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SETI@Home Faces Funding Problems
blamanj writes "The aussie version of ZDNET is reporting that money to continue the SETI@Home project is in jeopardy, and it may fall by the wayside unless further funding can be found."
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Protein folding distributed analysis by IBM...folded. I heard something about cycles for cancer, but I can't find a link.
RIGHT NOW, what can I use my spare cycles for, besides SETI?
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jonathan barket
If Seti@home goes bankrupt, will the creditors come and repossess my extra cpu cycles?
Maybe they should start looking for RICH aliens?
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
.. Can't they just get ET to wire them some more money?
Trolling is a art,
THey should ask SR Hadden for money.
There\'s no place like ~
1. Start search for alien life with idle time on home computers.
2. ???
3. More funding!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Those pesky Martians!
First they shoot down our spacecraft, now this!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I've been crunching numbers for SETI for a while now. It's sad that they're running out of money, but it's a part of how their program works. All that bandwidth, and nobody paying for it. They don't get any ad money, and bandwidth is very hard to come by these days. Heck, every one person has to download a few hundred KiB of data every few hours.
That may not sound like much... but when you have 4,027,337 users, it's a lot. Even assuming that only 1/4 of those users actively contribute, you're still looking at a million people downloading > 2 megs a day. Also, some of those million people run whole server farms, and that can build the cost up to 100 megs a day.
Bandwidth isn't cheap. If they run out of funding, I'll be sad to see them go.
More cycles for the Optimal Goulomb Ruler search!
Say it ain't so.
I'll tell you what the 'effect' is! It's pissing me off!
They don't want us to find out where they come from.
Maybe they could start selling some of the extra processing time to pay for the cost of the project? It would annoy me if they were making money off of it, but not if they were using it only to cover their costs.
1) Gain access to volunteering bank accounts.
2) When the account is idle for a bit, slowly draw a few cents every so often.
3) ???
4) Profit! Errr, stay in 'business.'
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Primenet/GIMPS.
http://www.entropia.com/ips/
They search for very large mersenne primes.
Unlike distributed.net, they're computing something new (distributed.net searches for decryption keys to a message whose contents is known!), and unlike SETI@home, they've had actual results: three of the largest prime numbers known to man were found through Primenet.
If those spare cycles are on a Windows machine (maybe you're not using it anymore!) you could always try www.uniteddevices.com, at http://members.ud.com/projects/cancer/index.htm, and help find a cure for cancer.
Just to name a few:
Folding@Home (don't know the exact link)
UnitedDevices (www.uniteddevices.com)
We *need* to finish it so Parkes can double their city's science output!
Perhaps they could include banner ads to generate more revenue. It would kinda suck, especially considering that you're the one providing a service to them. But if it's what it takes to keep the project going I wouldn't mind...
In news today, it was reported that, in an attempt to deal with a funding shortfall, SETI has spawned a daughter organization SETF (Search for Extra Terrestrial Funding). One of the biggest obstacles that SETI officials face is determining the appropriate exchange rate from the intergalactic rugblat to the dollar.
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
You can contribute to a cure for cancer with a project managed by Oxford University's Dr. Graham Richards. This is currently in a second phase using LigandFit virtual screening software.Powered by Accelrys (scientific software) and United Devices (Global Metaprocessor). Link is here
Worth it? Oh yes, most definitely.
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.
Distributed bank access clients...
Perhaps they can set up a Donate icon on their application, perhaps through Paypal...
I'm sure there would be tons of people willing to donate.
I don't agree with this. Sure we may never come in contact with any alien life, but think about the side benefits. Without the great impact of seti@home, we probably would have never had companies like United Devices which have done research into ways of curing cancer using distributed computing. Seti@home has shown to the masses a new way of doing great things. If nothing else, the publicity that seti@home got has sparked a completely new area of computing that was only previously available to "techies".
- funding from big contributors (without commercial obligations), not likely to continue (forever)
- funding from users. If 500 000 paypalled $5, it could be enough. Would you?
- advertising, 4 million users. Could work, would you accept it.
- become a subproject of another (commercial project), search ETs only with certain percentage of available CPU power.
- be eaten by an OS vendor (at some stage, a distributed client will become a fixed part of many operating systems, I believe) this might provide a kickstart for doing it for some vendor.
- run it by volunteers, reduce staff costs.
Can you come up with something else?
This is another Entropia project, they test millions of candidate drug compounds against detailed models of evolving AIDS viruses.
