dmcowen674 has posted news about Sun starting their grid for employees:
Look here first ...
Here is a short announcement...
Here is some more info...
This opens some questions for discussion:
1. How would a seller of CPU-cycles (i.e. parhaps you and me) make sure that our work is used as announced?
2. What is a reasonable price? How should it be calculated? Can a formula be developed, taking into consideration electricity, broadbad, investment, a warranty (for e.g. a certain number of hours crunched), etc, etc?
3. What rights should the buyer have: a certain amount of work? a certain amount of time? a certain amount of mathematical operations? What if the computer user needs/wants to use his computer while it is crunching?
4. What if the crunching program is buggy and crashes the system? Who should pay for the down time? Repair? Fault finding?
5. Who is responsible if the result turns out to be wrong and this error causes damage to some one? He who purchased the CPU-cycles? He who crunched?
6. Is the cruncher a contracor? Subcontractor? A service provider? All of these? None of these?
7. Should - for example - a Bunch of Crunchers (=BoCr - similar to TA) go out and sell their services? What would the consequenses of such an action be?
8. How does this affecty the security of a computer - some malware could be hidden in the client - and who makes sure that this is not the case? Should this be certified by some anti-virus company and who should pay for that? The cruncher or he who wants that work done ...
I may be naive - but isn't this a new situation which shuld be discussed? I am sure that there are other people out there (or in here ...) who are much better informed and who know better which Q's to ask and to answer.
:beer: Let's get started - thinking and discussiong ... :beer: