Javascript + User computer power
Recently a fellow HN member wrote and another posted about using javascript to ignore bots when doing a/b testing.
Post - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1411650
Original Author - http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11
Actual Post - http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/07/detecting-bots-in-javascrip/
Potentially the catalyst, at the very least a seed sown in the depths of my subconscious.
Earlier this evening whilst getting a little fresh air, I found myself wondering what if we could use the “login page” for instance, or any page for that matter on a web site / web application ( yes even the iphone ) to use the “viewers” computer for something good, other than just serving the html page to.
A combination of “md5 lookup” + “recaptcha” got me thinking surely we could.
At the moment, my idea has only reached the stage of:
auto generated text string + its hash conversion, sent along with the login credentials.
Clearly not rocket science, nor cutting edge for that matter.
Now place such an idea on facebook or even worse farmville and you start to see what could happen.
Useful links to aid in the building of “md5 hashes”
http://phpjs.org/functions/md5:469
What other useful things could it be used for?
- Could it one day be used via a headless html5 program to run over some cancer strains?
- DNA sequencing?
- p2p via javascript?
- post processing of data for other users on the site?