Slashdot Mirror
Is SETI@home Where Your Cycles Belong?
SETI@home is probably the best-known distributed computing project in the world. Several readers questioned not just the efficiency of spending computer cycles sifting for alien communications with SETI@home, but whether this search is based on a sensible idea in the first place. Reader TheSync, pointing to a Princeton research paper, offered an interesting case for another approach to seeking alien intelligence:
"Radio SETI is really a waste of time. Optical SETI is the logical choice because
- Visible light-emitting devices are smaller and lighter than microwave or radio-emitting devices.
- Visible light-emitting devices produce higher bandwidths and can consequently send information much faster.
- Interference from natural sources of microwaves is more common than from visible sources.
- Naturally occurring nanosecond pulses of light are mostly likely nonexistent, although there are all kinds of radio signals that could be similar to intentional SETI transmissions. Thus Optical SETI does not require grid computing to find signals.
- Exact frequencies of light are not required, as nanosecond unfiltered light pulses would still outshine the planet's star by over 30 times.
Optical SETI detection out to 100 light-years is doable today, with a bit more work optical SETI out to 1,000 light-years is possible."
More generally, reader theCat says he gave up on SETI@home "at the exact moment when I recognized that radio broadcast, even assuming other life forms discover it, is just a quick stepping stone toward more efficient/direct means of distribution, like wires or fiber. Or drums. Or pheremones. Or telepathy. ... SETI has always barked up the wrong tree. Not because there are no intelligent races out there — and I really do suspect there are — but because if they are intelligent in a way that we would even recognize then they've moved on to other forms of communication, or settled into a fine state of just dealing with every day as it comes and not worring about events in their version of Iraq."
Whether or not their approaches are optimal, reader exp(pi*sqrt(163)) defended the more esoteric distributed computing projects like SETI on a pessimistic ground, writing that after two years in computational chemistry for what is now GlaxoSmithKline, "I became strongly convinced that computers do not find cures for diseases - or even give you much understanding of illnesses. Molecular modeling is so far from being able to model in vivo molecules that it's practically worthless. ... [W]e already know that trials at this stage are poorly correlated with actual drug usefulness, simulations are just as much a waste of resources as SETI. ... It seems to me that molecular modeling is actually one of those hard 'macho' (but ultimately pointless) projects that gets funding because to criticize it makes you seem anti-drug, anti-therapy and anti-human-progress. (I'm not saying people shouldn't try to model molecules. This is a great blue-sky goal. But people who are trying to find drugs or therapies shouldn't be wasting their time with such techniques.)"
A persistent suggestion that SETI@home and similar projects were wasteful for failing to deliver enough tangible benefits to present-day society provoked several readers to defend the importance of voluntary participation; Chrisq compared the cycles spent on distributed science to donations to charities, writing "I don't like the way that some animal charities get more money than children's charities. Obviously the people making donations disagree. The point is the donor decides — if someone is giving something away, then they decide."
One reader suggested sarcastically "You know what's a waste of time? Gardening. You spend all this time and energy just to raise a few tomatoes that could have been bought at the store for cheap. ... People should stop gardening and focus their time and energy on solving global warming, but I don't presume to tell anyone what they should be doing with their time."
Another offered a tongue-in-cheek response providing a few facetious parallels: "It's a waste that people use their cars to go see a movie when they could be delivering food to the homeless shelter. It's a waste that people are storing ice cream in the fridge when they could be storing donated blood plasma."
Many readers, though, provided examples of projects that they consider worthy their computing efforts, either instead of or in addition to SETI.
"Personally, I always felt SETI was not very philanthropic — more like an amusing experiment in grid computing," says tedgyz, and suggests that grid.org to users who would like to spend some cycles on medical research. "They provide great features for managing all your computers that run the grid projects. You can even choose which research to participate in. And, to satiate a geek's lust for power, they have rankings for your aggregate compute time."
