What Makes Something An Appliance
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@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@Tim_G said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@black3dynamite said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
ATMs, cell phones, printers, thermostats, calculators, and videogame consoles.
Well, I can see those things being considered that, but a totally different type that we are discussing here. Or that we have been discussing. But maybe we just overlooked them?
This brings up a good point. A videogame console is definitely a computing device with a specific function. And it definitely limits configuration ability. At this moment anyways, I'd way more happily refer to my Xbox 360 as an appliance a lot sooner than I would call it a server.
Until you get to Steam, because that turns into a video game SERVER.
ARGH!!!
Maybe the two terms just are separate axis of description completely.
Well, that changes nothing of the appliance. That makes Steam the server, not my xbox.
XBOX = appliance
STEAM = server
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@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@black3dynamite said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
Appliance more of a pre-configured device?
Kind of. But what about after you start using it?
Depends if you start messing with it in ways not intended by its manufacturer...
That's what we ran into earlier... what constitutes the manufacturer? The one that made the real system, or the one that tacked some stuff onto it?
Now I think you're splitting hairs to be overly myopic. Whose logo is on the product you bought? That's the manufacturer.
So... that goes back to the original question... literally slapping branding on a product or just a web page on it, that's all it takes? That's the "painting your car and calling yourself a manufacturer" conundrum. It's hairier than it sounds because several commonly accepted appliances, like FreePBX, are 99.9999999% made by one company, the tiniest additional thing is slapped on top with no functional differences - basically just cosmetic changes, and now it is an appliance?
Sure. Why not? What does that violate?
Well it makes it not an IT differentiation but purely a marketing one. It means that you can take anything that is not an appliance, and simply hand to someone else and it is the act of "calling" it an appliance that makes it one, not the intent of its creation or any technical aspect of it.
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@Dashrender said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
Is painting a car or putting a seat cover in or installing GPS "modifying the design" of a car?
Those are poor examples, a better one might be taking a caddy and making it into a limo. It still drives, just like a caddy, but it's not really a caddy anymore, it's a limo. It's intention isn't be be a daily driver anymore, it still does nearly everything it did before, in some cases better than before (i.e. hauls more people), but it now really has an entirely different purpose.
Right, but you are making actual functional changes there. The point here is that with many of these appliances that people think of, they are just adding window dressing, not changing the functionality. A limo, assuming you mean stretched or with added features, isn't the same as the original Caddy, it can do some different things. But FreeNAS, for example, literally does nothing more OR less than the FreeBSD it is built on.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@black3dynamite said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
Appliance more of a pre-configured device?
Kind of. But what about after you start using it?
Depends if you start messing with it in ways not intended by its manufacturer...
That's what we ran into earlier... what constitutes the manufacturer? The one that made the real system, or the one that tacked some stuff onto it?
Now I think you're splitting hairs to be overly myopic. Whose logo is on the product you bought? That's the manufacturer.
So... that goes back to the original question... literally slapping branding on a product or just a web page on it, that's all it takes? That's the "painting your car and calling yourself a manufacturer" conundrum. It's hairier than it sounds because several commonly accepted appliances, like FreePBX, are 99.9999999% made by one company, the tiniest additional thing is slapped on top with no functional differences - basically just cosmetic changes, and now it is an appliance?
Sure. Why not? What does that violate?
Well it makes it not an IT differentiation but purely a marketing one. It means that you can take anything that is not an appliance, and simply hand to someone else and it is the act of "calling" it an appliance that makes it one, not the intent of its creation or any technical aspect of it.
That's not what you said, though. You just said that because they ONLY added something small, should that count. They still added something proprietary to the package and then slapped their name on it. They altered it in a way that belongs only to them. It doesn't mean you can't recognize what it's built on, but the result is 100% theirs.
If I start a company and all I do is take brand new cars, peel off the badges, paint them a custom-mixed purple that I give a trademarked name to, and then slap my brand on them and sell them, guess what? They are very obviously not built by me from the ground up, but they legally belong to me alone. If there was a manufacturer's name to be placed on the title, it would be my brand.
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The big question for me is do you have to install an operating system and/or use an operating system license?
