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By Maskone
#4721
Remember those old dummy terminals back in the days... (if you're old enough) well I bet they will come back one day when someone steals this idea.

Ok what's a dummy terminal? In a nutshell, it used to be basically a monitor and keyboard hooked up to a network of some kind. Usually there was a text based screen where the user can interact. Most or all of the processing was done on a central computer.

So my idea is that 1 day, we all invest into dummy terminals but this time with wireless. All you need is 1 big giant super computer here and there and wireless connection everywhere. When someone upgrades the super computer... POW you got a new pc almost.

But why do it? Handhelds would not need a high end cpu and could do wonders, your pc would be much cheaper, viruses would less likely do as much damage since only super computers would need updates not 100,000,000 home pcs.

I imagine their could be other uses.

Reward: a super computer
By HenrykGerlach
#4862
Wow, you just "invented" the thin client.
Although using WLAN is sexy. :-)
By MissPlayful
#4961
The idea that my little computer could be wirelessly connected to a supercomputer has a lot of appeal!. I will ponder what significance your idea might have for Computer Earth.

With perhaps thousands of people communicating with any one supercomputer at the same time, a big technical challenge would be designing the system so there is no wireless interference. How to divide up a narrow frequency range amongst thousands of users. Another challenge would be to provide sufficient security - the bigger servers are, the more personal information and traffic is accessible to someone who hacks into them.

I wonder if we would be able to utilise programs that are stored and run on the supercomputers - programs far too big to store and run on our own computers.

It might actually turn out to be more practical and secure to add some supercomputers to the internet. You can aleady store considerable amounts of data on the internet, at a price, and if wireless connection to the internet could be made much faster than it is at present, this may solve your problem. Mind you, city wide or even world-wide and fast wireless access to the internet is clearly some way off yet.
By Scooter McDuff
#7287
Hey There, Don't wanna rain on your parade but... that ain't gonna happen... no ones gonna make money off of it unless us the user forks out a load of money to use the "super computer" network, or the goverment pays for it for us, Still we'd be delt the expenss of it all with tax... Also other countries wouldn't want to share a network with us.

Don't get me wrong, its a cool concept but it just ain't gonna happen.. unless in may of a year to come the whole world joins up as one community and then finds a super computer to be a benifit. maybe just maybe that'd roll. Anyways thats the same concept to a degree of what happen'd in terminator. But that was a movie


-McDuff ;-)
By sneezyalex
#7296
Never Heard of a dummy terminal. :-?
By compugeek722
#8213
If you wanted to make your actual computer faster, I'm sad to say that the speed of your comp depends on your hardware and has NOTHING to do with its terminal...
By Jack Nobbz
#8345
To Scooter McDuff, I think it's dumb to say it'll never happen. I had exactly the same idea a while back, and it makes sense. It's more secure against viruses and problems, software can automatically be kept up to date, users never have to worry that their files are "back at home" but are instead centrally stored. They never have to worry about the fact that the terminal they're using doesnt have application X installed on it, because it's all on their account.

Yes, the startup costs are high, but so are a lot of business ventures. I think if properly implemented, it would be revolutionary. Try more blue-sky thinking dude, cos you could probably say "it ain't gonna happen" to half the stuff on this site (heated mousemats anyone?).
By xanado
#8428
Jack, that was an interesting reply you gave Scooter, especially if one reads all your posts...

Anyway, referring to the supercomputer, I guess all those people trying to implement "world computing" or whatever it's called, must be really stupid (they're trying to use the processing power of thousands of computers around the world which are connected to the internet all the time but not using it's own resources to the full, instead of using supercomputers which are horrendously EXPENSIVE) and you guys come up with this brilliant idea! :-P

And as for virus, maybe I fail to see something, but if you have 100.000's or even millions of people depending on one (super) computer isn't a successfull virus attack much more of a problem??

Can you imagine what would happen if any person and/or organisation happened to gain control of that computer?
By iLion
#8695
Xanado has a point. Someone would naturally have control over what is available on this super-computer and what is not. There are always trade-offs and here you might trade away the ability to decide what you wanted to do on the computer and when, etc.

I worked on those dumb terminals (not "dummy") back in the day, and you were restricted to doing and accessing what someone else had predetermined. It was nearly impossible to circumvent those restrictions, and if you ever even tried to do something unsanctioned - you would have the computer police standing at your desk within minutes. Every single key-stroke was watched by operators and by the system filters, captured, recorded, and archived! Everything.
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By Steve
#8700
Rumors have it that Google is working on something like this. What I found amazing is that the article I dug out about it is already 17 months old.
By Rooks
#8797
What about shared computing? That means you are connected to the internet (ala paying a provider) and your computer CPU is outsourcing tasks to local semi-idle computers on your service providers network. The other computers crunch your numbers and send it back. If the packets were small then no one computer could recieve enough info to combine into a portion of the original task so it should be safe security-wise. When your computer is semi-idle it does the same for others. My uncle is the president of a company that works with a technology called fibre channel and they have successfully passed the 10GB/s network so fast internet transfer is possible. What do you think?
By jstr
#8840
Firstly to compugeek772, I am thinking that you don't understand thin clients... maybe they are before your time. All the processing is sent to a server, and the result is sent back to you in a machine that contains only a user interface and a network interface.. no cpu etc. Think of your web browser as a software emulated thin client.

Now I would just like to say that I am quite sure that thin clients are still in production. I have to agree that wifi is a hot idea, but I don't think it would work by its self. I think you would need to imbed it into a dvd player or a set top box which already recieves a connection via a cable provider etc.

jesse
http://jesse.bur.st
By cold_fusion
#9385
It would be much more effective on a smaller scale, instead of a whole comunity. For example, a landlord could have one computer in a building. Then to use the it through a console, he could charge more rent ;-D

or if you lived in a dorm, and everyone just upgraded the one comp. one day you have xtra money and u buysome ram and just add it in, and the comp already has a blazing graphics card cuz your buddy wanted to play bf2, and life is good
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