This is a better source than Youtube videos regarding the possibility of alien life:

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Carl-Sagan/dp/0345331354/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209007408&sr=8-2

:)

Also, Arthur C. Clarke passed away quite recently. I have not read any of his books (if any), however. Perhaps someone can make a suggestion ?

Rendezvous With Rama, The Songs of Distant Earth, 2010

I think these are his best books. They're mostly about space exploration and first contact between humans and other civilizations. Some of his older books have become a bit dated because we have more information about the outer solar system from Voyager, Cassini, etc. But they're still fun to read. For example, the book 2001 involves Saturn's moon Iapetus and there's no way Arthur could have guessed in 1968 some of the strange features of this moon found by Cassini. Here's a picture of what I mean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iapetus_(moon)

It's also fun to compare the book and film of 2001. (The book and film of 2001 are inconsistent, but Arthur strangely chose to make 2010 consistent with the movie, rather than his book.)

. . . see here SETI@home Arthur C Clarke tribute page

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

Some strange things I noticed regarding the strongest gaussians that I have had - they do not show up in the log. ...

Note that the gaussian figures are a measure of how far the measured gaussian deviates from the 'expected' gaussian shape. A 'good' gaussian is one that scores a very small number or even zero.

Try searching the Boinc HELP for s@h for further details.

Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
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I am wondering - if these gaussians aren't of any value, what should I be looking for in a WU that is being processed ?

Probably nothing.

It's not the Gaussians aren't of any value, they may well be.
But you have to put your results in perspective.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sci_status.html

167,096 gaussians have been detected within the last 24 hours alone. Over the course of the project (or at least since they've been reporting this set of results), 275,274,618 gaussians have been detected.

Remember, a few years ago the SETI@Home team chose the 200 "best" potential candidate signals and out of those 200 only *one* was reconfirmed, and that one signal was ultimately deemed not to be a potential candidate for a signal from ET.

Despite the fact that chances are extremely remote that any potential candidate signal will ever be processed on your computer, no matter how many WUs you complete, the best thing you can do is crunch away and contribute your part to the larger picture. Without everybody contributing their part, this project wouldn't happen.

You can use BonicLogX and SETI@Home Map Viewer to analyze your results and plot the directions of the sources in our perspective of the Milky Way. Detected radio sources will be color-coded to show relative strength. It can be interesting to see what your results look like.
....but SETI@Home can only thoroughly check through all detected radio sources for potential candidates with something like NTPCKR, http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_plans.php