new thread
Would you like to be a longhaired ET searcher? There's been a group of such set up for years. I just hit my 4000th work unit processed, so I figured now would be a good time to post another link to the longhair statistics page, where you can join if you like.
The longhair group is soon approaching the 10,000 work unit mark. Join now, and you can be part of the group when we hit that benchmark.
Seti@Home is a project where radio signals are recorded at the Arecibo radio antenna in Costa Rica. The signals are divied up among all participants and processed by a screen saver. Each computer requests work units to process, searches each work unit for signs of extraterrestrial life and then sends the results back to the home site.
Follow the link and click on the icon for more information about the program.
I've always wondered how safe this type of thing is?
i. e. if you allow SETI to access your computer, could
a hacker also use SETI to access your computer and
install/run harmful programs, send out spam, or
steal information/data?
After all if you're going to allow SETI into your
computer wouldn't you have disable your firewall?
Also wouldn't a program like SETI make your
computer as slow as frozen mollases?
You don't. They allow you to access their computer. The screen saver logs onto their computer and sends results and pulls in a new block of data as needed. This is really no different than posting messages here: you pull a message, read it, then post a reply.
No. You are not opening up your computer at all.
Nope.
The Seti software runs in the background. As long as other programs are active, it does nothing. It only runs when no other tasks are doing anything. I have to say it is very effective at CPU management. I never notice it.
That is not quite correct, Victor. It is true on Windows 95/98 but NOT true on Win2000 (and probably XP), which are true multitasking systems. I found this out the hard way--mysterious errors in a real-time data acquisition program that was obviously being interrupted when it could not tolerate it. I then did a CTRL-ALT-DEL and looked at the Task Manager's "Performance" tab. As soon as you do the CPU usage goes up to 100% if SET@home is running in the background! I could not have this happening and thus had to remove it from the critical PCs. I downloaded a free CPU meter for Win98 and found that it does not occur on that operating system.
What isn't? The software not running when other applications are running?
I have Windows NT on which Win2000 and XP are based.
No problem at all with that. It's a very robust program.
So what if CPU usage goes up to 100%? That's a good thing. The point is that CPU cycles are not taken at the expense of other programs, at least not significantly. SETI@Home can be configured, by the way, to run constantly, but it can also be configured to run only when the computer is idle.
I suggest that you had it set up incorrectly. I've been using it for years on multiple OS's without a problem. So have thousands of other people.
