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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."
I would have thought that the movie and book rights, plus revenues from public speaking by the individual who finds ET would make that $500 look pretty paultry by comparison.
I consider SETI@Home to be one of the most inspirational projects ever attempted by our generation. Really, it's my equivalent of the moon shot (which happened two years before I was born).
I don't get misty-eyed very easily, but when I think about the films of JFK's inspirational speech... well, I hope the Kleenex is handy.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Who cares if this ever produces real results or not? It doesn't matter. It's the search that is important. Human beings striving for something new, working hard to discover whether they are truly not alone in the universe. I consider that to be an outstanding effort and achievement, even if we never find ET. I am proud to donate my computer's spare CPU cycles to such a noble effort.
God, that sounds so cheesy to go back and read it. But there it is. There's not much in the world today I get to feel good about. SETI@Home is definitely one of them.
modern choral music...
How is this a waste of time?
How is this modded as insightful?
It's using spare cpu cycles to do something that the computer owner considers important.
What do you do with your spare cycles which makes you a "more productive citizen?"
Some people prefer to help with cancer research, other people would love to make first contact. I don't think that productive citizenship factors in here at all.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
That's awfully convienient. There is no time between may and june.
If you are willing to accept that the SETI@Home client actually does what they say it does and the same goes for the protein folding, then there is one difference between the two projects that, IMHO, can make one want to run the former but not the latter.
If one or more result is found from SAH (i.e., signal of intelligent origin found), the result isn't "owned" by anyone nor would it be likely to be withheld for any sort of gain by the party that holds the answer. The SAH team could hardly claim a result has been found and NOT reveal the coordinates without causing a riot. No, if they get a result, they'll release the coordinates, after which time everything on Earth that's big, round, and concave is going to be pointed in that direction, and then scientists all around the world will all have the same raw signal data from which they can draw conclusions.
On the other hand, the protein folding results can be used for any number of purposes for the gain of the people who have the information. And, if the protein folding project could lead to curing diseases, is it not reasonable that it could also be used to CAUSE them, accidentally or deliberately? There's an inscrutability and opacity to the PF project that the SAH project doesn't have.
This is what has kept me from running the PF client (aside perhaps from lack of a Linux client if that is in fact still the case) - the feeling that my computers might wind up making, say, Glaxo-Wellcome twenty times bigger than Microsoft.
How many /.ers are going to run over and start up a client in order to get 500 bucks. I realize not everyone is going to run over but it will be interesting to see if there is a spike in there productivity. I stopped doing seti@home a while ago, when the reports of small amounts of data came out. I went back to dnet, but I still did more than 85% of the people...
If i get the loot I will donate half of it to the GNU foundation...
Douglas Calvert
You're taking the average over the RC5-64 project, which has been over 1600 days, meaning you're looking at the computing power available to this particular project, some 600 - 700 days ago or so.
Use my suggestion to add in the seti@home users' computational power, then add in a rough estimate of net users gained over the life of the project, then apply moore's law to compute the addition of faster cpus, and you'll be able to calculate the most likely time for completion (assuming say, 60% keyspace searched, which takes the average 1/2 and ads 10% for overhead). If you can do the math on that one, you're a better man (or woman) than I, but I'll bet you it'd be MUCH sooner than you think to complete the project. Assume it should take roughly 10 years (just for argument's sake) your average computational power would lie I believe somewhere around the 7th or 8th year. I could be a bit off on this, it's 2am and I've been up about 28 hours now. I think I need sleepy time.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
This isn't like RSA; you haven't hit half the search space when you hit 500,000,000 results. Statistically, a "catch" is no closer or further away than it ever was.
This is seriously fictitious milestone: it's only meaningful to humans, who think it's a large number, and who think it has more significance than other large numbers because they happen to have 10 fingers.
-- Terry
The only difference it is that if I unfold the "right" protein, some corporation will get my money, compared with the seti case, where just the "right" people will know when the messages will be detected.
:-).
Guess what, I'm still looking for ET