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I went to this page on neohapsis about the latest Linux kernel bug. I kept this URL opened in a tab and I noticed that my CPU was at full load... Weird. Then after looking around for a while I notice "Applet DistCrack.class started", WTF? I promptly banned it with AdBlock+.

Edit: I just noticed that they mention their "research on distributed computing" on the page. This is a bit harsh to me : suck up CPU first and opt out later?

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    Damn skippy. These people are bad citizens, at the very least. Aug 15, 2009 at 2:28

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I tried the link and reached the page with firefox.

  • Noticed nothing suspicious active on my system
  • Opened NoScript for neohapsis.com; temporarily
    • Still no new activity...
  • Then, opened the "blockable items" list on AdBlock+
    • I could see the blocked item
      http://dc.suntzu.net/DistCrack.class
  • Since I had opened NoScript specifically for the primary site (neohapsis),
    I effectively opted out.
  • Would not even have noticed all this
    if I had been to that site without reference from this question

Short story: If you are fine to run Ads from other Ad servers,
You probably do not mind giving some CPU time to distributed computing research
:-)
(this is probably their philosophy too)

If you want to opt-out of such things,
take suggestions from my description above.

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