From: Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@endtech.com)
Date: Sat Oct 14 2000 - 08:19:07 PDT
Here's the interesting point, how much cycle sharing,
disk storage, broadband ditches, and electricity do
you need to sell in order to make break even? The
computer industry has created the perfect pet rock. You
get it for free as long as you keep it plugged in and
using resources and it dazzles you with pretty screen
savers that show you what it's doing. Any non-cycle sharing
work you do on your computer that takes away from the
equilibrium point by stealing disk and cpu cycles away
from the paying mega-problems that are leasing your
pet rock--you are in essence paying for. I can easily see
someone strike an alliance deal with FreePC, Popular Power,
and someone like Compaq, HP, Dell and Earthlink/AOL to do
monitoring to make sure that the owner of the pet rock
gets their $50 a month (reimbursement) check for taking care of
the thing. Any use of cycles that fall below the break
even point are then taken out of the $50 to the point if
it falls below some level of cycle sharing, then the user
has to pay for their own electricity, DSL/Cable/Sat, expenses.
Hell, I can see MSFT being involved. Imagine sending the
machines without a mouse or a keyboard. MSFT would make a ton
of money selling meeces, and there are already dozens of companies
doing promotional keyboards, i.e. willing to pay for keyboards
with their logo or hard button wired into it as a ad/marketing expense.
Greg
p.s. Sorry for the cross-posting, but FoRK has a tradition
of [Stupid Idea Series] postings that we think someone other than
ourselves should go out and pitch.
C Wegrzyn wrote:
>
> Mostly as a matter of greed. Just think of being able to sell your excess
> cycles for money. Wouldn't it be an nice and easy way for some one like
> Compaq, HP, Dell etc. to say "Buy the super fast machine, join out XSCycles
> Club and have your computer earn extra money for you!" And if it cost a
> hundred dollars or so, people would bite at it (just remember P.T. Barnum!).
>
> Chuck Wegrzyn
>
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