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Interview with SETI@home Director David Anderson

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-life-on-planet-earth dept.

CowboyRobot writes "ACM's Queue magazine interviews David P. Anderson, a research scientist at the U.C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, who directs the SETI@home and BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) projects. SETI@home uses hundreds of thousands of home computers in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. FTA: "volunteer computing arose because projects such as SETI@home needed $100 million worth of computing power but didn't have the money. But there's no free lunch--a project must give participants something in return for their computer time.""

2 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Give them a way to keep score by winkydink · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems that many of us are competitive enough to donate cpu time and only get back a scorecard.

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  2. Re:Power usage? by Duncan3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Yes.

    2. Lots.

    The cost is just spread out over thousands of people, instead of having them all in one place.

    --
    - Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/