The next broadband killer: advanced operating systems?

Tue Oct 23 05:10:45 UTC 2007

On Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:39:48 PDT, Hex Star said:

> I can see "advanced operating systems" consuming much more bandwidth
> in the near future then is currently the case, especially with the web
> 2.0 hype.

You obviously have a different concept of "near future" than the rest of us,
and you've apparently never been on the pushing end of a software deployment
where the pulling end doesn't feel like pulling.  I suggest you look at the
uptake rate on Vista and various Linux distros and think about how hard it will
be to get people to run something *really* different.

> the operating system interface will allow it to potentially be
> offloaded onto a central server allowing for really quick seamless
> deployment of updates and security policies as well as reducing the
> necessary size of client machine hard drives. Not only this but it'd

I hate to say it, but Microsoft's Patch Tuesday probably *is* already pretty
close to "as good as we can make it for real systems".  Trying to do
*really* seamless updates is a horrorshow, as any refugee from software
development for telco switches will testify.  (And yes, I spent enough time
as a mainframe sysadmin to wish for the days where you'd update once, and
all 1,297 online users got the updates at the same time...)

Also, the last time I checked, operating systems were growing more slowly
than hard drive capacities.  So trying to reduce the size is really a fool's
errand, unless you're trying to hit a specific size point (for example, once
it gets too big to fit on a 700M CD, and you decide to go to DVD, there
really is *no* reason to scrimp until you're trying to get it in under 4.7G).

You want to make my day?  Come up with a way that Joe Sixpack can *back up*
that 500 gigabyte hard drive that's in a $600 computer (in other words, if
that backup scheme costs Joe much more than $50, *it wont happen*).

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 226 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20071023/206f0afa/attachment.sig>