Hi Ken,

There have been java applets that did this with the user's consent, e.g.
the MD5crack distributed computing effort had one:
http://distributedcomputing.info/recent.html ,
http://www.engsoc.org/~jlcooke/
It is not inconceivable one could do something useful with
ecma/java/j-script too, however it would have to be some variant of AJAX
to be useful to whomever wrote/hosted the script?
However, I don't think you're likely to see anyone stealing your CPU
time with this as of yet.

Maybe someone else has different thoughts on the matter :)

- Jeroen.

>Greetings and Salutations:
>
>I had an issue with my Firefox browser. The browser was static, yet it was
>using 70% or 80% of the CPU of the system.
>
>It got me to thinking. Java is a programming language. What would prevent
>companies from running a java script on your computer while you are viewing
>their page that uses your CPU to do some computing for them? Instead of
>selling (or in addition to selling) advertising the company could also sell
>CPU to other companies.
>
>Is this feasible?
>
>Ken
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are subtle and
>quick to anger.
>Ken Hollis - Gandalf The White - gandalf (at) digital (dot) net [email concealed] - O- TINLC
>WWW Page - http://digital.net/~gandalf/
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>
>

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