What fun is being "cool" if you can't wear a sombrero? (Hobbes of Calvin & Hobbes)
When has Seti@home actually provided any useful knowledge about interstellar ANYTHING? They just chew bandwidth and cycles for what purpose? Using FFT's to find seemingly coherant signals buried in electomagnetic background.
This project does seem quite interesting, in that it's trying to determine signals of life, but hasn't provided a thing (unless I'm wrong).
Why not let them die?
Now, if they could just borrow everone's pocket change overnight while they are not using it, collect the interest, then give it back in the morning... That should solve their finance problems.
Would it be possible for someone to come in and buy the name "Seti@home", along with the list of signed up computers, and then use that processing time for completely other purposes that might not be nearly as desireable as scanning for intelligent life?
I know that getting out of any such trojan use would be as simple as uninstalling/turning it off, but if there's a significant group of people who aren't smart enough to find out that the hands have changed and ditch it, what keeps the person who purchases SETI@home's assets from turning all those CPU cycles into something nefarious...like cracking the encryption on bank accounts or something (you're right, that was a lame idea, but I'm sure someone would come up with a better one).
And it would seem that given the universe of AOL/Windows users, there would be a significant number of folks who would fall into that category.
Or perhaps the End User Agreement or other documents prevent this? I've never run SETI@Home, so I've never seen their agreement.
In Short, just how exposed are people?
The Parkes facility is more powerful than that currently used to record the data at Arecibo, Peurto Rico and its addition would widen the search for extra-terrestrials to the Southern Hemisphere.
I would think it might be more productive to scan outer space instead of the southern half of our own planet, but whatever floats their boat.
Considering HIV has yet to be isolated just how can computer simulations help?
... they should direct their antennas towards wherever rich, powerful people live (e.g. Washington D.C.) and search for intelligent life there. (Some do believe in it's excistance, but it's only a matter of belif.)
Look a monkey!
Do you also propose the cancellation of all astronomy research, and putting all the money into medicine?
It think the SETI project is great. If somebody donates their resources to science, don't complain about it, even if you happen to like other projects better. Go out and preach to somebody who has an idle computer instead.
Tor
te "noise" we are filtering, is actually the message?!?
How do we know it's not?
Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but United Devices has a distributed computing project up that helps find a cure for cancer. Phase II, which began late last summer, is called LIGANDFIT, and 'helps scientists to characterize therapeutic targets and identify and assess drug canididates by performing automated docking of flexible ligands to a protien's binding site.' I'd encourage anyone who has a box with cycles to spare to check it out- i'm pretty sure they've got a linux client, as well as a windows one. I've been running it for 80+ days now, and i haven't noticed any problems with performance- and it's the least we can do for the public good.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
As others have said, I will also be sad to see S@H finish, but alas their job is done since we have found life on venus.
Ok, so it might not be "intelligent", but define "intelligence". I assume the S@H definition of "intelligence" is the ability to generate radio waves somehow.
Of course I was denied 2 hours ago.. how long could that story have existed? Maybe I took too long by ACTUALLY READING IT :P
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Internet organizations just don't work! You can't just give things like seti@home away. You have to charge for access.
[Head hangs in depressed manner]
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Now, maybe finding intelligent life outside our Solar System isn't very important, since we currently have no way of actually effectively communicating with them, but...
Distributed computing research is important. I really don't see why this kind of research isn't flowing with money, if for the only reason to fully understand how to effectively handle a network of computations that number in the millions. In 30 years, I get the feeling computers are going to come with low priority generic network computing clients to off load research of varing projects onto, what else are we going to use that 20Ghz machines for when we go to work?
Burn Hollywood Burn
Here at home it's taken about 4 Billion years for the technology to evolve allowing for an intelligent search for extraterrestrial life. If the Galaxy is 14 billion years old then older technologies should have at least sparsely spread over the Galaxy by now. Numerically, with a few long shots, it looks like we're alone around here. But hey, metaphysically we're the Universe on a course of self discovery. Not bad for a bunch 'o apes that lost the forest on the savannah and stood up to take a look around. Unless you go with the idea evolution of sentient beings follows a path akin to an EMF, sort of a take on the idea of a thought thinking itself a la Spinoza's take on God. (although I think the idea of a thought thinking itself as a definition of God goes back to one of the ancient Greeks, probably one of the neoplatonist, maybe Plotinus?)
