[X] My Assistant

[David]

The way google and other search engines work when you enter multiple search terms is that they look for frequency of terms on a page, as well as proximity of the terms to each other.

If you wished to avoid this, grouping all the suspect phrases together in a single post, as you did, was certainly not the best way to do so.

However, I tried searching for your questionable long phrase on Google, just to see whether unmannedspaceflight would turn up; if it does, it is buried very deeply. I tried using several terms from your list in combination, to narrow the list, and turned up nothing. So at the moment, there is nothing immediate to fear.

And on reconsidering your list, you seem to want to ban any word with a "science fiction" connotation. However, I have noticed that on this forum, simply due to the subject matter and the personalities involved, every tenth or twentieth message has some sort of science fiction allusion; I've seen discussions of science fiction novels, and of course repeated jokes about "Marvin the Martian", possible fossils and so on. I don't think you can practically hope to wipe those sorts of allusions out.

Moreover, banning such phrases as "unsuspecting worlds" or "missing planets" seems like overkill, as there are legitimate uses for such phrases even quite outside any discussion of ETIs, and they are hardly likely to be high upon any anomalist's list of search terms. Perhaps what bothers you is not so much the phrases, or the possibility of them being detected by a web-searching anomalist, as their context? --that is, the sense that a scientific forum such as this is degraded by the discussion of anything so "science fictional" as SETI?

[ljk4-1]

Hi ljk4-1, all of these older projects that you mention unfortunately predate my joining the staff at The Planetary Society, and they're out of my usual purview, so I'm afraid I don't know any information to give you.  I have forwarded your comments to the people here who particpate in the SETI projects.

I do know, however, that we continue to support SETI projects financially thanks to member dues and donations, and that we currently have active projects in optical and radio SETI, along with our other projects in technology development, Mars exploration, Near Earth Objecs searches, extralsolar planets, and others.  The stuff on our website is a little thin right now because we just completed our redesign and have only filled out the barest skeleton of necessary content.  I know that filling in more depth in the SETI section (as well as all the rest of the projects) is one of the priorities.  Here's the most recent update from our Director of Projects, Bruce Betts, about our SETI work, which was published in the September/October 2004 issue of The Planetary Report:

Thank you, Emily. I hope to receive a detailed reply soon from the SETI portion of TPS, especially on the Optical SETI project at Harvard. Three years with no substantial news, positive or negative, on the project is a bit surprising. The telescope being used is no department-store model, thus my wondering.

[elakdawalla]

Three years with no substantial news, positive or negative, on the project is a bit surprising.

Chalk it up to having only one full-time and two part-time people here who develop the entire Society website...so much to do, so little time. Seriously, we've heard you and will try to get more information up there... --Emily

[elakdawalla]

Perhaps what bothers you is not so much the phrases, or the possibility of them being detected by a web-searching anomalist, as their context?  --that is, the sense that a scientific forum such as this is degraded by the discussion of anything so "science fictional" as SETI?

I'm finding this conversation interesting because SETI is probably the one thing we do that gets our members most fired up -- both for and against. I'd say (based upon a completely unscientific survey of letters to the editor published in our magazine) that probably 10% of our members think that SETI is the most important activity we should be supporting, bar none, and 10% just as strongly feel that it is a monstrous waste of resources. I think the only other thing that gets people fired up in the same way is the question of human vs. robotic spaceflight -- again, some feel that there's no point to the space program at all unless its goal is to send humans out into the universe, while some feel that the point is science and that human spaceflight is a monstrous waste of resources. We -- not to mention the world's space agencies -- represent all these people with all these different opinions, and it's not always easy to walk a course among all the competing interests.

--Emily

[ElkGroveDan]

Chalk it up to having only one full-time and two part-time people here who develop the entire Society website...so much to do, so little time.   Seriously, we've heard you and will try to get more information up there... --Emily

Emily have you thought about an overt effort to recruit qualified staff volunteers? I know that Southern California is full of brilliant retired and semi-retired people with vast engineering and science backgrounds.

I recall that when the Rutans were building the Voyager aircraft I used to drive up to Mojave from the Valley to chat with them about it. There were several old retired engineers who were there as volunteers for the intellectual challenge alone. It was a thrill for me as an ME student at the time to meet these guys. I remember thinking what a vast pool of talent must be in So. Cal. alone just waiting to be tapped into.

