| Personal background |
| I am a retired Navy veteran, currently working as a LAN Analyst / Network Administrator for San Diego Data Processing Corporation, a non-profit entity created by the City of San Diego to service its internal IS needs. I'm a long time NetWare fan, and just got the Seti@Home client to finally run on my NetWare 6 box (thanks to http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,1347615;root=seti;mode=flat for the tip that made it work--load NETDB.NLM). |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
Well, considering:
1. The vastness of the universe;
2. The huge span of time that our galaxy is supposed to have existed;
3. The (hopefully large) amount of time the galaxy has left in it;
4. That we have been around for only a few thousand of those years (at best);
5. That we have only gotten up to the technological point where we can communicate outside our own galaxy during the last 50 years or so;
6. That even if our civilization lasted for a few thousand more years (doubtful, I sometimes think) it would still be a drop in the bucket of the millions and millions of years we are talking about; and that
7. The the sequence of events that led to life on our planet would have to be simluated in a very similar timeline for another race to be in a similar technologically advanced state...
I would have to say that while I don't discount the great coincidence that other intelligent races could exist at this point in time in an advanced enough technological state for us to communicate with them, I think the odds are stacked against us in this particular instance. But stranger things have happened.
But hey, I've got extra computer resources available, and I'm a big science fiction fan, so I don't mind helping out the cause. Unless we (or they) can conquer the speed of light, I don't think communication will be possible in real time, and actual travel is good distance in the future. However, actually proving another intelligent race exists might make religous zealouts reconsider the "fact" that theirs is the "only" true way. ;-)
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