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
All scientific endevours, especially the ones that go against conventional thought are considered to be a terrible waste of money and many people want them canceled. However, when these projects are sucessful, they rewrite conventional thought and their deiscoveries can change they way everyone lives their lives.
Columbus was considered insane to want to sail around the world to reach India. He was ridiculed and almost didn't find funding. His discovery completely changed the world. There was a time when the suggestion that the earth was round and not the center of the universe would get you killed. I'm not going to list any more examples of going against conventional thought but I'm sure all of you can think of plenty of them.
I'm sure that all of you reading this know, with out a doubt, that there is life on other planets. It is not hard to imagine that there is intelligent life out there too. While this project is trying to find a needle in a haystack, the cost of searching for it next to nothing vs the potential return, and actually finding it would be the greatest discovery ever made.
I believe there are many other projects that we should contribute to such as cancer or aids research, but do you honestly think that canceling SETI will make the vast majority of SETI users switch to another program?
If I drive fast enough at the red light, it'll appear green.
You mean SETI@Home has been distributing recordings of interstellar noise over a P2P network? I'll bet RIAA has something to do with their demise!!!
"...I would while away the hours, talk'n to the flowers, if I only had a brain..."
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
1. Write a paper on something that doesn't yet exist. ...???
2. References: none
3.
4. Get an A+ on the paper
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Seems that they could be taking some of the load off of carnivore. There's an aweful lot of data to process, and the gov't could provide the funding they need to stay in business...
My sig hates me. That's ok, I never cared for it much anyway.
And if just the US government would REALLY care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't need a big part of that 250 billion dollar defense budget, but could spend it on the development of medication and a solution to world hunger. Or just that yearly 30 billion from the 'black' defense budget.
What if all other countries would just halve their defense budget (let's not just piss on the US for once).
What if everybody with a decent income would donate 10% of it to a good cause.
Hey... What if every country would raise their taxes with only 1% and use that for a better world (you know... environmental things (let's just all sign the freakin' papers and not think anybody should be treated differently... (oh.. damn... did it again) food, medication.
Damn... with all those what ifs, we would all be happy...
Sorry, someone had to say it.
They should just release a "special" version for bank employees.
I know more than you drink.
So many people installed that stupid client. Why not just make people pay for the priviledge of finding ET life? I know many people would. Just sell the client on a cd with an alien doll.
Think about it, they could even give you data sets on the CD so that you don't have to down load them.
Sure, you'd lose some clients, but from what I heard, they have too many people for too little data anyway.
At the bottom of the comments, this random quote is up: "I wish you humans would leave me alone." Be careful what you wish for, little green man...
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
Imagine how much power would be saved if everyone set their computers to go into hibernate mode during periods of inactivity. I never ran any of these distributed clients for the simple reason that I felt saving power was of more immediate benefit to my electric bill and to the enviorment.
If the SETI project ends and you've still got that do-good feeling - enable your OS's power saving features. It's the OTHER good thing your computer can do when its processing power isn't needed.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
And I'd say that it's probably not even the biggest cost. Bandwidth really isn't that expensive any more. It's probably 1/10 of what it cost when they started... maybe closer to 1/100. I would imagine the biggest cost has got to be the use of that giant friggin radio telescope. Considering it's the biggest in the world (lucky me... I got to see it in person, and even go into one of the control rooms), it can't be cheap to operate.
I remember once hearing a statistic about how many tons of coal were burned a day to run SETI@Home. I'm sure there are lots of people who were in fact using "spare cycles" on a computer that would have been left on anyway and had no power management capabilities, but I would be that a high percentage of the computers running their program would either be turned off or be in a lower power mode if they weren't running it.
For a short period of time, I had SETI@Home running on 3 or 4 computers where I used to work (more to pump the company's stats than because I thought we'd find anything). All of those computers would have been turned off during the majority of the day when I was not at work if SETI@Home weren't running on them. So I don't buy the line that running it on another computer doesn't cost anything. Nor, frankly, do I think it's worth the extra cost that is incurred by running it.
Other distributed projects that have been mentioned in various messages here, on the other hand, I think are worthy causes. As long as the people (or companies) running their programs are willing to pay the cost of running the program, I think they're great things to be contributing to.
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
If we feel this is a good cause towards humanity's future, let's not sit on our hands, and consider donating to this worthy cause!
Here's the URL... I hope many of your readers use it:
PS: I do not work for SETI@Home. I just think the Internet could work in it's favour if we all shelled out $5+ a piece
There is plenty of money. But it's not available for anybody other than big business and the military.
