SETI@Home Project Changes Hands

SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
edited December 2005 in Science & Tech
The SETI@Home project, which searches for signs of extra terrestrial life from deep space, is changing hands as of December 15th. The project is to become part of the BOINC platform, a common software system that about a dozen other projects are also signed up for.

The original SETI@Home project, much like Folding@Home, harnessed idle CPU cycles from millions of Internet connected PCs across the globe in order to analyze data collected from massive radio telescopes. Running in place of a screensaver, the SETI@Home software, when downloaded on a PC, collected raw data from a centralized SETI@Home server bank and searched for patterns that might signal intelligent life. The BOINC platform will now allow SETI@Home to evolve, as the project will have access to a wider radio frequency range and many more telescopes.
"We'll be shutting down the "SETI@home Classic" project on December 15," read an e-mail sent by SETI@Home administrators at the University of California at Berkeley, where the project started in 1999. "The workunit totals of users and teams will be frozen at that point, and the final totals will be available on the Web." (PCWorld)
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If you already have SETI@home or want to start contributing, you will have to download and install software from BOINC. You will then be given the option to donate various percentages of your machine's time to any or all of the projects. Users can chose, for example, to donate 70% of their unused computer power to finding curing disease, 20% to looking for aliens, and 10% to predicting the future climate. (Nature.com)
Source: Nature.com

Comments

  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    SETI@Home isn't so much ending as it is changing. Now it'll be BOINC-based, and people can choose what percentage of their computing resources go to each of the BOINC projects.

    Story from Nature here.
  • CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    I saw this posted on digg, and whoever posted it there also made the mistake of a very misleading headline, the Seti@Home Project is not ending at all, the "Seti@Home Classic" application is no longer being support, you can still run the Seti@Home project through the Boinc interface, I really think you should change your headline cause it's not accurate at all and the selective quote makes it sound like the whole project is over with, and it's not.

    //edit upon reviewing the PCWorld article I could see how that could be misleading, and they actually are the ones making the mistake in their reporting by saying "Seti@Home is ending" they should clarify and say that the support for the individual Seti@Home application is over with but that the project is now being run on a new app
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited December 2005
    Better? :)
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