SETI not @ Home

Written by Wil Harris

November 23, 2005 | 13:46

Tags: #aliens #cancelled #distributed-computing #et #folding #home #seti

SETI@Home, the incredibly popular distributed computing project, is being switched off on December 15.

The SETI team is merging to be part of BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. When it does, there will be plenty of other distributed computing projects for geeks with spare CPU cycles to take care of, but SETI will not be one of them.

Unless something radical happens in the next couple of weeks, it seems as if we're unlikely to initiate contact with aliens through these means. A shame, that.

According to The Inquirer:

"The workunit totals of users and teams will be frozen at that point, and the final totals will be available on the web...

A spokesSeti said that those who want to keep looking for aliens can do so, but they will also be able to donate computer time studying climate change or other BOINC projects."


It rather seems like this is the end of an era - SETI was the first distributed computing project to really capture the imagination of the computing masses, and its usage has resulted in thousands of otherwise-useless machines the world over being put back to some use. It also started the craze for team-based computing, with factions the world over attempting to do each other in the number of numbers crunched.

Sad to say goodbye to such an intimate part of your Current Processes list? Or have you been curing cancer for years anyway? Let us know in the forums.
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