Is anybody else on the Forum analyzing data for the SETI program. I downloaded the SETI@home software and my 'puter has been processing data for the last 43 hrs. and I only 54% through with my first data block. That seems a bit long to me, just wondering if anybody else has some times?
I had seti til my last format when I lost it. It takes a long time, but it tries not to use too much in the way of system resources. I just left my computer on at night and let it run. I need to put it back on, its the best screen saver I've ever had.
Jake
------------------ '85 Fiero SC '95 Grand Am SE
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02:10 PM
Cliff Pennock Administrator
Posts: 11609 From: Zandvoort, The Netherlands Registered: Jan 99
Originally posted by Cliff Pennock: SETI = Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. A long shot to say the least since intelligent lifeforms can hardly be found here, on earth.
I know some camels and dophins that would SERIOUSLY kick your ass for that
Camels: Greatest mathematicians... Dolphins: We think they are dumb because all they do is goof off, have sex, and eat... While we build amazing things. Dolphins think *WE'RE* dumb for exactly the same reasons
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03:10 PM
Formula88 Member
Posts: 53788 From: Raleigh NC Registered: Jan 2001
I've done about 1000 work units in the last 2 years. My Pentium 200 took about 50 hours per work unit, my PIII 800 takes about 8. Also, the newer versions of Seti are more indepth than the earlier versions, so they take longer to run.
What kind of processor are you running? Also, the visuals on the screen saver eat a lot of CPU power. For best performance, have your screensave set to go black immediately.
The CROW has officially overthrown the African Grey Parrot as the MOST INTELLIGENT bird on the planet.
Suckers can ask and answer questions and solve problems! I'm getting me a crow!
Sad thing is, for indigenous species, it's totally legay to KILL them ("nuissance laws") but ILLEGAL to KEEP them (migratory bird laws). ?! S0, if I REALLY want one, and want o be LEGAL, I have to get an exotic species (African Pied Crow, for one). $800?!
So, other than the nobility of helping science, what is the reason you guys get involved with SETI? Mach10: ..."goof off, have sex, & eat" That's how Jane describes me, especially the 1st and last activities.
Originally posted by maryjane: So, other than the nobility of helping science, what is the reason you guys get involved with SETI?
Well, a few reasons. If your PC analyses a work unit that contains evidence of an Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, you get named as a Co-discoverer. That's pretty cool. Also, it's the first, largest experiment on the power of distributed computing. The users running SETI comprise the most powerful computer on the planet, logging 1000's of years of CPU time each and every day! Computing problems that would take the worlds most powerful supercomputers centuries to do, could be done by the SETI user's in a day. Plus, I'm a space nut and this is one way I can stay involved in the Space Program.
I left my PC running it 24hrs a day when I had my cable modem, but now with my dialup, I have to manually connect to download a new work unit. With my PC's speed, that would need to be done 3 times a day. Sure, I could just do it whenever I happen to log on, but after doing 968 work units, I've done more than 97% of the people running it, so I gave it a rest. I'd start it up again if I had an always on internet connection again. I should probably at least finish out the 1000 units, though.
It is often used by a reporter to indicate that the reporter spelled it the way the person said it, and that it wasn't the reporters mistaken spelling.
Or used in letters to the editor, to let people know that the moron (joking) who wrote the letter misspelled it, not the newspaper.
You guys convinced me to download it this afternoon, and I'm 27% done my first data segment on my PIII 650 w/ 384Mb RAM. I let my computer run 24/7, and have a constant Internet connection, so mine as well! The segment I'm crunching right now is from Feb 11, 2001. For those of you who are long term users of SETI@HOME, are we catching up or falling behind on that?
Originally posted by LZeitgeist: Hey Phil... you spelled 'sick' wrong.
So, Formula88 - if you finish 1000 work units, do they send you a set of steak knives?
No, but they do give you an electronic Certificate of Appreciation you can print out and frame. There's a general one for participating, and then there are other certificates for completing 100, 250, 500 and presumably 1000 work units. Don't know about beyond that.
I'm running a P850 and my average workunit times are 15hrs others in my group are well over that! been a memeber for over a year and only have 164 workunits.
Check out my group stats stewnods Join if you like
I first started SETI on 9/12/99, and have since logged 1.425 years of CPU time, averaging 12hrs 52min per work unit. I started with a Pentium 200 that took about 40-50 hours per unit. My PIII 800 currently gets about 9-10 hrs. per unit, but version 3 I could finish a work unit in under 8 hours. The newer versions do more indepth analysis.
There are currently 21 users (or groups) who have completed 10,000 work units! They logged between 8.4 and 34 years of CPU time to do this, so we're obviously talking many multiple processes running. And SETI@Sun currently has 889,405 work units!! logging over 832 years of CPU time! Wow! And they still only averaged about 8 hours per work unit.
The user "Qebsoft" has completed 39,649 work units, after logging only 3.23 years CPU time! That's 42min 50.7sec per work unit! DAMN! Would love to know what setup that is - how many CPUs, and what speed. Wow.
If you're running a Pentium III 850 and workunit times are 15hrs, you're not optimized for best performance. One of the biggest HP drains on SETI is drawing the visuals on the screen. If you set the properties on your screensaver to go to a blank screen immediately upon activation (I leave mine a 1 mintue) you will greatly speed up your processing speed.
