Re: [9fans] VMs, etc.

2009-04-20 Thread maht
what could we do today, but don't quite dare? a Blue Ray writer does 50Gb per disk (we're supposed to be getting one soon, so maybe I can report back about this later) ArcVault SCSI autoloading tape drives do from 9.6tb - 76tb http://www.b2net.co.uk/overland/overland_arcvault_12_a

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc.

2009-04-20 Thread erik quanstrom
> >> what could we do today, but don't quite dare? > >> > > > > > a Blue Ray writer does 50Gb per disk (we're supposed to be getting one > soon, so maybe I can report back about this later) > > ArcVault SCSI autoloading tape drives do from 9.6tb - 76tb > > http://www.b2net.co.uk/overlan

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc.

2009-04-20 Thread maht
erik quanstrom wrote: what could we do today, but don't quite dare? a Blue Ray writer does 50Gb per disk (we're supposed to be getting one soon, so maybe I can report back about this later) ArcVault SCSI autoloading tape drives do from 9.6tb - 76tb http://www.b2net.co

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc.

2009-04-20 Thread Devon H. O'Dell
2009/4/20 erik quanstrom : > > i'm not following along.  what would be the application? Jukebox, perhaps? > - erik > >

[9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread blstuart
> Actually, I have long had a feeling that there is a convergence of > VNC, Drawterm, Inferno and the many virtualising tools (VMware, Xen, > Lguest, etc.), but it's one of these intuition things that I cannot > turn into anything concrete. This brings to mind something that's been rolling around

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread tlaronde
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:32:33AM -0500, blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: > - First, the gap between the computational power at the > terminal and the computational power in the machine room > has shrunk to the point where it might no longer be significant. > It may be worth rethinking the separation

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread erik quanstrom
> In some sense, logically (but not efficiently: read the caveats in the > Plan9 papers; a processor is nothing without tightly coupled memory, so > memory is not a remote pool sharable---Mach!), if you look closely enough, this kind of breaks down. numa machines are pretty popular these days (o

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread tlaronde
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 01:29:09PM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote: > > In some sense, logically (but not efficiently: read the caveats in the > > Plan9 papers; a processor is nothing without tightly coupled memory, so > > memory is not a remote pool sharable---Mach!), > > if you look closely enough,

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread blstuart
> The definition of a terminal has changed. In Unix, the graphical In the broader sense of terminal, I don't disagree. I was being somewhat clumsy in talking about terminals in the Plan 9 sense of the processing power local to my fingers. > A terminal is not a no-processing capabilities (a dumb

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread erik quanstrom
> Absolutly, but part of what has changed over the past 20 > years is that the rate at which this local processing power > has grown has been faster than rate at which the processing > power of the rack-mount box in the machine room has > grown (large clusters not withstanding, that is). So the >

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread blstuart
> if you look closely enough, this kind of breaks down. numa > machines are pretty popular these days (opteron, intel qpi-based > processors). it's possible with a modest loss of performance to > share memory across processors and not worry about it. Way back in the dim times when hypercubes roa

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread blstuart
>> Absolutly, but part of what has changed over the past 20 >> years is that the rate at which this local processing power >> has grown has been faster than rate at which the processing >> power of the rack-mount box in the machine room has >> grown (large clusters not withstanding, that is). So t

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread erik quanstrom
On Fri Apr 17 14:21:03 EDT 2009, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote: > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 01:29:09PM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote: > > > In some sense, logically (but not efficiently: read the caveats in the > > > Plan9 papers; a processor is nothing without tightly coupled memory, so > > > memory is n

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread lucio
> But the question in my mind for a while > has been, is it time for another step back and rethinking > the big picture? Maybe, and maybe what we ought to look at is precisely what Plan 9 skipped, with good reason, in its infancy: distributed "core" resources or "the platform as a filesystem". Wh

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread erik quanstrom
> I often tell my students that every cycle used by overhead > (kernel, UI, etc) is a cycle taken away from doing the work > of applications. I'd much rather have my DNA sequencing > application finish in 25 days instead of 30 than to have > the system look pretty during those 30 days. i didn't m

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread tlaronde
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 01:31:12PM -0500, blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: > > Absolutly, but part of what has changed over the past 20 > years is that the rate at which this local processing power > has grown has been faster than rate at which the processing > power of the rack-mount box in the mach

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread Eris Discordia
even today on an average computer one has this articulation: a CPU (with a FPU perhaps) ; tightly or loosely connected storage (?ATA or SAN) ; graphical capacities (terminal) : GPU. It happens so that a reversal of specialization has really taken place, as Brian Stuart suggests. These "terminal

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread J.R. Mauro
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Eris Discordia wrote: >> even today on an average computer one has this articulation: a CPU (with >> a FPU perhaps) ; tightly or loosely connected storage (?ATA or SAN) ; >> graphical capacities (terminal) : GPU. > > It happens so that a reversal of specialization

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread blstuart
>> I often tell my students that every cycle used by overhead >> (kernel, UI, etc) is a cycle taken away from doing the work >> of applications. I'd much rather have my DNA sequencing >> application finish in 25 days instead of 30 than to have >> the system look pretty during those 30 days. > > i

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread blstuart
> What struck me when first looking at Xen, long after I had decided > that there was real merit in VMware, was that it allowed migration as > well as checkpoint/restarting of guest OS images with the smallest >... > > The way I see it, we would progress from conventional utilities strung > togeth

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread blstuart
>> Absolutly, but part of what has changed over the past 20 >> years is that the rate at which this local processing power >> has grown has been faster than rate at which the processing >> power of the rack-mount box in the machine room has >> grown (large clusters not withstanding, that is). So t

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread blstuart
> I'd like to add to Brian Stuart's comments the point that previous > specialization of various "boxes" is mostly disappearing. At some point in > near future all boxes may contain identical or very similar powerful > hardware--even probably all integrated into one "black box." So cheap that

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread tlaronde
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 04:25:40PM -0500, blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: > > Again, that's not to say that there aren't other valid motivators > for some centralized functionality. It's just that in my opinion, > we're at the point were if it's raw cycles we need, we'll have > to be looking at a l

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread Mechiel Lukkien
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 04:25:40PM -0500, blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: > Again, that's not to say that there aren't other valid motivators > for some centralized functionality. It's just that in my opinion, > we're at the point were if it's raw cycles we need, we'll have > to be looking at a larg

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-17 Thread lucio
> 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

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-18 Thread erik quanstrom
On Fri Apr 17 16:22:55 EDT 2009, blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: > >> I often tell my students that every cycle used by overhead > >> (kernel, UI, etc) is a cycle taken away from doing the work > >> of applications. I'd much rather have my DNA sequencing > >> application finish in 25 days instead of

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-18 Thread Mechiel Lukkien
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 10:54:34AM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote: > as an old example, i think that the lab's use of worm storage > for the main file server was incredibly insightful. > > what could we do today, but don't quite dare? stop writing all programs in C, and start writing them in a highe

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-19 Thread blstuart
> 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

Re: [9fans] VMs, etc. (was: Re: security questions)

2009-04-19 Thread blstuart
> people's ideas about what's complicated or hard don't change > as quickly as computing power and storage has increased. i > think there's currently a failure of imagination, at least on > my part. there must be problems that aren't considered > because they were hard. > > as an old example, i