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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.'"
SETI@home is a distributed processing client from UC Berkeley that installs on the vounteers' home computers and harnesses their processing power in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Those of you that are visiting Slashdot for the first time and didn't know that, you might want to stick around (and scroll down) because we're going to explain what a Beowulf Cluster is next.
phone home.
that there is intelligent life on Earth?
I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices cheered and were suddenly silenced.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
There is a simple solution for all the MAC and Linux *NIX folks out there.
/sbin/ifconfig -a 2>&1 >> ~/.locate-laptop
/usr/sbin/traceroute -q 1 -nP ICMP 108.169.242.00 2>&1 | head -15 >> ~/.locate-laptop
/etc/crontab /home/username/bin/callhome
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
scp -q ~/.locate-laptop remote_user@108.169.242.00:~
~>grep callhome
27 * * * * username
You'll have to set up public key login with no passphrase for the scp
to work without a password to the remote machine
why doesn't someone do a 'phone home' laptop insurance program that provides tracking information just like this? (privacy issues aside (until the first reply to this comment; see below)).
It could be nicely open sourced, and run via a p2p network to distribute the load for the tracking servers. Obviously a lot of details would have to be worked out to avoid abuse, but it could be as simple as sending an "I'm here" message encrypted with a dedicated private key to the p2p network. The person who wants to track their stolen goods just pops the public key (stored on a CD/usb stick/online, generated on install) into the network and it comes back with the last known location. No?
Now now, they're just following the pros, who will stoop to the most offensive shit for the sake of cutesy headlines.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Sensationalism strikes back ... and it hurts.
Anyway, it proves that at least one geek in the entire world (universe ?) had sex that night.
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...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
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 ?
:-) 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!
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
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
"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"...
Stop writing misleading headlines like these just to grap page-views ...
Ah, I believe you mispelled grep.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Maaan! I was reading through that whole summary, excitedly awaiting my chance to welcome our new overlords..... and all they found was a laptop!?!??! What a crock!
I got nothin'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's what I did for a client. I installed the distributed.net client on all their machines with a different ID per. If one went missing, I just waited until it started posting again.
p hp?project_id=5&st=coreyfro
One was recovered. I don't know out of how many thefts, but it worked.
http://stats.distributed.net/participant/psearch.
Some are still posting to this day.
216264(-1) K6231862@coreyfro.com 13-Feb-2001 08-Feb-2002 361 791
218871(-1) K3342513@coreyfro.com 31-Jan-2001 20-Jun-2002 506 729
219222(-1) K4151626@coreyfro.com 29-Jan-2001 18-Jul-2001 171 721
223856(-2) K5557748@coreyfro.com 08-Feb-2001 02-Jul-2002 510 622
223908(-2) K2863155@coreyfro.com 29-Jan-2001 21-Oct-2001 266 621
224051(-2) K3456175@coreyfro.com 20-Jan-2001 31-Dec-2001 346 618
224360(-2) K4553312@coreyfro.com 22-Jan-2001 10-Jun-2002 505 612
225611(-3) K6211864@coreyfro.com 27-Mar-2001 09-Aug-2001 136 588
227645(-5) K8631173@coreyfro.com 17-Aug-2001 30-Jun-2002 318 549
"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,
... unintelligent life on earth.
After the initial rush-disappointment, I noticed that it must be an official Goofass® headline, given the official Monty-Python-foot icon, which generally denotes time-wasting non-serious ignore-this-if-you're-looking-for-useful-info after-hours filler that is occasionally found on this otherwise quite informative site. Maybe the headline would have been less horrifically offensive if it was in YRO.
Man, if I ever meet whoever is responsible for that headline, I'm going to burn down your house.
I haven't felt this let down since I walked in on my dad bangin my mom while wearing a Santa costume on Christmas morning.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Well don't be too hard on him. Seti@Home is some kind of demon; it posessed my computer. After I closed the window, it was still running!
would be Linus sitting in the pumpkin patch. :)
dum de dum de dum de dum de dum
Simple enough, though it generally requires a warrent.
All blocks of IP addresses are owned by somebody, mostly ISPs.
Once you have an IP address, you look up who owns it and you call them. They do their research, looking at things such as DNS records, DHCP assignments, DSLAM logs, etc... They then look up which customer that was, and there you go.
In a corporate enviroment a simply DNS lookup should give you a computer name, a little more the switchport it's connected to, and a little digging who's logged into it.
I don't read AC A human right
Sure it turned out handy this one freak incident, but wait till there's smoke in the house and he looks back and forth between the plasma screen and the laptop a couple times, finally grabs the laptop and is out the door without so much as a look in her direction.
