at work that we were going to use to cut down on administrative work and such. Now 3 are sitting up in our server room collecting dust, 1 is rarely used, and the other 2 keep on showing their limitations with the users that use them. You have to have such restrictions on them, they can't do anything! $500 for a thin client that has to run off of a server? No thanks. Here's a $500 computer.
Thin clients were supposed to take over with technology, but it just throws more components in the process that can go wrong. I think that is the main reason "Web 3.0" or whatnot will not make the desktop OS obsolete - there are just too many more factors that will kill it. You would need near 100% up time through a perfect fiber connection to make it worthwhile. And by the time that becomes a reality for even 15% of the US, then computers are going to rediculously fast, unfathomably small, and wonderfully cheap, and by that time the main OS will probably be free (if Linux will ever take off).
So there is my $3.50. Probably should've bought a BigMac with it, but oh well. - wepeel, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19He's not saying we won't need and OS in the future, he's just saying that it won't matter which one we decide to use. His argument is that while many people argue over which OS is the best, in the future it won't matter which is the best, because everything will be online. I assume he realizes that then we will argue over which online application provider is the best.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14"while Internet speeds are getting faster and more stable, so are computer components."
Internet speeds are not getting faster. Referring to my post above. Bandwidth is getting greater. To use a road analogy, the distance being travelled isn't decreasing nor is the speed limit increasing but the road is getting wider to allow more cars through at once. This is great for pure data transfer since we just send more cars/packets over the road/internet in batch. Interactive applications cannot work in batch. You cannot stack up a series of function calls in a batch then send them over the web at once and expect people not to break down laughing at the 1970ness of your web app. So we are reduced to one discrete packet for each remote function call and each packet/car is travelling almost as slowly as it did 10 years ago and we aren't far from the speed of light/speed limit. When you get down to it the web cannot physically be fast enough to make it usable for more than a fall back. - gremos, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17If I recall correctly a few years back, Oracle was pushing the computers without hard-drives, it did not seem to go anywhere due to lack of widespread high speed internet back then. With high speed internet now pretty much standard, it might work for users with low demands like the author of the article.
As for me, I am sticking to my two laptops and PDA. My employer will fire me on the spot if I put any of my work files on internet, regardless of how secure it may appear. If it is not run by our IT department it is out of the question. As for my personal files, I like to keep them safe and secure without internet connection. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16@gizza Photoshop is going to be online soon (http://news.com.com/2100-7345_3-6163015.html)
Not at the level of the local software, but getting there.
He's not that in love with Google. Gmail and Google Calendar are more than enough for most people. Google Reader is simple and effective. I have to disagree with him on word processing, though. I still need Word to get my work done. Google Spreadsheets can't compare to Excel yet either. And Picasa is out performed by many other web based solutions. Actually... yeah this guy is overboard on Google.
OSs won't die due to games, too. We are a long way from a RuneScape that can look like World of Warcraft. - ipodsweatshop, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16An online OS? Imagine how easy it will be for the government to look through your stuff then. Also, net connectivity is required and so is good bandwidth. I'll stick with a local OS forever thanks.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13"Obsolescence is when a person or object is no longer wanted even though it is still in good working order."
The key part of that is "Still in good working order."
I type this from a Pentium 3 with 256 megs of RAM. My work computer, and seeing as all I have to use is Meditech and Outlook, it does its job well.
My Co-worker has a P4 with Hyperthreading.. But what's the point? We could have P2s and still be able to do our jobs.
Buying the newest tech because it's newest tends to waste your money. - jav1231, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Exactly. Remember when thin clients were going to kill the desktop? I'm not saying the OS won't die I'm saying I'm skeptical. Besides, SOMETHING has to run the browser.
- M2Ys4U, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10griffinsbridge: I recently went on a physics field trip and one of the professors at the laboratory we visited summarised this up very well, to paraphrase:
"It's not 'The Speed of Light' it's '*THE* speed' - The greatest speed possible for anything to travel. The only reason it's called 'The Speed of Light' is because light is the first thing we observed to travel at this velocity".
Just because we can slow light down doesn't mean things can travel faster than c (which is actually The speed of light in a *VACUUM*). - br0ck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12@rally25rus - Couldn't these firms be equally protected with insurance as well? Maybe this isn't true for everyone, but for me, all of my most personal data is already held by various online providers. Taxcut has my tax info including all SSNs and bank account numbers (for direct deposit), Quicken.com has authority to withdraw from my bank account and stores all of my bank and credit card transactions, Newegg and Amazon have every credit card I've ever owned, my insurance site has every medical treatment I've ever received, and digg.com has every stupid thing I've said for the last 2 years.
- brocej, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15*Loads dictionary.com for translation...*
- whisperedlie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8oh boy. remember when Java was going to be all you needed on your modern rendition of a dumb terminal? yeah, well the same reasons that never happened still apply.
A). I'm not giving someone 100% control of what/when/where I install or (more importantly) the data I create/collect/consume.
