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| Personal background |
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I work as a software engineer at a mobile robotics company in Massachusetts. I started out writing educational software on timeshared computers, at the time called "supercomputers" in 1978. I've been working with remotely controlled real-time systems since 1987, working on projects in industrial applications ranging from paper mills to automobile manufacturing lines to communications satellite control to my current work in remote mobile robotics.
I live just outside of Boston with my beautiful wife and two children. I dabble in photography, clocks from old mechanicals to NTP networks, and revel in good audio electronics. I sing in a classical choir and am active in the local Democratic party.
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I find the SETI@Home project intriguing on a few levels. One is as an example of tapping into the resources of the global, networked community. Here the organizers of this project had a need, invented an approach that provided those interested with a way to help fill that need, and then built one of the largest volunteer organizations ever made. Governmental and scientific organizations have spent billions of dollars building systems that pale in comparison to the capability strung together here on a shoestring. I am awestruck at this achievement.
Second, I find it technically exciting as an example of a large networked computing system. Other systems, such as large scale weather simulations for forecasting, could learn a lot from examining this effort in detail. With the possible exception of adding more peer-to-peer networking to reduce the bottleneck for receiving results and portioning out work units at Berkeley, there's little to change and much to learn from this system. The fact that in such a large computing system they have to account for effects such as low probability bit errors in floating point units is just one of the eye opening elements of making a system at this scale.
Third, having this system running on my computers scratches a somewhat strange itch for me. Working on real-time control systems has developed a taste in me for active computing systems that are always running, always aware, always doing their thing. Knowing that my computers are productively spending their spare cycles filtering data adds an overtone to that hum of activity that I enjoy.
Lastly, I'm somewhat interested in whether or not this project may actually find patterns in the signals being searched. I suppose that there might be other life in the universe. However, I'm not confident that we'll find proof of it in my lifetime. But, to find it we must look, and I'm glad that a start is being made in the SETI project. |
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