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SETI@Home Faces Funding Problems
Posted by
michael
on Tue Oct 15, 2002 03:13 PM
from the brother-can-you-spare-a-megabit/second dept.
from the brother-can-you-spare-a-megabit/second dept.
blamanj writes "The aussie version of ZDNET is reporting that money to continue the SETI@Home project is in jeopardy, and it may fall by the wayside unless further funding can be found."
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Question. (Score:5, Informative)
RIGHT NOW, what can I use my spare cycles for, besides SETI?
Re:Question. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Question. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Question. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Question. (Score:5, Funny)
Self-replicating protein-folding software. The next step on the ladder of artificial evolution?
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Primenet/GIMPS. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.entropia.com/ips/
They search for very large mersenne primes.
Unlike distributed.net, they're computing something new (distributed.net searches for decryption keys to a message whose contents is known!), and unlike SETI@home, they've had actual results: three of the largest prime numbers known to man were found through Primenet.
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Cure cancer (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Cure cancer (Score:5, Interesting)
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Fight AIDS (Score:5, Interesting)
This is another Entropia project, they test millions of candidate drug compounds against detailed models of evolving AIDS viruses.
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Re:Question. (Score:5, Informative)
There's also Folding@Home [stanford.edu] which researches protein folding as well - although instead of only for cancer research it's generally for other medical research such as Alzheimer's, MS, etc. - also non-profit.
There's Genome@Home [stanford.edu] which analyzes the genome for medical purposes. Non-profit.
And, finally, if you're looking for a generic listing of distributed computing projects, check here [aspenleaf.com].
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Re:Question. (Score:4, Informative)
Q: Are you going to sell the results of this project to large pharmaceutical companies?
A: No. The results of this study are the intellectual property of the University of Oxford and the National Foundation for Cancer Research, who will make the scientific findings of this project available to the greater scientific community.
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Re:Question. (Score:4, Funny)
Urp. Your right. What I said still goes for Folding (or at least did when I looked into it in depth 6 months ago).
Damn. I tried a quick look through the FAQ's , but didn't find this entry. My assumption that it would be like Folding hosed me. NFCR is a great charity too.
Hopefully I'll get modded way down.
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Re:Question. (Score:4, Informative)
Really? Please point out where they state this. The FAQ's seem pretty innocuous:
Folding@Home FAQ [stanford.edu]:
Genome@Home FAQ: [stanford.edu]
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Re:Question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Distributed.net [distributed.net] Break encryption and teach the government a lesson on the value of strong encryption at the same time.
That's where my spare cycles go...
*scoove*
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Why Distributed.net RC*-cracking is a waste... (Score:5, Insightful)
The government does not need a lesson on the value of strong encryption: these figures are easy to work out, and in any case the NSA already has supercomputers that they use (presumably) to do the same thing. (Except, they likely have better technology than brute force for some ciphers...)
Distributed.net is not about "breaking" encryption. The ONLY thing we learn from it is the encryption key. The key was generated by the contest organizers, and if they wanted, they could have just saved it and we'd be one bajillion cycles richer.
I think it's much more interesting to put my cycles towards something where the answer isn't known! The various folding@home, aids@home, etc. efforts are tantalizing, though it's not clear that they will ever have actual results. Personally, I'm using GIMPS (primenet), which searches for very large prime numbers. (If you want to float your encryption boat, you could recall that asymmetric encryption often uses large prime numbers, though these primes would be totally useless for that.) This is the distributed computing program I know of that has had the most tangible results: three of the world's largest known primes were found by it. (It's also one of the oldest... I joined about 7 years ago.)
GIMPS is here: http://entropia.com/ips/
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Re:Question. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a proud member of the Ars Technica DC community. We have a nice overview (called "The Food Court", because all our team names have some kind of relation to food :)) of the various projects we are involved with, right here: http://arsfoodcourt.dbestern.net/ [dbestern.net]
I'm trying to get all to join Ars (although you're welcome to do so ;)), join slashdot or whatever team you prefer - or join none at all. This list is pretty good IMHO and shows most of the popular projects
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You know.. (Score:5, Funny)
Bankruptcy (Score:5, Funny)
Funding (Score:5, Funny)
~LoudMusic
Re:Funding (Score:3, Insightful)
~LoudMusic
Hadden Coorporation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hadden Coorporation (Score:3, Funny)
Those pesky Martians! (Score:3, Funny)
First they shoot down our spacecraft, now this!
Sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
That may not sound like much... but when you have 4,027,337 users, it's a lot. Even assuming that only 1/4 of those users actively contribute, you're still looking at a million people downloading > 2 megs a day. Also, some of those million people run whole server farms, and that can build the cost up to 100 megs a day.
Bandwidth isn't cheap. If they run out of funding, I'll be sad to see them go.
Bandwidth isn't the only cost (Score:4, Informative)
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Sell the extra? (Score:4, Interesting)
New SETI@Home model.... (Score:5, Funny)
2) When the account is idle for a bit, slowly draw a few cents every so often.
