If it's possible to replace advertising with your CPU cycles, how, exactly, could this hurt the consumer? Sounds like it could <i>benefit</i> the consumer immensely. This could be another form of micropayments for people who might not be able to afford the cash upfront.<p>What the developer has created actually sounds rather ingenious.
"One interrogatory asks Rubin to provide a list of all instances where Tidbit and websites using the code "accessed consumer computers without express written authorization or accessed consumer computers beyond what was authorized."<p>Sigh. This is why we need more judges and lawyers who have at least knee-deep knowledge of technical details about the subjects they regularly rule on. This absurd language would not have been put into the subpoena if they even had a basic understanding of how client-side scripting works on the web, and by extension if they had a rudimentary understanding of how the web works at all.
There's one part of the subpoena that I don't understand. Why not turn over the source code? Since this is partially cryptographic software and also software that can be used to control a user's machine, it seems to me imperative for anyone who wants to give up control of their CPU cycles to know precisely how they're being used, or to trust the pool of smart cows who can study it for us.
So now everyone writing code has to fear the state of New Jersey will overstep its bounds and try to get them into court when they clearly have no jurisdiction or right to do so? I don't even see why this subpoena has to be answered by an out of state resident that has nothing to do with the state of New Jersey. Will the state pay for all these expenses?
First they came after climate scientists ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney_General_of_Virginia's_climate_science_investigation" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney_General_of_Virginia's_...</a> ), but I am not a climate scientist...
Seems like so many times these days, people's actions are defined by a process of:<p>I don't understand this -> I don't like this -> I'll research reasons to not like this -> You may never be permitted to do this.<p>Never, "Let's weigh the pros and cons and figure out what we will do about it." It's decision first, then rationalization.
I built something similar to this at a hackathon in 2011. The source is has been on github ever since. No one has come after me yet.
Don't understand what the big deal is.
The really stupid part of this is cpu mining for btc could not even be measured as a btc fraction at current difficulty.<p>You could probably run your cpu 100% for a year and not generate one satoshi.<p>That said, there are some botnets out there stealing gpu cycles and generating massive hashrates for scrypt coins. So I could see the cause for alarm but knowledge like that is going to get out regardless.