Swapping Clock Cycles for Free Music? 281
droopus writes "USA Today is reporting on an innovative business model for the music business. Free music for your spare CPU cycles.
Honest Thief says the firm has developed software, to be available in the second quarter of this year, that will enable file-sharing providers to capitalize on the unused CPU cycles of their members. That in turn would allow them to raise money to compensate artists for the use of their material.
Honest Thief said the software, known as ThankYou 2.0, enables a peer-to-peer file-sharing client to turn the computers of digital music fans into nodes in a distributed net.
By leasing out the processor power on distributed nets to research facilities the firm could generate revenues that would be distributed back to the musicians.
Some very smart people have suggested this before, but this seems like the first real implementation. "
Already done...? (Score:5, Funny)
Although, Kazaa hid it from the users, and kept the profits for themselves...
Re:Already done...? (Score:5, Informative)
this is the exact reason that i use kazaa lite [kazaalite.com] (caution, popups)
Re:Already done...? (Score:4, Funny)
Citizen: You have committed an error. (Score:4, Insightful)
Report to the Ministry of Information Wanting to be Free-as-in-Beer for reindoctrinalization.
Kazaalite? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Already done...? (Score:5, Informative)
For reference, the real site is here [k-lite.tk]. KaZaA Lite 2.1.0 is an excellent client. Now if only they had error checking/correction...
eMule Project (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't like KaZaA's constant pop-up windows and warning messages and prompts to install the latest Flash plug-in etc... use something else!
I just discovered the eMule Project [emule-project.net] about a week ago. Open source. No ads. And it looks a lot nicer than the spamware that I've been using for the past year or so too. Yes, it took me a while to get used to it (I had to actually READ THE HELP FILES to figure out how to get it past my router!) but it works really well now.
Re:eMule Project (Score:2, Funny)
plain and simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:plain and simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:plain and simple (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:plain and simple (Score:5, Funny)
enviromentally freindly too (Score:5, Insightful)
additionally,
it does not have to pay for the air conditioning costs to keep them cool too. Moreover beyond money you dont have to generate the electricity to power and cool the waste heat. instead the heat is dumped in the users homes and is not waste: it subtracts directy from the heat bill. and uses clean-water, clean air, anti-war nuclear power instead of say oil or gas (for which we fight wars).
Or even build a building, thus lessening development forces and consumption of water.
also this halves smaller disposal problem of computers. certainly they save on disposla costs. But also the land fill has fewer computers in it total (i.e. the one on your desk and the one in their rack will go to the dump --thats 2 computers. Or if you share it then that's only one computer in the dump)
by promoting electronic distribution (legal that is) of music we save the cost of millions of shipped packages every year containing CDs.
Since I might be willing to pay more for broad band if I were effectively getting a rebate on my use of it, it will promote broadband usage and higher profits for the companies that provide it, while not costing me more.
Re:plain and simple (Score:2)
I assume that you have never worked on a software product that was distributed world wide to a bunch to dolts who don't know anything about their computer, but can load a P2P client. Trust me, if the company wants this to work, they will offer a 24/7 support line, and it will be full. It will be full all the time... with idiots... just like the ones every software mfr has. It could be cheeper to have that PC inhouse on a 10Mb network.
2cents
Re:plain and simple (Score:2)
but i need them (Score:5, Funny)
Great Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really
Has the entirety of Slashdot fallen for yet another "redefinition scam"? Lots of people talking about how great this compromise sounds, and failing to consider something which seems, IMO, very obvious...
We already have COMPLETELY FREE music distribution. ClearChannel has currently cornered the market on it, but a few college stations still exist with a "real" playlist.
The entire issue of internet radio just serves to blur some lines thanks to the magical argument of "but this uses DIGITAL transmission". I thought the Slashdot crowd had enough of a clue to see through that argument, and usually take companies to task for even daring to suggest using it.
And now some company has very "generously" found a way to save all us poor little geeklings from having to pay for something we don't presently pay for anyway?
ThankYou 2?
FuckYou too.
Go take your sad little attept to find yet another way to screw the consumers by "giving" them something they already have (in this case "services rendered" rather than actual cash payments), and leave us the hell alone.
When the RIAA et al come to their senses and get a clue, I'll consider go back to paying their pleasure tax. In the mean time, my music collection has grown roughly 3x faster for the same money by buying $5/CD indie music directly from the artists (of which, the artist gets far more than they would for major-label discs), instead of $15/CD for canned formula-pop-hit trash.
