1. There is no one out there for us to communicate with. Technological civilizations are far rarer than science-fiction or Carl Sagan would have you to believe.
2. Yes, we should definitely send a beacon out. It should
be in Dolby Digital.
3. I run SETI@HOME because it drives my sysadmin mad.
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.