[elakdawalla]

Emily have you thought about an overt effort to recruit qualified staff volunteers?  I know that Southern California is full of brilliant retired and semi-retired people with vast engineering and science backgrounds.

We have certainly done this in the past -- in fact you can look at all the articles written for The Planetary Report as experts volunteering their time and expertise to us (we don't pay for articles in TPR). And in fact I'm working right now with a guy who spent a bajillion years working in the various incarnations of JPL's image processing laboratory to develop some new stuff for the site. But expertise doesn't translate directly into good Web content. In fact, the more expert somebody is, the more work it usually takes to turn what they write into something that's suitable for our audience. I'm not talking about "dumbing down" content, which is what many scientists contemptuously (and contemptibly) call the process of writing for the public. But you do have to do some work to explain certain terms, and also to explain the significance and context of achievements, which may be obvious or go without saying to the expert but which are not so obvious to the layperson.

In addition to that, it takes a lot of work to punch up the writing, and allow it to reflect the human emotions that all of us on this forum feel in response to space exploration. It's funny because these people are really interesting to talk to, but when they sit down and write they often produce stuff that is both extremely informative and extremely dull. There are a few notable exceptions, like Steve Squyres, people who are capable of writing great stories that also contain great quantities of science. But most don't have his gift. I think it's because when you learn to write for scientific journals you learn to remove all emotion from your writing, because scientific research must be based on objective fact and devoid of emotion, which is by its nature subjective. Speaking for myself, it took at least two years after grad school before I was able to expunge that horrible, passive, dull writing style from my brain and begin to write stuff that I found interesting to read (nevermind anybody else). I still write long, convoluted sentences that my copy editor always has to hack into shorter, more active pieces. So experts are certainly helpful and they provide us with a lot of material but it still takes a lot of writing work to bring their material to publication in a way that our visitors will enjoy it and respond to it.

--Emily

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

What you say about science writing is very true, emily.
With the only paper I have ever published (in economy) I had to expurge any emotion and most of philosophy/society implications (however there are much in economy). It is a bit sad, and on my site I rather presented the results in the form of a game, of novels, while summarizing up in some sentences, which are enough to explain it to the layperson.

In physics it is the same, and in space exploration there is also a high emotional content. I remember when I was a child, Mars was stil represented with the Schiaparelly maps (with the "channels") and Titan or Venus were just names, about which we knew exactly zero. Now we are getting out of our Earth craddle and exploring the wold!

Beyond the ordinary appearances such as a peaceful sun bathed afternoon among meadows and trees, there is this fantastic cosmos, baffling distances, incredible temperatures, other strange worlds, astounding time at the source of our lives, and we can abruptly feel the difference when suddenly the Sun hides behind the Moon (I whatched the 1998 eclipse). Then the day disappears as if a lamp was switched off, there are no more peaceful meadows but incredible masses of stone moving into the cosmos at unconceivable speeds, there is no more friendly sushine but a thermonuclear furnace which its red flames around the moon... And the guies who came with expensive telescopes and cameras just left them down, and gaze at this unforgettable view.

And then, as quickly as it came, it is over, the abyss door closes, the sky becomes blue again, the birds resume singing, only a chill remains of the strange vision.

Wow

[dvandorn]

I can also really relate to Emily's discussion of writing technique. My natural writing style is rather like Emily describes hers -- long sentences with conversational-tone punctuation. And sentence fragments. For effect.

At least, in my case, there is some sort of switch I can throw in my brain, and I can just start cutting the sentences down as I write them. And I can go through what I just wrote, give it a short once-over, et voila, short, action-verb sentences.

My first drafts are usuallly in final draft or next-to-final-draft shape. I just have this little problem with typos -- in specific, with hitting the space bar just a fraction of a millisecond early. One of the worst examples of this is when I write the short connecting phrase "to the"... it tends to come out "tot he."

Ever tried to use a spell checker to find something like that? When the words "tot" and "he" are both perfectly valid English words? Considering the subject matter I'm usually dealing with, though, I can just do a word search on "tot" and find every instance...

-the other Doug

[ljk4-1]

SETI@home killed off ?

Placed in sarcophagus rises again

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27885

By: Nick Farrell

Wednesday 23 November 2005, 07:18

DISTRIBUTED computing experiment SETI@home will be switched off on
December 15 as it becomes part of the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for
Network Computing (BOINC).