3) ???
4) Profit! Errr, stay in 'business.'
There are better things to do than look for aliens (Score:4, Interesting)
That obviously can't be true... (Score:5, Funny)
We *need* to finish it so Parkes can double their city's science output!
SETI Spawns SETF (Score:5, Funny)
Distributed Funding (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure there would be tons of people willing to donate.
Re:Distributed Funding (Score:5, Informative)
Go here [berkeley.edu] to donate by credit card or mail.
They also provide a chart of their donations over the last year here [berkeley.edu].
BWCarver -- 1301 work units and counting...
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Ways out (Score:5, Interesting)
- funding from big contributors (without commercial obligations), not likely to continue (forever)
- funding from users. If 500 000 paypalled $5, it could be enough. Would you?
- advertising, 4 million users. Could work, would you accept it.
- become a subproject of another (commercial project), search ETs only with certain percentage of available CPU power.
- be eaten by an OS vendor (at some stage, a distributed client will become a fixed part of many operating systems, I believe) this might provide a kickstart for doing it for some vendor.
- run it by volunteers, reduce staff costs.
Can you come up with something else?
So are your CPU cycles their assets? (Score:4, Insightful)
Would it be possible for someone to come in and buy the name "Seti@home", along with the list of signed up computers, and then use that processing time for completely other purposes that might not be nearly as desireable as scanning for intelligent life?
I know that getting out of any such trojan use would be as simple as uninstalling/turning it off, but if there's a significant group of people who aren't smart enough to find out that the hands have changed and ditch it, what keeps the person who purchases SETI@home's assets from turning all those CPU cycles into something nefarious...like cracking the encryption on bank accounts or something (you're right, that was a lame idea, but I'm sure someone would come up with a better one).
And it would seem that given the universe of AOL/Windows users, there would be a significant number of folks who would fall into that category.
Or perhaps the End User Agreement or other documents prevent this? I've never run SETI@Home, so I've never seen their agreement.
In Short, just how exposed are people?
Localized Searching (Score:4, Funny)
I would think it might be more productive to scan outer space instead of the southern half of our own planet, but whatever floats their boat.
Other Distributed Computing Projects (Score:5, Informative)
SETI@home donation page (Score:5, Informative)
Of course I was denied 2 hours ago.. how long could that story have existed? Maybe I took too long by ACTUALLY READING IT :P
A simple solution... (Score:5, Funny)
Let's stop talking and start donating!!! (Score:5, Informative)
If we feel this is a good cause towards humanity's future, let's not sit on our hands, and consider donating to this worthy cause!
Here's the URL... I hope many of your readers use it:
PS: I do not work for SETI@Home. I just think the Internet could work in it's favour if we all shelled out $5+ a piece
Whoa whoa whoa - we are NOT in a funding crisis (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, we're always in a funding crisis. I personally spend a huge chunk of my time here at the SETI lab writing grant proposals. That's what academia is all about. I've been working in this group for 6 years now, and we've always been just scraping by. This is NOT NEWS.
In fact, we're pushing forward on all fronts. Please see:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/setifuture.html
- Matt Lebofsky - SETI@home
SETI@Home does science too... (Score:5, Informative)
The large computational power available is unique and makes it extremely useful for finding many kinds of time-variable radio sources (not just ET). The project is also being used to map the Hydrogen in the galaxy as detailed here [berkeley.edu].
Even though getting signals from an extraterrestrial intelligence may be a pipe dream, the project still has value from a pure scientific standpoint.
Just a couple of thousand bucks? (Score:4, Informative)
Is this the extent of the problem? If so, it seems like just bringing it up once at
Tor
The official word from SETI@home (Score:5, Informative)
The situation isn't as dire as it sounds. Our dominant problem has been that the falling economy has caused some of our sponsors to withdraw support. With support withdrawn, we are denied matching funds from the University. Essentially, the University is witholding funding until we find further sponsors. We are actively seeking corporate sponsors who would be willing to donate, and have their contributions matched by the University. Under the matching program the sponsors must be for-profit industry. If anyone reading this works for such a corporation, please contact SETI@home through our web site.
Individuals wishing to make a contribution can do so through the SETI@home web site. Please be aware that our current largest sponsor is the Planetary Society. A membership to the Planetary Society (assuming it is done through the links on the SETI@home page) may return more to SETI@home than does a direct contribution, as it indicates the importance of SETI@home to members of the Society.
Regardless of the funding issues, we are working hard to make SETI@home II a reality. We have funding from the NSF to develop the BOINC [berkeley.edu] client/server code which will be used as the framework for SETI@home II. We are in the process of building the SETI@home II data recorder. What we do with it (multibeam, wide bandwidth) and where (Arecibo or Parkes) depends upon what we can afford.
We are also seeking NSF funding for AstroPulse [planetary.org] and SETHI [berkeley.edu] and SERENDIP V.
That said, things are currently somewhat tight here. We'll need to make do with fewer employees until we're back in the black. I don't think this spells the end of SETI@home by any means.
