SETI@home is a distributed processing client from UC Berkeley that installs on the volunteers’ home computers and harnesses their processing power in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far nothing noteworthy has comeout of this massive project… that is until today! One of the volunteers was able to track down his wife’s stolen laptop
using the IP address that SETI@home client reports back to the server. After getting back the laptop his wife said, ‘I always knew that a geek would make a great husband.’
This is pretty funny. I never really liked the SETI@home project; I figure it’s pretty useless. Maybe my bias comes from the fact that my first impression of it was when I worked as a computer techie at a University of Arizona establishment. A guy that worked up front as a receptionist had installed the “screensaver” on his PC. Naturally, it soaked up tons of resources, especially hogging the bandwidth from an already dry DSL connection shared across the entire building (with all the computers hooked up on one Ethernet network). I discovered it one day and was outraged. I told the guy that I had uninstalled it and that software of its kind was not allowed. One week later, it was back up and running on his PC *shakes fists*. Sheesh.
Luckily he “quit” his job just a little while later.
[via SlashDot]
