What is seti actually for?

[DocEvi1]

I understand that seti is designed to number-crunch and make one super computer out of many peoples rather than one persons, but what do you get out of it?

By this I mean you have to pay your electricty bill (albeit not much, but still) your internet phone bill (some people have free, but you still have the rental) and what do you actually get back, some numbers? Am I missing something?

www.overclock.co.uk (or maybe www.overclockers.co.uk) built a 7 mobo/cpu machine simply to work on seti - do you get money back or something? It seems a complete waste of money and time to me, but then I am asking what it is about.....

Stefan

[RampageIII]

Hi Doc,


All you really get out of SETI@Home is the feeling of anticipation that comes from embarking on a journey to the unknown. For some this is like an aphrodesiac, an elixir for the mind and soul. The very idea that there are others "out there" that may be searching for us is as compelling as a lost child searching for it's mother. These are strong emotions that no amount of time or money would be able to hold back. It may mean finding the key to all knowledge, our very essence!;)

I just want to beat Powered by Robonium!:p haha

[BJUK]

You do not get any cash, but if a signal is decoverd from a unit you have processed, you will be given credit for you part in the discovery in any press as a result.
it's the takeing part that matters. Seti are not asking you to build computer to do the job, just use unused processer cycles with a screen saver to do the job
Check out the web site at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ and if intersted join the SysOpt team.
:cool:

[DocEvi1]

just thought I would ask. I figured that's what you got out of it, and I understand why people do it, it just aint for me. I mean why give my power to someone else :D it for meeeeee :D

Stefan

[fini]

Doc Evil,, why not join the UD team then? It is considerably more likely that a new anti-cancer drug will be developed because of UD (I think at least one already has) than finding little green men. Not that I'm knocking you Seti guys, I used to run it, but I just thought that UD was dealing with a more imminent problem and had more chance of actually making a difference (IMHO of cause).

Fini

[mickey_hwoarang]

what you getting from Seti is a sense of feeling that you are contributing to something big, something that can change everything!

Some people think that they contributing to global warming and the likes, because having your comp run 24/7 does use a whole lot of energy. But if we discover something big, it would all be worth it. Or i think...:D

[fini]

Mickey, I'd just like to add that it's exactly the same for UD. Think about it,, a world without cancer. I mean I know that’s not going to happen, but if UD can move us any closer to that then that’s got to be a big thing. Saving one persons life’s a big thing... how big is saving millions?

Fini

[BJUK]

On the power consumpion front, i heard some were that boiling the kettle for your morning tea/coffiee uses twice what your computer will in 24 hours, so long as the monitor is off or in standby.

[vibe666]

why do we do it?

i know why I do it, maybe that's enough.

I do it because I believe that it can be done and if there are a billion stars in our galaxy and a billion galaxies in the universe (still expanding according to most) then for us to be the only living things in that universe is just plain daft.

a little over 6 months ago I was looking in this very forum wondering why they had a DC forum if nobody was doing much DC'ing. I enquired and as it turned out there did used to be a SETI@home team for Sysopt.com. But things went wrong. there were some heated discussions and the whole bunch upped sticks and moved to another forum. They wanted to be somewhere else so they went. and I wish them all the best, but I wanted to be here and I wanted to be part of a Sysopt.com SETI@home team, and as there wasn't one I decided to start it myself and it could have been anyone that did it except for the fact that I got there first. I'm not anything special, I just thought it would be good to do something together so I started the group after asking the Admin people here at sysopt and they gave me the OK to do it.

I started adding a signature to my posts (see below) to advertise the group and after only a day or two I had my first member (RampageIII) who now keeps an eye on things with me and has been invaluable when I have been away from a computer (I've moved house 3 times and country once in the last 6 months). I never really expected more than half a dozen people to join the group but it just kept growing and now we are up to 54 members in 9 different countries (if my counting is right) with collectively over 18 years of CPU time giving 12566 results (so far). I think that's pretty good going.

Why do people do it? why do we do anything that is unnecessary? because it's a challenge. who can do the fastest WU who has the most units completed. who's going up and who's going down the leaderboard?

and the big question: Who's going to be the one?

Probably not one of us, but it could be. Someone always wins the lottery. It has to be someone doesn't it. but whoever it is that gets that WU with an ET signal in it will have got there on the shoulders of every other SETI@home user on the planet. we all contribute because one day it WILL be someone and every WU that gets crunched will bring us one step closer whether it takes 114 hours to complete it or 3 and a half (the slowest and quickest averages on the team, incidentally both on the Spud network:D).

If I wasn't using my spare CPU time for SETI@home it would be just sitting there thinking about nothing anyway. why not give your computer something to do when it's on it's own? it'll stop it getting bored.:r

***viBe***
Why not put your PC's idle time to good use by downloading the seti@home client (ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/setiathome/setiathome_win_3_07.exe) and then joining the Sysopt.com Users 2002 (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?cmd=team_lookup&name=Sysopt.com+Users+2002) Team. To speed up your WU times try the Command Line Client (ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/setiathome/setiathome-3.03.i386-winnt-cmdline.exe) and SetiHide (http://www.scheit.de/seti/1543.zip). It's much faster than the Windows client. :D
Good SetiHide thread HERE (http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=94507). Guide to setting up SetiHide on page 5 of thread.