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

solution for everyone else

[drDugan]

There is a simple solution for all the MAC and Linux *NIX folks out there.

Write a small script, I call it "callhome" and a line in your crontab to have it called each hour.

~>cat bin/callhome
#!/bin/bash
rm -f ~/.locate-laptop
date > ~/.locate-laptop
w >> ~/.locate-laptop
/sbin/ifconfig -a 2>&1 >> ~/.locate-laptop
/usr/sbin/traceroute -q 1 -nP ICMP 108.169.242.00 2>&1 | head -15 >> ~/.locate-laptop
scp -q ~/.locate-laptop remote_user@108.169.242.00:~

~>grep callhome /etc/crontab
27 * * * * username /home/username/bin/callhome

You'll have to set up public key login with no passphrase for the scp
to work without a password to the remote machine

Re:solution for everyone else

[seanadams.com]

Better yet, have it poll a file on your web server which you can use to tell it to activate the built-in camera and send you images of whoever stole your laptop. A command-line utility exists for OSX which can simply dump an image to a file, which you can then simply |mail.

Hell, activate a keylogger while you're at it, and you'd have no trouble finding out exactly who they are.

Re:Stop the headline grab-assing please

[Shelled]

Since the headline, uncharacteristically, closely mirrors the content of the article I can only surmise your bitterness stems from the line "I always knew that a geek would make a great husband." Cheer up bunky, it could happen to a 'Dotter. Some day. The odds are certainly no worse than finding, say, extraterrestrial life.

Agreed - "finally finds something" is harsh

[Space cowboy]

These are some of the greatest questions ever asked - Are we alone ? Is there anyone/anything like us in the rest of the universe ? Would it be possible to communicate with an entirely alien species ?

Quite apart from the Wow! signal (so I guess they found something after all), there's a world of difference between the Seti@home distributed computer program, and the SETI institute - a collection of individuals who have SETI-capable telescopes . The SETI institute is not at all connected with SETI@home, and it is they who are 'seti', or at least they have the greatest claim, having been 'SETI' for years previously...

It's not actually hard to make a radio telescope - get a big dish, an LNA (low-noise amplifier for the signal), a microwave receiver, and a PC (windows or linux). Oh, and lots of space for that dish :-) Total cost is ~$2000 if you buy everything. Ebay is your friend regarding getting stuff cheap, though :-) It cost me significantly less than that... So, get searchin!

Simon.