This was my screensaver for several years starting in maybe 2001. It felt really cool as a 12 year old to be contributing to the project in some small way.
For a long time I would periodically check on the screen saver in case there would be some big message saying my computer found aliens or something. Never did though :)
Contributing resources to a scientific experiment aligns contributions with outcomes, since getting a hit is knowledge that everyone benefits from: the result (including a negative result) is in the public domain and benefits everyone to know. In this case, the result is that after 20 years of distributed search, no plausible ET signal was found and verified. That's good to know!
I rebuilt my PII system last year and really wanted to run SAH on it for old time's sake but sadly that hasn't been possible for a long time. I miss watching that old screensaver and optimising the system performance so I could get through a WU in less time, iirc at the time it took about 18 hours each.
Years ago I worked for another BOINC project, climateprediction.net and I'm pleased to see that they are still operating (see: https://main.cpdn.org/).
IIRC SETI@Home was well-known back then - I'd always mention it if people asked what I did, and they usually recognised it.
Used to have this running on all of our computers in the office back in 1999, or 2000. Such a satisfying screensaver! Then I went even further and put it on the servers too.
I'm beginning to wonder if typos, missing words, and other grammatical error in titles is an accidental thing, or if someone has discovered that it gets more "engagement".
My first internship was at DEC / Compaq in 2000. I was on their C compiler team and my project was to build seti tools with their updated Alpha Linux C compiler and compare perf against the tools built with the GNU C compiler. It was a fun project.
I don’t believe extra terrestrial life will contact us through effort or negligence via radio. To help proof this I’ve run the SETI@HOME screensaver for years.
Wanted to share this funny SETI@home prank that Monzy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Maynes-Aminzade) did in 1999, where he created a fake VB app that tricked a coworker into believing that his computer successfully found an extraterrestrial signal.
I remember at the time that donating CPU time was considered trivial. Not so much today.
At the time of SETI@home, a typical CPU used maybe 20W at full load, fans usually ran at constant speed, and power management was much more primitive. So you barely noticed the difference between idle and full load, both on your electricity bill and on the noise the PC made.
Now hundreds of watts is not uncommon if you also use the GPU, and people are much more conscious about how much power computers use. And at full power, fans spin up loudly, laptops get uncomfortably hot, etc... It means you are not going to do it as easily. It probably didn't help the "@home" projects.
I started running SETI back in 1999 when it first came out. I ran it on both my personal machines and even had it running on several servers I controlled at work. I probably ran it for several years before losing interest, pulling it off of everything. I guess I am a bit surprised to learn it was still running. It was quite unique back in the day. I wonder how many years of CPU time were burned running this thing.
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 53.0 ms ] threadWas it all for nothing?
The truth is still out there.
For a long time I would periodically check on the screen saver in case there would be some big message saying my computer found aliens or something. Never did though :)
I'm quite surprised these are still around as I hadn't seen them mentioned in so long.
I always assumed the phase out of screensavers (and introduction of CPU low power modes) were terminal for them.
Update: looks like there is a Wikipedia list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volunteer_computing_pr...
Would still be nice to know for the applicable ones if any success have come out of these or if they're just fun toys
The original site is down, but jump to November 5, 1999 to see the screenshot. https://web.archive.org/web/20030404093458/http://www.monzy....
At the time of SETI@home, a typical CPU used maybe 20W at full load, fans usually ran at constant speed, and power management was much more primitive. So you barely noticed the difference between idle and full load, both on your electricity bill and on the noise the PC made.
Now hundreds of watts is not uncommon if you also use the GPU, and people are much more conscious about how much power computers use. And at full power, fans spin up loudly, laptops get uncomfortably hot, etc... It means you are not going to do it as easily. It probably didn't help the "@home" projects.
:)
Wasnt this the original wording?