Topic: Renting a computer with specific operating system and/or software (Read 993 times)

Possibilities are endess, cannot see a use case that could help particulary realise the potential of the idea.
The system would be neutral regarding risks. It would be up to the renter to charge taking into account the risks and/or monitor its use during that time and restore the system to a previous configuration. For the peace of mind of the renter he could rent himself a VPN service and only allow that tunneled internet connection to be used, restrict certain things, etc, etc.
Free market and competition would tend to bring cheap services but the higher thr risk the more you could charge, according a rewarding system of rankings or something like that.
It would be up to each to measure the risks and set things properly, the system would be neutral for that matter and eventually you could make some good bitcoins with it or use it for a specific purpose - like playing a specic stage of a game - and spend some to feed the economies.
Sorry for not going much into spacific cases. I find that a bit vague and don't think would help much the discussion.

There could be several parameters used for finding the right system as well, for instance, for some uses, renting a system nearby would be a good idea, to have reduced ping times.

Paying anonymously with bitcoin could of course be a risk, as the renter could to anything illegal, for example downloading copyrighted software (warez) in france.

I can see many legit, and many non-legit uses for this as well. Many providers already let you create virtual servers on the fly, amazon for example.

Reimaging the machine after rental could be one way to avoid having anything malicious permanently done, but having access to a local machine of some random internet user also means you may have access to more devices in his home over his local network, and these may be comromized as well if security is not good enough.

There was already one suggested use case scenario of a fully configured system with Sierra Charts, is there any other use cases you would suggest?

Imagine someone rented a system, and then did a SR purchase from it, and then that somehow was intercepted and the person renting out his PC got law enforcement knocking on his door, unlikely - but not impossible.

It looks that perhaps only commercial providers should really do this, as the risk may be too high for non-tech home users?

Do you know what that is?

I see this for remote access for an accounting system:

 - http://itfix.ca/accountinghostinginfo.html

I know of ByteSized, not sure how that relates:

 - https://bytesized-hosting.com/

One of the guys on here has a service for setting up a virtual machine connected to the Internet for rent...pretty slick idea.

Oh, anything other than doing an image restore after the session is over is asking get p0wned!   This would need to be a service offered commercially, though because it could be someone offering it from anywhere in the world, there probably would be no problem finding willing suppliers of systems for this endeavor.

You could watch it and ask for the money you think is fair.
With teamViewer you can watch what others are doing on your computer as they do it and block it any time you want.

Or ask provide a cheaper or free service for the sake of it.

I see potential here.
Also the website would be neutral. It would be up to the users to use it righteous, etc.

A potential problem is trust between the parties.  Does the renter trust the user to not change/break anything, do something illegal that could get the renter in trouble, etc.?  Does the user trust the renter to not hack the software to snoop on, mislead, etc. the user?

Definitely a good idea though.

So let's say there is an expensive piece of software (or otherwise unavailable title) that I wouldn't be willing to buy but I would be willing to rent it per-hour, perhaps?  (And can't get a bootleg copy / or don't want to install it?) 

I could see demand for this.  Even within the bitcoin world ... I'ld pay for access to a system loaded with sierra charts all configured to access Mt. Gox feed, for instance.  As a Linux user I would need to set up a Windows VM and install it and ...   ya, so I've never touched Sierra Charts.  But I might pay to rent a system that has it, for a few hours.

Using the same logic as for my idea of renting a wifi with password, we could have a site help us rent a computer with a specific operating system and/or software, and paying in bitcoins directly to the owner of the machine.
According to the licenses of them it could be legal or illegal to rent specific machines.
This could use something like TeamViewer - that is what I use for remote access. It works great with all sorts of devices.
But the website would actually help you find a specific machine and use a specific client (that could be other than TeamViewer) for the remote access according to your criteria of choice.
It doesn't seem overcomplicated to develop such a website.
I think I am going to try to implement such, using PHP, for hotspots and remote access for strangers. 
It would certainly be another jump into disruptive matters.
What do you reckon?