Unused CPU cycle myth
"un-used CPU cycles are just asking for mean glances from financial types who've read airline magazines about cheap cloud servers"
The financial types need a swift kick in the arse. My servers idling in my business cost me only the electricity to run them and occasional hardware maintenance (replace a drive in a RAID, etc.). For a 4GHZ Multi-core/Multi-CPU server (be creative) costing 100,000.00 [insert your currency here] the first minute of up-time sees each second cost .0000004 [insert your currency here] per cycle. As time passes that number gets lower!
<sarcasm>Oh yes.. VERY expensive. </sarcasm>