I like the idea, but this could be seen as overloading the
browser.
A far more useful (IMO) approach, is one which I've seen dicsussed
on these "the future of computers" type TV shows - one where you
have a program dedicated to doing this kind of slave robot work.
I'd be happier to have a separate system that I could tell to
fire up Netscape at 2am to go check on the weather forecast for
the day, or to run myapp to destroy all files that more than a week old
in my wastebasket.
All this could be possible with a user-fiendly interface to cron, with
no overloading of www clients.
rob