Seti @ Home

[Phoenixfury]

I was just wondering if there were very many people here that use Seti @ home? I use a few other bulliten boards and belong to a group called Team Trillian. Does anyone here want to compare stats?

[Diesel]

I used to run SETI, but now we focus on Folding@Home.

If you're not familiar with the project, there's plenty of info in this forum that explains it, and we have a decent team put together, so any of us can explain it as well. ;)

SETI fits the theme of these forums, but we figured that Folding@Home presents the opportunity for more of a benefit than SETI.

BTW, welcome to the soup. ;)

[Phoenixfury]

Well thankyou Diesel Dan!

Yeah I'm die hard set on Seti and commited to team Trillian at this point. Even if I wasn't part of Team Trillian I would still run Seti, but that's just me. :) I read a little bit into Folding @ home, and I think it's a great cause. I've heard that Seti @ home is only a 3 year program, so when that's up, I will likly look at Folding @ home as my next project. :)

[Diesel]

For me, I looked at the possible benefits that could come from the respective projects. As I saw it, the projects had the following issues:

Prime95 - no real benefit in practical terms
RC5 - self-defeating, in that it either proves that an encryption scheme is virtually un-crackable, or that it's fallible.
SETI - discovery is a wonderful venture, but the area being explored is so miniscule, chances of finding anything are slim.
United Devices - good in principle, but the commercial backing rubs me the wrong way. The outcome will benefit some big corporation, who will then probably charge people out the ear for a cure for their disease.
Folding@Home - Public disclosure keeps the positives of United Devices, while sharing the information freely with the medical and scientific communities.
Genome@Home - very similar to Folding.

Now, these are just my personal opinions, so don't take my criticism of a project as a criticism of someone participating in these projects. I've contributed to most of them myself (my SETI stats (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?email=cabral@pipeline.com&cmd=user_stats_new)). However, when it came time to looking into forming a team of our own here, we looked at all of the projects and felt Folding presented the best balance of potential benefit and chances of material success.

If the project even helps the medical community to develop a treatment for a disease that previously had no treatment, or helps someone dealing with an illness in some small measure, then I think anyone would consider the project to be an overwhelming success. Of course, the potential for the project is far greater.

[Phoenixfury]

I can respect your opinion and I think that is cool. My personal feeling on this is run what you choose to run. My choice was already made and I'm sticking too it. I think it's great that you have the support of this board to run Folding @ home. I think it's a great cause and very much worth while. Beleive me if I could run both Seti and Folding @ home I would do it, but I know that would greatly affect my processing speed and kill my system preformance. As I said before, perhaps when the Seti @ home project comes to an end, I may switch over to Folding @ home. Until then, I'll be one of the few members here keeping an eye out in the sky. :)

[WaterB]

i ran seti on my celeron333 until i hit triple digits.. (took a while).. then i had to redo my computer and didn't think it was worth it to run seti anymore.. :)

i ran screensaver.. make people go oooo.. what's that

[Diesel]

Originally posted by Phoenixfury
My personal feeling on this is run what you choose to run.

I agree.

FWIW, running both SETI and Folding simultaneously wouldn't impair your system performance, as they both use IDLE priority. However, running both silultaneously will destroy your times in each project, as they'll only have access to half the CPU resources they had previously.

However, neither should affect overall system performance, either running alone or running together.

[SwissSmiss]

heh, took dan long enough to get me to start folding... :D