I think it would be cool if when you reach certain number crunching benchmarks participators would receive a t-shirt or a baseball cap stenciled with seti and their benchmark number or their team with numbers and their name.

I would think it wouldnt be too expensive and assume it would draw in more participants that would like to compete.

Just an idea, I would def endorse it

thank you for your time.

approximately 158,000 active users. That would be a very expensive prize distribution. Unless you set it so that only about 1% actually attain the goal. even then thats 1500+ For a project that is on a shoestring budget this would seem unattainable

---

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Ok,ok I see.

imagine this, I'll try not to waste your time.

Try and get perhaps Alienware computer company involved as a kind of sponsor. Split the cost of the tshirts or whatever. You both get your logos on the shirts. Then limit the amount you make so they are exclusive. t achievments(Then everyone wants one). Have perhaps 10 awards a month for different each catagory with the best scores. At the end of the year the champion of # crunching wins an alienware laptop.

All of this I would think would give s whole lot more interest than hoping they may discover a signal. I bet most people would participate b/c they know their chances are so low to win an Alien discovery.

Or maybe the top crunchers of the year get a seti satellite dish named after them.

maybe get all that televised on X-play or Attack of the show like a contest.

And if a signal is found everyone that participated in seti@ home goes down in history at discovering life... and a taco

Getting a sponsor of any kind would ruin any kind of non-biased approach to the scientific endeavor of the already-made-into-a-joke of alien hunting. It would immediately encourage complaints of "Why Alienware when Macintosh clearly runs SETI better?" or "Sure, your Alienware has a higher RAC because they support SETI, so they must have special optimizations built into the application that checks for the presense of an Alienware computer and gives them preferrential treatment".

Maybe I'm going overboard there, but I don't think the project wants to put themselves in such a precarious position.

Also, SETI@Home does not have any satellites. SETI@Home uses the Aricebo Satellite and more recently the Greenbank Telescope, and I don't think SETI@Home is authorized to rename either after a SETI@Home user. Likely you're thinking of the Allen Telescope Array owned by the SETI Institute, which is unaffiliated with SETI@Home.



At this point, SETI's infrastructure and internet connection are rather clogged with the number of users they currently have, and as much as I'm sure the Project Administrators would love to have more, they need to focus on ways of being able to have more users connect to their servers without dropped connections.

Prizes and contests are fun and all, but they simply need funding to improve things like better servers and get a faster internet connection. SETI@Home has about 5 total employees, requires about $500,000/yr for the lease of their lab, server maintenance, and other (slow coming) progress, but typically receive less than $50,000/yr and all funding comes from private donations.




These are based upon my own observations as a volunteer for the past nearly 10 years. I think that the foundation needs fixing before worrying about getting more volunteers, most of whom refuse to open their wallets with attitudes like "I'm already donating my processing time and paying my electric bill! Why should I donate money too?" (an argument I've heard repeated all too often).

By the way, people have also tossed around the idea of paying to participate as a way to guarantee income for the project, but the Project Administrators have tossed that idea out because they do not want to exclude anyone from contributing to science based upon their willingness to pay.

[quote]Getting a sponsor of any kind would ruin any kind of non-biased approach to the scientific endeavor of the already-made-into-a-joke of alien hunting. It would immediately encourage complaints of "Why Alienware when Macintosh clearly runs SETI better?" or "Sure, your Alienware has a higher RAC because they support SETI, so they must have special optimizations built into the application that checks for the presense of an Alienware computer and gives them preferrential treatment".


You both have good points, but isn't the end result to get this done and attract some publicity or fresh funding.
If budget is so tight then why not ask for companies to apply to be a sponsor, then you could filter the obvious silly ones. Im sure there are lots of company's that would be proud to be associated with this effort.

I bet the major chip manufacturers would be interested? And they would be delighted to pony up for a few tee-shirts. I bet they spend more than the seti budget on pens and key-rings anyway.

You both have good points, but isn't the end result to get this done and attract some publicity or fresh funding.
If budget is so tight then why not ask for companies to apply to be a sponsor, then you could filter the obvious silly ones. Im sure there are lots of company's that would be proud to be associated with this effort.

SETI@Home is not allowed to approach companies for support or donations directly. The Berkeley Regents forbid it.

I bet the major chip manufacturers would be interested? And they would be delighted to pony up for a few tee-shirts. I bet they spend more than the seti budget on pens and key-rings anyway.

Most companies would want exclusive marketing. E.g. If nVidia were to help SETI@Home, they would want to exclude ATi/AMD. I imagine the same would go for Intel vs. AMD.

Even if it didn't pan out that way, most certainly the companies would not want to be associated with the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence as the mention of SETI conjures up bad publicity of "little green men" and "anal probings" and nutty conspiracy theorists who insist our public officials are of an alien reptilian race. Most companies would avoid that association like the plague.

I understand what you're getting at (a means to an end) but I agree with what the other fellas have said. This is ultimately a hard-science endeavor and there are certain ways that you just have to go about it. It's kind of the same reason AA doesn't take in outside funds (even from churches/salvation army/et al).

What I *DO* think could help is perhaps starting some kind of coordinated social media (i cringe even saying those words) push for more users. Perhaps something to make it go viral. Those are the only things I can think of which could achieve the ends that we want w/o violating the framework we have to work in.

Thanks for reading!
~Mike

I believe SETI@Home has a Facebook page already. I don't know for certain because I don't use social networking sites, but I seem to recall Dr. Eric Korpela saying something about it in a previous message.