Question

Embed distributed storage (like Tahoe FS) and distributed computation (like hadoop) in the browser to create the client side cloud. Imagine the advantages of providing each user the full power of every idle computer in the world and the combined storage of every hard drive free space. Users should combine their limited resource into the People's cloud. Don't let corporate data centers be the only real computing force of the internet and the browser a window on whatever they want to show or sell. Opera got it right calling a related product Unite, in fact web surfers of the world, unite!

Answer 1

Only problem with Opera Unite is that it is completely controlled by Opera, and uses Opera's servers to route all your data... in short, forcing you to use Opera's (a corporation) servers (datacenters) exactly like you don't want.

Take a look at how Opera Unite actually works, it's not as 'freeing' from corporations as it implies... it entirely depends on Opera and their servers to function.

As per your idea, it sounds great! Problem though: I don't use much space, but my harddrive still fills up eventually (usually 10gb+ games that I forget to uninstall when done with). I don't want others using my harddrive. If all harddrives were open for everyone to use, then those users who bit-torrent 150gb of data monthly will fill my harddrive, and everyone elses, while poor me who only use about 15-25gb a month wont get much use out of this.

Plus, if people have (virtually) infinite storage space, two trends will start, that will break your idea: A) people will stop deleting files they don't need to conserve their space, and thus, not 'recycling' spare memory, filling up your harddrive net astonishingly fast, and B) people will stop buying large harddrives. Why spend $100 for a 350gb harddrive, when you can spend $25 for a 50gb harddrive, and just use your free, infinite, online storage?

I'm all for allowing others to share my CPU power though! I don't 'run out' of that.

Great idea, but it's my opinion that in practice it wont work too well. It'd work for small communities though, I think! Maybe if there were different 'clouds' you could register for (with a admin accepting invite requests, and booting resource hogs) then whole forums of people could share their resources on their own micro-cloud (if I might coin a term).

Answer 2

Maybe this shouldn't be implemented in Firefox...