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Space Science

SETI@Home Faces Funding Problems 350

blamanj writes "The aussie version of ZDNET is reporting that money to continue the SETI@Home project is in jeopardy, and it may fall by the wayside unless further funding can be found."
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SETI@Home Faces Funding Problems

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  • Question. (Score:5, Informative)

    by 3-State Bit ( 225583 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:15PM (#4456020)
    Protein folding distributed analysis by IBM...folded. I heard something about cycles for cancer, but I can't find a link.

    RIGHT NOW, what can I use my spare cycles for, besides SETI?
    • Re:Question. (Score:5, Informative)

      by CLinCH ( 517691 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:18PM (#4456066)
      You can participate in Folding@Home [stanford.edu], which uses cycles to study protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. It's run by a Stanford profesor.
      • Re:Question. (Score:3, Informative)

        by TheKey ( 465831 )
        Or, head over to www.distributedfolding.com. I'm not sure what the relation is to Folding@Home, if any, but this is the protien folding that I contribute to.
      • Re:Question. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:30PM (#4456738)
        I also run Folding at Home, and I find it disheartening that only a few thousand other people contribute. Protein Folding has far more potential to advance science and cure diseases than projects like the United Devices cancer program. Just yesterday I looked at the goal of the project to find that it's already been exceeded. Makes me wander what kind of progress would occur if Folding at Home had the kinds of numbers behind it other projects enjoy. For that matter, what kind of progress would all distributed computing projects make if sixty million people participated rather than the paltry several million we see today. Too bad most people are unaware of the untapped potential of their computers, too apathetic to use it, or both.
    • Primenet/GIMPS. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:23PM (#4456110) Homepage Journal
      Primenet/GIMPS.

      http://www.entropia.com/ips/

      They search for very large mersenne primes.

      Unlike distributed.net, they're computing something new (distributed.net searches for decryption keys to a message whose contents is known!), and unlike SETI@home, they've had actual results: three of the largest prime numbers known to man were found through Primenet.
      • Entropia (Score:3, Interesting)

        by shren ( 134692 )
        Don't forget that when using Entropia, your computer's cycles are used for some commercial tasks to earn Entropia money. I have no idea what the ratios are for commercial vs non-commercial. They don't say, which makes me suspicious.
        • Re:Entropia (Score:3, Informative)

          by Tom7 ( 102298 )
          This is true for Fight AIDS @ home, but not (as far as I know) for GIMPS. I've been running GIMPS for about 7 years now and have never seen it do any non-mersenne work. I also don't see anything about that on the GIMPS home page.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        Instead of looking for what to do with spare CPU cycles just turn off the computer and save some of Earth's resources.
    • Cure cancer (Score:4, Informative)

      by friendofafriend ( 602350 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:26PM (#4456138)
      You can contribute to a cure for cancer with a project managed by Oxford University's Dr. Graham Richards. This is currently in a second phase using LigandFit virtual screening software.Powered by Accelrys (scientific software) and United Devices (Global Metaprocessor). Link is here [ox.ac.uk]
    • Fight AIDS (Score:5, Interesting)

      by trala ( 118402 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:31PM (#4456183)
      Fight AIDS [fightaidsathome.com]

      This is another Entropia project, they test millions of candidate drug compounds against detailed models of evolving AIDS viruses.

    • Re:Question. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:31PM (#4456188) Homepage
      The cancer project [ud.com] is being run through United Devices. This is a non-profit project and the data being generated will not be sold to a for-profit firm.

      There's also Folding@Home [stanford.edu] which researches protein folding as well - although instead of only for cancer research it's generally for other medical research such as Alzheimer's, MS, etc. - also non-profit.

      There's Genome@Home [stanford.edu] which analyzes the genome for medical purposes. Non-profit.

      And, finally, if you're looking for a generic listing of distributed computing projects, check here [aspenleaf.com].
    • Re:Question. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Atzanteol ( 99067 )
      Well, Distributed.net [distributed.net] of course! They've just finished RC5-64, and are continuing on OGR. RC5-72 should start within a month or so.
    • Seems that they could be taking some of the load off of carnivore. There's an aweful lot of data to process, and the gov't could provide the funding they need to stay in business...
    • Re:Question. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by scoove ( 71173 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:51PM (#4456374)
      what can I use my spare cycles for, besides SETI?