It *is* worth it! (Score:5, Insightful)
I consider SETI@Home to be one of the most inspirational projects ever attempted by our generation. Really, it's my equivalent of the moon shot (which happened two years before I was born).
I don't get misty-eyed very easily, but when I think about the films of JFK's inspirational speech... well, I hope the Kleenex is handy.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Who cares if this ever produces real results or not? It doesn't matter. It's the search that is important. Human beings striving for something new, working hard to discover whether they are truly not alone in the universe. I consider that to be an outstanding effort and achievement, even if we never find ET. I am proud to donate my computer's spare CPU cycles to such a noble effort.
God, that sounds so cheesy to go back and read it. But there it is. There's not much in the world today I get to feel good about. SETI@Home is definitely one of them.
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Re:It *is* worth it! (Score:4, Interesting)
Bull-puckey. SETI@Home is a quixotic endeavor at best. Results do matter---or at least, the reasonable belief that results are achievable. When JFK announced that we would be going to the moon, serious scientific minds believed it was possible in a reasonable time frame. There is no such reasonable belief with SETI@Home. We have no concrete evidence whatsoever that any intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, not to mention intelligent life that transmits radio signals in our general direction.
In the 1960s, we knew where the moon was, and we could determine reasonably accurately how much fuel and time it would require to get there once a vehicle was constructed. Who can tell us how much time and CPU horsepower it's going to take until we discover an alien radio talk show?
Yes there are always people who underestimate what is possible. But interestingly enough, we do all right anyway. We all get a laugh about Bill Gates' supposed quote that "640K should be enough"; and yet, somehow he still manages to make billions on products requiring many, many times that much memory...
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
It think the SETI project is great. If somebody donates their resources to science, don't complain about it, even if you happen to like other projects better. Go out and preach to somebody who has an idle computer instead.
Tor
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Wishing it to fail is a bit narrowminded (Score:4, Insightful)
Columbus was considered insane to want to sail around the world to reach India. He was ridiculed and almost didn't find funding. His discovery completely changed the world. There was a time when the suggestion that the earth was round and not the center of the universe would get you killed. I'm not going to list any more examples of going against conventional thought but I'm sure all of you can think of plenty of them.
I'm sure that all of you reading this know, with out a doubt, that there is life on other planets. It is not hard to imagine that there is intelligent life out there too. While this project is trying to find a needle in a haystack, the cost of searching for it next to nothing vs the potential return, and actually finding it would be the greatest discovery ever made.
I believe there are many other projects that we should contribute to such as cancer or aids research, but do you honestly think that canceling SETI will make the vast majority of SETI users switch to another program?
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I lost my wife to cancer, but that's no excuse for this kind of idiocy.
a) Some cancer is avoidable (e.g. smoking) and some AIDS is not (transfusion, maternal transmission to infants).
b) Expecting people to avoid a disease by resisting the single most powerful biological instinct is stupid. It isn't going to happen. A medical treatment is the only hope.
c) HIV is a wake-up call. It is purely our good fortune that it is so hard to get that you have to have sex or a transfusion to get it, rather than being spread by mosquitoes like West Nile, or through the air like measles. The next virus to come down the pike may not be so well-behaved as HIV. Most of what we learn fighting HIV is likely to help us against the next one.
d) It's not a zero-sum game. Advances in biology are often portable. A cure for cancer could quite plausibly come out of AIDS research.
e) AIDS is increasing; most cancers are not. We don't have to worry about an epidemic of cancer among young people. Yet just such an AIDS epidemic is wiping out people wholesale in Africa. There is so much sickness that it is contributing to starvation, because people are too ill to raise food.
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Re:ALF (Score:4, Interesting)
> the technology to evolve allowing for an
> intelligent search for extraterrestrial life. If
> the Galaxy is 14 billion years old then older
> technologies should have at least sparsely spread
> over the Galaxy by now.
If that's the case, it may simply be that other civilizations in the galaxy/universe haven't been around long enough to be sending signals for us to recieve. Consider that about 10 billion years after the universe came into being, planets capable of supporting life began to appear, plus or minus one billion years.
If humans are average, and our solar system is average, and you consider how long earth has been a source of radio emissions (maybe a hundred years?), in the scheme of things we've barely been making noise for a fraction of a second.
Granted the distance between stars and the time it takes for radio waves to go between them, if all forms of life all across the galaxy started broadcasting radio emissions at the same time we did, radio signals may not even start to cross earth's path for another ten thousand years (the milky way is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter). If a civilization got a one billion year jump start on us, either they came and went while we were still evolving a vertebrae, or they never got past inventing fire, or we already missed their radio signals. Same story if they have a five hundred million year jump, or a 250 million years, or even 1 million years. If we were the first intelligent beings in the galaxy, it could be millions of years before anyone starts broadcasting anything.
Conclusion being, given how short a period we've been gathering data from space, to suggest there's nothing out there because we haven't found it is a logical fallacy. The galaxy just isn't old enough, and we don't have enough of a data set, to make any conclusions.
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