SETI Finally Finds Something

QuatumCrypto writes "SETI@home is a distributed processing client from UC Berkeley that installs on the volunteers' home computers and harnesses their processing power in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far nothing noteworthy has comeout of this massive project... that is until today! One of the volunteers was able to track down his wife's stolen laptop using the IP address that SETI@home client reports back to the server. After getting back the laptop his wife said, 'I always knew that a geek would make a great husband.'"

Comments

Stop the headline grab-assing please

[grumpygrodyguy]

OK no offense, but this is bullshit.

Stop writing misleading headlines like these just to grap page-views, a lot of us happen to actually care about stuff like SETI and don't appreciate the run-around.

Re:Stop the headline grab-assing please

[MyLongNickName]

I was about to post a snappy reply, but then I noticed your nick name. With truth in advertising like that, we can't be too surprised with your posts...

Re:Stop the headline grab-assing please

[Cheapy]

That was a truthful headline. Something WAS found using SETI@home. If SETI@home had found evidence of intelligent life, the headline would've said so. As if the truth of the headline wasn't enough, the huge foot icon should've been a big indication that it's humorous. Furthermore, you are the exact kind of person who needs this kind of article. Laugh a little bit. Life's short, may as well enjoy it.

From the TFA:

[ATAMAH]

"Kimberly's writings were safe, and the thieves didn't appear to have broken into her e-mail or other personal folders."

How, exactly, do you break into a personal folder? Is double-clicking it called "breaking" in these days? I thought the conventional term was "opening"...

Re:From the TFA:

[atomic-penguin]

I'm just going on what Microsoft has documented in the Microsoft Press literature. Filesystem encryption implemented this way is certainly not as foolproof as say something like a PGP encrypted file.

Here is a perfectly valid example: I copy a Microsoft "encrypted" file from a workstation to a file share which also happens to have NTFS. That file will be encrypted at the workstation, and it will be encrypted on the file server. It will NOT be encrypted over the wire. That may even be okay for some people. But it's certainly not the same thing. The file should be encrypted until I decrypt it. The operating system shouldn't choose that it not be encrypted for a copy or move operation.

I'm not claiming the encryption is weak or faulty, because I don't know that it is. I feel the way it was implemented is at fault, that's just my opinion.

Re:Does this mean

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Well, as Bill Watterson observed, "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

Re:In all seriousness though...

[Woy]

If you dig a bit in that website you'll find your answer:

Unsupported Browser Detected! We're sorry, the Computrace LoJack for Laptops self-management site does not support the web browser you are currently using. You must use Internet Explorer 5.5 (or later) to access this site.

Don't expect magic where you can't even see competence.

Nothing noteworthy

[whackeroony]

"So far nothing noteworthy has come out of this massive project"

Dismissed a trend-setting project with just that one line. Of course, it does not matter that SETI@Home showed the power of volunteer computing for the first time, led to new advances in distributed computing, motivated Grid computing and PlanetLab among others and spun off BOINC, an open source project that serves as a base for similar @Home projects.

But, of course, it no find me any ALIEN!!! Bah,

Re:Gah!

[BobSutan]

You have no idea how right you are. Whoever let this article's title slip by should be tickled until they puke.

Re:solution for everyone else

[Lorkki]

This has precisely what advantage over not letting the thief access any part of your system directly?

Re:solution for everyone else

[Nasarius]

Uh...being able to track down your laptop would be the advantage.

Would it also trigger mindless fear for you if the OP used a CGI script on a web server? The potential security problems there would be slightly greater than the no-input login script.

Re:solution for everyone else

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh. The first thing any idiot thief would do would be install Windows over my GNU/Linux system, not run it happily using a login/pass they don't have until I track her down.

Re:solution for everyone else

[Lorkki]

I'm thinking more along the lines of a simple and stupid daemon that listens for input and writes it onto the disk. Advantage being that the local end is the only one that has anything to do with the file system, so you have less variables in play.

Re:Welcome

[GeffDE]

No, someone copied the Wikipedia entry without citing...

But then, that's typical slashdot...

SETI@home: the new Hummer

[YGingras]

How many gigawatts are wasted on SETI@home? They pretend that computation is free and anything that looks like a funny pattern, they search for it. Most of the patterns don't make sense at all. People crank-up their energy bill just to have their name on some nonsense top-100. Distributed computing is a good thing and giving away your spare cycle is nice but don't think that those cycles are free. If you decide to give your cycles away, please choose a project that does more than just massaging data. SETI is like Hummers, it offers an opportunity to boost your ego by wasting energy.

Re:Welcome

[danbert8]

It pains me to see how many mod points were mercilessly wasted on this pointless article. (pre-emptive strike) In Soviet Russia mod points waste you!