Basically, we're always in a funding crisis. I personally spend a huge chunk of my time here at the SETI lab writing grant proposals. That's what academia is all about. I've been working in this group for 6 years now, and we've always been just scraping by. This is NOT NEWS.
In fact, we're pushing forward on all fronts. Please see:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/setifuture.html
- Matt Lebofsky - SETI@home
Sure, finding a signal from ET is a longshot. But the project is also useful for real science in astrophysics.
The large computational power available is unique and makes it extremely useful for finding many kinds of time-variable radio sources (not just ET). The project is also being used to map the Hydrogen in the galaxy as detailed here.
Even though getting signals from an extraterrestrial intelligence may be a pipe dream, the project still has value from a pure scientific standpoint.
They just need to change the name to SETI@INSPACE or something, I wouldn't want any association with another bankrupt @home...
Has anyone thought about how much better off the aliens will be if we don't find them?
For instance, we won't be broadcasting advertisements to them, we won't be exploiting their natural resources, we won't give them the chickenpox....I think the aliens should be rejoicing!
[In all seriousness, I've donated many billions of cycles to SETI@Home... I just worry what we'll do when we find'em!]
And when the cures for cancer and AIDS are discovered, it could very likely be the result of a global distributed computing system modelled after the groundbreaking work of Seti@home.
Yes, this is very true, which is why the folks at SETI should be proud of at least these accomplishments, and should be good sports and encourage their user base to switch to other distributed computing projects when they shut theirs down.
The University of Kansas' 'Lifemapper' project ...maps where Earth's species of plants and animals live, and could potentially live.
http://beta.lifemapper.org
Don't forget that when using Entropia, your computer's cycles are used for some commercial tasks to earn Entropia money. I have no idea what the ratios are for commercial vs non-commercial. They don't say, which makes me suspicious.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I hope you're trolling. Just because they won't sell the results to a for-profit corporation doesn't mean that the results aren't available. In fact, if you bothered to read the links the results are going to be made public. What they won't do is sell it to a company who will in turn require an exclusive right to the results.
So, for instance, Pfizer can use the results, but they won't get exclusive rights to the results. If Pfizer doesn't like these terms, and so won't make use of them, then Pfizer is in fact at fault.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
According to this graph the total amounts of donations have just fallen from a few thousand to a few hundred dollars (yes, thank you, I located it from this informative post).
/. might solve the problem. But then again, maybe there are more material issues, maybe they missed a grant or something...?
Is this the extent of the problem? If so, it seems like just bringing it up once at
Tor
Prehaps SETI should try a different approach to finding aliens.
Launch a bunch of AOL disks into space and see if any subscribe.
The only problem is if they use AOL's techniques, they will get plenty of responses, but *still* be broke.
Table-ized A.I.
Folding@Home, and it's sister project, Genome@Home
As a biologist and pharmacologist, I run folding@home myself. But realistically, I think its chance of curing cancer or AIDS is about as good as SETI@home's chance of finding aliens.
However the issue is what is a good cause. Taking it to the extreme, I wouldn't like my spare cycles to be used by a password cracking system. The real problem is that computation can be easily "faked". I.e. multiplication of two large numbers can be done with FFT. So in order to be sure that nothing "funky" is happening, the system should be opensourced.
But opensourcing brings another problem - anybody could just take the source and change it so that it polutes the main system with fake results.
Ok, you could eliminate polution by sending the same thing to multiple users, but that seems to kill the advantage of this kind of distributed computing (the overhead of distribution, comparison, etc, becomes comparable to the computation itself, so why not just do it locally ...)
The Raven
The Raven
I lost my wife to cancer, but that's no excuse for this kind of idiocy.
a) Some cancer is avoidable (e.g. smoking) and some AIDS is not (transfusion, maternal transmission to infants).
b) Expecting people to avoid a disease by resisting the single most powerful biological instinct is stupid. It isn't going to happen. A medical treatment is the only hope.
c) HIV is a wake-up call. It is purely our good fortune that it is so hard to get that you have to have sex or a transfusion to get it, rather than being spread by mosquitoes like West Nile, or through the air like measles. The next virus to come down the pike may not be so well-behaved as HIV. Most of what we learn fighting HIV is likely to help us against the next one.
d) It's not a zero-sum game. Advances in biology are often portable. A cure for cancer could quite plausibly come out of AIDS research.
e) AIDS is increasing; most cancers are not. We don't have to worry about an epidemic of cancer among young people. Yet just such an AIDS epidemic is wiping out people wholesale in Africa. There is so much sickness that it is contributing to starvation, because people are too ill to raise food.