Perhaps the WSJ article draws a false dichotomy, however: one reader asked "Does Carl realize that it's possible to crunch more than one project at a time with BOINC? Right now I'm attached SETI, Einstein, Rosetta & LHC. It works on one for a bit and then will switch to another for a bit. And so what if SETI@home will never find anything, it's a cool looking screen saver!"
(Another reader reported dissatisfaction with BOINC: "I upgraded from the old SETI@Home client to BOINC when it became available - but the BOINC client required too much effort on my part and was getting in my way. ... I'm donating my CPU cycles to some altruistic cause, I don't want to have to RTFM. I just want to install and forget. For this reason I miss the old SETI client, and have, as a result, now stopped contributing.")
Eventual benefits aside, some readers doubt that the medical research projects' goals parallel their own: one reader writes "... I won't do the ones for the drug companies. My grandfather was denied a chance at surviving cancer in the 60's, but the big drug companies went to the FDA against the doctor who had a good success rate for curing colon/stomach cancer because one of the chemicals used was not FDA approved. The big drug companies are not looking for cures, they are looking for drugs to sell."
In response to fears that medical-research undertakings would exploit their volunteers' contributions to the data crunching, Lars Westergren several times pointed out that the Stanford-based Folding@home protein-folding project, at least, has committed itself to sharing the data generated by its volunteers, citing the project's promise (found in its FAQ) that
"We will not sell the data or make any money off of it. ... Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site."
In another comment, Westergren argued that "[e]ven if this worst-case scenario did happen [of donated cycles being turned into secret-formula drugs], the cycles donated would not be wasted. You would have helped advance human scientific research, and the medicines created would still be saving peoples' lives."
Along similar lines, as reader lhbtubajon puts it, "[i]f a company starts manufacturing a product so expensive that they cannot make a profit on it, they will soon cease to exist, as will the beneficial product they hoped to give to the world."
Whatever the ends to which the data is eventually put, many readers raised another objection: power consumption. Shisha outlines the inherent uncertainty of whether cycle-donation makes sense:
"All those free computer cycles are not that free. Modern CPUs consume more electricity to do more work and someone has to pay the electricity bills. Busy CPUs need more cooling and fans that run at full throttle for a year do wear out and fail (and you risk burning some important component, even if the PC is designed to shut down when it detects overheating). That's simply because desktop PCs are desktop PCs and not workstations and the assumption is that the fans will have to run at full throttle for maybe half an hour at a time. The real costs are not easy to work out, but it might, just might be more efficient to donate the money to charity."
(This analysis, according to another reader, "[underestimates] the quality of a desktop PC. I ran SETI and climateprediction.net for about 4 years straight on a dual G4 PowerMac. Ran like a champ. 100% CPU for months straight. Never had a problem. They can take abuse.")
Placing the WSJ article into context, FlynnMP3 pointed out that author Gomes isn't trying to force anyone to change their computing behavior, and suggested an argument that SETI@home might specifically hold greater worth than can be divined from its success rate so far:
This is merely an opinion piece. It's easy to take the pragmatic road and donate personal computing cycles to cancer research or something as equally earth based, citing return-of-results arguments.
I postulate that the returns for finding out if there is intelligent life in outer space has greater implications for the world's population. Not immediate concerns mind you (unless something extraordinary happens), but the practical usage will eventually seep out of the acedemic and scientific circles and benefit the population in ways that we cannot possibly imagine."
More succintly, another reader's understatement may explain just why so many people are happy to donate a few watts in the quest for E.T. life: "Odd, I can think of few things that would change life on earth more than a verifiable intelligent signal from outer space. This story reminds me to go download SETI@home again."
Thanks to the readers whose comments helped inform this discussion, especially those quoted above:
I like this Backslash—the comment quality is what separates slashdot from digg. On slashdot, there is are a lot of crap comments, but there are often some gems mixed in too.
As far as SETI goes, I suppose what I'm most interested in is the leak comment in the main story. Is there really only a few hundred year window to find advanced technological socieities from their radio waves? Does everybody really switch to cable TV instead of broadcast?
