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| Personal background |
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| 40yo male from southwestern Virginia. Background in electronics, and more recently transitioned into computers/networking, since there are few electronics industries left in this area. So far I've completed an associate's in IST, and currently taking Cisco classes (CCNA). But I believe I'll have to move away from here to make a go of it. ===== Equipment used: 4 computers networked at home with cable modem access. They are a Pentium-133, Pentium III-450, AMD Duron 750, and AMD Athlon 900. I run SETI most the time on all but the Pent-133 (not much point... took nearly 100 hours to process one unit). All these I assembled myself. They all run Windows 98 & 2000. I'm about to give birth to another soon, have everything but mb & proc, probably go with AMD 2G . That should boost my stats somewhat, lol. I'll include a pic here of my setup once I get a decent camera, soon I hope. ===== 7/6/03: Well, I've since built my new computer (AMD 2100 XP), and bought a digital camera (Canon G2). Despite all the camera's wonderful capabilities, I realized I had to crop and compress the crap out of the pic because of SETI's pic file size limitation (a measly 50k). May as well have used one of them $20 digital cameras. Given 10M of HD space costs less than 1-cent now, SETI is getting off pretty cheap for my $20/month of electricity to run 3 computers. But it keeps my house comfortably warm in the winter. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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| : I strongly believe the universe is teaming with life... but intelligent life is probably rare. By 'intelligent', I refer to the capability of construction, technology, space travel, etc. Although the dolphin may be mentally intelligent, it was shortchanged by evolution and not given an opposable thumb, so cannot create 'things'. ===== For the fortunate creatures that can grasp a hammer, then I must wonder how many self-destruct after development of technology. Given our own precarious past and present, I consider it a miracle we've not destroyed ourselves already (through war, pollution, over-population, marriage, etc) and add to that the destructive capabilities we have at present will pall in comparison to what is to come, I'm certain doom befalls many. So there... call me a pessimist if you wish, but I believe technology is the downfall to more than the savior. So in conclusion, an opposable thumb is any specie's greatest curse. ===== 7/13/03: A NOTE ON CHEATING: An article on this subject caught my attention several days ago. Its sad that there are members who would trade off the possible gains of this research for high numbers in order to boost their little egos. The bad data created through such actions endangers the whole project, casting doubt on the accuracy of any data to the scientific community. Its not very surprising that cheating 'can' occur, but that it 'does' occur, over such a trivial, and for the most part, anonymous matter. Who is this user 'blah blah' that's completing 1000 or 50000 WU/week? Who knows... who cares, really. The only people they are impressing are themselves. I suppose they can't afford a fancy car, or a real computer, so the big WU numbers must somehow compensate for their phallic shortfall. My only hope is when/if the aliens do arrive, that all the cheaters are lined up and probed. |
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