      Distributed.net [distributed.net] Break encryption and teach the government a lesson on the value of strong encryption at the same time.

      That's where my spare cycles go...

      *scoove*
      • by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @06:54PM (#4457348) Homepage Journal
        It's a totally trivial back-of-the-envelope calculation to deduce how many cycles it takes to find the key for an encrypted message by brute force (the way that distributed.net does it). Why do we need to corroborate that statistic via one very expensive sample?

        The government does not need a lesson on the value of strong encryption: these figures are easy to work out, and in any case the NSA already has supercomputers that they use (presumably) to do the same thing. (Except, they likely have better technology than brute force for some ciphers...)

        Distributed.net is not about "breaking" encryption. The ONLY thing we learn from it is the encryption key. The key was generated by the contest organizers, and if they wanted, they could have just saved it and we'd be one bajillion cycles richer.

        I think it's much more interesting to put my cycles towards something where the answer isn't known! The various folding@home, aids@home, etc. efforts are tantalizing, though it's not clear that they will ever have actual results. Personally, I'm using GIMPS (primenet), which searches for very large prime numbers. (If you want to float your encryption boat, you could recall that asymmetric encryption often uses large prime numbers, though these primes would be totally useless for that.) This is the distributed computing program I know of that has had the most tangible results: three of the world's largest known primes were found by it. (It's also one of the oldest... I joined about 7 years ago.)

        GIMPS is here: http://entropia.com/ips/

    • Re:Question. (Score:4, Informative)

      by pointwood ( 14018 ) <jramskov@ g m a i l . com> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:52PM (#4456893) Homepage

      I'm a proud member of the Ars Technica DC community. We have a nice overview (called "The Food Court", because all our team names have some kind of relation to food :)) of the various projects we are involved with, right here: http://arsfoodcourt.dbestern.net/ [dbestern.net]

      I'm trying to get all to join Ars (although you're welcome to do so ;)), join slashdot or whatever team you prefer - or join none at all. This list is pretty good IMHO and shows most of the popular projects

  • You know.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by jbarket ( 530468 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:15PM (#4456028)
    and it may fall by the wayside unless further funding can be found.
    With their track recording of finding things, I'm not holding my breath.
  • Bankruptcy (Score:5, Funny)

    by Morologous ( 201459 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:15PM (#4456029)
    If Seti@home goes bankrupt, will the creditors come and repossess my extra cpu cycles?
  • Funding (Score:5, Funny)

    by LoudMusic ( 199347 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:15PM (#4456031)
    Maybe they should start looking for RICH aliens?

    ~LoudMusic
    • Re:Funding (Score:2, Insightful)

      Or just start selling cute plush peng..er aliens.

      What I don't understand is a government funding the SETI project and then denying the existance of extra-terrestreal life.
      • Re:Funding (Score:3, Insightful)

        by LoudMusic ( 199347 )
        Actually I think that works about right. They are saying that ET hasn't visited us yet, but we're willing to look for him.

        ~LoudMusic
      • Re:Funding (Score:2, Informative)

        by douglips ( 513461 )
        What I don't understand is a government funding the SETI project and then denying the existance of extra-terrestreal life

        Um, dude - the government doesn't fund SETI. I think that's why they are running out of money.
      • Uhm.

        If the government knew of ETs and was trying to hide it from us, why would they fund a high profile organization like SETI?

        It's like saying "Why is the government funding a search for the cure to AIDS and then denys one exists!"
  • Dummies.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    .. Can't they just get ET to wire them some more money?

  • by gregRowe ( 173838 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:16PM (#4456035)
    THey should ask SR Hadden for money.
  • by toupsie ( 88295 )
    Its not like they have found one freaking alien since starting the project. i.e. the South Park Underwear Gnome joke:

    1. Start search for alien life with idle time on home computers.
    2. ???
    3. More funding!

  • by GMontag ( 42283 ) <gmontag AT guymontag DOT com> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:18PM (#4456062) Homepage Journal
    Those pesky Martians!

