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SETI@Home Close to Half-Billionth Result

Posted by timothy on from the why-if-I-only-had-a-nickel-for-every dept.

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."

2 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. the original? by Loki_1929 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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."
    1. Re:the original? by sam_handelman · · Score: 5, Funny

      ET: Greetings, hu-mans. We contact you to usher you into the great community of sentient species!
      Human: We have d3crypt3d ur private k3v/s! \|/3 wi11 h4xxor u!
      ET: Stop that. It's an insult to the dignity of all thinking beings.
      Human: 1 4m s0 3|_33T!
      ET: I didn't wait 10,000 years for my answer to cross the icy depths of space so I could read your sophmoric babblings.
      Human: 1 r0xx0rd u!
      ET: Your puny intellect is no match for our massive weapons!
      Human: Br1|\|g it on! U \|/1|_|_ f34r /|\3!

      Of course, I just assume that alien intelligence is like me. Maybe I'm just too closed-minded to envisage a form of consciousness that isn't driven into a homidical rage by leet-speak.

      Seriously, while there are a great many ways besides SETI you can meet people and waste processor cycles together (I know - keep analysing the ripples in the surface of loch ness until you find the "messages" pixies are sending us from another dimension!) my colleagues at Oxford have managed to come up with something genuinely useful to do with your spare processor cycles.

      --
      The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.