Sounds good :)

There is only one little downside: the download/upload speed of users and renters..

I forget the name/URL, but I know it has been done... =(

seti at home, world community grid, distributed.net are already doing distributed computing to process large amounts of data.

Testing html/applications in different browsers has already been done by browsershots.org among others.

The idea of using other people's bandwidth for mirroring sounds interesting.

Not a bad idea, actually, but you've got to think about the threat from unscrupulous users. Otherwise, not a bad concept!

Rebuttel to berseken:

BOINC (Seti at Home) is good but it requires a lot of effort but only large projects could use it.

Ever tried using browsershots.org? Half of the time you don't even get a screenshot due to the demand on their servers!

And rebuttel to Asymptote:

An eBay like feedback system would be employed.

Now that virtualisation is common you could rent out a virtual PC running from your computer. This would make it a heck load more secure for the owner. A major problem would potentially be reliability, a home user would potentially run processes that would upset the processes run by the leaser.

Interesting but as you aim to provide general purpose computing there are allot of obstacles. Look forward to seeing this idea evolve.

gr8 idea to utilise the free resources. really kewl !

I had an idea a little similar (but in SETI direction). I think there are some similar ideas in CH. Search a little about, and you may team with them.

The mirroring feature is already handled pretty well by Freenet.

A lot of the clustering services avoid security/privacy issues by limiting what the clustered app can do (e.g. SETI@Home just runs calcs, it doesn't have free rein). In this case, you're basically allowing some anonymous person to log on as a regular user, so you're going to really address privacy/security from both sides.

There are already services that will let you rent time on a virtual desktop on a server machine. This avoids the privacy/security issues because no one else is ever using that device. When you're done, the service provider simply deletes that virtual machine. It also allows you to handle OS licensing in a manageable way.

i'd be worried about security issues viruses, and other illegal activites - but thats me.

i expect you could run anything in a sandbox or separate VM so it could not affect the other systems on the machine.

There'd be a lot of overhead for something like that so it might slow your system down when more than one person wants to use it, depending on the speed and memory of your machine.

Otherwise thats a cool idea you have there :D

It sounds great,
It could be very interesting for micro firm which don't have infrastructure to have this service, or for private developers who work on an application and don't have time to spend on that

has potential...

Well, how will the model work? what's the business plan?
A developer will need access to a person's computer in order to test his software, what user will sanely give this level or permissions to a stranger? and if the user is the tester himsel, what's his reward for his time and the risking of his personal computer?

All in all, with the abundance of virtualiz machines solutions today, i see no merit in this idea.

is this been done?

Interesting concept. Look at what others are doing in the same arena and figure out what needs to improved or combined.