gathering bandwidth through spam

[Mike McNally <m5@vail.tivoli.com>]

Maybe I'm dense, but it didn't really "click" until the other day that
the Netscape mail reader, which renders html pages mailed as attachments
right there in the mail reader window, would also run any Java applets
(and, I guess, Javascript code) referenced by the page.

If you're using Netscape as a mail reader, and this isn't old news to
you, you can try it: point the browser at a page with an applet, and
then use the "File->Mail Document" menu command to mail it to yourself.

Thus:  if you want to gather some free compute cycles, just spam a
document out to a few thousand hapless victims.  Those using Netscape
for mail (and you can find them pretty easily by looking at the
"X-Mailer" field when creating your mailing list) will click on your
message, pull your applet, and give you some cycles without realizing
it.  Of course, your applet will be free to connect back to home base
and relay any results it gets.

Cool, huh?

______c_____________________________________________________________________
Mike M Nally * Tiv^H^H^H IBM * Austin TX    * For the time being,
       m5@tivoli.com * m101@io.com          *    
      <URL:http://www.io.com/~m101>         *    three heads and eight
arms.