While we may never find anything in our lifetime, I prefer to use my computer to do nonprofit work like Seti@home rather than trying to find cures for cancer so some company can make billion of dollars off of my computer.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
