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Article: "While Wikipedia's visitors read Wikepedia's entries, the CPUs of their computers are almost idle."
Assumptions, Assumptions. How do they know? Personally I do tons of stuff and I use computers several years old - I notice if a web-page starts to kill my CPU and I quickly kill it.
The users CPU is the users. Not the website's, they don't have the right to take it over without asking, no matter how altruistic the cause is.
Why not ask the user for permission? Well, if your going to do that, why not just prompt users to download and install any of the many other programs that use Idle CPU time for good causes? They could use an idle CPU much more efficiently than some Javascript on a webpage could.
The second issue raised, where potentially a company could fork over enough money to block some other service - that's really bad, but I don't see it ever happening despite scare quotes like the ones the article provides. There's simply no way customers would put up with it, and the company being blocked could easily sue the company paying for the block. So who would actually do that?
Sue under what law?
The ruling party in the UK has made it clear they do not support net-neutrality. So you think they would introduce a law that made this kind of thing illegal? Dream on.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS, says in clause 11.1:
By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
Article: "While Wikipedia's visitors read Wikepedia's entries, the CPUs of their computers are almost idle."
Assumptions, Assumptions. How do they know? Personally I do tons of stuff and I use computers several years old - I notice if a web-page starts to kill my CPU and I quickly kill it.
The users CPU is the users. Not the website's, they don't have the right to take it over without asking, no matter how altruistic the cause is.
Why not ask the user for permission? Well, if your going to do that, why not just prompt users to download and install any of the many other programs that use Idle CPU time for good causes? They could use an idle CPU much more efficiently than some Javascript on a webpage could.
The second issue raised, where potentially a company could fork over enough money to block some other service - that's really bad, but I don't see it ever happening despite scare quotes like the ones the article provides. There's simply no way customers would put up with it, and the company being blocked could easily sue the company paying for the block. So who would actually do that?
Sue under what law?
The ruling party in the UK has made it clear they do not support net-neutrality. So you think they would introduce a law that made this kind of thing illegal? Dream on.
As others have pointed out, Skype are not the only ones guilty of the "auto-install" crime by far. If Skype, why not all the others to?