    First they shoot down our spacecraft, now this!
  • Sad... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by octalc0de ( 601035 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:19PM (#4456073) Journal
    I've been crunching numbers for SETI for a while now. It's sad that they're running out of money, but it's a part of how their program works. All that bandwidth, and nobody paying for it. They don't get any ad money, and bandwidth is very hard to come by these days. Heck, every one person has to download a few hundred KiB of data every few hours.

    That may not sound like much... but when you have 4,027,337 users, it's a lot. Even assuming that only 1/4 of those users actively contribute, you're still looking at a million people downloading > 2 megs a day. Also, some of those million people run whole server farms, and that can build the cost up to 100 megs a day.

    Bandwidth isn't cheap. If they run out of funding, I'll be sad to see them go.
    • by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:52PM (#4456382)
      And I'd say that it's probably not even the biggest cost. Bandwidth really isn't that expensive any more. It's probably 1/10 of what it cost when they started... maybe closer to 1/100. I would imagine the biggest cost has got to be the use of that giant friggin radio telescope. Considering it's the biggest in the world (lucky me... I got to see it in person, and even go into one of the control rooms), it can't be cheap to operate.
    • Re:Sad... (Score:2, Informative)

      well, this is an academic program supported by the various sources that academic types get funding from (state agencies, the university, private sponsors, etc.) I dont think they ever had any intention of making it able to support itself. SETI has been running a long time, and most likely the core project will still run even if the @home portion has to go. Even though the bandwidth costs are high for the project, if the project ever had to purchase THAT kind of processing power for itself, I am sure the cost would far exceed by many orders of magnitude the price for processing time now. If the funders look at a cost/benefit analysis of the project they will find the money. SETI was meant to be a very long term project. It must be nice to not be expected to produce any results at any given time :). I mean correct me if I am wrong, but 1 million people (which I think is about right) * 2 megabyte (which I think is alot) = 1,000GB right? An OC-3 + whatever connection should just about cover that, so youre looking at bandwidth costs of around $100k/month, or about 1.2 million per year. Now I bet you there is absolutely no way that they could come even remotely close to getting that kind of processing power for that little amount of money. For a popular (with the people) project like this, I would think getting another million to run for a year would be a piece of cake. And is this news? Projects like this are always in need of funding. At my old university every year the chairman came by and said, geez, the funding is really tight this year, I dont know... we might have to cut you 10% or so... at which point the scientists beg and plead and say theyll do this this and that and whatnot and negotiate to get their funding. Its a game. I doubt seti@home is going anywhere.
  • More cycles for the Optimal Goulomb Ruler [distributed.net] search!
  • ...that all the CPU cycles I have donated over the years in processing over 1400 units have been...a waste of time?

    Say it ain't so.

    • Re:You mean...? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by f97tosc ( 578893 )
      ...that all the CPU cycles I have donated over the years in processing over 1400 units have been...a waste of time?

      No, even no-events are of some value. Now we know of a lot of frequencies that are not being used in a lot of start systems.

      Tor
  • Conspiracy (Score:2, Funny)

    by osmac ( 24461 )
    They don't want us to find out where they come from.
  • Sell the extra? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by goon america ( 536413 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:22PM (#4456101) Homepage Journal
    Maybe they could start selling some of the extra processing time to pay for the cost of the project? It would annoy me if they were making money off of it, but not if they were using it only to cover their costs.
    • Re:Sell the extra? (Score:3, Informative)

      by grid geek ( 532440 )
      Unfortunately that idea wouldn't work with their current setup. SETI@home isn't a real distributed system its a multiple node application - it can only run the single program and to adapt it to aything else would require users to download a new application.

      If they were to use something like a securely sandboxed virtual machine (and there are several groups I know about doing this with funding in Europe) then it may be an idea.

      Of course at that point both the user and seti start having to worry far more about security than someone just changing their processing times or returning incorrectly processed units due to mods to the software which used to happen.

      Of course if people want to contribute then they can go to The SETI Donor page [berkeley.edu] and contribute there.

