Thanks nexty for sending this our way. An operating system spanning the Internet would bring the power of millions of the world's Internet-connected PCs to everyone's fingertips
When Mary gets home from work and goes to her PC to check e-mail, the PC isn't just sitting there. It's working for a biotech company, matching gene sequences to a library of protein molecules. Its DSL connection is busy downloading a block of radio telescope data to be analyzed later. Its disk contains, in addition to Mary's own files, encrypted fragments of thousands of other files. Occasionally one of these fragments is read and transmitted; it's part of a movie that someone is watching in Helsinki. Then Mary moves the mouse, and this activity abruptly stops. Now the PC and its network connection are all hers.
This sharing of resources doesn't stop at her desktop computer. The laptop computer in her satchel is turned off, but its disk is filled with bits and pieces of other people's files, as part of a distributed backup system. Mary's critical files are backed up in the same way, saved on dozens of disks around the world.
Later, Mary watches an independent film on her Internet-connected digital television, using a pay-per-view system. The movie is assembled on the fly from fragments on several hundred computers belonging to people like her.
News source: Scientific American
When Mary gets home from work and goes to her PC to check e-mail, the PC isn't just sitting there. It's working for a biotech company, matching gene sequences to a library of protein molecules. Its DSL connection is busy downloading a block of radio telescope data to be analyzed later. Its disk contains, in addition to Mary's own files, encrypted fragments of thousands of other files. Occasionally one of these fragments is read and transmitted; it's part of a movie that someone is watching in Helsinki. Then Mary moves the mouse, and this activity abruptly stops. Now the PC and its network connection are all hers.
This sharing of resources doesn't stop at her desktop computer. The laptop computer in her satchel is turned off, but its disk is filled with bits and pieces of other people's files, as part of a distributed backup system. Mary's critical files are backed up in the same way, saved on dozens of disks around the world.
Later, Mary watches an independent film on her Internet-connected digital television, using a pay-per-view system. The movie is assembled on the fly from fragments on several hundred computers belonging to people like her.
News source: Scientific American
Mary's computers are moonlighting for other people. But they're not giving anything away for free. As her PC works, pennies trickle into her virtual bank account. The payments come from the biotech company, the movie system and the backup service. Instead of buying expensive "server farms," these companies are renting time and space, not just on Mary's two computers but on millions of others as well. It's a win-win situation. The companies save money on hardware, which enables, for instance, the movie-viewing service to offer obscure movies. Mary earns a little cash, her files are backed up, and she gets to watch an indie film. All this could happen with an Internet-scale operating system (ISOS) to provide the necessary "glue" to link the processing and storage capabilities of millions of independent computers. Read more @ Scientific American
Image courtesy of Scientific American
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