If you aren't using Javascript then it isn't the same idea. The whole point of this is that this requires absolutely no installation. It just works automagicall

If you aren't using Javascript then it isn't the same idea. The whole point of this is that this requires absolutely no installation. It just works automagically when you visit a website. The main technology hurdle that I see here is that it has to be imperceptible to the user when they "turn on" the botnet feature. This means the browser has to do some analysis of available CPU cycles and keep CPU utilization at a level where it does not affect performance. To do this well, the browser would need to be able to access detailed, realtime systems information, which is not part of any HTML standard as of yet. (I agree with you on the editorializing/hype issue though)