yes. but the moment they find something, life will be different for all of us.

Go D Go

Yes, it is a shame that so many folks are crunching for SETI instead of for something useful. And while there is plenty of opportunity re unused computers -- as keithhenry pointed out -- it seems to be extremely difficult to get new people involved. For instance, a couple of weeks ago I posted a short message on a cancer group with Yahoo; I first obtained permission from the Group's owner and its board of overseers. The group has over 5,000 members, most of whom I presume are personally affected by cancer in some way and therefore ought to be at least moderately interested in anything that offers hope for a cure. The subject line said: "Use your computer's spare power to help find a cure for cancer". There was not a single reply. I would have even welcomed an accusation of spamming, because that would have given me the opportunity to explain that the message was previewed and approved by the group's owner and overseers, but I didn't even get that kind of response. Now, if any of those members happened to check out my webpage or the WCG site, then I would have expected to see SOME sort of ensuing discussion in that thread -- but there has been total silence. I find that absolutely incredible and extremely discouraging -- but I press on anyway.

As for SETI, I just picture a bunch of Star Trek fans engaged in a fantasy. While I will concede the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, I am very skeptical about it and, in any event, don't believe that knowing it would ever be beneficial to mankind in any way. I therefore have to agree with Didactylos that our lives won't change in any meaningful way, and I can't see how that knowledge would ever reduce wars, etc. On the contrary, I think such knowledge would be a setback to religion which, for the most part, helps to restrain many people from less moral lives. For that reasno, I take the opposite position of keithhenry in that I hope that SETI never finds any evidence of alien intelligence.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

I too experienced the same situation with my yahoo group I moderate with nearly 10,000 members - posted a message and only one single reply.









I remember reading this somewhere besides this link on Wikipedia, that the majority of DC donors prefer theoretical science projects which cannot in any way be used for commercial profit. So silly, IMO:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seti_at_home