Letter from Arthur C. Clarke and Dan Werthimer

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Profile Sir Ulli
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Message 262884 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 16:37:10 UTC
Last modified: 16 Mar 2006, 16:37:24 UTC

no Thread to this so i will beginn

i get this mail

Dear Sir Ulli,

SETI@home needs your help. But before we tell you why - and how you can help - Dan and I would like to thank you for your role in the SETI@home success story.

We would first like to thank you for your participation in SETI@home. During the first SETI@home project you personally assisted us by searching for extraterrestrial signals in 20000 data chunks and providing 10.258 years of computing time. We want you to know we appreciate your efforts and the efforts of the other 5.4 million volunteers who have donated over 2.4 million years of processing time. When we started, people thought our projection of 100,000 users to be overly optimistic! You helped us prove that public participation in scientific computing could work. You also helped us to see that this type of community effort deserved to be more common. That's why we developed the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing or BOINC. BOINC has the benefit of allowing our volunteers the option of sharing their processing power with other worthy projects in addition to SETI@home. These projects range from looking for gravitational waves to searching for cures to diseases.

But all these successes are just a beginning. As you are aware, SETI@home has successfully transitioned to operating under BOINC. Because of this, new searches are on the horizon for SETI@home. We are releasing a new version of our processing software that increases the sensitivity of our search by a factor of two or more. We are building and installing a new data recorder at Arecibo. This data recorder operates in conjunction with a newly installed receiver that has the capability to observe seven places on the sky simultaneously. It also increases our sensitivity by another factor of five. These increases in sensitivity mean that SETI@home will have capability of detecting signals that are three times more distant than we could before. The region of space we can search will expand by a factor of thirty. That's thirty times the chance that your computer will detect that faint signal from another star.

This increase in capability isn't without cost. Following the "dot com" bust, the commercial support that kept SETI@home running has largely disappeared. Because of this loss of support, we can no longer count on matching funds from the University of California. We are rapidly approaching the end of what funds we do have. We we will need to raise about $750,000 to pay for these new capabilities and to keep SETI@home operating for the next year. Without this support SETI@home may be forced to shut down.

We hope that you will consider making a donation to SETI@home. You can make a secure donation by credit card by clicking this link. Instructions for donation by check or money order are there as well. Unless you specify otherwise, your donation will be noted by a star icon next to your username on the SETI@home pages and your username will appear on our list of donors. If you do not wish to have this recognition you may indicate that as well. Please be assured that regardless of whether or not you choose to have your donation be anonymous, SETI@home will not share your address with other organizations.

You can check on our fundraising progress by visiting our main site at http://setiathome.berkeley.edu

Thank You,

Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Author and Futurist and Dan Werthimer
Chief Scientist, SETI@home


Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli

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Message 262888 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 16:50:50 UTC



I just received a similar letter also.




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Message 262915 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 17:56:55 UTC

LOL I best be off to the sulking thread then, mine hasn't arrived yet :-(
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Message 262916 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 17:59:09 UTC - in response to Message 262884.  



no Thread to this so i will beginn

i get this mail

Dear Sir Ulli,

SETI@home needs your help. But before we tell you why - and how you can help - Dan and I would like to thank you for your role in the SETI@home success story.



thanhs Sir Ulli

thank Ophus

:-)

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Profile Byron Leigh Hatch @ team Carl Sagan
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Message 262917 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 18:00:54 UTC - in response to Message 262915.  
Last modified: 16 Mar 2006, 18:01:46 UTC



LOL I best be off to the sulking thread then, mine hasn't arrived yet :-(




me Too

LOL

:-)
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Message 262918 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 18:03:24 UTC

E-mails are being sent to all our users asking for their help. This process takes time. If you haven't gotten your e-mail yet, you can read your personal e-mail on line.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donate.php

Hi Byron that is a bad Day for all Seti People around the World...

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli

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Profile Byron Leigh Hatch @ team Carl Sagan
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Message 262919 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 18:04:34 UTC - in response to Message 262918.  

E-mails are being sent to all our users asking for their help. This process takes time. If you haven't gotten your e-mail yet, you can read your personal e-mail on line.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donate.php

Hi Byron that is a bad Day for all Seti People around the World...

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli



thanks Ulli
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Message 262944 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 19:21:33 UTC
Last modified: 16 Mar 2006, 19:38:12 UTC

Hi everybody,

I too haven't received my email yet, but I went to the Personal email online link, that Sir Ulli mentioned (thanks Sir Ulli), and I'm going to print mine off (sad but true, but hey that's me).

2.4 million years of CPU time, and that's just Seti. Amazing. Perhaps about 4 million cpu years for the whole of BOINC. We should all be proud of ourselves!

And from the SETI@home Donor List
"SETI is probably the most important quest of our time, and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently." - Arthur C. Clarke 2006



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Sometimes I think we are alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we are not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
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Message 262965 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 20:09:30 UTC

I have to make a criticism relating to this topic of funding, they ask for donations but they don't open it up to everybody.

