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On 31 December 2006 20:20, Mick wrote: |
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> On Sunday 31 December 2006 16:02, Uwe Thiem wrote: |
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|
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> > This won't happen for various reasons. |
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> > |
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> > In the business world, the main reason is security. Who will trust |
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> > an "Internet Desktop Provider" with their internal documents? |
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> |
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> The same people who are trusting a multitude of outsourcing companies with |
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> their HR, Payroll, logistics, IT management and support, procurement, |
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> marketing, public relations, project delivery, . . . , you get the drift. |
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> I wouldn't trust them any more than you do, but in the world of hollow |
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> corporations there are a multitude of companies out there who would trust |
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> nearly anybody to "take this problem away". |
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|
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On the other hand, I know enough companies that don't do that - and I do IT |
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consultancy jobs for them. I don't doubt that a large number of companies is |
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hollow and stupid. The questions is what the ratio is between those that |
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store their latest blueprints inhouse and those that don't. I do not know. Do |
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you? I mean hard numbers, not guesses. The other question is what the top 100 |
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will do. Will Ford keep their internal strategic papers on the servers of an |
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Internet Desktop Provider (IDP)? Will Dow Chemical? DaimlerChrysler? Exxon? |
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You get the drift. ;-) |
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|
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> |
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> > In the world of home computing, there are actually two main reasons. The |
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> > first is porn. |
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> |
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> Why does porn need to stored locally?! |
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|
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Many daddies John Doe might not understand the implications of storing |
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potentially embarrassing (and often illegal) data on someone else's servers. |
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Many, if not the majority, will at least have their suspicions and probably |
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chicken out of IDPs. |
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|
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How significant is this? Well, I had the task to analyse the logs of a |
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transparent proxy of a local ISP for some time. It was quite amazing. Just |
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short of 50% of HTTP traffic was porn. About 80% of their subscribers were |
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regular porn site visitors. So yes, it is significant. |
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|
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> |
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> > The second is nearly photo-realistic games. |
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> |
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> Of course. That is I think one area where a thin client will not be able |
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> to compete with a modern desktop PC. I don't play games and haven't seen |
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> what sort of latency a game played through FreeNX can achieve. On the |
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> other hand future gaming may be left to games consoles? |
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|
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NX is a truly amazing technology. I tried a full KDE desktop over a bloody |
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modem line, and it reacted as if local. Still, the games I am talking about |
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put a far higher stress on the local system *and* the bandwidth. Still, if |
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thin clients would get far better video subsystems *and* much more ram they |
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might do the trick. |
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|
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> |
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> > Another, not that important, reason is that there are vast areas in the |
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> > world where bandwidth is insufficient and far too expensive for it. |
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> |
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> Indeed, although most of these vast areas are sparsely populated and some |
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> of them are wired up as we speak - a friend who visited China 3 years ago |
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> mentioned that the gov't was laying yellow fibre-optic cables right across |
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> the country. |
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|
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While China is a huge part of the world population-wise. it isn't all of it |
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outside the US. Besides, fibre-optics aren't all of it. We have a backbone of |
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them as well. Still, the average bandwidth a client can expect is somewhere |
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between 3 and 4 KB/s. |
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|
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Anyway, since you use gmail.com, you are at least outsourcing your email. ;-) |
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Not too bad, I admit - as long as you aren't sending incriminating or simply |
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confidential stuff through them. |
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|
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Uwe |
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|
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-- |
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A fast and easy generator of fractals for KDE: |
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http://www.SysEx.com.na/iwy-1.0.tar.bz2 |
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-- |
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