Search for Aliens with Plokta

There is now a Plokta team for the SETI@home project

As has been widely publicised, a venture has been set up to use spare CPU cycles on home computers to analyze radio telescope date for signs of signals of aritificial, extra-terrestrial origin. You can download a screensaver from SETI@home which will do something marginally more useful than displaying flocks of flying toasters.

The seems like a suitable project for Plokta, which is, after all, the Journal of Superfluous Technology, and we've set up Team Plokta with SETI@home. If you want to join the SETI@home project, or you're already busy processing, why not join Team Plokta and see how many units of data fandom can analyze. The full name is "Team Plokta", which is what you should enter on the form for joining the team.

You don't need a permanent Internet connection. The software just needs to connect for a few minutes when you've finished processing a data set, so that you can upload the results and download the next data set. On my fairly fast PC, this is once every 24-30 hours, depending on what else I'm doing.

Note that the site is extremely busy. I recommend connecting between 0600 and 1200 GMT if possible.

-- Mike Scott

25 May 1999