On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:12:28 +0200, Andrew Nowicki
wrote:

When a reasonable person fails to attain his
goal, he either abandons the goal or tries
a different method of attaining the goal.
An idiot is usually defined as someone who
responds to failure by doubling his efforts.

So if I fail to chop down a tree with a single swing of an axe, by
your definition I would be an idiot to continue chopping? Sure, you
can argue that my 2nd and subsequent swings of the axe are not
identical to the first.... but then again the searches now being
conducted by SETI@HOME are not identical to earlier searches.
Different numbers of frequencies, different algorithms to detect
artifical signals among the noise and so on. The whole "shared
computing power" concept, while not unique to SETI, nonetheless got a
huge boost from the SETI@HOME project. Even if the SETI@HOME program
never finds what it is hoping for, it has been very valuable in
pioneering the way for other scientific projects that had been stalled
for lack of adequate computer power. So perhaps now a biochem program
(that wouldn't otherwise have have had funding for a supercomputer)
gets to discover something very useful to humanity.

There are times when even a good idea needs to be followed with
perseverance to ultimately succeed. There are other times when the
spinoffs turn out to be more important than the original goal. We
have had very little directly useful results from our trips to the
moon - but the research needed to MAKE those trips has resulted in
huge benefits here on earth.



NASA is an ossified bureaucracy, but they are
not idiots. When their big SETI program failed,
they abandoned it. SETI@homers ignore their
failures and have little if any interest in
modifying their search method.

As technology changes, so do the search methods. Right now the radio
bands and shared computers are the dominant search system - but now
there is growing interest in optical searches. Instead of a
generalized radio broadcast, a narrow laser aimed at a specific target
star might be the way the other civilizations might go. This would
require the other civilization to be actively trying to send messages
(even just the IMPLIED message "This was artificially and deliberately
sent"), but it has advantages. But anyone with a computer can
participate in the shared computing search. Anyone who can get hold
of an old, big satellite dish antenna (the 8'+ models) can do their
own searching, expecially in areas of the sky not covered by the main
search. I don't think we are quite to the point of backyard
astonomers looking for incoming laser light, but that may not be too
far away.