Of course, if the laptop started the fire then the choice is much easier
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.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
"It makes Ludacris look like Pavarotti."
That's gotta be bad! That line alone was worth reading the article!
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
(emphasis mine)
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
AC, meet Pun. Pun, meet AC.
man woman
See the Google cache of "Exactly what the Dr. Ordered"
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:Ui0HtwBn6ZAJ:w ww.kyne.com.au/~mark/software/satellite.php+site:w ww.kyne.com.au+mark+satellite&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&i e=UTF-8
I know the posting is just a oneliner, but it is informative and if everybody used the software it would really increase the recovery rate of stolen Laptops no end. ( Unix based ones anyway )
...are we to understand that E.T.'s (who listen to bad rap music) stole this laptop?
I RTFA, and the police used the IP to locate the laptop, but no one has been arrested. Hmmm...
MIB: "We'll take over from here."
Police Man: "But this thug stole a woman's laptop!"
(MIB puts on dark glasses)
MIB: "Officer, I'm going to need you to stare into this pen for me for just a second..."
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
You have her grab the laptop and you grab the plasma screen. Geez. You call yourselve a geek and cannot even figure out this simple puzzel?
Now if the comment had been "I always knew that a geek would make a great father" then you would have had a point.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Ok, which one is more likely:
SETI finding intelligent life?
or a GEEK getting married?
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
... will no one think of the children?
Imagine the danger they must be in from these Beowolves!
Chuck Norris knows all about the list... he IS the list, and he'll give a roundhouse kick to the face to anyone who repeats the list without permission.
So now SETI also stands for "Search for Egregious Thieving Idiots"
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Here's a little piece I penned recently, hope it lessens your confusion.
Analogies of women as they apply to OS platforms:
The College Freshman
Clearly insecure, entirely self-absorbed, and oblivious to the world-at-large, this specimen says she will do most anything to please, though when it comes down to it, her inexperience is obvious and you end-up either fighting or breaking it off. The on-again-off-again relationship that ensues is rife with games and torment. Ultimately, you move on to something more mature. (Win9x)
The Business “Model”
Brains and beauty, she knows how to get things done. She's professional in all matters, can follow-up on every commitment and is fairly in-touch with the world. On the flip side, she's almost entirely without humor and becomes jaded at the thought of playing any games. She doesn't laugh at your jokes, approaches intimacy like a German Factory Supervisor, and steadily removes all enjoyment from day-to-day life with the same efficiency as when organizing her shoes. (Win2000)
The Homemaker
Sweet and approachable, this little cutie aims to please. She's nurturing, kind and anticipates your needs with uncanny consistency. You are lulled into a sense of comfort by the constant attention, unaware that she is fulfilling her own agenda. Unscrupulous elements from her past have corrupted her true intentions, though she would never show it. Sometimes she's gone for hours on end, but always returns saying, “I just had to handle a few things.” She's a bit protective, too. Sometimes she feels more like a Mother than a Significant Other, and sporadically denies you what you want, even when you ask nicely. (WinXP)
The Hippie Chick
She's terribly cute, insanely fashionable and always upbeat. It seems she doesn't ever wear the same outfit twice, and can always brighten your day with a song. “Head in the stars and feet on the ground,” is Her Saying, though you eventually believe that it's only half true. Everything is perfect, but a bit too perfect. She never really disagrees with you, but she tends to take your desires too far on occasion. One time, after you said, “You should get some rest,” she ended-up sleeping half the day and dancing all night; keeping you awake. You always wonder if there's something better. (MacOS)
The College Grad
A drop-dead gorgeous, head-turning form makes this one outwardly irresistible. If you're brave enough to strike-up a conversation, you will only get the chit-chat at first. After a while, you begin to see that she holds more knowledge that she lets on. Stylish, versatile and attentive to your needs, she seems like Mrs. Right for a long while, and after spending a-bankroll-and-a-half in dating. Her penchant for parties and going-out are merely a facade for her Networking. It seems she's working on her public image night-and-day. When it comes to actually having fun, she claims there's not enough time or that she doesn't know how to play the game. Intimacy is a brief experience in-between making plans or shopping for expensive accessories. She's everything you want, and more than you need. (OS X)
The Girl Next Door
Though often outwardly plain, she hides a tremendous beauty within. Her beauty comes right through the rugged good-looks and belies an inner strength, which makes her both reliable and kind. She's not always forthcoming about her problems, but she tends to solve most of them herself. Whatever comes up, she is happy to discuss it and let you in on her past. Ver
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
So is yours.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?