I am currently a first-year student at Earlham College. I have no idea what my major is going to be, but I am thinking of computer science. Earlham's Computer Science department is geared towards applying the knowledge immediately towards projects, such as maintaining CS's and ECS's servers and networks.

As for my hobbies, I enjoy working with computers, as you might have guessed from above. I run Linux and NetBSD where I can, but I also provide pseudo-Help Desk support to my floor, which is Windows/Mac. I also enjoy bicycling and chess.

I do think that extra-terrestrial intelligence exists. I don't think that there is any telling of when we will discover them, or vice versa. I think such an encounter will greatly benefit all areas of science, from philosophy to medicine. While I think a beacon is useful, it will be nowhere near as effective as mere radio surveillance of the sky. If such a beacon were to be setup, I think a simple binary code would be enough, as that would signify intelligence without becoming too complicated.

On a personal note, I run SETI@Home because I feel it is the responsibility of all who are able to look for intelligence, whether it is like us or very different. It also gives me an excuse to leave my machines all the time so they can accumulate a good uptime. :)

Just as a suggestion to the project, I think it would be a good idea to try to integrate all of the distributed computing projects, such as SETI@Home, cancer research, and protein mapping. Then users can choose a variety of projects, and the downloader chooses packets at random from the different projects. With nearly 4,000,000 users, SETI@Home dominates the distributed computing market, and makes it difficult for other projects to take hold. At the same time, I'm sure a significant portion of SETI@Home's users also would be willing to work on cancer and protein, and this integrated would make it easier for them to do that.