>> Granted I haven't read the detailed documentation. But it looks like 
>> you can put together an AMI and list it on Amazon's website with "hey, 
>> you can run this thing for $2/hour". 
> 
> Yes. Which might be worthwhile if that's how you're selling software you 
> can't get anywhere else.

Indeed. It wouldn't surprise me if somebody like AutoCAD lets you run 
their software this way so you can "rent" it rather than "buy" it. 
(Although... why would you only need CAD software for a short while?)

>> If you wanted to be able to submit renders from your PC and have them 
>> automatically run, you'd have to have an instance constantly running, 
>> waiting for work to be submitted. 
> 
> Huh? No. You start the AMI when you're ready to render something, and 
> shut it down when it's finished. That's the point.
> 
> If you're automating it (or, rather, the way *I* automated it), the 
> software on your desktop creates an S3 bucket with a name based on your 
> Amazon ID, it copies the files up to it, it launches the AMI passing in 
> your credentials, the AMI starts up and looks at the credentials and 
> copies down the jobs, renders them, and puts the result back on S3 and 
> shuts down.  When all the instances have shut down, the software on your 
> desktop copies the results from S3 back to your machine.

That sounds like a sensible workflow. And I guess if the AMI gets 
started under the customer's account (which your tool presumably has to 
somehow obtain), they get billed, and you can still take your cut.

...until somebody else realises that all your AMI actually does is untar 
the files and launch POV-Ray, and they build their own AMI that does the 
exact same thing. Now they can do exactly what they did before, but 
without paying a cut to you. ;-)

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