Re: ::scr Seti@Home & Global Warming

[Chris Devers <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 17 May 2002, David Cantrell wrote:

> Now, you could argue that Seti@Home and their ilk are not science.
> Trouble is, it's generally not possible to say in advance which
> experiments and which theories will bear useful fruit.  Seti@Home
> *might* detect alien life, which would certainly be new knowledge.
> It has also helped push back the boundaries of computer science by
> providing a case-study for methods in how to (and how not to!) run
> large distributed projects.

>From that point of view, one could compare these distributed computing
projects to things like particle colliders: both are doing a Big Job
(though SETI is probably less groundbreaking than say CERN) and are
costing lots of money -- but the distributed computing work, as opposed
to the big physics experiments, is largely grassroots and, for the most
part, doesn't cost the taxpayer a dime. If you don't want to chip in, no
one is forcing you to. Surely that's a credit to this kind of research...


--
Chris Devers                                chdevers@xxxxxxx
Apache / mod_perl / http://homepage.mac.com/chdevers/resume/

"More war soon. You know how it is."    -- mnftiu.cc