Also, since I have 256Mb RAM, I run SETI continuously in the backround. With that setting, I don't even need to use the screen saver portion. I can use a simple blank screen saver instead, for best speed. Any graphic screen saver will take CPU time away from SETI and slow the process. I would get my shortest times if I only ran SETI when the screensaver was active, but it only saves about an hour or so, and over the course of the day, that time is made up by backround processing. So while it may take a couple hours longer to do one unit while doing other stuff, I can still do more work units in a 24hr period because I'm putting in more CPU time.
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12:12 AM
Formula88 Member
Posts: 53788 From: Raleigh NC Registered: Jan 2001
And I remember marvelling at how fast a 486/50MHz was when it came out. Wow, supercomputer power on your desktop!
Today, I still have my 1st 486 at home. It still works fine, but sits collecting dust like some ancient antique. Right next to my IBM Selectric II typewriter.
I saw a report on SETI on the doscovery channel - i thought this was interesting - when they first started the program, on the very first day they started 'looking' they thought they found a signal.
If I remember correctly, they never did figure out what that signal was - and in the 40 years since (yes they have been listening since 1960!) they have not heard a single thing that can be attributed to ETs.
Thats the thing about SETI that bothers me. I have a Ham radio license. If you buy a ham radio, put up an antenna, and turn it on, you will immediately hear hundreds of people on the air
unless the band is dead (no skip happening) -then you hear nothing. Skip comes and goes during different hours of the day.
But my point is, if there is someone out there transmitting, then you dont have to listen for 40 years to find a signal - if its there, its THERE!
Personally I believe, for a couple of reasons, that we may be the ONLY life in the universe - not for religious reasons, but based on some discoveries of how complex life really is, and how hard it would be for it to spring into existance spontainiously.
If this is true, it would be a blow to groups like SETI, and people who want to make 'first contact' with a united federation of planets kinda thing out there
but if its true then it also elevates the importance of US tremendously. If we are the only life in the universe, then it is our DESTINY to populate the galaxy, and maybe even beyond that.
And we have the technology to get started - you dont have to travel at the speed of light or faster to travel to other stars - you simply need a space-arc like craft that can carry a large group of colonist and keep them alive onboard for the many year journey.
I think the realization that we might hold the only life inthe universe in our hands could be a tremendous unifiying concept for humanity.
Originally posted by Ken Wittlief: Thats the thing about SETI that bothers me. I have a Ham radio license. If you buy a ham radio, put up an antenna, and turn it on, you will immediately hear hundreds of people on the air
unless the band is dead (no skip happening) -then you hear nothing. Skip comes and goes during different hours of the day.
But my point is, if there is someone out there transmitting, then you dont have to listen for 40 years to find a signal - if its there, its THERE!
Well, that's the problem - filtering out all the noise of our own transmissions. If someone is transmitting on their Ham, but you can't hear them because of noise, etc., does that mean they're not broadcasting? If you're not listening on the right frequency, you won't hear them. And it's not just the search for a communication - but the reception of artificially created signals. An alien species could tell there is life on Earth from the radio traffic coming from it, even though it's not an attempt at communication with aliens.
Personally, I believe there is life out there simply based on the law of averages. If the universe is infinite, there HAS to be other occurrences of life. Maybe nowhere that we'll ever be able to find, but it has to be out there. Even in our own galaxy, and we know there are other galaxies, there are enough stars that could potentially have planets to put the odds in favor of there being life.
Im pretty sure I have brought this up before. SETI uses Drakes Equation to estimate how many worlds there might be in our galaxy that are trying to signal us.
Its based on how many stars are in our galaxy, how many of those might have planets, how many might be earth like, how many of those life may have evolved on...
the problem is, they assume that life will evolve on ALL planets that have earth like conditions, a 100% probability.
and they then come up with something like 10,000 planets that should be out there trying to contact us.
the problem with this is, life is SO complicated that the probability of it springing into existance is extreemly remote - even taking into account every single atom in the universe, and every single second since the big bang, there hasnt been enough time for life to happen all that often.
So their assumption that since life happened here it must happen on almost every inhabitable planet - that is wrong.
If you put a number on the complexity of life, the odds of it happening at random are something like 1E-300.
I think this might be the reason the government has cuttoff all funding of SETI - they have concluded there is nothing out there - and NASA is seriously looking into interstellar travel now.
I think NASA has figured it out - theres nobody out there - and since life is fragile confined to one planet here - it is our destiny to seed the galaxy.
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10:28 PM
Nov 21st, 2001
Formula88 Member
Posts: 53788 From: Raleigh NC Registered: Jan 2001
Well, it makes sense that if you weed it down to just planets with Earth-like conditions, your chances of finding life are much greater than any planet at random. I'm not completely familiar with those equations or their assumptions. Is that 10,000 Earth-type planets in this Galaxy? If so, what about other galaxies? My argument is that even with a 1E-300 probability, the probability approches 100% as the limit approaches infinity. "If" the universe is infinite, there HAS to be other instances of life out there, according to that assumption.
That's the problem with science, though. If you make certain assumptions, you can prove anything. But, it's a start.
I dont know why you think the universe is infinite - astromeners have a reasonable idea of how big the universe is, and there is way less that E300 atoms in the whole universe.
And yes I believe they came up with 10,000 earth like planets in our galaxy - the importance of that is, anyone outside our galaxy would be too far to communicate with or even to receive a signal from.
logging over 832 years of CPU time! Wow! And they still only averaged about 8 hours per work unit. 
