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Opinion Summary
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SETI@home: Flawed but fascinating software
by vicwang | Mar 30 '00
UPDATE 10/7: The Beta version of the 3.0 version of Seti@Home has just been released, and it has been significantly improved. I've addded some comments to the review where appropriate to reflect those improvements.
The Seti@home project is a...Return to opinion
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Re: ok label me paranoid (Reply to this comment)
by vicwang
One more thing I forgot to mention: even though the idea of Echelon existing might have some merit, I think distributed computing would be one of the worst possible ways it could be done.
1) It would be incredibly un-secure. Even if the work units are encrypted, if just one of the users cracks a work unit then the whole project is exposed.
2) It would take forever for the data to actually go out, be decoded, and finally come back. Probably enough time for the terrorists to do their stuff before they get caught! :)
3) There isn't really any crunching of data going on with monitoring 'net traffic, which Echelon supposedly does. It's pretty much just a matter of scanning through the text for keywords, which would take just as long to do it centrally with their servers as it would take for the servers to parcel out the data and have it scanned by client PC's. Think of it this way: if it takes a server ten seconds to send out a 300k work unit, it could have processed 300k of text by itself in those ten seconds, and gotten the results instantly.
Anyway, it's an intriguing conspiracy theory but I don't think it's worth being afraid of Seti@Home over :).
-vicwang
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Oct 07 '00
6:30 pm PDT
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Re: ok label me paranoid (Reply to this comment)
by vicwang
"The NSA has a super secret powerfull program that they barely admit even exists: Echelon."
Hey Turin. Where did you hear about Echelon, anyway? I'll admit that at first I thought you were crazy :), but after doing a little research it sounds like you have a point. Even several foreign governments such as France and Germany officially believe that Echelon exists, and that the US is illegally using it for foreign (and possibly domestic?) intelligence...
I was also pretty surprised to find that the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) also believes that Echelon is real (they have a FAQ at http://www.aclu.org/echelonwatch/faq.html )
I also found a pretty good article at http://www.policy.com/news/dbrief/dbriefarc750.asp
Anyway, you might remember something called "Carnivore" that was recently exposed and reported on by major news sources, and sounded suspiciously similar to Echelon. Carnivore was a program that could monitor all email traffic going through the email server it's installed on, looking for "key words". Apparently the FBI had been using it for sometime, but they decided to postpone its use after it was exposed (until it could be evaluated by a "neutral" 3rd party). Now here's the kicker, from Tom's Hardware Page. Is this some crazy stuff or what?!:
"Responding to the demands of privacy advocates, the US Department of Justice agreed to a review of the FBI's controversial e-surveillance Carnivore program. Top universities refused, however, to take part in the study, calling it a "rubber stamp." The DoJ then hired a relatively unknown group, the Illinois Institute of Technology's Research Institute. For approximately $175,000, the supposedly independent group agreed to execute the review, though without the right to publish any commentary not specifically requested or edited by the DoJ."
"In an ironic twist, the DoJ published, on the Web, a document about the research group with personal information "blacked out." In fact, the information was not eliminated but only masked and, once recovered, the data revealed that the organization is made up of White House insiders, individuals who have, or have had, large government contracts, and other DoJ and Clinton administration allies."
"For more information, read wired.com and/or theregister.co.uk."
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Oct 03 '00
2:51 pm PDT
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Re: ok label me paranoid - yes (Reply to this comment)
by mr_x100
???
I don't think the G-men are going to use the public's spare CPU cycles
against them, they'd just raise taxes to install more mainframes!!!
Now back to SETI - I have to totally agree, its such a great concept,
but to deliberately slow things down is disgraceful. I've gone back
to RC5 distributed net until the folks at SETI optimise their code and
allow more general public input and review of their code.
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Jun 23 '00
9:52 pm PDT
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ok label me paranoid (Reply to this comment)
by Turin
SETI uses a vast network of computers globably to help decode everything it picks up. The NSA has a super secret powerfull program that they barely admit even exists: Echelon. BE WARNED BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING! Echelon monitors every chatroom, email, any electronic communications data, inlcuding phone calls and scans and filters out words like terrorist bomb threat etc. Conversations or emails that have enough of Echelon's libray of catch phrases sends off an elert where it is reviewed, that's right your personal communication, by another human being to determine the extent of this threat. Well my friend does the online SETI thing and one day it just popped into my head, you know, Echelon sure would require a hell of a lot of computing power...
PS. If I dissapear, tell my friends i love them, thanks.
=)
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Jun 09 '00
12:25 pm PDT
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Nifty litttle program... (Reply to this comment)
by karenortwein
however my husband and son were worried about it doing it's thing,(no, I have no clue why) so I had to take it off. I really got a kick out of it though.
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Jun 07 '00
9:19 pm PDT
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Nifty litttle program... (Reply to this comment)
by karenortwein
however my husband and son were worried about it doing it's thing, so I had to take it off. I really got a kick out of it though.
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Jun 07 '00
9:19 pm PDT
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Cool Review (Reply to this comment)
by sherrylee
This is the first Seti@Home review I've seen; it didn't even occur to me to see if it had a category. I've been trying to convince my husband that we should do this; maybe now I'll have some fresh (and better) ammo, other then "But...it's so neat!"
Thanks!!
~Sherry Lee
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Apr 08 '00
11:19 pm PDT
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