Not everyone has a card that is accepted by SETI, surely open a paypal account and let the money flood in, more users are able to pay by paypal as it is flexible, there may be a charge for using it but surely the small charge out weighs the amount of money that could flood in with Paypal
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Message 262973 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 20:22:15 UTC - in response to Message 262965.  
Last modified: 16 Mar 2006, 20:23:13 UTC

I have to make a criticism relating to this topic of funding, they ask for donations but they don't open it up to everybody.

Not everyone has a card that is accepted by SETI, surely open a paypal account and let the money flood in, more users are able to pay by paypal as it is flexible, there may be a charge for using it but surely the small charge out weighs the amount of money that could flood in with Paypal

I have a merchcant's account with PayPal. The small charge is not much different then you would pay any processing provider for acceptence of CC's over the internet. Plus you don't have to pay the extra fees to process AMEX and Discover Cards.
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Message 262975 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 20:25:27 UTC - in response to Message 262944.  

Hi everybody,

I too haven't received my email yet, but I went to the Personal email online link, that Sir Ulli mentioned (thanks Sir Ulli), and I'm going to print mine off (sad but true, but hey that's me).


I went to the link as well - didn't print it, though (my printer is down for the ten count) - but I did copy it into a Word document that now sits at my desktop ;)

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Message 263068 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 23:35:14 UTC - in response to Message 262965.  

I have to make a criticism relating to this topic of funding, they ask for donations but they don't open it up to everybody.

Not everyone has a card that is accepted by SETI, surely open a paypal account and let the money flood in, more users are able to pay by paypal as it is flexible, there may be a charge for using it but surely the small charge out weighs the amount of money that could flood in with Paypal


I bet Matt wishes he could get back the months he spent trying to wrangle the ability for us to accept Paypal. The biggest issue is that the Univeristy won't let us open a bank account. We approached other non-profit organizations in an attempt to get them to accept donations on our behalf through an account of theirs. We even went so far as to develop the code to interface to paypal. Unfortunately the organizations that initially agreed to help us out with this withdrew (at the last minute).

We considered using a personal account, but the tax implications were frightening.

About our only option would be to start a non-profit foundation to accept donations on our behalf. It would take years to get the IRS 503(c) designation.
So we're stuck with what the University offers.

@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

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Message 263071 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 23:38:54 UTC

It is a very big shame for the project its missing out on so much money out there, get that university's ass kicked, I don't see what there problem is all the funds would goto the good of the project.
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Message 263076 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 23:49:08 UTC - in response to Message 263068.  

I have to make a criticism relating to this topic of funding, they ask for donations but they don't open it up to everybody.

Not everyone has a card that is accepted by SETI, surely open a paypal account and let the money flood in, more users are able to pay by paypal as it is flexible, there may be a charge for using it but surely the small charge out weighs the amount of money that could flood in with Paypal


I bet Matt wishes he could get back the months he spent trying to wrangle the ability for us to accept Paypal. The biggest issue is that the Univeristy won't let us open a bank account. We approached other non-profit organizations in an attempt to get them to accept donations on our behalf through an account of theirs. We even went so far as to develop the code to interface to paypal. Unfortunately the organizations that initially agreed to help us out with this withdrew (at the last minute).

We considered using a personal account, but the tax implications were frightening.

About our only option would be to start a non-profit foundation to accept donations on our behalf. It would take years to get the IRS 503(c) designation.
So we're stuck with what the University offers.


Thanks for the Info Eric...

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli



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Message 263078 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 23:51:08 UTC

Another option is to post an address for people to send checks.


BOINC WIKI
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Message 263080 - Posted: 16 Mar 2006, 23:58:02 UTC

another Question, when Seti goes down

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donate.php

because of the money, what will the people doe with the

http://www.seti.org/site/pp.aspx?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=179290

Millions of Dollars for what, when no where is there to look at the Data..

you have to think about this...

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli


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Message 263082 - Posted: 17 Mar 2006, 0:00:24 UTC - in response to Message 263078.  
Last modified: 17 Mar 2006, 0:01:13 UTC

Another option is to post an address for people to send checks.


http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donate_bymail.php


SETI@home
Space Sciences Laboratory
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-7450
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Message 263115 - Posted: 17 Mar 2006, 1:21:14 UTC

"Another option is to post an address for people to send checks."

This is not a solution for all people.

Last year i send a check from Germany to USA, the transaction fee was bigger as money i send.

I think it is not my problem. I don't need money, SETI@home needs money!

If there is no solution, i can't donate. It's a very easy principle.

The SETI@home team is responsible to find a solution. A project like SETI@home must work on more than projekt software, hardware, science etc. That's life.
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Message 263117 - Posted: 17 Mar 2006, 1:28:12 UTC - in response to Message 263116.  
Last modified: 17 Mar 2006, 1:30:53 UTC



Truly heartbreaking!! If only a mere 30,000 people would donate $25 a year, SETI wouldn't have to shut down.



hi CR

a little bit of good news

so for March, 2006

$10829.46

a little bit of good news

Look here


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Message 263130 - Posted: 17 Mar 2006, 1:46:13 UTC

I read this thread and made my first donation just now $25, but every bit helps, right?

Sparky
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Message boards : Cafe SETI : Letter from Arthur C. Clarke and Dan Werthimer


 
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