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The soul of a virtual machine and watching Linux
By Gearhead, NetworkWorld.com, 08/11/05
IBM researchers in New York have been working on the SoulPad, a way of making computing portable by using virtual machines that are loaded with user data that is stored on a portable device (perhaps as small as a ring). The idea is that the user data would be encrypted on the storage device and then decrypted and downloaded into a running VM on any machine. Interesting idea.
Another IBM project is the Linux Watch or WatchPad. Ugly? Yep. Linux and X.11? What's it for? Mobile IPv6? Yep. SIP? Yep. Mobile Web services? Yep. Other stuff? Yep and yep again.
That's a lot of functionality in a small package. Reminds us of a joke (see below).
What else is up IBM's sleeve? (Or perhaps that should be "on IBM's sleeve".) Check out IBM's Pervasive, Mobile, and Wearable project.
Here's the joke:
A man is struggling through a Los Angeles airport terminal with two huge and very heavy suitcases when Bill Gates (who for some odd reason is travelling by commercial airline) walks up to him and asks: "Have you got the time?" The man sighs, not recognising Gates, puts down the suitcases and glances at his wrist. "It's a quarter to six", he says.
"Hey, that's a pretty fancy watch!" says Gates.
The man replies "I built it. Check this out..."
He shows Gates a display for every time zone in the world. He hits a few buttons and from the watch a voice says "The time is six oh five" in a very British accent. A few more buttons and the same voice says the time in Japanese. "I've put in regional accents for each city. The display is ultra high resolution and there are 123 different voices" says the man.
Gates is amazed. The man continues to show off the watch. He pushes a more buttons and a tiny, very high resolution map of Los Angeles airport appears on the display. "The flashing dot is out location by GPS" explains the man.
"View recede ten", the man says and the display zooms out.
"I want this watch!" says Gates who sees market potential and a short development cycle.
"Oh, no, it's not ready yet, I'm still working out the bugs", says the man. "But look at this", he says. "The watch is also an FM radio receiver with a digital tuner, a sonar ruler that can measure distances up to 100 feet with an accuracy of a quarter inch, a printer and I'm really proud of this, an MP3, WAV, JPEG, PNG, WMV, Quicktime and MPEG4 player with room for around 100 hours of material."
"I've got to have it!!" says Gates.
"No, you don't understand, it's not ready."
"I'll give you $2,000 for it!"
"Oh, no, I've already spent more than..."
"I'll give you $8,000 for it!"
"But it's not..."
"I'll give you $20,000 in cash for it!" saysl Gates pulling out a bulging wallet.
The man stops to think. Gates waves the cash in front of the man: "Here it is, $20,000! Take it or leave it!"
The man abruptly makes his decision: "OK," he agrees as he peels off the watch and hands it to Gates (who he still doesn't recognize).
Gates puts on the watch and starts to walk away.
"Hey, just a second" calls the man after the stranger.
Gates turns around. "What?"
The man points to the two heavy suitcases he struggling with and says "Don't forget your batteries."
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