  • by GreyWolf3000 ( 468618 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:22PM (#4456105) Journal
    1) Gain access to volunteering bank accounts.
    2) When the account is idle for a bit, slowly draw a few cents every so often.
    3) ???
    4) Profit! Errr, stay in 'business.'
  • If those spare cycles are on a Windows machine (maybe you're not using it anymore!) you could always try www.uniteddevices.com, at http://members.ud.com/projects/cancer/index.htm, and help find a cure for cancer.

  • by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:24PM (#4456121) Journal
    SETI Program costs only 1000 gold, 3 Culture, and requires Computers. It never becomes obsolete!

    We *need* to finish it so Parkes can double their city's science output!

  • Adware? (Score:2, Interesting)

    Perhaps they could include banner ads to generate more revenue. It would kinda suck, especially considering that you're the one providing a service to them. But if it's what it takes to keep the project going I wouldn't mind...
  • by brandido ( 612020 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:24PM (#4456126) Homepage Journal
    In news today, it was reported that, in an attempt to deal with a funding shortfall, SETI has spawned a daughter organization SETF (Search for Extra Terrestrial Funding). One of the biggest obstacles that SETI officials face is determining the appropriate exchange rate from the intergalactic rugblat to the dollar.
  • Distributed bank access clients...
  • by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:27PM (#4456159) Homepage
    Perhaps they can set up a Donate icon on their application, perhaps through Paypal...

    I'm sure there would be tons of people willing to donate.
    • by BrianWCarver ( 569070 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:45PM (#4456322) Homepage
      They already have a system for accepting donations.

      Go here [berkeley.edu] to donate by credit card or mail.

      They also provide a chart of their donations over the last year here [berkeley.edu].

      BWCarver -- 1301 work units and counting...
      • by Pedrito ( 94783 )
        They also provide a chart of their donations over the last year here.

        Wow, the got a whole $5,000 one month. That could have paid for almost two days' operating expenses.

        Really, it's a friggin' shame if they lose funding. I think SETI@Home has been an amazing success, regardless. They certainly have shown the power of willing participants and they've received incredible donations from SUN and others.

        I've been happy to contribute my CPU time. In fact, I broke into the 99th percentile this past weekend and was quite happy about it.

        I'll toss a few bucks their way, but I can't send much. Times is tough for everyone.

        Honestly, I don't believe they'll find any ETIs because I don't think there are any in our galaxy (using my own guesses against the Drake equation, I came up with a bit less than 1 civilization per galaxy, and for other reasons think 1 would generally be the maximum). Still, I think it's a worthwhile project and hey, I'd love to be proven wrong on this one.

        Hey mister, can you spare a dime? If you can, head over to SETI@Home and drop 'em off a few bucks. They deserve it.

  • Ways out (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jukal ( 523582 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:30PM (#4456180) Journal
    and would you accept it:
    - funding from big contributors (without commercial obligations), not likely to continue (forever)
    - funding from users. If 500 000 paypalled $5, it could be enough. Would you?
    - advertising, 4 million users. Could work, would you accept it.
    - become a subproject of another (commercial project), search ETs only with certain percentage of available CPU power.
    - be eaten by an OS vendor (at some stage, a distributed client will become a fixed part of many operating systems, I believe) this might provide a kickstart for doing it for some vendor.
    - run it by volunteers, reduce staff costs.

    Can you come up with something else?

  • Donation = loss? (Score:2, Interesting)

    When has Seti@home actually provided any useful knowledge about interstellar ANYTHING? They just chew bandwidth and cycles for what purpose? Using FFT's to find seemingly coherant signals buried in electomagnetic background.

    This project does seem quite interesting, in that it's trying to determine signals of life, but hasn't provided a thing (unless I'm wrong).

    Why not let them die?
    • by Tassach ( 137772 )
      SETI@Home's significance is not the fact that they are looking for ET; but the method that they developed to do so. S@H was the first distributed computing effort to gain mass media attention, and in many respects was a proof of concept for large distributed computing projects. By any rational definition, the experiment was a success. For me, it was never really about finding ET; that was always a longshot. IIRC, they estimated that S@H would only detect Earth at a range of 10 light/years or so.