B). Waiting to stream down 30GB of MP3s to load up my Zune/iPod sounds really ***** fantastic, unless you want to give me 150MB/s internet access at the same rate that i'm getting 12mbps
C). Losing the ability to interoperate different computers/electronics to enrich my life would not be possible (or would be entirely lame), such as MCE/XBOX360 interaction
D). Not being able to use a computer because my ISP is down (or my thin OS provider is down) sounds sweet
E). This would saturate our already piss-poor pool of bandwidth and our internet experience would suck
C). The presumption that someone like google magically never suffers catastrophic errors and thus never could lose your data is rather naive. at least i can create DVDs of my stuff at my own leisure. - lpcustom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8How is he thinking outside the box? This same idea has been regurgitated over and over for the past two years.
- LeGav, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Unplug your internet cable or wireless card, and lets see how productive you are then.
- tracydanger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I didn't know about mediamax. That alone was worth the article. 25 GB free online storage. Way better than box.net.
4 accounts = 100 GB free storage online. I'll digg for that tip alone. - ScoTTeh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6You're right. Article's like this might be right in the future, but at the moment only basic applications you might use in an office situation will become available on the web. These applications are able to fit into the way the web is currently designed with a little bit of Javascript and server side scripting. Things like watching DVDs, playing modern games, running legacy applications (lots of companies still rely strongly on these), etc just wont work well via the web anytime in the next few years (decades?).
Another problem that restricts something like this is bandwidth limitations, while most of Digg's users are located in the USA, people in most other countries arn't as fortunate. Here in Australia (a developed country) all plans have relatively small bandwidth/data caps for what this article proposes.
The OS as we know it may not disappear in the foreseeable future, but it will become much more web driven. - effedup, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I like google as much as the next guy but the author LOOOOOVVVVVEEESSS google.
- RoboDonut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Why would anyone want to do everything over the internet? Web apps are incredibly slow. A P3 500MHz with REAL software could outperform a P4 running web 2.0 crap.
- Flashman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"The one thing I haven’t found a perfect solution for is mp3s"
How odd, that no company has stepped up to focus on permitting the uploading of MP3s to its servers...
/sarcasm - dilbertmouse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@themajor
I'm stuck at work in Internet Explorer Hell, you insensitive clod! - BumbyKnuckles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Okay i have a question how is even even getting to these sites without an OS installed? No matter what microsoft will always dominate the market because got damn its just easy to use for the typical computer user.
- cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10The author is right, and the author is wrong. The answer is that great answer given by IT geeks to civillians quite often; it depends.
For ME to depend on the internetwebs for my work is truly laughable, besides, I do much more than what the author entertains a user doing. More powerful PCs will lead to more and more cool applications that take advantage of said horsepower.
For my Mother to depend on a simple OS with a good internet connection for the basic stuff she does, as does the author, makes total sense. I've moved about everything she does to the internet, save that of basic word processing she does with Abi Word. She's SO used to Abi word, changing to Google Docs would be a pain. Besides, Google does is NOT as easy for a noob to use as it may seem to us geeks.
I can however easily imagine the day of the internet appliance is coming. OS? Who cares, if you're my Mother or the like. A simple yet fast pc, that boots from flash memory (fast), gets its updates from a service provider (easy for end user), and can do most anything on the web you want it to do.
Cool, I'd buy that, for my Mother. Then there will be the balls to the walls, full featured, full powerd, do it all full function PCs like we're used to now, basically the PC I use today. - Jofaba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I don't agree with this article in several aspects, and found your comment by searching for "privacy", as this guy is obviously not only trusting the security of his information on foreign server hard drives and the software that maintains them and archives them for retrieval, but also completely giving up any hint of privacy by giving all of his personal information (pictures, unpublished writing, etc) to companies he hopes he can trust.
However, just wanted to point out a small flaw in your post. You said "Until they are able to bootstrap a pc just enough to load a web browser, operating systems matter." While you're half right, it still is technically possible with a livecd. You don't need to install an OS or have a hard drive to work the way this guy does. It's not terribly slow either. I have a gaming computer that I'm trying linux on (I mention it's gaming because it has high speed hardware) but my DVD drive broke a while back so I put an old mac drive in, and then I corrupted my mbr dual-booting, and don't know enough to fix it myself; though I tried. For nearly a month I was accessing the net, a huge part of my home life (be it for Pandora music, Digg.com, favorite communities, news, etc) without a hard drive or integrated OS.
The downside is media playback and the limit of your cd/dvd drive speed. But... a livecd is still an OS, so you're still right to some degree. I'll give the statement a 75% accuracy rating. Overtime, there's no reason to think that some hardware won't come with a version of a live cd installed, sort of like a bios. A very simple interaction between the hardware to access the net and have a virtual desktop. I imagine that'd most likely be a motherboard feature. - minc3d, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4And when the internet goes down this guy will sit in the corner with his dunce cap on because he cant get any work done.
Online apps are nice, but no replacement in terms of speed or functionality compared with their desktop counterparts. Ill take my Office 2007 over Google Docs and Spreadsheet anyday. -
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