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@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@Dashrender said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
Is painting a car or putting a seat cover in or installing GPS "modifying the design" of a car?
Those are poor examples, a better one might be taking a caddy and making it into a limo. It still drives, just like a caddy, but it's not really a caddy anymore, it's a limo. It's intention isn't be be a daily driver anymore, it still does nearly everything it did before, in some cases better than before (i.e. hauls more people), but it now really has an entirely different purpose.
Right, but you are making actual functional changes there. The point here is that with many of these appliances that people think of, they are just adding window dressing, not changing the functionality. A limo, assuming you mean stretched or with added features, isn't the same as the original Caddy, it can do some different things. But FreeNAS, for example, literally does nothing more OR less than the FreeBSD it is built on.
Window dressing - I want to argue with this - I'd say - sure it's window dressing, but that's all most GUI'fied tools are is window dressing on the CLI tool. Adding a GPS to a car doesn't change it's function, declaring FreeNAS a thing is changing it's function, not fundumentally, but mentally it does - it's why people use it instead of just using FreeBSD instead. It's the appliance-ification of the OS for a user. Without it, the number of people willing to use FreeBSD drops like a rock (at least for this purpose).
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Another thing I'm wondering about - the underlying situation of the appliance - the maker probably just uses whatever they had lying around and rarely if ever update it.
Hense all of the appliances Scott mentioned earlier that have old/ancient version of 'nix on them.
Great example - the CT machine we have. Costs $300K - it's an appliance. It's running on Windows 2000 Pro, but it's still an appliance. I do have the ability to get fully into the OS and do whatever I want with it, but I shouldn't.
And this is just one of billions of appliances where the underlying OS is rarely if ever updated... If we're lucky the top layer app is updated, but not the underlying OS.
not sure this should or shouldn't matter, but I thought I should mention it.
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@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@black3dynamite said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
Appliance more of a pre-configured device?
Kind of. But what about after you start using it?
Depends if you start messing with it in ways not intended by its manufacturer...
That's what we ran into earlier... what constitutes the manufacturer? The one that made the real system, or the one that tacked some stuff onto it?
Now I think you're splitting hairs to be overly myopic. Whose logo is on the product you bought? That's the manufacturer.
So... that goes back to the original question... literally slapping branding on a product or just a web page on it, that's all it takes? That's the "painting your car and calling yourself a manufacturer" conundrum. It's hairier than it sounds because several commonly accepted appliances, like FreePBX, are 99.9999999% made by one company, the tiniest additional thing is slapped on top with no functional differences - basically just cosmetic changes, and now it is an appliance?
Sure. Why not? What does that violate?
Well it makes it not an IT differentiation but purely a marketing one. It means that you can take anything that is not an appliance, and simply hand to someone else and it is the act of "calling" it an appliance that makes it one, not the intent of its creation or any technical aspect of it.
That's not what you said, though. You just said that because they ONLY added something small, should that count. They still added something proprietary to the package and then slapped their name on it. They altered it in a way that belongs only to them. It doesn't mean you can't recognize what it's built on, but the result is 100% theirs.
If I start a company and all I do is take brand new cars, peel off the badges, paint them a custom-mixed purple that I give a trademarked name to, and then slap my brand on them and sell them, guess what? They are very obviously not built by me from the ground up, but they legally belong to me alone. If there was a manufacturer's name to be placed on the title, it would be my brand.
Sure, but do we as professionals recognize that as a different category of product? No, because at a technical level, you can't even tell that anything changed.
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@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
The big question for me is do you have to install an operating system and/or use an operating system license?
That's useful but, often the answer is yes or no in nearly all cases. I can't think of any uniformity there.
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@Dashrender said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
Hense all of the appliances Scott mentioned earlier that have old/ancient version of 'nix on them.
Most are not too old. FreeNAS is a little old. FreePBX is up to date on an older CentOS family (fully patched, but not the latest features.) Some expose the underlying OS directly for updates, some do not.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
The big question for me is do you have to install an operating system and/or use an operating system license?
That's useful but, often the answer is yes or no in nearly all cases. I can't think of any uniformity there.
If it comes as an appliance by the terms I described, no you would never have to install or license an OS.
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@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
The big question for me is do you have to install an operating system and/or use an operating system license?