BOINC has been developed at UC Berkeley as a framework for volunteer
computing projects like SETI@home.

According to a press release, those who are currently using SETI@home are
being asked to visit here for instructions.

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

The BOINC site will allow boffins to build other volunteer computing
projects in areas like molecular biology, high-energy physics, and climate
change study.

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.

[dvandorn]

Hmmm... upon reading this thread last week, I went ahead and started running SETI processing again. I've got a much better system now than I did back when I ran it a few years ago, and I figured it would be more useful now.

When I went out to the SETI@Home site to download the software again, I got the BOINC client. It's been running fine for me over the past week and a half or so.

So, a lot of people are already using the BOINC client, it would seem. It's sort of a nice name, too...

-the other Doug

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

What does this means?

If I understand well, the work will continue, but in place of processing only SETI we will have to compute any other data from other experiments, without being given the choice.

Historically, as far as I know, what is now the BOINC was first developped for SETI, and after used by other experiments.

Is this just a technical/commercial move, or another tortuous mean to twart SETI? If someone has more precise info, please tell, at least to dissipate any doubt.

[jaredGalen]

What does this means?

If I understand well, the work will continue, but in place of processing only SETI we will have to compute any other data from other experiments, without being given the choice.

It's okay, , the whole process of distributed computing projects has been streamlined I guess you could say. The BOINC client now supports processing data from other projects, some of which are mentioned above.

A user simply picks which project they want to work on, or multiple projects and allocate processor time as they want. If you do 2 projects you can allocate time 80% to one and only 20% to the other if you want.

It's really quite good I think, makes everything much better rather than having a client for each number crunching application you want to join.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

It's okay, , the whole process of distributed computing projects has been streamlined I guess you could say. The BOINC client now supports processing data from other projects, some of which are mentioned above.

A user simply picks which project they want to work on, or multiple projects and allocate processor time as they want. If you do 2 projects you can allocate time 80% to one and only 20% to the other if you want.

It's really quite good I think, makes everything much better rather than having a client for each number crunching application you want to join.

So it's OK, not something bad for SETI. Anyway I heard that there are many other interesting experiments going on in other fields.
I was a bit alarmed, because there was in the past some unfair attempts to halt SETI. I hope this is really in the PAST now.

Alas I cannot join, my old computer is too slow for this. It took 1 month to process one SETI block... when they are considered lost after only some days and reprocessed elsewhere. (For reliability reasons they process several times the same blocks, but it is useless to send results months after)

[ljk4-1]

Scientists, be on guard ... ET might be a malicious hacker

The Guardian November 25, 2005

*************************

Richard Carrigan, a particle
physicist at the US Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory, believes the
SETI@home project is putting Earth's
security at risk by distributing the
signals they receive to computers
all over the...

http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedire...sID=5064&m=7610

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Scientists, be on guard ... ET might be a malicious hacker

The Guardian November 25, 2005

*************************

Richard Carrigan, a particle
physicist at the US Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory, believes the
SETI@home project is putting Earth's
security at risk by distributing the
signals they receive to computers
all over the...

http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedire...sID=5064&m=7610

There is at least one scientist who believes in extra-terrestrial intelligence!


Seriously, for an ET signal becoming an internet virus, need that the ETs know how our computers work. And anyway eventual ET signals (into the blocks the SETI@home program sends all over internet) are coded as analog signals, not available as digital codes. Even known internet viruses, coded this way, would be completelly inoffensive.

A more serious risk is that some intentionally modify many blocks. For this reason the SETI@home system sends every block to several computers, to detect any tempering of a block.

The only real risk is about an intelligible ET signal being spead over the internet. What would happen depends of "their" moral values or statement of intention. Many people will consider ETs as "superior" and thus accept their moral code as "better", whatever it is. (I am very affirmative, just look at what happens with the so-called "contactees"). If it is really better, it is a good thing. But if it is worse than ours... or only more subtle, many misinterpretations can occur.

After all, we tend to consider that ETs are more evolved, and thus better than us. But the only thing sure is that they avoided to destroy their planet with war and polution (a thing we are not yet sure to be able to do) so that they can last for long, and we have much better chances to encounter such a stable civilization than a civilization at the stage we are now.