During his opening speech at the GNOME Developers conference GUADEC Jono Bacon, community manager for the Ubuntu distribution, called for a common vision inside the project, an area in which the project as a whole is currently lacking. Only a few hours later Red Hat developers Havoc Pennington and Bryan Clark presented their own proposal for a reinvention of the Open Source desktop: The GNOME Online Desktop. My take: As I have been saying for a long time, GNOME needs a vision (and leaders) for the future. I'm glad that people are finally stepping up.
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Member since:2007-05-22
As a 56k dial-up user, I can assure you that you are not the only one. Transferring anything over 56k is a pain, having to transfer _everything_ over it would be prohibitive.
Member since:2005-07-06
That's only half the story; in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, flat rate plans are prohibitively expensive and the connections are castrated at peak times. The only alternative are the cheaper but metered plans which give a certain number of megabytes/gigabytes downloads per month.
Like I said in a chatroom last night, the GNOME development is far too US or more correct, western focused/centric rather than realising that not all countries have the same level of infrastructure and it would be prohibitive for many users regarding many of these pie-in-the-sky ideas.
It goes further, for example, take Apple for example, in their dash board, its all very nice for those who live in the US, but how about those who live outside who want financial data from their own stock exchange - for example, there isn't that ability.
This reminds me very much of Microsofts notion "create software and the hardware will eventually come up to meeting the requirements" - which completely ignores that those in developing (and even non-developing nations), that a NZ$1500 is expensive and unreasonable to expect an end user to invest that much money into a computer merely for surfing the internet and typing up things.
The 'network desktop' is doing the same thing, but replace hardware with bandwidth.
Member since:2007-06-19
No you are not. While on-line services will become
more common , people will never j
treat their computers as X terminals only.
Hardware integration , games, ..for many
things like playing your mp3 collection or watching videos it simply makes no sense to do it over the internet even if there was the bandwidth to do it.
But the most important thing is privacy. P2P and bittorrent are not going away soon and I don't think anyone would want their possibly illegally downloaded tv show to be on a public server and thus more vunerable
to the legal mood of the day.
The genie can't be put back in the bottle(though the RIAA will try)
Member since:2005-07-07
The problem is that we are training in the public schools and universities a generation of SHEEPLE that will surrender important freedoms (like private offline computing) for the "next big advancement in technology" the "conveninece" of not having to install their own software or supposed "security" of having their information centrally controlled. Gun grabbers, Neo_CONs and internet software renters all depend on this basic fact of how our current society is being developed.
I'm actually surprised that the Open Source community actually contains enough SHEEPLE to be involved in an anti freedom scheme such as this. Even done with F/OSS centralized control of comoutung is a worse offense against freedom than anything the PROPRIETARY software manufactueres have done so far (Even though they are also talking about participating in this disgusting treasonous business, particularly Microsoft.)
Edited 2007-07-20 05:09
Member since:2006-01-17
I agree. But I'm also amazed that people let the only copy of their massive amounts of email reside on Google's servers. These same people will probably have no trouble with storing the only copies of their CVs and vacation photos on someone else's computer as well.
But I don't think we have to worry about offline storage becoming obsolete until we can stream an HD movie with no noticeable lag from the other side of the planet. But maybe that will happen in your 10 year estimate? Who knows?
Member since:2005-10-12
No, you're certainly not the only one. Back in the dark ages (1981), I wanted a PC because it was just that - a personal computer. No more annoying mainframe outages. No worries about someone else losing or messing with my private data.
If I have something to share, I'll put it on the web. If I need to be able to work on a computer wherever I go, I'll either carry my laptop or place my os, apps, and data on a bootable flash drive.
Member since:2005-08-26
Member since:
2006-01-10
Am I the only one who shudders at the thought of having all my information online at all times? If I'm controlling the server itself, that's one thing, but I'd rather not have something like an important document I'm writing to be on some server out there on the net.
There still is a use for having an Offline computer, though sadly it's starting to disappear. Also if you think about it, if we start moving towards a time when people just connect to their desktops all remotely, then all that money people have been spending on mass storage for their own system will be obsoleted.
One last point, this really couldn't work until everyone has Internet 2. Some places in the world or even in some cities can't get any higher than 256kbs, or even 56kbs.
I can see something like this in 10 years or so, but it's not very viable now.