Bitter? Hell yeah! I've grown *SO* sick of hearing about various attempts to repackage something we already have for free (or cheap) and charge us more for it...
Sure (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't suggest anything even remotely resembling "stealing" the music (if one can even do such a thing, I still haven't decided that myself) - I don't mean downloading MP3s, or swapping with friends, or anything of the sort.
Turn on a radio. What do you hear? Music! Coming to you FOR FREE. Your radio doesn't give the station spare CPU cycles, it doesn't "force" you to listen to commercials, it doesn't even collect demographic info.
My point centers around that. So many companies seem to have this idea that the internet counts as this amazing new medium that needs totally different laws and pricing schemes. That simply does not hold true. Internet radio doesn't need to differ AT ALL from broadcast radio. But folks keep saying some difference has to exist, and we keep swallowing it up.
Until the RIAA gets its act in gear, I'll keep listening to Canadian and European internet stations; buying indie music that doesn't pay for lawyers to fight against what I believe in; and giving a great big finger to corporate America that believes it knows what I want and how I'll pay for it more than I do.
Just in the really unlikely chance someone in the afforementioned group reads this... You know what I want? Choice. I would pay perhaps $10/CD (twice what I spend per indie CD) to choose the exact contents of such a CD, shipped physically to my door (not some sub-quality DRM'd format that expires when I miss my monthly music-library-extortion). I want real music to choose from, not a canned boy-band or slut-soloist of the week to repackage the same drum-machine-with-bad-lyrics songs over and over. I want variety. I want artists who get paid for their work, not artists who need to sue their labels to get what their contract promises them. I want the right to rip music to my computer in the format of my choice (which I theoretically have, except for increasing technical difficulties thanks to "broken" CDs, which I keep returning but the companies keep making anyway).
peronally i have no ethics and shouldnt be talkin, but maybe some may think it is the right thing to do.
I do have ethics. I don't want to screw anyone out of their work. However, those ethics include the idea that the people actually doing the work should get my money, not lawyers, suits, and PR folks so far behind the times they think people will pay more for less just because they redefine the words "better", "cheaper", and "choice".
Perhaps you really do have no qualms about downloading music with no compensation for their work. I can't tell you that. I do, however, believe that most people who "illegally" download MP3s don't do so out of lack of ethics, but out of lack of choice. If music cost a realistic price (of which more than a pittance went to the artist); if 99% of it didn't completely suck; if music stores actually offered choices rather than prepackaged sets of one or two listenable songs and fourteen tracks that make dogs howl; then I think we'd see a lot more "honest" people buying music rather than "stealing" it.
In the mean time, the RIAA has reached the end of its life. I fully expect it to collapse worse than the video game insdustry 25 years ago, or the comic industry did a decade ago, in the next few years. And you can bet I won't mourn its passing as I did either of those previous two. I see its pathetic attempts to squash any form of music on the internet as no better than SCO's attempts to report one last quarter's profit for a dying product.
Good riddance.
Uh, riiiight. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh, riiiight. (Score:3, Interesting)
that's not the only reason (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Uh, riiiight. (Score:2)
But, ahem.. they aren't giving money away. They are selling your processing time. Which means they are getting money, not paying it. SETI is using your processing time to do something with no pay. This thing would act as a reseller of your processing time and using the money to pay for your songs.
Of course, it's hard to imagine your processor time is worth enough to pay for those songs.
Re: why is it hard to imagine? (Score:2)
The idea of having millions of CPUs "on tap" to crunch a corporation's figures seems quite tantalizing. I think it loses much of its initial luster, though, when they start looking at what it takes to make it go.
Not only do they have to code clients (possibly for multiple platforms, if they don't want only Windows users participating), but they have to provide a level of support (updates?) to said clients, ensure everything is secure (the data is useless if people are altering the results before sending them back, and the infrastructure can't catch that and filter/block it), *and* keep the "core" of it running, so it's efficiently picking up the processed data that keeps coming in, chunk by chunk.
Have you ever seen Kazaa run on a win machine? (Score:3, Funny)
At least now, I can have my PC slow to a crawl AND help artists.
