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FORA.tv Series: Maker Faire Bay Area 2009

Dan Werthimer Presents SETI@home

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Rdallas1 Avatar
Rdallas1
Posts: 44
Posted: 06.10.09, 11:03 AM
It's really exciting that we the public have the opportunity to change history by having the ability to detect if there is really life on other planets. After all, I think it is pretty unlikely that we are the only living beings in the entire universe. My question is that if we do detect life on other planets, what is the next step? Will and should we make contact if we have the technological ability? It is definitely worth thinking about, especially since it seems new technology is growing at an extremely fast pace these days.
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Vasil Avatar
Vasil
Posts: 46
Posted: 06.10.09, 03:00 PM
Quote from SETI@home website: "Any time you download a program through the Internet you are taking a chance: the program might have dangerous errors, or the download server might have been hacked. SETI@home has made efforts to minimize these risks. We have tested our applications carefully. Our servers are behind a firewall and are configured for high security... The applications run by SETI@home may cause some computers to overheat"
Program developers need to do a better job in promoting their product and guaranteeing safety to the contributing users. One of the SETI's functions is to collect information from a user's computer and send it to the main server. Could SETI be a creative tool to hack personal data? Privacy and safety stand out as the main issues on the way to programs successful promotion and distribution.
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Berend Avatar
Berend
Posts: 2
Posted: 06.16.09, 04:11 PM
Could it be a creative tool to hack personal data? YES, it could be. Is it likely that it IS a tool to hack personal data? NO. It is likely that that 'free' screensaver you downloaded from some obscure and visually loud website after clicking some popup is a tool to hack personal data? YES. One of SETI's functions is to cllect information from a users computer and send it to the main server. Yes, that is true: IT'S A DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING EFFORT! That's the whole point of the SETI@Home program: you are donating computer time to crunching numbers. This means the SETI@Home program downloads from the main server a piece of data, uses your computer to crunch numbers and look for ETI, and send the analysis back to the main server. THAT is the 'information being collected from a users computer', it probably also sends back that you are running Windows Vista on an AMD/Intel processor at 2.8 GHz with 4 Gigs of RAM, cause that data can be used to help optimize the performance of the SETI@home program. BTW, you can *turn off* sending that data if I'm not mistaken .There is an option to opt out of sending information on BOINC that is not the crunched data.
So basically, if you dont want to help out with distributed computing. Dont download it.
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ladyfox14 Avatar
ladyfox14
Posts: 29
Posted: 06.17.09, 04:00 PM
@Vasil - I highly doubt that SETI@home is using your computer's information for devious purposes. You are more likely to send your personal information to strangers/catch a virus by torrenting a movie or whatever it is that you kids do these days. If you think about it, program developers do not generally guarantee your safety. I do not recall buying a product and them telling me they will always be able to keep my personal information under lock and key. There are times sites tell you they will not personally use your information but what if someone hacks into the site? The company is somewhat at fault but it still doesn't fix the problem of your personal dirt floating around the internet. As long as someone is able to hack into a site, your personal materials are never safe.

When you buy products with big brand names like Adobe or Apple, you assume that your personal information is safe when it is completely possible that it isn't. Gmail searches through your emails to find links that are related to what you are writing. Google knows all the sites that you have visited and they do not given out any of this information to the government/outside businesses only because of their moral values as a company. It would be easy enough to catch all the people that are looking up how to make large scale bombs but Google is not going to betray the trust of their people.

The best way to avoid giving out personal information is to make sure you aren't giving out certain material like your password if it seems sketchy that your computer is asking for permission and know from where you are downloading stuff. You can also generate a new password for every program/site you use and if you want to be extremely paranoid, you can encode your computer data, including im messages (in this case, your friends would need to download a decoder in order to read any receiving messages). There are a lot of different ways to make your computer infinitely more secure but it all depends on if it is really worth spending so much time doing so.

One problem with being so paranoid is that if you start hardcore encoding enough of your computer data, you will become a blip on the government surveillance and they will probably come after you. Government officials assume the only reason you are being so careful is because you have something to hide from them when in reality, it is not at all true. You just want to keep your information safe from hackers, etc but it doesn't look like that to them. But I am sorry. I am diverging off subject.

I agree with @Berend - if you don't want to help, don't download it.
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Bim Avatar
Bim
Posts: 1
Posted: 06.29.09, 03:23 AM
I have been running SETI@home for many years and have not heard of anyone suffering from viruses or spyware. )
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nightlight Avatar
nightlight
Posts: 31
Posted: 10.18.09, 12:38 AM
I to have been running SETI@home for several years, though most of the time I was running it on a computer dedicated to only, or mostly, to SETI and have never had any trouble though that computer is currently out of commission due to a power surge, it was a really bad day, but I am hoping to replace the hard drive and continue. I consider it an honor to be involved with such a project.
I have to admit that I think that it is very unlikely to receive a message from ET but we certainly won't if we don't try.
I encourage anyone with spare time on their computer or with their old computer to help them out. Who knows what may come of it.
I to wonder what if we do should we receive a message from another ET but first things first.
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