Re: [ba-ohs-talk] The Worldwide Computer
At 08:28 AM 3/4/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>At 2002-03-03 21:09 -0800, Jack Park wrote:
>>I did this with my Wintel ME laptop for about 6 months, studying
>>molecules involved with Leukemia. Had to quit because Windows ME is just
>>not robust enough to handle context switching and so forth on a regular basis.
>
>A colleague of mine was fired by our contracting customer because he had
>joined in the calculation of pi with the machine being used at the
>customer site. Not an authorized use of the customer's machine.
>
>Certainly he was at fault, but the event came to mind when you talk of the
>"worldwide computer" in that what if my computer was _unwittingly_ part of
>such a beast?
>
>................... Ken (01)
It might already be used that way. Senior moments prevent me from stating
explicitly how that is so, but there is a trick that has to do with
computation on http packets that allows someone to send you a bunch of
packets and your computer will unwittingly perform computations on those
packets and send them back. Maybe someone has the reference to that trick. (02)
Cheers
Jack (03)