What's the difference between Seti@home and RC5

[wtp]

i use seti, but is there any difference between them??? I wonder why people prefer RC5 over Seti or Seti over RC5, i use Seti because i like SETI. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

wtp http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[ghostface]

i think seti is processing for aliens. rc5 is trying to crack encryption schemes.

[SoopaStar]

they are two completely different programs. seti tests radio rwaves brought in from space to test for extraterestrial life. RC5 is searches thru keys to an ecryption code.

Paul

[bdog]

They are right. The other way I look at it is SETI is searching for aliens, they might find them, they might not. With RC5 the code WILL be broken, it is just a matter of time and who is the lucky person to do it. Also Seti used to have some problems with the management of the project. They were getting so much publicity and had so many people sign up that they were sending the same work units out to several people because they didn't have enough to go around. I haven't looked into it in about a year, and they may have fixed this, I don't know.

[Anakhonda]

Or here is another way of looking at it:

People who run SETI are helping to make one of the greatest discoveries of all time... their contributions help Mankind.

RC5 waste their computer processing power to break a useless code... in hopes of winning prize money.

Do you want to help your fellow man, or help yourself? The choice is yours.

(I am just kidding around, slightly) http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Joel Kleppinger]

You know... in the end, you'd be right, Anakhonda. But then again, when you look at the odds, they certainly aren't high at all.

Fact is, working with d.net helps do more than crack a worthless message. It fosters a community of people that are trying to learn and grow in computers. Look at all of the pproxies that have sprung up and people that have gained priceless networking knowledge just from working with the d.net client.

It's great that people are going to both projects... balance is good. But for me, RC5 is the goal.

[bdog]

I agree with you Anakhonda, It would with out a doubt be a bigger discovery, if not the biggest discovery of mankind, if seti found something opposed to the rc5 code getting cracked. However, as Joel said, they have some steep odds against them. There are also a group of scientists (I don't remember where) that say that the way they are doing the project will not work. I like participating in rc5 because I know that it will be completed, however I would rather aliens be found than rc5 cracked, but I don't think seti is going to do it any time soon.

[hai]

SETI sounds pretty much like vaporware and it puts much larger load on your pc than rc5 does. If they DO find aliens, you probably have to find your way to escape from the massacre causing by alien human hunters. Scary? We all know what happened when American Indians met European immigrants several hundred years ago.

[SysOpt]

Finding an ET signal does not mean that as soon as we do, they're going to storm the Earth. There are millions, perhaps billions, of galaxies out there. If the radio telescope happens to be aimed at one that's broadcasting something, we might hear it. The folks sending it out won't know whether we heard it or whether the waves just hit a rock, etc., unless they have some technology we don't know about.

But my personal feeling is that the odds that intelligent life out there is living at the same time we are at the same or higher level of technological advancement, and broadcasting in the frequency range we're studying, are slim.

[Missing the point]

Anaklonda, RC5 is helping everyone by learning how to better encrypt codes for transaction on the internet