At my school www.uncc.edu they run seti non stop on all the winXP boxes and slows the net work down. I don't know how much network activity seti uses, but I'm sure hundereds of boxes running it on a 10baseT network doesn't help the situation. We also run lots of dumb terminals, by which I mean computers just running X, so that needs a lot of bandwidth. Computers should be used for something more useful like folding.stanford.edu the distributed folding project.
MAKE YOUR TIME
RC5-64 was supposed to take something like a hundred years when we started that, and it managed to be completed in about 5
The amount of processing power used for Distributed.net's RC5-64 effort hadn't grown exponentially but rather pretty much linearly. There's a limit to the power of even word of mouth.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hasn't anyone read The Forge of God ?
Cautious civilizations don't broadcast out of fear of attracting attention. If we do hear something, it will from a species wiped out by the Killers long, long ago.
They don't really need to splash out for all this gear just to find aliens. Here, let me save you SETI labcoats some cash.
Take 1 (one) RMS and dangle it in front of one of your telescopes.
Ask it about algorithm patenting, or the Bitkeeper license. Make sure the RMS is dangling mouth to the dish. Doesn't have to be that close. The RMS can actually be dangled from several miles out.
Wait for someone to crunch the WU and get back to you with a positive hit.
Buy new tux for Nobel Prize ceremony.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Just remember to check the settings after you join. When you install the UD client, you give them the right to run whatever project they want, unless you change it in the settings!
If you want to support a project where the privacy of the participants are taken seriously, you should take a look at Distributed Folding. This is not the same as the Folding@Home project, but it is doing something similar.
Unlike UD, there are clients for a lot of platforms and they are going to add more soon.
Important: Be sure to read the readme for the client! You'll regret it if you don't.
Instead of looking for what to do with spare CPU cycles just turn off the computer and save some of Earth's resources.
Finding a cure for Cancer or AIDS would be great. However, when it is found, all you will have is a cure for Cancer...But I use my spare cycles to hunt for aliens. When Aliens are found, they will already have the cure for cancer, aids, alzheimers, etc.
I know that's silly, The aliens will probably want something in return.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Comedy "give your extra CPU cycles to something that's actually useful" option.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
You sound like one of these people who questioned the usefullness of the first sattelites[sp]. Thanks to sattelites we now have more understanding of the weather (saving lifes and products by better weather forecasts), we know where to find water and are able to communicate from all over the world to all over the world.
:-)
Imagine what we could learn from finding intelligence[sp] from outside this world... maybe they will teach us to be tolerant to each other (that would be a big win
bash$
It's a totally trivial back-of-the-envelope calculation to deduce how many cycles it takes to find the key for an encrypted message by brute force (the way that distributed.net does it). Why do we need to corroborate that statistic via one very expensive sample?
The government does not need a lesson on the value of strong encryption: these figures are easy to work out, and in any case the NSA already has supercomputers that they use (presumably) to do the same thing. (Except, they likely have better technology than brute force for some ciphers...)
Distributed.net is not about "breaking" encryption. The ONLY thing we learn from it is the encryption key. The key was generated by the contest organizers, and if they wanted, they could have just saved it and we'd be one bajillion cycles richer.
I think it's much more interesting to put my cycles towards something where the answer isn't known! The various folding@home, aids@home, etc. efforts are tantalizing, though it's not clear that they will ever have actual results. Personally, I'm using GIMPS (primenet), which searches for very large prime numbers. (If you want to float your encryption boat, you could recall that asymmetric encryption often uses large prime numbers, though these primes would be totally useless for that.) This is the distributed computing program I know of that has had the most tangible results: three of the world's largest known primes were found by it. (It's also one of the oldest... I joined about 7 years ago.)
GIMPS is here: http://entropia.com/ips/
I have been afraid of this for quite some time. And as I said in my /. interview of July 2000 I think the answer has always been to serve some ads. Ads like those here on /. would be fine by me and would keep us from losing this valuable project.
The situation isn't as dire as it sounds. Our dominant problem has been that the falling economy has caused some of our sponsors to withdraw support. With support withdrawn, we are denied matching funds from the University. Essentially, the University is witholding funding until we find further sponsors. We are actively seeking corporate sponsors who would be willing to donate, and have their contributions matched by the University. Under the matching program the sponsors must be for-profit industry. If anyone reading this works for such a corporation, please contact SETI@home through our web site.
