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| Personal background |
Hey, Luxembourg is a small country so I guess it will be easy to find out my Real Name if I tell about myself. But here we go anyway: I am currently moving a high speed towards my 33rd birthday. Somehow acceleration seems to be involved in this, which is a bit distressing. Ok, so I am into Informatics (do I hear yawns?). Applied Informatics, no research (more yawns). Some Linux involved (yeah!). Graduated from: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich in '94. My Dream was: to do something in AI. So I hung around as teaching assistant a couple of years. Finally, I thought that it would be better to either get a Real Job or do a PhD but I didn't trust myself to pull through a PhD (4 years? Eeek!) so I gravitated toward the Luxembourg Telecoms Operator where I helped in setting up the Chtulhu-like ICMS Billing System (It eats minds. No, really!). After four years I decided I was bored senseless and took a job at one of those crazy startup companies surfing the Internet wave. Still no AI, but I got to read lots of books about then-unkown-to-me concepts like HTML and Networking and Mad Script Kiddie Attacks. Crazy. Well, this startup eventually morphed into monster.lu. That killed off my belowed Linux servers. Sitting next to remotely-serviced Windows machines was not my idea of a good time, so I moved to another startup, where I still am. That's enough CV for now. Hobbies? Well, none really. Once I have finished job-related activies and read through all the weeklies and monthlies and the books on my table (Comics! Science Fiction! Science! Engineering! Computers! Politics! Management? Raah!), there is still some time to play Counterstrike and have a couple of drinks, sure...
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
Thoughts...well... Let's say that I consider (radio) SETI an interesting endeavor with low probability of success. We are currently examining such a very small hypercube of space x time x frequency x meaningfulness, and to have somebody else on the other end at the right moment, not too far away, rich enough to place a call, calling in our preferred frequency band and who does not speak in tongues ...slim chances indeed. But we will see. In a few thousand years maybe? I just hope that they send us their whole library of physics, I am dying to see a somewhat complete mathematical description of this universe. Now, SETI's problem is that it may take longer to get a meaningful result than humans are prepared to accept or to invest serious resources in. I may take even take longer than humanity can survive in the first place (I reckon we are gonna make another few thousand years to the max). Am I a pessimist?
Now for some wilder speculation: once machines become sentient (bound to happen in a few decenniums) we will have superior Alien Intelligences to contend with in our own backyard. Now that should be challenging. Also, they might be interested in doing management of projects taking milleniums (i.e. SETI) -- if they are bored, they can just slow the clock speed -- and they might be interested in taking up travel to the stars at sub-light speed, too (they are small, do not need mongo life-support systems and, no, I don't believe in travel > c - this is a prison universe!). Thus, anyone from this solar system reaping benefits of SETI might only have a few thought patterns in common with their human ancestors. Good enough for me.
See you at the Big Rip!
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