But .....? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But .....? (Score:5, Insightful)
besides, the dialup users are not the concern of the RIAA and friends. That one mp3 per hour doesn't amount to much, at least compared to when I queue up a couple hundred and average about 1 every 30 seconds.
Re:But .....? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it is. (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, if your system is designed right. Remember, seti@home doesn't require extensive communication to work, it handles 250K packets which are handled over several hours or a day, and then returned, and new information is gathered. This keeps the master servers from being hammered to death. Also, they're redundantly assigned, to make sure of data integrity, and if a client never returns a result, another one with the same packet probably will. It's no good for small jobs, but big jobs, like weather modelling, key cracking, analyzing RF signals, etc, should be fine.
Re:But .....? (Score:2, Informative)
Hmm, They could use that (Score:3, Funny)
Artist: Where's the Cash?
Honest Thief: All the cash we raised went into taking in that last slashdotting.
Correct URL for honest thief.. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.thehonestthief.com/ is the correct URL.
Re:Correct URL for honest thief.. (Score:5, Informative)
Offtopic question about linking (Score:2)
Re:Offtopic question about linking (Score:2)
Sorry... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sorry... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sorry... (Score:2)
Not really... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have come to believe there is no "free music", just a point where ones tolerance is higher than the perceived level of annoyance caused by the "not free" (whether it's commercials, Carson Daily, or unused processor cycles...)
This could work... (Score:3, Informative)
Since they will not understand it, they will boycott it and try to ban it.
Geeks wouldn't want to install something that surely will be delivered with a 1096-page EULA stating that Honest Thief can do whatever they please with your CPU, whenever they please, and that they may close your account when they feel like it.
And Joe Sixpack couldn't use it either, because his ISP would ban this bandwith hog.
That's just the way it is, and I am _not_ pessimistic.
Re:This could work... (Score:2)
They would if the EULA had 1024 pages
Re:This could work... (Score:2)
On the contrary, they understand it very well.
Big-business music saw the internet for what it was almost immediately: their death-knell. Not because it makes "piracy" easy, but because it makes distribution easy.
Before the internet, musicians were beholden to the record labels, because they had no other choice - if they wanted to become "rich and famous", they needed someone to distribute their music.
The internet changed that - it's now conceivably possible for an artist to distribute their music to a worldwide audience, without relying on a music label.
The record labels see the writing on the wall. They know that the days of the "slave-labour" contracts are almost over, and they're doing everything they can to prevent it. We're just witnessing their death throes.
Since they will not understand it, they will boycott it and try to ban it.
They'll try to ban it alright, not because they don't understand it, but because they realize that it brings their demise that much closer.
Full circle (Score:2)
(?) - see the Backstreet Boys [backstreetboys.com] website to see why most studios produce is of questionable musicallity...
Like paying airline mechanics with free car washes (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to make more sense to offer the CPU cycles directly to sound production studios for post-production audio, to transform tomorrow's raspy-voiced bimbo into the sultry songbird that studios want and crave.
Just the 2003 version of an ad-driven "free" ISP service, I'm afraid.
Re:Like paying airline mechanics with free car was (Score:3, Insightful)
Untested is the key word. I think this idea is worth testing. People have been preaching this sort of thing for a long time; why not try it?
Re:Like paying airline mechanics with free car was (Score:2)
And who buys these cycles? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Like paying airline mechanics with free car was (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, I prefer to donate cycles for research that will be public domain.
No way... (Score:4, Insightful)
Concerns... (Score:5, Interesting)
Barring these concerns, I would see this as possibly viable...
Re:Concerns... (Score:3, Informative)
I didnt even have to read the article to tell you this, just read the dang summary, sheesh...
Re:Concerns... (Score:2)
How does it handle refunds (these files were bad, 32k bitrate, not what I expected?)
Finally, I can't see this system working unless people can develop an overdraft-- download the songs, then pay for them. Nobody's going to wait 3 hours between downloads to pay them off one at a time. Of course, if you allow an overdraft, then they close the account and leave the firm holding the bag.
Re:Concerns... (Score:2)
Simpson's Did It! (Score:2, Informative)
This time around its Honest Theif [honestthief.com].
When will the naming of companies with oxymorons end?!
I would do it. (Score:2)
I'm not quite sure how you are going to get the RIAA clan to trade cycles for music. They much prefer dollars.