  • Now, if they could just borrow everone's pocket change overnight while they are not using it, collect the interest, then give it back in the morning... That should solve their finance problems.
  • by Gorm the DBA ( 581373 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:33PM (#4456209) Journal
    OKay...if the article answers this I'm going to feel stupid, but I can't get to it right now (it's an internal network thing here)...

    Would it be possible for someone to come in and buy the name "Seti@home", along with the list of signed up computers, and then use that processing time for completely other purposes that might not be nearly as desireable as scanning for intelligent life?

    I know that getting out of any such trojan use would be as simple as uninstalling/turning it off, but if there's a significant group of people who aren't smart enough to find out that the hands have changed and ditch it, what keeps the person who purchases SETI@home's assets from turning all those CPU cycles into something nefarious...like cracking the encryption on bank accounts or something (you're right, that was a lame idea, but I'm sure someone would come up with a better one).

    And it would seem that given the universe of AOL/Windows users, there would be a significant number of folks who would fall into that category.

    Or perhaps the End User Agreement or other documents prevent this? I've never run SETI@Home, so I've never seen their agreement.

    In Short, just how exposed are people?

  • by scott1853 ( 194884 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:33PM (#4456210)
    The Parkes facility is more powerful than that currently used to record the data at Arecibo, Peurto Rico and its addition would widen the search for extra-terrestrials to the Southern Hemisphere.

    I would think it might be more productive to scan outer space instead of the southern half of our own planet, but whatever floats their boat.
  • ... they should direct their antennas towards wherever rich, powerful people live (e.g. Washington D.C.) and search for intelligent life there. (Some do believe in it's excistance, but it's only a matter of belif.)
  • te "noise" we are filtering, is actually the message?!?

    How do we know it's not?
  • by EngMedic ( 604629 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:36PM (#4456233) Homepage
    Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but United Devices [ud.com] has a distributed computing project up that helps find a cure for cancer. Phase II, which began late last summer, is called LIGANDFIT, and 'helps scientists to characterize therapeutic targets and identify and assess drug canididates by performing automated docking of flexible ligands to a protien's binding site.' I'd encourage anyone who has a box with cycles to spare to check it out- i'm pretty sure they've got a linux client, as well as a windows one. I've been running it for 80+ days now, and i haven't noticed any problems with performance- and it's the least we can do for the public good.
  • As others have said, I will also be sad to see S@H finish, but alas their job is done since we have found life on venus [slashdot.org].

    Ok, so it might not be "intelligent", but define "intelligence". I assume the S@H definition of "intelligence" is the ability to generate radio waves somehow.
  • by Havokmon ( 89874 ) <rick@h[ ]kmon.com ['avo' in gap]> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:36PM (#4456239) Homepage Journal
    ... which you would think an editor would include, IF SETI@home NEEDS MONEY [berkeley.edu], but I guess he was too worried about submitting the story before me, dammit.

    Of course I was denied 2 hours ago.. how long could that story have existed? Maybe I took too long by ACTUALLY READING IT :P

  • Internet organizations just don't work! You can't just give things like seti@home away. You have to charge for access.

    [Head hangs in depressed manner]

  • Now, maybe finding intelligent life outside our Solar System isn't very important, since we currently have no way of actually effectively communicating with them, but...

    Distributed computing research is important. I really don't see why this kind of research isn't flowing with money, if for the only reason to fully understand how to effectively handle a network of computations that number in the millions. In 30 years, I get the feeling computers are going to come with low priority generic network computing clients to off load research of varing projects onto, what else are we going to use that 20Ghz machines for when we go to work?
  • by Quirk ( 36086 )
    Here at home it's taken about 4 Billion years for the technology to evolve allowing for an intelligent search for extraterrestrial life. If the Galaxy is 14 billion years old then older technologies should have at least sparsely spread over the Galaxy by now. Numerically, with a few long shots, it looks like we're alone around here. But hey, metaphysically we're the Universe on a course of self discovery. Not bad for a bunch 'o apes that lost the forest on the savannah and stood up to take a look around. Unless you go with the idea evolution of sentient beings follows a path akin to an EMF, sort of a take on the idea of a thought thinking itself a la Spinoza's take on God. (although I think the idea of a thought thinking itself as a definition of God goes back to one of the ancient Greeks, probably one of the neoplatonist, maybe Plotinus?)
    • Re:ALF (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@@@tru7h...org> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:05PM (#4456485) Homepage
      > Here at home it's taken about 4 Billion years for
      > the technology to evolve allowing for an
      > intelligent search for extraterrestrial life. If
      > the Galaxy is 14 billion years old then older
      > technologies should have at least sparsely spread
      > over the Galaxy by now.

