Internet render farm
Here's an interesting implication of a WinNT-based 3D Studio: With the Remote
Access Service (RAS), you can easily connect to the Internet via PPP.
You can also run other LAN Manager protocols via RAS. With this, you can
easily mount a drive remotely across the Internet. All it takes is an entry in
LMHOSTS and then you can use ordinary File Manager "connect to network drive"
operations or a command line NET command to link to the remote system's drive.
With this, you could make an Internet-based rendering farm. I recently read a
press release about Electric Image on the Mac offering a similar service…
they apparently place their office Macs on the Internet, available for
net-rendering to their customers. Think of all those computers at Autodesk that
aren't in use late at night… 🙂