-S
Real implementation? (Score:2)
Research Firm revenue != artist revenue (Score:5, Interesting)
You can sell that distributed power to firms and even they are going to realize how much the true cost/value of such a net is.
which in turn is going to make the value of selling such power go down... the revenue from even selling 80% of Kazzaa's distributed computing wouldn't match the "lost" sales of even just the TOP 40 artists or so "traded" on the P2P network. Much less the huge amount of other artists who become
the real solution is to stay ahead of the RIAA , MPAA, DRM, and paladium/itanium by cracking their shit quickly until the media industry is forced to re-shape itself into a more communal buisness model which would award the artists more and promote the local talent more.
-- enter the sig --
Hmm... (Score:2)
Now, if they port it to Linux/Mac OS X (I say Linux because I'll just recompile it).
This could work; and if the RIAA are smart, maybe there will be a court order for Kazaa to bundle it with their downloads, or for it to be required to be running this program when running any P2P app?
Now, if only the RIAA will pull their heads out of their asses, they could be compensated for P2P programs, and be able to set up their own online music biz _without_ investing anything.
CPU is cheap.... (Score:2)
Foiled again. (Score:5, Funny)
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Good Idea: This is how the RIAA Will See it: (Score:5, Interesting)
Geek perspective: If you let me dl your music (something I want), I'll let you have my unused cycles (something that is surely valuable).
Evaluation: Fair trade
RIAA perspective: You want to drive to my house, take my stuff, and drive away. In exchange for me allowing you to rob me blind (yes, this is the way the RIAA thinks, despite absence of evidence), you're offering to let me borrow your shitty old car while you're not using it??
Evaluation: You're still a god damned thief, geek boy. Go to hell!
Re:Good Idea: This is how the RIAA Will See it: (Score:2)
But I think they should be out of business. I may be wrong in thinking of them as gangsters running the protection racket. Possibly. But to my mind the evidence tilts that way. Certainly they have engaged in corrupting the legislature, though probably quite legally. Being legal is no excuse.
Up through around 1990 I respected the laws. Now I just consider it prudent to obey them. People who illegally copy music are far less criminals in my mind that those who corrupt legislators. It's just that it's only the less guilty party that risks jail time.
If every company that was a member of the RIAA, and the MPAA too, dropped bankrupt tomorrow, I wouldn't weep a bit. Not though it includes Sony, a company whose electronics I respect. (Well, I might be sorry that LexMark wasn't included. That recent stunt of "legally" prohibiting cartridge refills seems to qualify them as the same kind.)
Great for all us guilty musicians (Score:2, Interesting)
-Doc
I have to ask... (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless such an endeavour was open source, why would you trust it?
Frankly, these guys are asking for more trust than most people would extend their next-door neighbours. And abusing that trust would be far too easy.
Yes, SETI, distributed.net have shown the altruistic potential of such software but we're not talking about non-profit organisations here, we're talking about corporations, and the only language that corporations know is the language of money. And people interested in making money don't always put other people's (data) security high up on their list of priorities.
To be honest, I'd rather spend some hard cash buying music online or in the local record store. At least that way I know I'll never wake up one day to find that my system's been hacked by a script kiddie who was given the keys to my virtual front door by a "harmless" piece of software.
A touch paranoid, perhaps, but better safe than sorry is my motto.
Cut out the RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
Me too. Its somewhat hypocritical to condemn the RIAA and keep sucking the top 40 teat. There are plenty of indie bands out there which not only sound great (of course music taste is subjective), but also sell CDs for 10 dollars and throw eight dollar concerts. Its not like its hard to find lots [epitonic.com] of indie music [google.com].
I'm getting tired of hearing how we can appease the RIAA. They don't want a truce, they want you to buy their shiny CDs at 16 bucks a pop, listen to their radio stations and commercials, and go see their overpriced shows plus play the ticketmaster tax.
Capitalism is supposed to decentralize power, the RIAA is as centralized as you can get. Cut them out, ignore their products, and give your money to other markets.
Even if selling cycles was 10x more profitable, they still wouldn't got for it. Maintaining the current system is much more profitable and they're already commited to DRM and already told MP3 traders to piss off.
Re:Are you thinking what I'm thinking? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's called a sandbox. Assuming you trust HonestThief, they can write their software such that it safely execute the code of their clients. This approach can cut down on effective CPU throughput (think: Java) if it's not done right.
