Have you ever wondered if there is life beyond the planet Earth? Will we ever find this life? How can I be a part of the team that finds the first sings of Extra Terrestrial life? Well, I can try to answer your questions with a very cool program called SETI@Home. Now, you can be part of a worldwide team, searching the skies for that first sign of life.

The way this thing works is a huge satellite continuously scans the skies, and stores data in huge hard drives. Because there is so much data here, the computers at the SETI labs cannot sift through it all. That is where we come in. Our computers take a small part of this data, and search through it for specific radios signals. Thousands of users around the world have worked on this project so much, that over 600,000 years worth of computing have already been performed, with over a thousand years worth coming in every day.

With this kind of computing power devoted to one project, you can see how this could easily be the first group to discover life beyond Earth. Even though nothing concrete has been found to date, some pretty strong signals have been found so far. Hopefully, we will find life in the next few years.

So, how can you get started. First, download the program onto each and every computer you have available for running SETI@Home. The more computers you can run it on, the better, as you will sift through more signals, and speed up this whole process. Currently, I have it running part time on two computers, and my brother has it running part time on one, and full time on another.

Then, just start running them. You can choose whether you want to run it as a screen saver, or an application. In screen saver mode, it will kick in whenever you aren't using the computer (and some say, this is the fastest way to run it). In application mode, you will want it to be the only application running, as it will take as many CPU cycles as it can. Either way, run it while you aren't heavily using the computer.

You will notice that it takes a long time to complete one of these blocks of data (about 14 hours on a G4 466 or G3 500 MHz). With that in mind, you will of course want a few tips for speeding up your sky searches. First, turn off system sleep in the energy saver control panel. Also, make sure your monitor is set to 256 or thousands of colors (and if you have two monitors, make sure they are both set to the same color settings, or your block processing time will double). Also, collapse the window in application mode, or run as blank screen in screen saver mode.

Finally, if you want to work with a huge team of Mac users, look no further than Team MacAddict. With 5000 Mac users, it's the largest Mac group around. And because we all know Macs are so great, we can take pride in knowing this is the 5th largest group overall, and Macs are in second or third place for many of the overall system statistics. Go Macintosh!

So, if you want to find aliens, are interested in space stuff, or just love your Mac, this is the program for you. Do something with your computer when you aren't using it, and you could be the first person to ever truly find alien life. The truth is out there. Use the Force. Live long and prosper. \\//_