On the rented computer itself, we have ... what? Has any thought been given to this? (Sorry I'm kind of jumping into the middle.)

See, because even if somebody paid me to download some random executable, there's no way I would. So native executables are out.

That leaves either Java applets, which are free to post to the originating site but are otherwise sandboxed (otherwise somebody will abuse this to send email spam), or scripts in some scripting language, e.g. Perl etc. Java is probably the best choice IMHO, but I'm interested in hearing what else might be a good idea.

The good thing about a scripting language is that I could in principle examine the code to make sure it's not doing something I don't approve of, see? Since it's running on my machine! Java's security mechanisms make that less urgent, but they also restrict what the downloaded applet could do in the first place.

So: tradeoff. Just thinking out loud here.

Posted: May 31, 2007, 6:51 pm

I don't understand
Refer to the post at Website Machinery, because I'm not sure if we need any Rental Machinery.

Posted: June 1, 2007, 11:17 am

VNC: it's extremely cross-platform, free and popular. The rented machine provides a password and username, which we could make a random generator for, which is provided to the buyer. When the session is over, the rented machine's owner simply kills the process and changes the log-in details.

As for folks being short-changed/hacked, a feedback system and caveat emptor rule could be used?

Posted: June 1, 2007, 1:24 pm