Note that access to most resources (printer, screen, network, etc.) isn't necessary for the computations that HonestThief's client's code would be doing. They might provide a disk cache of some sort, or even an API to pass messages back out to the network to other processing nodes. I dunno.
Of course, even trusting that HonestThief does write the daemon with an eye towards security and sandboxing, it will be hard for them to get it right on their first try (whether they're pre-verifying the opcodes or using a full blown java-esque approach).
However, this doesn't really matter in the end: big clients spending lots of money on processing power have better things to do than to write virii for which they will go to jail. The biggest danger would be from criminals who subvert the program (prehaps by masquerading as HonestThief.com?).
Strange businessman/plan (Score:2, Informative)
He has also shown in the past that he had no real knowledge about P2P, he just follows the buzzwords. Just look the silly honest thief site...
Just some weirdo who desperately wants to become rich and who thinks he is very cool. I think this service will utterly fail.. (unless perhaps he convinced some skillfull developers with his peptalks, but I hope they are smarter...).
Re:Strange businessman/plan (Score:5, Informative)
He has also shown in the past that he had no real knowledge about P2P, he just follows the buzzwords. Just look the silly honest thief site...
Just some weirdo who desperately wants to become rich and who thinks he is very cool. I think this service will utterly fail.. (unless perhaps he convinced some skillfull developers with his peptalks, but I hope they are smarter...).
Not viable (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget to add in the salaries of all the people who have to run this "P2P for cycles" system. Development costs. Administration. Those are people that could just be running the purchased cluster, instead of trying to milk P2P somehow. I think this is just a shot in the dark. Or a conspiracy to fingerprint downloads, as someone else mentioned.
Re:Not viable (Score:3, Informative)
That's as far as revenue goes. Profit is not nearly that much. (I'd guess the retailer alone takes ~40%) With these costs shaved off, people will probably buy more music, perhaps generating more profit from less revenue. CPU cycles may still be too cheap, but you haven't proven it.
What's worse, you're propagating that dead "every-file-downloaded-is-a-CD-sale-lost" argument. While there may be a (documented?) correlation, it's much more subtle. Besides, its so Hillary Rosen.
Re:Not viable (Score:2)
Re:Not viable (Score:2)
I think its worth a try, so long as the beneficiaries of our cycles are disclosed.
Re:Not viable (Score:2)
What about limitations? It seems the recording industry is DEAD set against giving anything away (selling or otherwise) without protection in place. I personally am going to reject any copy protected (read: crippled) media. Why release this stuff for free on someone's CPU-fer-files P2P when it can just end up on Kazaa/Gnutella/WinMX/Freenet/blah blah blah etc etc ad nausseum? I think the cat is already out of the bag. P2P isn't going anywhere without totally crippling the internet, which IMO will destroy ISP's. Not that they won't have any business at all, but they will have a LOT LESS business.
stupid (Score:2)
Fine.
You want me to pay for my music?
Fine.
Why tie one to the other? Sounds like a stupid idea to me.
It will be a cold day in hell (Score:3, Insightful)
err... on purpose that is
I'm sure Kazaa already has plenty of ways to let users do this, but ignorance is bliss.
why not a distributed/p2p client that generates (Score:3, Funny)
clients could vote if they like whats being generated and the music would shift accordingly..
just an idea
These spare CPU cycles aren't worth that much. (Score:5, Informative)
Your processors aren't worth as much as you think (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your processors aren't worth as much as you thi (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, they can buy it on demand when they need it and don't have to invest in hardware that gets useless after a couple of months.
Doomed to failure (Score:2)
i've found the solution (Score:5, Funny)
analog vs digital (Score:2)
Maybe the "Killer App?" (Score:5, Interesting)
- User runs a distributed computing app on his computer, accumulating credits of some kind on a per work-unit basis.
- User can cash in his work-unit credits for merchandise, music, software, whatever.
This could have interesting impact on the whole "how much CPU power is too much" question. Suddenly there are more reasons than just bragging rights to have the fastest CPU on the block. I wonder if Intel or AMD would start to encourage this kind of thing.
Re:Maybe the "Killer App?" (Score:3, Funny)
We've even got a distribution network in-place already for the prizes: The public school fund-raiser companies!
One ought to be able to get at least a 50-cent coloring book and a set of Hello Kitty stickers out of a couple of weeks worth of XP 2100. And of course, every kid who shows up to the meetings gets a free box of Cracker Jacks, even if they've only got a 386.
