Something funny about SETI.

[Xionide]

It just don't make sense to me. There site says a whole bunch of stuff that i can't understand about why you should donate cpu cycles. And these are the things that bug me.

1.How are the cpu cycles going to help? it seems like if they wanted to find extraterestrials they would need a bigger telescope, not cpu cycles.

2. They are sending you over the internet that seems as if it could be tampered with and give back the wrong stuff. How would they know if you were unless they already knew the answere to the question there sending you?

3.Why is it faster to send the information over the internet then to process it on a computer directly connect so you get low latency?

It seems like they are just trying to confuse you into donating cycles. It doesnt explain really what your doing in a way a normal person can understand.

Can someone explain this to me in a dumbed down way so I dont sit here and think its some kind of consparacy or something?

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: Xionide
It just don't make sense to me. There site says a whole bunch of stuff that i can't understand about why you should donate cpu cycles. And these are the things that bug me.

1.How are the cpu cycles going to help? it seems like if they wanted to find extraterestrials they would need a bigger telescope, not cpu cycles.

2. They are sending you over the internet that seems as if it could be tampered with and give back the wrong stuff. How would they know if you were unless they already knew the answere to the question there sending you?

3.Why is it faster to send the information over the internet then to process it on a computer directly connect so you get low latency?

It seems like they are just trying to confuse you into donating cycles. It doesnt explain really what your doing in a way a normal person can understand.

Can someone explain this to me in a dumbed down way so I dont sit here and think its some kind of consparacy or something?

1) They help by analyzing radio signal data.

2) These concerns aren't warranted, it doesen't really matter.

3) Huh? The whole point is to take advantage of the HUGE untapped potential out there. Most peoples computers sit and do nothing all the time. Latency has nothing to do with it.

 

[dighn]

1. they try to find patterns/other things from the radio telescope signals by analyzing them. but it takes more processing power than they have.

2. not sure but i believe they send the same unit to multiple people

3. again, they do not have enough processing power so they have to use yours.

edit: oh man i must be really tired, first two sentences sounded weird.

 

[habib89]

they have all this information gathered from those huge radio sattelites. and they dont' have enough of their own cpu cycles to process the information.. more computers = faster process

well... some poeple do tamper with the information.. that's why they send the same ones to different people.... to check it

i'm not sure what you mean.. but look at it this way.. if there were only one person running seti, it would take much much longer than if 1000 people were running seti.. and there are way more than 1000 people running seti

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: dighn
1. they try to find patterns/other things from the radio telescope signals by analyzing the signals. but it takes more processing power than they have to process the signals.

2. not sure but i believe they send the same unit to multiple people

3. again, they do not have enough processing power so they have to use yours.

I don't think they send the same work unit to multiple people, that would kinda defeat the whole purpose.

There is nothing to modify or tamper with though.

 

[Xionide]

thanks for clearing it up for me

 

[Eli]

Okay, maybe I'm wrong about the work unit and tamper thing?

I dunno, I haven't done SETI since it first came out.

 

[Xionide]

Originally posted by: Eli

Originally posted by: dighn
1. they try to find patterns/other things from the radio telescope signals by analyzing the signals. but it takes more processing power than they have to process the signals.

2. not sure but i believe they send the same unit to multiple people

3. again, they do not have enough processing power so they have to use yours.

I don't think they send the same work unit to multiple people, that would kinda defeat the whole purpose.

There is nothing to modify or tamper with though.

I would think you could. If you were a level 3930 egghead nerd then you could cast level 200 magic and read th binary going to your processor and then change one "1" into a "0" and the whole human race would think that a alien race has written "fart" in morris code from millions of gallixies away.

 

[dighn]

"level 3930 egghead nerd" ROFLMAO that's funny

 

[JWMiddleton]

Originally posted by: Eli

I don't think they send the same work unit to multiple people, that would kinda defeat the whole purpose.

There is nothing to modify or tamper with though.

With science it is important to be able to reproduce results. So, the same WUs is given out multiple times and the returned results are compared. If they don't match it is sent out again. If a person's computer is having a hardware problem such as a memory problem it could affect the results, and has done so. This would be considered non-malicious tamper with a WU.

Each WU has data that tells exactly where, in this vast universe, that the radio telescope was pointed when the data was recorded. Recently the project selected the top candidates (about 200) over the past few years and revisited those locations in the sky for new recordings. That data is now in WU format and is being analyzed. If the 2nd pass shows similar activity then there is a good chance that we have found something and further investigation would be done.

 

[sharkeeper]

With science it is important to be able to reproduce results. So, the same WUs is given out multiple times and the returned results are compared. If they don't match it is sent out again. If a person's computer is having a hardware problem such as a memory problem it could affect the results, and has done so. This would be considered non-malicious tamper with a WU.

You have to wonder what the percentage of erronous results submitted are with all of the overclocked computers out there. People that are folding should NOT o/c at all IMO. It's just not worth the risk.

-DAK-

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: shuttleteam

With science it is important to be able to reproduce results. So, the same WUs is given out multiple times and the returned results are compared. If they don't match it is sent out again. If a person's computer is having a hardware problem such as a memory problem it could affect the results, and has done so. This would be considered non-malicious tamper with a WU.

You have to wonder what the percentage of erronous results submitted are with all of the overclocked computers out there. People that are folding should NOT o/c at all IMO. It's just not worth the risk.

-DAK-

Well, if what he says is indeed true, it doesen't matter since its basically checked for validity.

 

[sharkeeper]

Well, if what he says is indeed true, it doesen't matter since its basically checked for validity.

Yes but the checking invalidates the point of marginally faster computation (with errata) from running equipment too close to SOA limits.

Prime95 does checking at the client level. Funny how people complain that they won't run it on their faulty machines because everything else works! Oh the irony!

-DAK-

 

[Shockwave]

Hell with the aliens. I have 2 cell phones, 6 email addresses, a homephone and 2 mailing addresses. If they want to reach me, they should have NO problems getting ahold of me. I'll donate to helping cure cancer first.

 

[hdeck]

Originally posted by: Shockwave
Hell with the aliens. I have 2 cell phones, 6 email addresses, a homephone and 2 mailing addresses. If they want to reach me, they should have NO problems getting ahold of me. I'll donate to helping cure cancer first.

my thoughts exactly.

 

[silverpig]

SETI isn't only about finding ET. The project has produced a lot of valuable knowledge.

1. They STARTED the mass DC thing.
2. They have found many new radio signals from things like pulsars and black hole candidates as well.
3. After they finish processing the data from the southern hemisphere recorder they are going to use SETI for other research (namely for professors and students of universities to run their experiments on).

 

[silverpig]

Oh, and about number 1, yeah, they do need a better telescope. They don't actually expect to find anything with the setup they have now. In order to find a civilization now it must be a casual emitter of radio signals (like we do right now with our radio and tv signals) and be very close to earth, or be beaming intense radio signals at us from a greater distance away.

Then again, this is why SETI started the DC effort; they don't have the money to build their own telescope, or to build their own supercomputers, so they use spare telescope time at Arecibo and spare cpu cycles from us.