Slashdot Mirror
SETI@Home Close to Half-Billionth Result
Jonathan writes: "SETI@Home, the largest distributed computing project in the world, is on the verge of receiving its 500 millionth result. This is a major milestone for both the project and distributed computing as a whole. Oh, and if you still need some added incentive to get involved, there's a $500 reward for the user who returns the milestone result."
Ok, now all you folks staring at the pretty screensaver really ought to be cracking keys for Distributed.net.
If everyone just jumped on RC5, we'd have the 128-bit key done by now, and ET would still be there waiting for us. If you're going to talk to aliens, shouldn't you at least let them know your computer can brute force a 128-bit encrypted RC5 key? If that doesn't impress them, nothing will. Once they see that, they'll probably show us the secrets of interstellar travel, and eternal life, things like that. But only if we crack keys first, so go download the Dnetc client and get cracking!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
$500 reward for the user who returns the milestone result. ;)
lol, I bet the winner is some guy who just signed up for the project the day before - the SETI@Home version of a Slashdot first post
I think the milestone is the half-billionth result, rather than actual contact with ET, tho with all the celebrating I'd do if I made first contact, I think that $500 might just about cover my nights alcohol purchases ;)
i thought @Home was dead?
Since some guy on Regis and Kelly predicted that a major UFO sighting will happen sometime between May and June!
yeah but one way or the other SETI@home is better, if we find alliens they might show us not only how to cure diseas but also boost us by several 100 years worth of research in other fields like physics etc. and on the other hand if they're destructive and (well duh...) destroy us, then we don't have to worry about disease! didn't that make ur day?
--tzan
Yeah, but you know that the first sign of alien "intelligence" that we find is going to be the intersteller version of "MAKE MONEY FAST".
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
the movie and book rights, plus revenues from public speaking by the individual who finds ET
Yeah, that'd be a thrilling movie, book, speech. Basically:
day 1: checked my computer, no result
day 2: checked my computer, no result
day 254: checked my computer, screensaver turned off... turned it back on, disaster averted, no result.
day 675: checked my computer, no result
day 676: checked my computer, n.... hold on... no, that's nothing, no result
etc, etc
Ok, I just realized I've spent the last 10 minutes writing a Slashdot post. It's probably time I grew out of that, too. (Ooooh, my karma's gonna be smoking... hehe. You'd think I would learn my lesson about questioning the groupthink, from the whole Freenet thing. Ahh well. Burn, karma, burn!! ;)
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Here is the answer that 500 million of the results provided: 500,000,000 * "no".
If they are really that advanced, they have no MS in their society, and therefore can no longer fathom the thought of "viruses".
Or, it could be like Independence Day, where the alien society obviously never had script kiddies so our 1337 virus technology will screw them over and allow a few F18s to blow the hell out of them...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Better still is the Kids In The Hall's take on it:
"We've been anally probing for years now, and the only thing we've found is that 1 in 10 of them don't really mind it that much!"