barbary - the SETI website made a brief mention of that specific error message, when it apparently happened last Sun. night. They promptly removed that bit from the page by Tues. however... 🙁
Here's the latest from their slow-to-come-up website now:
"? March 6, 2002 18:00 UT ?
Our database problem is fixed and we are back online.
? March 6, 2002 16:00 UT ?
We are having trouble with our user database. The main data server as well as some web site functions are offline until we fix the problem."