I have a physicist friend who is enamoured of the rare Earth hypothesis—that the universe is mostly inhospitable to life and that we're it.
Of course it looks like a waste, so do any of the other things you can contribute to... until they hit their mark. Now while I'll agree that protein folding has more immediate advantages to cures, etc. , SETI discovering a real intelligent alien signal would generate a flurry of spending that would likely yield many more inventions, something like what the first space race did for technology.
stuff |
Good for you. I've decided to donate my spare CPU cycles to turning off my machine to save electricity. Your spare CPU cycles belong to you, and you can use them however you like.
Some people think global warming research is more important than SETI. Others think the opposite. Some people think AIDS research is more important than cancer research. Others think the opposite. Luckily, we all have the freedom to choose whatever we want. Haranguing people for not supporting your pet cause is ridiculous and counter-productive. Everyone has their own set of priorities.
Considering we live in a world of trite devices like the Clapper, pop music, and a population that is overweight. Our entire economy is becoming one based upon ease of living, not social responsibility. I would put SETI pretty low on my list of priorities to goto war over about what we spend our time/money supporting. Sure the overall goal of SETI may seem farfetched, but then again I know people that think NASA is a huge waist of money when there are starving and homeless. Yet they don't realize the accidental achievements we've made because NASA exists.
No sig for you!!
So don't read it.
I'll freely admit that I'm lazy (and given the fact that a lot of others here are developers, I'd say they are too) and being so, its nice to have the entire discussion summarized. In some of the larger discussions, its easy to get lost
SETI@home essentially invented donated distributed over the internet, over a dozen other projects are benefiting from it in the form of BOINC and the WSJ is upset because people don't donate cycles with presumed morally superior choices the WJS sees. I have noticed an up-tic recently in attempts to kill SETI research of any kind. The reason is always "it's a waste of time." In other words the opponents of SETI always know better that it is a fruitless search than the proponents, but they have no scientific basis for making that assertion other than that's the way it feels to them. Granted pro-SETI people similarly have little evidence that ET will be found soon -- but there are no wasted inquiries in science. If you search and fail to find something, you have still learned something, you now have a number and you can put some bound on a phenomenon. No one tells physicists to give up searching because they haven't found the Higgs Boson yet, or at the lower energies they initially predicted.
Most likely a signal won't be found in the next decade or two, but I still donate my free cycles to SETI@home. I believe that while in the short run the odds are not high, there are few other discoveries that could be so transformative as this -- and although they won't say it, this is why the opponents of SETI are so rabid to shut it down. SETI is the ugly step child of science, it will never get the support other branches will. This is why a volunteer effort is so important. Of course if a signal is ever found, well then step back and watch all the money and resources that will get thrown at it, then your cycles won't be needed. Also be prepared to hear all about how many politicians where a friend of SET way back when.
WSJ suggests inertia to explain why we give cycles to search for SETI, that and the pride of placing high in the SETI work units competition. WSJ suggests that competition is the main reason for SETI@home's success, and had another project come along first to set up as competition for bragging rights about how many work units accomplished all the cycles would be goin to that project instead. Rubbish. The same people that download OSS apps and care about matters scientific are the very people that care about SETI. I donate my cycles because I care about SETI, which has I have already mentioned is an unpopular science with the general public. It is seen as an underdog by the hacker community, it appeals to their sense of adventure and wonder.
Ironically I had just posted on this subject in a new blog project Brink with the entry SETI: First Detection
Letter To Iran
There's a reason the moderation system is in place, and that is to highlight the good comments.
True. But that moderation system doesn't build the consensus comments into a readable story. That's what Backslash does.
Essentially they're taking the results of the moderation system and building them into a readable summary. It's not perfect yet - timothy's summaries jump around a bit - but I think it's entirely reasonable to expect it to get better.
