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6 total messages Started by Brian J Walter - Brewing Chemist... Fri, 18 Jun 1999 00:00
The Truth is Out There ...
#75
Author: Brian J Walter - Brewing Chemist...
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 00:00
53 lines
3484 bytes
If you never dreamed of being an astronomer please move on.  For those
that have, continue reading.

SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has a fairly new project
called SETI@Home.  They are collecting radio telescope data at the Arecibo
Observatory in South America (Peru ?).  This data (35 GB a day) is written
to tape and sent to Berkeley.  From there it is divided into 256KB chunks
and sent out over the internet to people like myself who have volunteered
our computer downtime to crunch the data.  What you get is a data analysis
program that runs like a screen saver (i.e. only when you are not using
your computer).  It takes the data and does _a lot_ of searching for
narrow bandwidth signals.  When I say a lot that means that a really fast
computer will complete a data set in 15 hours of CPU time.  My Pentium 200
MMX with 32 MB of RAM is processing at about 2% of a data set an hour, or
50 hours of CPU time for one data set!  With 140,000 data sets a day you
can see why SETI is looking for extra processing time.  Once done with a
data set the results are sent back to Berkeley via the internet and a new
data set is downloaded.  Who knows, you just might be the one to discover
ET Intelligence.

If you are still interested, go to http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu to
download the program.  They have versions to run on PC and Mac platforms
as well as several UNIX flavors including _Linux_!  The program is really
easy to setup and run.  

Besides tracking individual statistics, including listing you on their
website if you find anything interesting, they also track combined group
efforts.   I couldn't find a CSU or Fort Collins group, so I started one
myself.  To join you first have to download the program and install it,
thus setting up an account.  Then go back to the main we page listed above
and click on groups.  Goto the bottom of the screen and seach for
"Colorado State Rams" w/o the quotes.  Click join and go from there.

Oh, and the group description was cutoff by their program.  The complete
text is below:  (apologies to those who do not read csu.general on a
regular basis and thus don't understand)

We are a mixed bunch of past and present students of Colorado State
University who have decided to expand our current searching from Remi's
left foot to loftier grails such as ET Intelligence.  Basically we have
all seen Star Wars Episode I and the football season is too far away to
excited about, so we needed something to do.  Although we typically work
for Guiness (or the occasional Murphys) we are all geeks at heart and
will thus do this work for free.

Good Day,
--bjw


-- 
Brian J Walter        |            walter@lamar.colostate.edu
Chem Graduate Student | Homebrewer               | RUSH Rocks Best!
Colorado State Univ   | BJCP National Beer Judge | CSU Rams #1!
Re: The Truth is Out There ...
#76
Author: Bradley Greager
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 00:00
69 lines
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Brian J Walter - Brewing Chemist Astronomer wrote:

> <snip>efforts.   I couldn't find a CSU or Fort Collins group, so I started one
> myself.  To join you first have to download the program and install it,
> thus setting up an account.  Then go back to the main we page listed above
> and click on groups.  Goto the bottom of the screen and seach for
> "Colorado State Rams" w/o the quotes.  Click join and go from there.

    One used to be able to (about two weeks ago) find CSU under the .edu
section of the stats, it was under good ole colostate.edu  I think however with
so many participants, they've had to limit the size of the tables and thus show
only the top computing schools.  Last I checked CSU had about 50 participants,
myself included, but wasn't one of the biggest contributors.

> We are a mixed bunch of past and present students of Colorado State
> University who have decided to expand our current searching from Remi's
> left foot to loftier grails such as ET Intelligence.  Basically we have
> all seen Star Wars Episode I and the football season is too far away to
> excited about, so we needed something to do.  Although we typically work
> for Guiness (or the occasional Murphys) we are all geeks at heart and
> will thus do this work for free.

    But I'm sure we'd like that Guiness if we found something, right?  I mean,
there's got to be some reward for this, eh?  :-P

--
                                             \|/    _____     \|/          _
_              `  _  '
                             ////           @~/  ,    o  \~@        o' \,=./ `o
-  (_)  -
                           (o -)           /_{ \_____/ }_ \           (o o)
'     `
------------ooO--(_)--Ooo-----\___U_/------ooO--(_)--Ooo-----------------
                                  bgreager@holly.colostate.edu
                              http://holly.colostate.edu/~bgreager


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Re: The Truth is Out There ...
#77
Author: Adam Carheden
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 00:00
13 lines
1355 bytes
Awesome!  Now I'm a member and a contributor to the greater scientific
good. :)  I also don't have to feel so bad about paying Intel so much
for a PII because it's no longer going to waste on things like freeciv.

One question about the software though; since I'm a dialin user, what
happens if it needs to send data when I'm offline?  Does it just poll
until I connect?  The faq says that it can be set to ask permission to
connect, but there was nothing about that in the README file, so I'm
assuming that it was talking about windows/mac versions.  Anyone know
anything about the i686-linux-glibc1-static version?
-- 
Adam Carheden
carheden@holly.ColoState.EDU
Re: The Truth is Out There ...
#78
Author: J. Thomas Sapienza
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 00:00
16 lines
1297 bytes
In csu.general Brian J Walter - Brewing Chemist Astronomer <walter@lamar.colostate.edu> wrote:
> If you never dreamed of being an astronomer please move on.  For those
> that have, continue reading.

And to think I almost joined team slashdot!  *phew*

*thinks*

I work for the Forest Service, and we have a lot of computers turned off
for almost 12 to 16 hours a day ... I wonder if I could abuse that
opportunity to do some processing?  ;)

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
 Tom Sapienza                               sapienza@holly.colostate.edu
 ICQ: 3532821                               Score: 35
					            
Re: The Truth is Out There ...
#79
Author: Big Willy Style
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 00:00
21 lines
1512 bytes
There was a loud shot and J. Thomas Sapienza's last words were:
: I work for the Forest Service, and we have a lot of computers turned off
: for almost 12 to 16 hours a day ... I wonder if I could abuse that
: opportunity to do some processing?  ;)

*shrug* i work in the NR building so i'm just letting it run all 
weekend.. 

-big willy style




+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Willy Stroh                          remy@cnr.colostate.edu |
| PC/Unix Lab Technician   http://lamar.colostate.edu/~saurus |
+-----                                                   -----+
|     "Monkey's can be taught differential calculus and       |
|      spatial statistics, but in the end, they still eat     |
|      with their feet."-The Mad Russian                      |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Re: The Truth is Out There ...
#80
Author: Michael Dwyer
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 00:00
20 lines
1567 bytes
In csu.general Big Willy Style <remy@cnr.colostate.edu> wrote:
: : I work for the Forest Service, and we have a lot of computers turned off
: : for almost 12 to 16 hours a day ... I wonder if I could abuse that
: : opportunity to do some processing?  ;)

: *shrug* i work in the NR building so i'm just letting it run all 
: weekend.. 

I've got some 30+ machines all of at least PPro, many are P3s.  But
until the next release comes out, I can't push the SETI stuff through
our firewall...

BGreager: PUHLEEEZE stop posting in HTML+VCard!  You cannot KNOW how
annoying that is!

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Michael J. Dwyer                      I doubt, therefore I might be.
mdwyer@holly.ColoState.edu       http://WWW.CS.ColoState.EDU/~dwyer/
Computer Science Major                      Amateur Radio Tech N0ZAP
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