MemeMachineGo!

SETI is the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, currently pursued by listening to radio telescopes for something that seems more like a signal than noise (because we can do that much while earthbound.) This creates such a vast quantity of data that even the preliminary analysis to find candidates for closer examination is a big problem. SETI@Home is a distributed computing project to allow individuals to chip in by analyzing bits of signal on their home computers, many of which sit idle most of the time.

A crackpot is calling for increased security in SETI@Home lest leet alien script kiddies 0wnz0r the Internet by customizing a signal to take advantage of (unknown, theoretical) security flaws in the SETI@Home client.

Said crackpot is a Fermilab particle physicist, but he apparently learned all he really needed to know about computers from Hollywood blockbusters.

It’s difficult to describe just how stupid this is. It’s not that it’s absolutely impossible, but it’s more likely that aliens could arrive able to talk with bees. It would be a better use of time and effort to prepare a contingency plan for what we, as citizens, can do if Jupiter is stolen. It makes worrying about the coming mandatory barcode tattoos being the mark of the beast seem rational and even staid.

This Slashdot comment’s take on a possible outcome has been the most worthwhile thing to come of it.

I send you greetings from what you know as the smaller magelenic cloud. my name is ortion fleglar, and my father, the late ortion flekgar, left to me a sum of one hundred million kletlons before being pulled into a hyperspace anomoly. Before his untimely demise, he warned me never to trust my hive-mothers, gleblon flamkis and formta gleklar…