      If that's the case, it may simply be that other civilizations in the galaxy/universe haven't been around long enough to be sending signals for us to recieve. Consider that about 10 billion years after the universe came into being, planets capable of supporting life began to appear, plus or minus one billion years.

      If humans are average, and our solar system is average, and you consider how long earth has been a source of radio emissions (maybe a hundred years?), in the scheme of things we've barely been making noise for a fraction of a second.

      Granted the distance between stars and the time it takes for radio waves to go between them, if all forms of life all across the galaxy started broadcasting radio emissions at the same time we did, radio signals may not even start to cross earth's path for another ten thousand years (the milky way is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter). If a civilization got a one billion year jump start on us, either they came and went while we were still evolving a vertebrae, or they never got past inventing fire, or we already missed their radio signals. Same story if they have a five hundred million year jump, or a 250 million years, or even 1 million years. If we were the first intelligent beings in the galaxy, it could be millions of years before anyone starts broadcasting anything.

      Conclusion being, given how short a period we've been gathering data from space, to suggest there's nothing out there because we haven't found it is a logical fallacy. The galaxy just isn't old enough, and we don't have enough of a data set, to make any conclusions.
  • You mean SETI@Home has been distributing recordings of interstellar noise over a P2P network? I'll bet RIAA has something to do with their demise!!!

    "...I would while away the hours, talk'n to the flowers, if I only had a brain..."
  • by cicatrix1 ( 123440 ) <cicatrix1&gmail,com> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:48PM (#4456348) Homepage
    They should just release a "special" version for bank employees.
  • So many people installed that stupid client. Why not just make people pay for the priviledge of finding ET life? I know many people would. Just sell the client on a cd with an alien doll.

    Think about it, they could even give you data sets on the CD so that you don't have to down load them.

    Sure, you'd lose some clients, but from what I heard, they have too many people for too little data anyway.
  • At the bottom of the comments, this random quote is up: "I wish you humans would leave me alone." Be careful what you wish for, little green man...
  • Imagine how much power would be saved if everyone set their computers to go into hibernate mode during periods of inactivity. I never ran any of these distributed clients for the simple reason that I felt saving power was of more immediate benefit to my electric bill and to the enviorment.

    If the SETI project ends and you've still got that do-good feeling - enable your OS's power saving features. It's the OTHER good thing your computer can do when its processing power isn't needed.
  • by CokoBWare ( 584686 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:02PM (#4456459)

    If we feel this is a good cause towards humanity's future, let's not sit on our hands, and consider donating to this worthy cause!

    Here's the URL... I hope many of your readers use it:

    PS: I do not work for SETI@Home. I just think the Internet could work in it's favour if we all shelled out $5+ a piece

  • by Lebofsky ( 141548 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:09PM (#4456520)
    This article is really giving us a headache. Quotes taken out of context or points exaggerated, etc.

    Basically, we're always in a funding crisis. I personally spend a huge chunk of my time here at the SETI lab writing grant proposals. That's what academia is all about. I've been working in this group for 6 years now, and we've always been just scraping by. This is NOT NEWS.

