[lug] Seti at home

[Hugh Brown]

Seems like they could have been fraudulent (not that they were) from the
start and been cracking large codes the whole time.  You download a
block, crunch on it, turn in the results, get a new block, etc.  The
whole time they have been working on cracking bank codes or something. 
Sounds like something out of conspiracy theory.  I doubt that this is
actually the case, but what assurances do you have that the software is
actually performing the function you think it is.  I guess you just have
to trust the seti @home people. 

Interesting thinking though.

Hugh


Timothy Klein wrote:
> 
> Wayde,
> 
> You know, I had never really thought about it.  I just believed them.  Hmmm...?
> Well, I think it is most likely that they are doing SETI work, but the other
> possibilities do exist.  I do watch my machine fairly closely, though, and Seti
> only makes outside connections when it finishes a work unit, and then to the
> same place for a short time.
> 
> Got me thinking.
> 
> Tim
> 
> On Fri, Aug 11, 2000 at 09:33:48AM -0600, Wayde Allen wrote:
> > On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Timothy Klein wrote:
> >
> > > and my Seti at home times-per-work-unit went from time around 25 hours to around
> > > 7 hours.
> >
> > I have a really dumb question about Seti at home.  A while back I was curious
> > about this service and visited their web page.  One thing that seemed
> > curiously missing for a service that people should volunteer to run on
> > their home systems was a clear and concise description of the software,
> > the analyses to be done, the organization responsible for this code, and
> > especially a guarantee or some degree of assurance that it actually does
> > what they say it does.  With the current worry about network security I
> > find it interesting how commonly distributed accross the net this program
> > is without these kinds of assurances.  I haven't checked their web site
> > lately so perhaps this has changed, but I guess what I wonder is how do
> > you know that your machine is really working on Seti data rather than
> > perhaps chewing on some encryption breaking code?
> >
> > - Wayde
> >   (wallen at boulder.nist.gov)