That's useful but, often the answer is yes or no in nearly all cases. I can't think of any uniformity there.
If it comes as an appliance by the terms I described, no you would never have to install or license an OS.
so is Windows ruled out as an appliance OS?
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@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
The big question for me is do you have to install an operating system and/or use an operating system license?
That's useful but, often the answer is yes or no in nearly all cases. I can't think of any uniformity there.
If it comes as an appliance by the terms I described, no you would never have to install or license an OS.
so is Windows ruled out as an appliance OS?
Nope, because as I said in my CT machine license - the vendor takes care of all Windows based licensing. As long as I use the device as prescribed by the reseller, then I should never have to worry about licensing on Windows as the underlying OS.
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@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
The big question for me is do you have to install an operating system and/or use an operating system license?
That's useful but, often the answer is yes or no in nearly all cases. I can't think of any uniformity there.
If it comes as an appliance by the terms I described, no you would never have to install or license an OS.
so is Windows ruled out as an appliance OS?
Windows is an operating system, just like Ubuntu or CentOS. I wouldn't call it a server or appliance at its basic default level.
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@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
The big question for me is do you have to install an operating system and/or use an operating system license?
That's useful but, often the answer is yes or no in nearly all cases. I can't think of any uniformity there.
If it comes as an appliance by the terms I described, no you would never have to install or license an OS.
Windows PCs need to be managed at the OS layer, though. Not really an appliance. Can you use them as they come? Yes, you "can", but should not (aka you are responsible for managing them, the default install is just a demo - it's not meant to be used that way so it fails intention) and if anything goes wrong, you are the only one managing the OS, reinstalling, updating, etc.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
The big question for me is do you have to install an operating system and/or use an operating system license?
That's useful but, often the answer is yes or no in nearly all cases. I can't think of any uniformity there.
If it comes as an appliance by the terms I described, no you would never have to install or license an OS.
Windows PCs need to be managed at the OS layer, though. Not really an appliance. Can you use them as they come? Yes, you "can", but should not (aka you are responsible for managing them, the default install is just a demo - it's not meant to be used that way so it fails intention) and if anything goes wrong, you are the only one managing the OS, reinstalling, updating, etc.
They have automatic updates. I don't manage my Windows PC at the OS level, and I would doubt that 90% of people do. I've not once ever had to do a registry edit on a personal PC, or touch the OS in any way. And it comes installed and licensed.
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They say.....
It took us nearly two years to select, design, test, and qualify the myriad hardware components that go into TrueNAS, which is a purpose-built appliance — meaning software coupled with custom hardware — designed for its one specific application: critical storage.
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To me an appliace if a piece of vm or hw with specific software which:
1- wants you to think as it wants and not as you want ( while opensource applianxe then let you drop to the cmd line, but just try to by pass std interface and look at the messy you do)
2- has Everything bundled in a more or less obscure blackbox
3- has unified support for both hw and sw. -
anything .OVA or .OVF or equivalent, but not virtual hard disk like VMDK, or VDI
that contains the OS + definitions for it like 2GB ram ...etc
and have a server role (VPN/Collabora office/web application like os ticket )
also should work out of the box with minimal configuration changes.The closest thing to containers before it came out.
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@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@art_of_shred said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@scottalanmiller said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
@IRJ said in What Makes Something An Appliance:
The big question for me is do you have to install an operating system and/or use an operating system license?
That's useful but, often the answer is yes or no in nearly all cases. I can't think of any uniformity there.
If it comes as an appliance by the terms I described, no you would never have to install or license an OS.
Windows PCs need to be managed at the OS layer, though. Not really an appliance. Can you use them as they come? Yes, you "can", but should not (aka you are responsible for managing them, the default install is just a demo - it's not meant to be used that way so it fails intention) and if anything goes wrong, you are the only one managing the OS, reinstalling, updating, etc.
They have automatic updates. I don't manage my Windows PC at the OS level, and I would doubt that 90% of people do. I've not once ever had to do a registry edit on a personal PC, or touch the OS in any way. And it comes installed and licensed.
But you have to add the applications that you use on top of it. It doesn't really do anything on its own beyond surfing the web.
