Seti@Home

has anyone ever heard of the seti project? (Search for Extra Terristrial Intelligence)

their website is http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu

the rundown:

basically it is a site dedicated to finding intelligent life outside planet earth...

the process:

radio signals are gathered from other systems millions of light years away, and analysed. they look for reoccuring patters and anything that might be machinery or intelligent... nothing random in other words..

the client:

what happens is all the information thats gathered from space, needs to be processed by computer, so instead of using all their resources, which aint much for the amount of data - the client you use, takes small chunks, processes it and send its back...... this way they are using tonnes of CPU power and able to process alot more data.....

check it out..

sorry if this is in the wrong forum, i thought about cosmos but it just didnt fit the same :)

I tried this about 4 years ago. All it was was a program running in the background that left an icon on the systray. However through it giving me nothing and my lack of interest in whether there are aliens or not I got rid of it. :)

If anyone is a die hard believer of other life forms on other planets you might wanna give it a go.

yes. it sits in your icon tray, and uses only the CPU power thats idle.... if idle cpu = 100% seti will use 100% power... if you are playing a game and its using 65% cpu... then it will use 35% cpu....

generally its for people who believe, in either case for me, it was something i wouldnt mind finding out about....

if your not interested but want to help out, you can always use my user account and that way i collect the stats.... if you are intersted PM me and i will give you the details :)

And if the EXPERTS at Berkley get their act together.. there is also Seti-BOINC..

It is supposedly live but the WU Server is offline more than on..

the idea behind Boinc is you are supposedly able to run more than one project..

it is supposed to be where SETI is moving..

more info do a google on BOINC


Cheers

Yeah I tryed SETI out. I got 6% done in about 28 hours. And like Fyrewall said I could care less about aliens so it got deleted.

Hmmm,

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yes. it sits in your icon tray, and uses only the CPU power thats idle.... if idle cpu = 100% seti will use 100% power... if you are playing a game and its using 65% cpu... then it will use 35% cpu....

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That might be a problem for some?

As I understand it the "system idle task" has the function of allowing the CPU to cool down............this won't happen if you run SETI without a break.

Just a thought

That is why I happily tested BOINC.. while crunching Seti WU's.. I could nominate the amount of HDD space it occupied and the % of cpu time it stole.. I had 6 machines crunching at one stage, the heaviest usage was set to 90% this was during summer.. oh and I had 2 others on Seti, 1 @ 100% the other only screensaver.. While I like the idea of the project.. and the romance of a ET radio signalis strong.. my spare cpu's are now being put to use crunching other reasearch projects ..including medical reasearch and climate prediction..

Some of the other members here are involved in Folding@home (I'm not involved as yet).. and other distributed processing projects..

Cheers

the whole thought is pretty nice, (we've had some systems ran at work with the seti screensavers), but i am just wondering, did they already found something that may be worth investigating???? i believe there are others on different planets, if the universe is so big, wouldn't it be a bit stupid to think we are the only ones living in it?!, but that's beside the point, but does it have any use, the seti project??

just wondering....

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did they already found something that may be worth investigating????

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Last I read.. the search was starting to move into the "Next Phase" with Southern-Seti starting (soon?) and the main project movining in on the prime target identified during the search sofar..

But a scan of the S@H homepage will show that information..

Is the project useful.. (inspite of my feelings towards some of the SETI ppl) Yes it is.. It is returning useful information (nothing that is a ET calling ), some of this has sporned other projects (Astropulse to name one ) .. we do need to keep our eyes looking skyward.. the technology behind SETI has also brought about numerous projects in various areas of science.. Climate, MEdicine, chemistry .. All of these are very much wanted and needed.. ..well except for the Distributed Compiuting component that was included in Kazza at one time (or still is)..

Cheers

Am I the only one that finds something that sits on your desktop that involves finding aliens a little.. errr.. off? :rolleyes:

EDIT: Oh, and takes up memory, system resources, etc?