Folks, here’s a speed tip:
in your screensaver options, set it to go black after 1 minute. You won’t have the neat STNG background to look at, but it will run much faster.
Yeeehawww hot damn!
wait what the hell is it and where can you get more information?
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
The team:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?cmd=team_lookup&name=Straight+Dopers
BTW, my name on Seti@home is Fritz123, just in case anyone cares…
Wow! A SETI thread on the first page after 3 days! Maybe it is me…
DeathLlama (and Homer), the work units are actually closer to 340k, and not all are created equal. Units with more potential actually take longer to process, as strong signals (spikes) will be further processed to see if they fit the Doppler effect that we would expect to hear from earth (Gaussians). But, DeathLlama, 7:15 is still an impressive average. Why aren’t you on the team? Or are you?
adam yax, anyone running NT4 or Win 2K should run the text only client. Go to this link and download the file “i386-winnt-cmdline.exe” file. Make a directory anywhere, put the file there, and then make a shortcut to your desktop. The text client gives you zero feedback (it will say “doing baseline smoothing” forever) so you may want to download a program like SETI Spy to let you know your computer is actually doing something, and what.
Lazarus7, with a dual processor Win2K machine, you should make two SETI directories, each with a copy of the text client, and assign each task to a separate CPU. You’ll get twice the output.
To Demo, Murano, and the third person who signed up, (sorry, I stopped keeping track due to a perceived lack of interest) Welcome to the team!
[sub]Shameless threadspotting request (hey, I didn’t start this thread…)
“We don’t do permanent links, but if David or someone wants to post the link on the SDMB from time to time, I have no problem with that. Good luck! -Ed”
- Ed Zotti on the subject of a link to Straight Dopers on the SD homepage after DavidB’s threadspotting of my original SETI thread netted us 30 members in 2 days.
Dammit, Forgot to close sub! And Geobabe, I care. Nice to know your on the team! I don’t know half of the people on the team as their SDMB personas. So, fess up everyone else!
Well, shucks, Gatsby. I joined up right at the beginning, and I was real proud of myself and my 100-something units until all these overachievers joined and pushed me down to #15 or so on the list 
<—(We need a boo-boo face smiley, don’t ya think?) I realized that since my screen name is different, you wouldn’t know which one was me.
you can add my 137 units to the total
I just changed my name on Seti to match my screen name here; “Balance” should show up the next time the stat page is updated. I’m pleased to note that my average time/unit has dropped drastically since I upgraded. I get about 12 hours/unit now. The first machine I ran it on took about 100 hours/unit.
Yes, I remember. Fritz123 was one of the pioneers! However, I didn’t associate Fritz with Geobabe. Geobabe gets me a little curious. Fritz123 just kind of creeps me out a bit. Well, until I could associate a name with the name. Or something…
Fritz was a nickname given to me by a pal in the Navy, for reasons still unknown. I use it sometimes because it’s something no one would associate with my real name. Geobabe, on the other hand, has to do with my current incarnation as a geology student.
Alright, alright, I finally joined the SD group. You now have my 88 units. I am known as DeathLlama there as well.
(Am I cool now?)
I as well have joined the Dopers.
Ok I am all set up with seti and have even joined the SD group. One thing I could not find in all the faqs. What is the protocol if you do spot ET?
PS I have set my preferences for seti to run all the time. I still have no credits or units. Do I need to do anything else other than just have it downloaded on my machine to earn data or whatever?
Well, aha, if you do find ET, all the team members will personally come to your home to congratulate you–and to see whether they will come fry you with their cosmic ray guns.
Do you have dial-up access or are you online all the time? If you’re on 24/7 all you need to do is set your preferences to retrieve a new data unit whenever you finish one. If you use dial-up, the program will alert you by flashing the little antenna icon to let you know you need to phone home, as it were.
No really geobabe what do you do if you see an odd signel on your saver?
And ps. You are a babe.
If you DO see an intelligent signal, when it is finished processing, it is sent back to Seti@home with a special flag attached. They then REprocess the signal to make sure it’s not a problem with your software, and if it turns out to be legit, you get special mention as the discoverer. Sadly, there is no cash prize, but you’ll be popular with the geek chicks. That is a good thing. Geek chicks are hot.
–Tim
Of course I’m a babe, I’m a geek chick!
Hey, where’d everybody go?
Hey, how come my computer takes so long to process the units? I have an AMD-K6 500 MHz with 96 MB ram.
Wassup wit dat?
Demo, you must be running the screensaver. See my tip above about running the text only client, or see Mr. Cynical’s tip about setting the screensaver to blank. Those graphics are real pretty, but they chew up half of your CPU cycles. The text client constantly runs in the background, and will jack your CPU usage to 100%, but all versions of SETI client play nice with other apps and will take a back seat when necessary.
You may even want to try the non-Intel version of the text client (i486-nonintel-winnt-cmdline.exe) to see if that improves your times any.
Also, AMD processors just don’t crunch SETI units as well as their Intel counterparts. Even the latest Athlon processors are slower than their P3 equivalents.
Anyway, with the text client or screensaver set to blank, you should probably be able to get your times down to somewhere around 15 hours or so with that rig.