SETI Finally Finds Something

QuatumCrypto writes "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.'"

In all seriousness though...

[user24]

why doesn't someone do a 'phone home' laptop insurance program that provides tracking information just like this? (privacy issues aside (until the first reply to this comment; see below)).

It could be nicely open sourced, and run via a p2p network to distribute the load for the tracking servers. Obviously a lot of details would have to be worked out to avoid abuse, but it could be as simple as sending an "I'm here" message encrypted with a dedicated private key to the p2p network. The person who wants to track their stolen goods just pops the public key (stored on a CD/usb stick/online, generated on install) into the network and it comes back with the last known location. No?

Re:Gah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on, that's 5-Funny for sure. It's the truth, but definately a 5.

Re:Welcome

[Anonymous Coward]

Beowulf is a design for high-performance parallel computing clusters on inexpensive personal computer hardware. Originally developed by Thomas L. Sterling and Donald Becker at NASA, Beowulf systems are now deployed worldwide, chiefly in support of scientific computing.

A Beowulf cluster is a group of usually identical PC computers running a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Unix-like operating system, such as Linux or BSD. They are networked into a small TCP/IP LAN, and have libraries and programs installed which allow processing to be shared among them.

There is no particular piece of software that defines a cluster as a Beowulf. Commonly used parallel processing libraries include MPI (Message Passing Interface) and PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine). Both of these permit the programmer to divide a task among a group of networked computers, and recollect the results of processing. It is a common misconception that any software will run faster on a Beowulf. The software must be re-written to take advantage of the cluster, and specifically have multiple non-dependent parallel computations involved in its execution.

The name comes from the main character in the Old English epic Beowulf.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Stop the headline grab-assing please

[Megajim]

After the initial rush-disappointment, I noticed that it must be an official Goofass® headline, given the official Monty-Python-foot icon, which generally denotes time-wasting non-serious ignore-this-if-you're-looking-for-useful-info after-hours filler that is occasionally found on this otherwise quite informative site. Maybe the headline would have been less horrifically offensive if it was in YRO.

Re:solution for everyone else

[Perey]

It's the difference between protection and recovery. drDugan's callhome (and TFA's use of SETI@home, of course) provides a chance of recovery but reduces protection (they can boot it). Locking down the boot sequence provides pretty solid protection, but your chances of getting it back move closer to nil.

Re:Question...

[Firethorn]

Simple enough, though it generally requires a warrent.

All blocks of IP addresses are owned by somebody, mostly ISPs.

Once you have an IP address, you look up who owns it and you call them. They do their research, looking at things such as DNS records, DHCP assignments, DSLAM logs, etc... They then look up which customer that was, and there you go.

In a corporate enviroment a simply DNS lookup should give you a computer name, a little more the switchport it's connected to, and a little digging who's logged into it.

Unintelligable RAP

[Taimat]

"It makes Ludacris look like Pavarotti."

That's gotta be bad! That line alone was worth reading the article!

Re:Welcome

[neuro.slug]

11! = 39916800, that's how many.

Re:Welcome

[dgatwood]

Netcraft confirms Wikipedia is [slashdot.org] dying [slashdot.org]. :-D

A better solution for everyone else.

[chris_sawtell]

See the Google cache of "Exactly what the Dr. Ordered"

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:Ui0HtwBn6ZAJ:w ww.kyne.com.au/~mark/software/satellite.php+site:w ww.kyne.com.au+mark+satellite&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&i e=UTF-8 [72.14.253.104]

I know the posting is just a oneliner, but it is informative and if everybody used the software it would really increase the recovery rate of stolen Laptops no end. ( Unix based ones anyway )