> I guess I'm a little slow; it's taken me a little while to get > my head around this and understand it. Let me see if I've > got the right picture. When I "login" I basically look up a > previously saved session in much the same way that LISP > systems would save a whole environment. Then when I > "log off" my session is suspended and saved. Alternatively, > I could always log into the same previously saved state.
The seesion would not be suspended, it would continue to operate as your agent and identity and, typically, accept mail on your behalf, perform "background" operations such as pay your accounts and in general represent you to the web to the extent that security (or lack thereof, for many unsophisticated users) permits. Nothing wrong with me having a private search bot to look for particular pornography or art or documentation while I'm asleep, the trick is to run it on whatever platform(s) are suitable at the time. Take my situation, for example. I am at the dial-up end of an ISDN BRA connection (2 x 64kbps channels for all intents and purposes, one of them reserved for voice calls) which costs me a nominal amount to stay connected (when the powers that be allow it) from 19:00 to 07:00 each weekday and from Friday evening to Monday morning (and a fortune during what the Telco calls "peak time"). The rest of the time, I find it preferable to use GPRS (3G is not yet available) for on-demand connections because I pay per volume and not for connect time. Naturally, that makes my network a roaming one. Having my mail exchanger et al. in Cape Town permanently on line at a client's premises provides the visibility I need all the time, but it is not something I will continue to be able to afford as my involvement with that client will eventually stop. I'm not sure I can afford hosting thereafter, but that is a separate issue. The other organisation I am associated with has a hosted Linux server I may use, or I may piggyback on their hosting contract, but I get too little choice of platform on which to operate and even the hosting structure may not suit me for a number of technical and political reasons. My dream is to be able to virtualise not so much the platform as the "application" where application means whatever I feel like using at the time. Including being able to access on a low speed line the stuff that is, say, strictly text based. Or, as I often do, download big volume items overnight, while I sleep. But most of all, I want to walk away from the workstation and pick up where I left off anywhere else, including accessing the "profile" using the local resources, not necessarily the extraordinary features I may have built for myself in my workshop (I wish!). Most of all, it must be possible for me to enhance my "profile" wherever I am, teach it new tricks whenever I discover them, make it aware that they may only work in specific locations. Do you get my drift? The crucial bit is that it depends heavily on "being on the network" insofar as having access to resources you cannot possibly be expected to carry on your laptop (now you need Windows, just now you need MacOS, say, or connection to your burglar alarm). In fact, my idea of security is to deploy my mobile phone as the key, GPRS allows me a very inexpensive, always on-line tool to provide, say, encryption keys that have my identity firmly attached to them, practically anywhere in South Africa and in most places in Africa, nevermind Europe (connectivity was superb in Italy and Greece, last October) or the USA. Given the access key, any "terminal" ought to be able to provide at least part of the "experience" I'm likely to need. In passing, a device that struck me as being extremely handy is the 3G, USB dongle that is highly popular here, you mey be more familiar with it than I: it contains a simulated CD-ROM that it uses to install its software. I though that was particularly clever, specially if you transform it into a Plan 9 or Inferno boot device. I'm sorry if I'm throwing around too many ideas with too little flesh, I must confess that I find this particular discussion very exciting, I have never really had occasion to look at these ideas as carefully as I am doing now. I was going to address the issue of being disconnected and I note that to some extent I have, because once you treat your mobile phone as a factor, being disconnected becomes a non-issue. But if you do land in a dead spot, for real, then, sure, you need much of your profile on your portable. How much lives in your phone (no matter how, that has to be connected to a computing device or _be_ a computing device) and how much on, say, on your laptop, is not important, as both have to be with you, ideally they ought to be the same device and most likely will be. In fact, in a Plan 9 paradigm, the phone is the CPU/fileserver, the laptop is the terminal (now you got me thinking!). Replication is another issue that needs careful thought, although once again, it gets resolved by defining the phone as the arbiter, no matter how many devices need conflict resolution. ++L PS: Who would have thought that instead of drawterm, we'd want to implement a Plan 9 CPU server on the iPhone?! Less so on an iPod :-)
