I'm a program manager in the OS group at Microsoft. I've always been facinated with the hope that there are greater intellects than our own. It would be nice to find that on our planet, but I'm not opposed to looking to other planets to find it. :)
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I do think there is life on other planets, but I don't know if we will ever find it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't look for it though. Some of the best discoveries in our history happened by accident, so we may just get lucky and discover something by accident.
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.