Singularity

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Oh hey look, /. got ahold of the "Unix beats Windows, according to Microsoft" article today.

Gotta love /., it's all the news you read two days before!

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What I'd like to see is an OS that can be turned up, see who else is on its network that it can share CPU time with, and seamlessly shift load around as demand dictates. I usually have four machines running at the same time, and two or three are typically underutilised. It'd be nice to be able to regain that unused CPU power.

You seem to be describing "GooOS"

Some people have speculated that Google is building the Singularity device itself, or at least the platform that its software will run on...

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Well I guess there's no Singularitarians around here, what a shame.

*Shrug* I gave up on caring about OSes a long, long time ago - these days, I usually just sit by, look at the mess it all is, and quietly weep. While drinking.

(Yes, I know you were referring to techonolgical sigularities - I was just making a joke that, in hindsight, fell way short of its mark. Bleh.)

In all honesty, though, I'm really hoping we start seeing integrated grid computing in the next generation of operating systems. This is something Plan9 actually did pretty well for its time, but now with computers being both more ubiquitous and numerous, it makes sense.

Son'y sort of moving this way with the PS3, but my guess is that they're going to resell the cycles rather than having them directly available on the local network. What I'd like to see is an OS that can be turned up, see who else is on its network that it can share CPU time with, and seamlessly shift load around as demand dictates. I usually have four machines running at the same time, and two or three are typically underutilised. It'd be nice to be able to regain that unused CPU power.

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Well I guess there's no Singularitarians around here, what a shame.

Back on topic then, here's an interesting article about a paper comparing Windows, Singularity, Linux, and FreeBSD. One of the funny conclusions is that Linux/FreeBSD seem to perform better than Windows in most of the tests:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/index.php?p=459

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Aww, and here I thought someone had started a thread on technological singularity. I'm already planning on it as the topic of my next Defcon talk (along with the Semantic Web)

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Find it here.

I'm kinda hoping it'll be as popular as Plan9.