The outputs of the moderation system are fairly "raw." This just digests them a little bit more, which some of us already do, granted. But some don't.
The CPU chip is the main draw of power now, and to help this they've worked hard to make the chip draw less power when its idling. It's not just wear and tear on the fan. In places with expensive electrictiy, like California, the power bill for a machine can be the most expensive component. The most extreme chips draw as much as 70w on full, I think, which is 600 kwh a year, at the incremental 19 cent cost in California that's over $100 per year.
There is a terrible irony in the idea of people burning vast amounts of electricity like this in the effort to deal with global warming.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
He got "nocked off the shelf" for using proper grammar?
Weird.
But you don't need to leave your pc running 24/7 to contribute to distributed computing projects - typically during normal use you're not fully utilizing your cpu... if that's the case, then you can still make a small contribution towards some sort of research, and still not waste electricity by leaving your pc on all the time.
While folding at home aims to understand the mechanism by which a protein folds, the project is not very amenable to protein folding. The problem is that protein folding is a linear process, so it doesn't work very well. A similar approach, Rosetta@Home, led by the most respected protein folding group in the world, The David Baker Lab, uses an algorithm with is much more likely to yield useable results. Last year they used distributed computing to vastly outperform every other protein folding lab in the world. I highly suggest everyone use Rosetta@Home over Folding@Home
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/
First you animate. Then you SUSPEND!!!
Last time we had this article I noticed many post strongly defensive for the use of SETI. However it could EASILY be argued that it's a complete waste of time. I'm not going to say "No intelligent person runs SETI" ;-) But I will say this again... it got me marked Troll before, but maybe kinder eyes will see it this time.
Imagine instead of the article complained that most distributed computing computations were devoted to a wasted cause... SFAW. (Search For Angel Whispers) Now is it a little more understandable how those who don't share the same set of faith might feel SETI use is a huge loss of resources?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I choose SETI cause I feel (wich may not be true, but it's what I feel) that many of the others directly benefit greedy health corporations masked as foundations.
I'm not going to give away my CPU cicles for free if they don't agree to donate the AIDS vaccine, or whatever, to mankind when they have it. Most probably they will sell it for a fortune.
At least not for me. I used to be pretty darn high in the SETI rankings, having quite a number of machines at my disposal. But after a lot of thought, I decided to shut off all of the clients for good.
You see, consuming those extra tens of kilowatts means more pollution, and around here, more consumption of non-renewable resources. Between the low possibility of finding a remote signal, and the imminant possibility of crapping up the environment (MY environment, my local environment) long before anything could be done about the signal, I chose to try and keep this place clean.
Not only do the CPUs consume less energy without being fully loaded, with cool-n-quiet, they can consume MUCH less. And the building AC runs less to keep the place cool. Now, does this make a huge difference? I don't know. I still drive to work each day - alone in my car, as there isn't a public transit option, and I don't work the same hours as anyone else, and I still run an air conditioner all day long to keep my house cool for me, the wife, kid, and dogs.
I suppose that for a really good cause, like folding@home, I might feel alright about it. But for now, I like having the place quiet, and the electrical draw low.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
But you don't need to leave your pc running 24/7 to contribute to distributed computing projects - typically during normal use you're not fully utilizing your cpu... if that's the case, then you can still make a small contribution towards some sort of research, and still not waste electricity by leaving your pc on all the time.
That's incorrect. Computers are not merely on vs off; its a continuum of power consumption.
To use the classic car analagy, imagine that someone wrote a program to to do research using your car engine when the car is idling. So, whenever you pull up to a stop light, or a drive thru window, the engine would direct its energy output to research. However, when its "idling" that energy is being used to sustain the "idle" its NOT available for something else, to do some hard research a lot more power is required, and the engine would immediately crank up to 6000 rpm and hold there until it was time to move again.
Its pretty clear this program will seriously affect fuel consumption.
