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Re: [OM] SETI searchers sought

Subject: Re: [OM] SETI searchers sought
From: "Tom Scales" <tscales@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 21:37:39 -0500
OK, I agree this is way off-topic, but I'm one of the 'searcher's too. It is
pretty cool and just uses up spare cycles. If you want to learn more, go to
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

According to the current statistics, I rank 271,108 out of 2,072,579
searchers, with 86 units complete. Since each unit, on my machine, averages
almost 22 cpu-hours, that's a lot of cycles. I have plenty of horsepower
though and run it on two machines. I'm about to add a third machine, and
I've only been running it for a few months.

Essentially how it works is that you download their software, install it,
and it downloads small pieces of data, radio signals from the big radio
telescope in Puerto Rico, I think.  My 22 hours of cpu processes 10 seconds
of radio signal.  As you can see, lots of cycles are required.

I don't know that I necessarily believe in extraterrestials, but it's kind
of fun to be involved. The top 1000 searcher information is also kind of
amusing. The top searcher is Seti@Sun, presumably Sun Microsystems, with
694,402 results returned. Yes, almost 700,000, compared to my whopping 86.
And I'm in the 86 percentile with my measly numbers. Other names you might
recognize: Intel at number 4, Dell at number 7,Compaq at 13, Microsoft at
41, IBM at 53, Nasa at 77. I don't think these are necessarily company
sanctioned, as from the names, they look like labs at the companies. Sun is
represented a half dozen times in the top 50. Clearly, this is something
that a lot of people, and companies, take seriously. My guess is they're
throwing a lot more powerful hardware at it than my measly PC's.

So anyway, check out the website and maybe a Zuikoholic will be the first to
discover life off this planet.

Tom Scales

<snip>
> I hope this isn't an abuse of the list, but I'd like to solicit some
> CPU cycles for a good cause. I just started Searching for Extra-
> Terrestrial Intelligence (I've given up on earth...) and have
> processed 5 datasets so far for the SETI project in the background.
>
<snip>
> Tom Trottier



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