[ Thanks to Matt for
this link. ]
“Internet computing is a term commonly used to describe the use
of multiple networked computers to run dedicated computing
applications. The most famous example is The Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, in which half a
million home and corporate PC users voluntarily use their spare
processing power to analyze radio telescope data for SETI.“The SETI project is typical of the Internet computing domain in
that its application is both dedicated and vertically integrated.
In other words, no generic use of the computing resources is or can
be made, and all dataflow between the computing resource and the
data server uses proprietary APIs. When an application upgrade is
required, manual intervention is needed to download new
executables, and typically no management layer exists for
dynamically pushing new computing tasks or otherwise manipulating
the available computing resources…”