    In fact, we're pushing forward on all fronts. Please see:

    http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/setifuture.html

    - Matt Lebofsky - SETI@home

    • Basically, we're always in a funding crisis.
      When a crisis lasts for more than a few months, it becomes a "state of emergency".
      When a state of emergency lasts for more than a year, it becomes a "economic reality".
      When an economic reality passes unnoticed by Slashdot for over six years, it becomes a "crisis".
      One piece of advice to Seti@home: do not take Slashdot too seriously. We're just bored and enjoying the scenery.
      Thanks for a great concept. Even if the actual chance of finding extraterrestrial intelligence is 0%.
      I'm sorry, but what we call "intelligence" is simply our definition of humanity, and this is unlikely to be found anywhere in the universe except HERE.
      Slashdot included
    • We at SETI are NOT in a funding crisis. We have learned from experience to live with low budgets. The rumors of a funding crisis are totally fal

      Please Deposit Another 25 Cents To Continue

  • by 1fitz2many ( 409956 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:10PM (#4456530) Homepage
    Sure, finding a signal from ET is a longshot. But the project is also useful for real science in astrophysics.

    The large computational power available is unique and makes it extremely useful for finding many kinds of time-variable radio sources (not just ET). The project is also being used to map the Hydrogen in the galaxy as detailed here [berkeley.edu].

    Even though getting signals from an extraterrestrial intelligence may be a pipe dream, the project still has value from a pure scientific standpoint.
  • by f97tosc ( 578893 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:23PM (#4456686)
    According to this graph [berkeley.edu] the total amounts of donations have just fallen from a few thousand to a few hundred dollars (yes, thank you, I located it from this [slashdot.org] informative post).

    Is this the extent of the problem? If so, it seems like just bringing it up once at /. might solve the problem. But then again, maybe there are more material issues, maybe they missed a grant or something...?

    Tor
  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:29PM (#4456722) Journal
    Prehaps SETI should try a different approach to finding aliens.

    Launch a bunch of AOL disks into space and see if any subscribe.

    The only problem is if they use AOL's techniques, they will get plenty of responses, but *still* be broke.
  • by vlad_petric ( 94134 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:37PM (#4456787) Homepage
    Donating your spare CPU cycles for a good cause seems like a noble thing, and you don't lose anything by doing it (except, maybe, for internet traffic, which might matter if you're in a country where internet access is prohibitive).

    However the issue is what is a good cause. Taking it to the extreme, I wouldn't like my spare cycles to be used by a password cracking system. The real problem is that computation can be easily "faked". I.e. multiplication of two large numbers can be done with FFT. So in order to be sure that nothing "funky" is happening, the system should be opensourced.

    But opensourcing brings another problem - anybody could just take the source and change it so that it polutes the main system with fake results.

    Ok, you could eliminate polution by sending the same thing to multiple users, but that seems to kill the advantage of this kind of distributed computing (the overhead of distribution, comparison, etc, becomes comparable to the computation itself, so why not just do it locally ...)

    The Raven

  • by SETIGuy ( 33768 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @07:20PM (#4457526) Homepage

    The situation isn't as dire as it sounds. Our dominant problem has been that the falling economy has caused some of our sponsors to withdraw support. With support withdrawn, we are denied matching funds from the University. Essentially, the University is witholding funding until we find further sponsors. We are actively seeking corporate sponsors who would be willing to donate, and have their contributions matched by the University. Under the matching program the sponsors must be for-profit industry. If anyone reading this works for such a corporation, please contact SETI@home through our web site.

    Individuals wishing to make a contribution can do so through the SETI@home web site. Please be aware that our current largest sponsor is the Planetary Society. A membership to the Planetary Society (assuming it is done through the links on the SETI@home page) may return more to SETI@home than does a direct contribution, as it indicates the importance of SETI@home to members of the Society.

    Regardless of the funding issues, we are working hard to make SETI@home II a reality. We have funding from the NSF to develop the BOINC [berkeley.edu] client/server code which will be used as the framework for SETI@home II. We are in the process of building the SETI@home II data recorder. What we do with it (multibeam, wide bandwidth) and where (Arecibo or Parkes) depends upon what we can afford.

    We are also seeking NSF funding for AstroPulse [planetary.org] and SETHI [berkeley.edu] and SERENDIP V.

    That said, things are currently somewhat tight here. We'll need to make do with fewer employees until we're back in the black. I don't think this spells the end of SETI@home by any means.

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