Same goes for your CPU. When its sitting there idling, it its drawing a few watts, just enough to keep everything alive. When its doing research its running full tilt and drawing its maximum wattage, loading data onto the buses, and even kicking the fans into high gear to compensate for the extra heat being generated, etc.
Its your computer, and you can direct it to do what ever you like:
1) You can turn it off to save electricity
2) You can pay to have it idle, using just enough electricity to be ready the second you need it
3) You can pay extra to have it running full bore for a worthy cause of your choice during the time it would have otherwise been idle and using minimal electricity.
4) You can pay even more to leave it running 24x7, and have it contribute to a cause even during times when you know you don't the need the computer on for yourself.
Whatever you choose is fine by me; its your computer and your electrical bill*. Just don't confuse 2 and 3. Even though the computer might be on for the same amount of time they use significantly different amounts of electricity. 3 isn't a "free" upgrade from 2.
*Assuming its your electricity; I can imagine LOTS parents being annoyed to find out they've paid over a thousand bucks** toward the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence over that last decade thanks to the "free screensaver" their kids set up. I'd bet anything that if your PC metered its electrical use to applications, the popup for SETI asking for another dollar every few days would be a big wake up call to a lot of people.
** $1000 isn't an exaggeration at all. It's even somewhat conservative. One estimate put a PC running Seti at Home 24x7 at around $185/year in electricity. (This was an older estimate; modern power hungry PCs will burn far more electricity than those P-IIs with 235W power supplies from '99, and the cost of electricity has gone up too. Seti at home has been around since 1999. Now think how many homes have 2 or 3 computers.
I think a great idea for a project is finding intelligence in Washington DC. We would need every available computer to achieve this result so start hacking today and get the alphabet agencies involved too. Seriously though,we do need to start looking for brains in our own backyards before we find any in outer space or whoever we find there "ain't gonna come over to play anyhow", and would likely get rid of us so we don't hurt them. Or maybe we could run a search for the best person to be president without telling the computer who it is first like they do it now.
Nobody seems to have looked at the basic economics of this whole thing.
SETI@home exists because no company or government would fund computing resources on that scale for that project. If everyday people don't crunch the numbers in their spare time, nobody will. Therefore, the founders of the SETI@home project found a way to harness the power of the Long Tail efficiently.
Medical research, OTOH, has a high expected payoff. If everyday people won't decidate CPU cycles to protein folding problems, drug companies will build their own clusters to handle the load.
So on the one hand, we have a project that will either be done through the efficient aggregation of support from anyone who happens to feel like chipping in a few CPU cycles, or not at all. On the other hand, we have research that attracts both private and government funding, and will be done whether the general public decides to participate or not.
Now comes Lee Gomes -- noted astrophysicist and expert on the allocation of computing resources -- to tell us that the SETI program should be abandoned. It's worthless, and anyone who supports it is wasting precious resources while people die.
The entire article, from start to finish, is hard-packed bullshit, folks. It's only a small step removed from the 'Email/The Web/[Fill In The New Technology Here] Costs Business $N Billion In Lost Productivity Per Year' crap that comes out every 18 months or so. The methodology is exactly the same: point at something people time or energy doing, declare it 'nonproductive', then write a thoroughly unrealistic screed about how great the world could be if people devoted those resources to something 'useful'.
It would take only a small extension of his reasoning to argue that all the CPU cycles 'wasted' on computer games should be devoted to 'important' medical research. One could take the same basic template and argue that Linux and F/OSS are a waste of time and effort: if all those coding resources were channeled into Microsoft's Shared Source program, they could be doing something worthwhile for the vast majority of people who use computers every day.
The fact that the article was posted to Slashdot by a WSJ employee smacks of outright click-whoring. The article itself lacks any meaningful substance. It fails to raise any issue worthy of discussion. It merely defines millions of people as stupid and wasteful because they don't happen to share Lee Gomes's personal set of priorities. It's a long-winded example of hypothesis contrary to fact, with a disingenuous and insulting "not that I'm telling anyone what they should do" coda at the end.