Seti at Home

"Bill Sheppard" wrote in message ...
SETI has been likened to the 'Cargo Cults' of the south Pacific during
WW2. When the SeaBees would come in and build airstrips and set up radio
antennas, the islanders noted that very soon a great iron bird appaered
out of nowhere and unloaded crates full of goodies. In like fashion,
they proceeded nearby to erect huts and string up vines between trees to
summon the iron bird. They were very serious, but it gradually began to
sink in that the iron bird was not responding. In like fashion, SETI
assumes that aliens would be using something as primitive as radio for
interstellar signalling. It'd be about like trying to communicate across
the Atlantic on a jungle drum. Or trying to find 'gravity waves' among
the din of terrestrial tectonic/ seismic noise.

The project is more a study in human nature than anything else.
There's never been a shortage of gullible fools, especially in
astronomy. The same morons who think their chances of winning
the lottery are substantially improved by playing it, who think crop
circles originate from someone other than bored college kids, and
who've seen the film "Contact" once too many times. Sad.

But chances are the following conversation is being repeated all
over the Milky Way:

"Have you heard what those silly humans are up to?"

"What now?"

"They're scanning for radio waves."

laughter "Poor slobs. Cancel that first contact mission to Earth,
they obviously aren't ready yet."

RickW

"Bill Sheppard" wrote in message
...
SETI has been likened to the 'Cargo Cults' of the south Pacific during
WW2. When the SeaBees would come in and build airstrips and set up radio
antennas, the islanders noted that very soon a great iron bird appaered
out of nowhere and unloaded crates full of goodies. In like fashion,
they proceeded nearby to erect huts and string up vines between trees to
summon the iron bird. They were very serious, but it gradually began to
sink in that the iron bird was not responding. In like fashion, SETI
assumes that aliens would be using something as primitive as radio for
interstellar signalling. It'd be about like trying to communicate across
the Atlantic on a jungle drum. Or trying to find 'gravity waves' among
the din of terrestrial tectonic/ seismic noise.

OC, I have always interpreted it differently. In my interpretation,
SETI@Home is assuming that the signals we will receive will be very old, and
that there is a good chance, that even a modern more advanced civilization
would possibly at some point, using a frequency set that we now consider
typical. I don't think we're looking for ET's now...we're looking for their
re-runs of 'I Love Lucinditron'.

BV.

"Terry Groff" wrote in message
rthlink.net...
SAH has stated from the outset that there will be no "WOW"
announcements until all of the data is processed. They recently
went back to Arecibo to review a few of the more outstanding
signals found and those Workunits are currently being processed
along with the continued processing of the other millions of
WU's. When the current phase is completed, The BOINC phase will
begin using a different scope located at Parkes observatory in
Australia to cover a larger area in the southern hemisphere.

Please see http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/setifuture.html

I am currently a beta tester for the BOINC project working on the
Astropulse client.
snip

I am dieing to work with BOINC. I can't wait for it to be released.

BV.

"Rick" wrote in message
The same morons who think their chances of winning
the lottery are substantially improved by playing it,

Au contraire. The odds of not winning are infinite if one does not play.

"Jim Fisher" wrote in message . ..
"Rick" wrote in message
The same morons who think their chances of winning
the lottery are substantially improved by playing it,

Au contraire. The odds of not winning are infinite if one does not play.

See what I mean?

RickW

"Terry Groff" wrote in message...
rthlink.net...

"Frog" wrote in message
...

"Jim Fisher" writes:

Okay, I've had the screen saver on for years now. Have
processed tons of data. . . .
. . .
So, the question is, is there anyone here that is "in the
know" about this stuff that can say that there have been a
few similar "Wow" experiences during this entire Seti@Home
project?
. . .
Trouble is people
want instant results and when they dont get instant results
they tend to drift away as one or two seem to have. No one
ever said there would be instant results if any, we all know
it would be a time consuming effort with the possiblitly of
no hard results. But as I say if we dont look then theres
no chance at all is there unless anyone lands from another
world in central park!!. So I wouldnt get too despondent
about it, its a big place out there!.

Central Park? Do you think anyone would notice? :-)

Terry

Sure!... they'd get mugged before they took two steps.

happy days and...
starry starry nights!

--
A smidgeon of fear and a sprinkle of strife
And a whole lotta love till your cold...
Most everyone here wants to live a long life,
Ah! but nobody wants to get old.

Paine Ellsworth

Jim Fisher wrote:
"Terry Groff" wrote in message
rthlink.net...

SAH has stated from the outset that there will be no "WOW"
announcements until all of the data is processed. They recently
went back to Arecibo to review a few of the more outstanding
signals found and those Workunits are currently being processed
along with the continued processing of the other millions of
WU's.


Ahh, paydirt. Thanks for the info.

See? If I didn't ask (look) for the answer, I would have never received it?
Interesting, huh?

--
Jim Fisher




Nice thread Jim. Btw, you might want to get away from the
Screensaver;try SETI Driver or somthing similar. With no vidio overhead
your WU production will go way up & you can cache WU's too.

Who knows, if found, the ET's should be able to drink all Min's beer.....

-----------------------
Name (and URL) Results Received 2991 Total CPU Time 2.620 years
Average CPU Time per work unit 7 hr 40 min 21.2 sec Average results
received per day 1.96 Last result returned:Sun Jul 20 13:24:46 2003 UTC
Registered on:Sun May 16 16:03:13 1999 UTC
-----------------------------

I started with a 386-33 DX & for the last 2 years have been running a
1.3 gig Athlon. ( about 4+ WU's a day ).


lightshow

"lightshow" wrote in message
...
Jim Fisher wrote:
"Terry Groff" wrote in message

rthlink.net...

SAH has stated from the outset that there will be no "WOW"
announcements until all of the data is processed. They
recently
went back to Arecibo to review a few of the more outstanding
signals found and those Workunits are currently being
processed
along with the continued processing of the other millions of
WU's.


Ahh, paydirt. Thanks for the info.

See? If I didn't ask (look) for the answer, I would have
never received it?
Interesting, huh?

--
Jim Fisher




Nice thread Jim. Btw, you might want to get away from the
Screensaver;try SETI Driver or somthing similar. With no vidio
overhead
your WU production will go way up & you can cache WU's too.

That's right Lightshow. I've been running the CLI client with
SetiDriver and SetiSpy for a couple of years now. I've been
turning in 4 or 5 a day on my 1GHz PIII w/ WinMe.

One should dump the screensaver (GUI) and switch to the
Commandline Client (CLI) if one wants to increase one's output.

Terry

Gotta look, that's for sure. It's part of the human condition. If the
paydirt, so to speak, were to occur in my lifetime, I'd be very surprised.
But this is not about the odds, it's about the search.
Bob Doyle
SETI@home user for: 4.138 years

"Jim Fisher" wrote in message
.. .
"Terry Groff" wrote in message
rthlink.net...
SAH has stated from the outset that there will be no "WOW"
announcements until all of the data is processed. They recently
went back to Arecibo to review a few of the more outstanding
signals found and those Workunits are currently being processed
along with the continued processing of the other millions of
WU's.

Ahh, paydirt. Thanks for the info.

See? If I didn't ask (look) for the answer, I would have never received
it?
Interesting, huh?

--
Jim Fisher

"Bob Doyle" wrote in message
But this is not about the odds, it's about the search.
Bob Doyle

Here, here!

--
Jim Fisher