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SETI@Home Project Ends
PC World ^ | 12/16/2005 | Phil Hochmuth, Network World

Posted on 12/17/2005 3:58:48 PM PST by Vermonter

SETI@Home Project Ends

For years, volunteers shared idle CPU cycles to analyze interstellar data. Phil Hochmuth, Network World Friday, December 16, 2005

Along with the Howard Stern Show, another radio endeavor involving alien life forms is going off the air this week; SETI@Home, a grid supercomputer project for detecting signs of extra terrestrial life from deep space, officially ended December 15.

"We'll be shutting down the "SETI@home Classic" project on December 15," read an e-mail sent by SETI@Home administrators at the University of California at Berkeley, where the project started in 1999. "The workunit totals of users and teams will be frozen at that point, and the final totals will be available on the Web."

The Search for Extra Terrestrial Life at Home (SETI@Home) project harness idle CPU cycles from millions of Internet-connected PCs across the globe in order to analyze data collected from massive radio telescopes. Running in place of a screensaver, the SETI@Home software, when downloaded on a PC, collected raw data from a centralized SETI@Home server bank and searched for patterns that might signal intelligent life--possible E.T., TV shows, radio communications, or other signals.

Other Applications Although the program ran as a screensaver the collective computing power was enormous; 2 million years of accumulated CPU time, and over 50 terabytes of data, or "workunits," parsed. More than 5 million users have downloaded the software, according to the project organizers.

The project also became a kind of competition for PC hobbyists known as "overclockers" who tweak their systems to run as fast as possible and use SETI@Home workunits to measure system performance and claim bragging rights.

But like the Stern show, SETI@Home will live on in another form. The project is being moved to the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), an open-source grid project using the same principles as the original project. BOINC will continue the search for E.T. radio signals, but a new client also allows users to devote spare CPU power for other research projects, such as climate change, astronomy, and curing human diseases.

Other such researchers have also adopted the SETI@Home approach for research projects that benefit from large amounts of computing power.


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 2silly4words; boinc; etphonehome; nothingoutthere; seti; theend; wasteoftime
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Didn't see this posted
1 posted on 12/17/2005 3:58:48 PM PST by Vermonter
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To: Vermonter

Nutten out there folks.


2 posted on 12/17/2005 4:00:07 PM PST by bnelson44 (Proud parent of a tanker! (Charlie Mike, son))
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To: Vermonter

Are they done, or have they given up?


3 posted on 12/17/2005 4:00:16 PM PST by RightWhale (Not transferable -- Good only for this trip)
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To: RightWhale

What's in the article is all I know


4 posted on 12/17/2005 4:00:47 PM PST by Vermonter
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To: RightWhale

they're switching all the brain power over to the global warming data crunching...


5 posted on 12/17/2005 4:01:42 PM PST by RobFromGa (Polls are for people who can't think for themselves.)
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To: Vermonter

Interesting... Why can't they let us choose which project gets our extra processing cycles? It seems only fair.


6 posted on 12/17/2005 4:01:47 PM PST by coconutt2000 (NO MORE PEACE FOR OIL!!! DOWN WITH TYRANTS, TERRORISTS, AND TIMIDCRATS!!!! (3-T's For World Peace))
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To: Vermonter

And why the hell are they sharing column space with Howard Stern?


7 posted on 12/17/2005 4:01:55 PM PST by Fenris6 (3 Purple Hearts in 4 months w/o missing a day of work? He's either John Rambo or a Fraud)
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To: systematic

Might be able to pick up some extra CPUs!


8 posted on 12/17/2005 4:02:06 PM PST by martin_fierro (It's NOT all about The O)
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To: RightWhale
Are they done, or have they given up?

"The project is being moved to the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), an open-source grid project using the same principles as the original project. BOINC will continue the search for E.T. radio signals, but a new client also allows users to devote spare CPU power for other research projects, such as climate change, astronomy, and curing human diseases."

9 posted on 12/17/2005 4:02:23 PM PST by Hank Rearden (Never allow anyone who could only get a government job attempt to tell you how to run your life.)
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To: Vermonter

The protein folding program is probably the most beneficial for humanity.


10 posted on 12/17/2005 4:03:06 PM PST by Moonman62 (Federal creed: If it moves tax it. If it keeps moving regulate it. If it stops moving subsidize it)
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To: Vermonter

As Hank said, the project itself lives on as a part of BOINC.


11 posted on 12/17/2005 4:04:07 PM PST by Lauretij2
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To: RobFromGa

You're serious. Well, there is a lot of uncrunched data. They need some kind of thesis, though, or they'll just end up with more data.


12 posted on 12/17/2005 4:04:52 PM PST by RightWhale (Not transferable -- Good only for this trip)
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To: Fenris6
And why the hell are they sharing column space with Howard Stern?

I believe it's because aliens have heard.....


13 posted on 12/17/2005 4:05:04 PM PST by edpc
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To: Fenris6

to generate media, aka you put howard stern in and people are suppose to oohh and ahh... becuase he's a marketing genious...

thats the whoopla behind that

so thats the real question, why did they use his name since, noone but the howy heads cares...

my2c worth


14 posted on 12/17/2005 4:05:23 PM PST by Flavius (Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum)
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To: Vermonter
their software always crashed my system.

For awhile I used my unused clock cyles to find prime numbers.
15 posted on 12/17/2005 4:06:52 PM PST by birbear (Admit it. you clicked on the "I have already previewed" button without actually previewing the post.)
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To: Vermonter
BOINC will continue the search for E.T. radio signals

So now we can all BOINC for extra-terrestrial life? Hmmm...

16 posted on 12/17/2005 4:07:10 PM PST by JRios1968 ("Cogito, ergo FReep": I think, therefore I FReep.)
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To: bnelson44
Nutten out there folks.

Of course there is. Too bad some still see earth as the center of the universe.

17 posted on 12/17/2005 4:07:38 PM PST by Jigsaw John
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To: Jigsaw John

Naw, if there was sumpten you would have heard from them by now. ..... Naw, nutten out there...


18 posted on 12/17/2005 4:09:06 PM PST by bnelson44 (Proud parent of a tanker! (Charlie Mike, son))
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To: Hank Rearden

There is more astronomical data coming in every day than can be processed in months, and they can process and reprocess the same data over and over whenever they want to look for a specific feature. This ought to be done on a much bigger scale, and it shouldn't depend on whether the grad dept gets some funding.


19 posted on 12/17/2005 4:09:22 PM PST by RightWhale (Not transferable -- Good only for this trip)
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To: Vermonter

I had a PC in this project since 2000. Last year I found that there was a Freeper group in SETI@Home and moved my acct to that group. Oddly enough I stopped running SETI on my PC recently for the first time in ages and now they are folding.


20 posted on 12/17/2005 4:09:49 PM PST by KillTime (Western Civilization herself breathes a sigh of relief as President Bush wins 4 more years.)
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