Individuals wishing to make a contribution can do so through the SETI@home web site. Please be aware that our current largest sponsor is the Planetary Society. A membership to the Planetary Society (assuming it is done through the links on the SETI@home page) may return more to SETI@home than does a direct contribution, as it indicates the importance of SETI@home to members of the Society.
Regardless of the funding issues, we are working hard to make SETI@home II a reality. We have funding from the NSF to develop the BOINC client/server code which will be used as the framework for SETI@home II. We are in the process of building the SETI@home II data recorder. What we do with it (multibeam, wide bandwidth) and where (Arecibo or Parkes) depends upon what we can afford.
We are also seeking NSF funding for AstroPulse and SETHI and SERENDIP V.
That said, things are currently somewhat tight here. We'll need to make do with fewer employees until we're back in the black. I don't think this spells the end of SETI@home by any means.
Support SETI@home
Given that it is a University project, any eventual commercial product will send much of its profits to Oxford or the UK government. Which doesn't all that bad.
I will be willing to trade food for the knowledge -- let's ship them our Congressmen.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
http://toolbar.google.com/dc/faq_dc.html
:)
Install the google-bar and you to can use spare CPU cycles!
SETI and their goals have nothing to do with astronomy, and it would be wise not to get them confused. Astronomy research, like all other scientific research seeks better understanding of the world around us. SETI has dedicated itself to obtaining a goal which will probably never happen, and the journey to which provides no meaningful gains.
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Striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap ho
But opensourcing brings another problem - anybody could just take the source and change it so that it polutes the main system with fake results.
We're in the process of attempting a new solution to this problem. We're open sourcing the distributed computing framework (essentially the operating system) and allowing the computing application to be closed source. This method opens the code signing/verification and data encryption code to be viewed by anyone who is interested, but doesn't necessarily allow untrusted application code to return a result. (Look here for more info).
Support SETI@home
Oh, and another thing. You know how Microsoft puts ads all over Slashdot? Well, every time I see one, I click on it to get Slashdot some money (and to cause Microsoft to have to spend money) but I never look at the content^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgarbage they are advertising. In other words, I click, and after their trash finishes loading, I click the back button. Thanks, Microsoft. Where do you want to bang your head against the wall today? (I'm saying this because there was one such ad on this page when I opened it.)
Even on our own planet, we have a hard time mapping our concept of 'intelligence' onto other animals.
Our brains have a very 'human' view of the world, and it's this view that we call 'intelligence'.
Our minds are only general in the sense that they can solve the range of problems we face.
An 'intelligent' alien species would have to have gone through a similar evolutionary path as us,
to develop something we would recognise as 'intelligence'.
It's not pessimistic to estimate this probability as extremely low.
We have one planet, and one chance, and there is no universe teeming with little green men who will help us fix out future.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
"SETI and their goals have nothing to do with astronomy"
To my knowledge, Stephen Hawking uses data gathered and analyzed by SETI@home in his study regarding black holes. And I'm pretty sure there are other scientists using the SETI@home-data as well
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
There is a reasonable limit to practicality.
By your argument, the time, energy, and wealth spent creating art, music, literature, and other cultural achievements without a tangible effect could have been better spent baking bread or building roads.
"Quantify" for me the value of the works of Shakespeare.
Good lord, we are talking about a question on the order of profundity as to the existince of God himself.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
Charge for the client :)
Actually, setting up a paypal account for donations could generate a signifigant revenue stream. $1US ain't much, but 2-3 million users chipping in a buck could lead to a large amount of play-money.
If seti's (or could ne) set up as a a non-profit, it's even tax deductible.
How about these guys?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's not a matter of following "evolutionary rules." Instincts are blind, thoughtless drives, burned into the nervous system by millions of years of evolution. The drive to reproduce evolutionarily predates the capacity for thought.
And remember, AIDS is a new disease. Perhaps after a thousand years and millions of deaths, AIDS will lead to an evolutionary modification of the drive to procreate. The hard fact is that while individuals can sometimes be persuaded or forced to limit their reproductive activity, nobody anywhere has ever met with real success in enforcing strict monogamy. Expecting to eliminate AIDS by persuading most of the people on earth to be strictly monogamous is living in a fantasy world.