I can see this proven, time-tested business model working quite marvelously.
Bartering VS Currency (Score:3, Insightful)
Then, I could use that "generic credit" to buy music, or EVEN OTHER THINGS! Hell, what if I could provide ANY service or product and get this generic credit??
Maybe we could call it "money".
nonsence thinking (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh well, move along everyone .. (Score:2, Interesting)
One dont need to be smart to proclaim the benefits of using idle PC time for the distributed computing. Quite [parabon.com] a [uniteddevices.com] few [entropia.com] companies [appliedmeta.com] are already doing just that.
It's now purely the issue of effective marketing and sales, not the technology. And grabbing CPU cycles to compensate musicians is just another business plan, certainly neat in idea, but not exactly novel.
Distributed network (Score:2, Funny)
Great name for the software (Score:2)
Oh yeah, thanks for suing us for not breaking the law and increasing your sales.
Thanks for adding bad copy protection to CDs we purchase for way too much and own.
Thanks for having no other recourse.
Please use my computer to make more money.
Please and Thank You.
Micro payments (Score:2, Insightful)
Interesting... (Score:2)
Ideally, there would be options as to what research projects you are willing to support. I would blow a gasket if my cycles were used to support research into abortion(personal feelings, if you support it, thats your business), but research into cancer drugs I wouldn't have any problem with...
The minimum of course is knowing who you are supporting with those cycles. I wouldn't even consider it if I didn't have a list of what companies and organizations my cycles are being donated to.
What the RIAA is really fighting for (Score:3, Insightful)
Here we have a company that is perfectly willing to pay them for their copyright claims. Yet, quoting from the article:
This pretty much reveals it all. In fact, that second paragaph is particularly interesting; "...and have said they will press ahead with an effort to enforce their rights". Anti-trust legislators around the world should really begin asking them exactly what "rights" they're really trying to enforce, because it's quite obviously not copyrights that they're interested in. And when a cartel believe it has a right to control distribution, governments should have an interest in protecting the public from the corruption of that cartel. And if the recording industry is not a corrupt cartel [cnet.com], then Microsoft is not a monopoly [albion.com].
--K.
Obvious Comment (Score:2, Interesting)
Because such a thing hasn't been made by our uber-fast progress of dot-com creation, then most likely, it doesn't work.
Suicide is the true mark of an advanced civilization - philipd
There's just one way for this to be profitable (Score:3, Informative)
1. RIAA won't let him distribute music electronically without restrictions (DRM) no matter how much he pays them per song. RIAA views at every unlocked MP3 as source of hundreds, if not thousands of pirate copies.
2. CPU cycles are difficult to sell, especially when they are not reliable (client might just disappear for a month) and not trustworthy (client might sabotage the project by producing false computation results).
I see a possible way for it to function, but it would be a complete rip-off. Note that this not related to reality at all - it's pure imagination. I possess no knowledge about HonestThief (I've not even read the article, just the Slashdot comments!).
A. don't intend to pay the music producers at all, just prepare to disappear within a months (or go bankrupt)
B. don't intend to sell the CPU cycles. Instead, consume them yourself. The best (but most illegal!) purpose would be to crack some cryptographic secret that can be turned into money later. You know, bank network security etc - let your imagination play..
I'm not suggesting that HonestThief is planning any such thing.. It's just that I can't figure out how his business model can work.
Marc
Re:Clock cycles = Electric Bill (Score:3, Informative)
I have 5 PC's on all the time (though not at 100% utilization). Even at 100% they wouldnt suck more than about 100 watts each.
I also have a bearded dragon, whos home has two 150 watt basking lamps, and 60 watts of flourescent lighting. I'm also not a fanatic about turning off the lights when I leave the room. I'm notorious for leaving the bathroom light on all day (60 watts times 4 bulbs)
My bill is only around 100 a month.
Re:Solution. (Score:3, Interesting)
Free audiobooks, with ads embedded in the first 15 seconds or so.
Recently, they had to change their model to one of buying all but the lowest bitrate quality mp3's.
Maybe poor advertising, maybe poor ad sales, but I think in all the books I got from them (50-75?), I heard maybe one ad that was not 'internal.
Re:It is not stealing (Score:2)
Copyright Infringement