I am a software engineer that really loves the idea of using home systems for distributed processing of science projects. I proposed the idea to AT&T in 1991 for a large scale project that we had going on at that time, they rejected it saying that no one would ever donate their CPU time to you for free. I guess SETI has proved them wrong on that one!
I have gone on since then to get my Ph.D. in Computer Science and have written a number of small distributed systems myself.
I currently work at Microsoft in Redmond Washington.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
The very idea of even a REMOTE possibility is what keeps me going on looking using the SETI program. I like the idea of using my spare CPU cycles to help science. The science budget in most Universities is a joke compared to a commercial budgets. I enjoy the thought that SETI is getting more CPU cycles donated than most companies could afford to pay for! I really hope that SETI continues to run FAR beyond the current scope of the project. I would support a permanent mandate / budget from the National Science Foundation to SETI for this project or derivatives. I think it is that important.
I think with the rise of public clouds the ability of users to contribute cycles is going to be diminished. Not as many people have spare machines at home anymore, they keep everything in the cloud.
I have been running SETI since the command line around 1999 I believe. I stop and start over time depending upon how many machines I have and where I am residing at the time.
It is amazing to me that all the CPU cycles I did for YEARS across lots of machines was eclipsed by a pretty simple GPU today. That is pretty darn cool!
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.
