Re: [gentoo-user] Re: anti-portage wreckage?

[Uwe Thiem <uwix@iway.na>]

On 31 December 2006 20:20, Mick wrote:
> On Sunday 31 December 2006 16:02, Uwe Thiem wrote:

> > This won't happen for various reasons.
> >
> > In the business world, the main reason is security. Who will trust
> > an "Internet Desktop Provider" with their internal documents?
>
> The same people who are trusting a multitude of outsourcing companies with
> their HR, Payroll, logistics, IT management and support, procurement,
> marketing, public relations, project delivery, . . . , you get the drift. 
> I wouldn't trust them any more than you do, but in the world of hollow
> corporations there are a multitude of companies out there who would trust
> nearly anybody to "take this problem away".

On the other hand, I know enough companies that don't do that - and I do IT 
consultancy jobs for them. I don't doubt that a large number of companies is 
hollow and stupid. The questions is what the ratio is between those that 
store their latest blueprints inhouse and those that don't. I do not know. Do 
you? I mean hard numbers, not guesses. The other question is what the top 100 
will do. Will Ford keep their internal strategic papers on the servers of an 
Internet Desktop Provider (IDP)? Will Dow Chemical? DaimlerChrysler? Exxon? 
You get the drift. ;-)

>
> > In the world of home computing, there are actually two main reasons. The
> > first is porn.
>
> Why does porn need to stored locally?!

Many daddies John Doe might not understand the implications of storing 
potentially embarrassing (and often illegal) data on someone else's servers. 
Many, if not the majority, will at least have their suspicions and probably 
chicken out of  IDPs.

How significant is this? Well, I had the task to analyse the logs of a 
transparent proxy of a local ISP for some time. It was quite amazing. Just 
short of 50% of HTTP traffic was porn. About 80% of their subscribers were 
regular porn site visitors. So yes, it is significant.
 
>
> > The second is nearly photo-realistic games.
>
> Of course.  That is I think one area where a thin client will not be able
> to compete with a modern desktop PC.  I don't play games and haven't seen
> what sort of latency a game played through FreeNX can achieve.  On the
> other hand future gaming may be left to games consoles?

NX is a truly amazing technology. I tried a full KDE desktop over a bloody 
modem line, and it reacted as if local. Still, the games I am talking about  
put a far higher stress on the local system *and* the bandwidth. Still, if 
thin clients would get far better video subsystems *and* much more ram they 
might do the trick.

>
> > Another, not that important, reason is that there are vast areas in the
> > world where bandwidth is insufficient and far too expensive for it.
>
> Indeed, although most of these vast areas are sparsely populated and some
> of them are wired up as we speak - a friend who visited China 3 years ago
> mentioned that the gov't was laying yellow fibre-optic cables right across
> the country.

While China is a huge part of the world population-wise. it isn't all of it 
outside the US. Besides, fibre-optics aren't all of it. We have a backbone of 
them as well. Still, the average bandwidth a client can expect is somewhere 
between 3 and 4 KB/s.

Anyway, since you use gmail.com, you are at least outsourcing your email. ;-) 
Not too bad, I admit - as long as you aren't sending incriminating or simply 
confidential stuff through them.

Uwe

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