[2275] in java-interest
Spare CPU cycles
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Elliotte Rusty Harold)
Wed Sep 27 16:59:44 1995
From: "Elliotte Rusty Harold" <Elliotte@blackstar.com>
To: java-interest@java.sun.com
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 14:33:00 EST
Reply-To: Elliotte@blackstar.com
Cc: elharo@inch.com
Recent discussions on this list have gotten me to thinking. There
really isn't any way for a user to prevent java applets from
borrowing excess CPU cycles is there? For instance it would be
possible to write an algorithm to accomplish some highly CPU
intensive and very parallelizable code (like breaking DES), include
the code in a regular animation applet, add some code to send the
results back to the server where I would have a special program to
collect the data, and then place the applet on a popularweb page. This
way I could borrow many CPU cycles from machines all over the net to
crack some very tough problems. As near as I can tell there's nothing
in java that would prevent this since at no time would any of this
violate any of java's security constraints.
In some cases it might be possible to fund or charge for pages
by donation of CPU cycles rather than by advertising or subscription.
Doing this behind people's back is a problem, but there might be
ways for me to point my browser at a page working on a
problem I supported when my machine is idle so I could donate its
memory and CPU cycles to the project without having to trust the lead
scientist absolutely.
There have been a number of problems solved by harnessing the power
of multiple computers working in parallel such as the recent cracking
of Netscape's 40-bit security code and my own work on optimal batting
orders (not the most significant projects I admit). However until now
the lead programmer had to be trusted on all the systems he or she
used. That is no longer true if the code is written in java.
Any thoughts?
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold Black Star Publishing Co., Inc.
elliotte@blackstar.com 116 East 27th Street
elharo@escape.com NY NY 10016
-
Note to Sun employees: this is an EXTERNAL mailing list!
Info: send 'help' to java-interest-request@java.sun.com
