What is SETI@home

     As I update old information that was on the old TEAM: Brian web site, I will leave the old page intact, below the new information, if only for historical value.  The rich and vast history of TEAM: Brian, which, surely, be highly valued by future historians.  (Right...anyway...)

      SETI@Home is the original BOINC project.  It is the original distributed computing project.  And, all at the same time, the one project that
you are most embarrassed to try to explain to your friends who don't know what any of this is all about.  Why?  Well, these guys are serious scientists, using some of the best telescopes and radio arrays on the planet, working entirely on donations, to look for, aliens.  Well, signs of intelligent life not on planet Earth, to be more exact, but, basically, aliens.  And people seem to find that, oh, so funny.  (Wow, I seem to have gone from stupidly humorous to really, really bitter on these things.)  Anyway, the guys at SETI@Home created distributing computing and wrote the BOINC software, allowing all the projects who came after them to share computing time with them.  Sine non qua, or, without SETI@Home, all of this would not exist, so show 'em a little respect.  I know.  It's hard.  They are looking for aliens, after all.  But, try, ok.  Just try. 

Brian


     Below is the original SETI@Home information from the old TEAM: Brian web site.  Any information found there is likely to be old, out of date, or no longer valid.  The old web site is incredibly old.  The theme you need to understand her is extreme age.  Old.  Well, I think I ran that straight into the ground. 

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What is SETI@Home?

Well, their website has this to say:
"SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data."
You put a program on your computer that receives data from SETI@Home. When you are not using your computer, your computer analyzes the data and sends the results back to SETI@Home. Basically, they are looking for radio signals from space which would indicate the presence of intelligent life. It's a SETI project, SETI, the Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. They are looking for aliens! Or, maybe, an alien radio station.  KXET maybe? Anyway, SETI projects are always all volunteers who get little real financial help because no one sees an profit in looking for aliens, so it is nice to help them out. Also, it is not like nothing ever came out of this project. Other scientists use the data they collect to figure other cosmic stuff out. Something about hydrogen dispersal I think. Anyway, there is that and, well they did develop this software that allows people to have many smaller computers do the work of larger computers faster and less expensively than would otherwise be possible, so they are contributing to other scientific research. Anyway, the people at SETI@Home can tell you more about themselves than I really care to. You can find them at http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/ 
Brian