SETI@home still looking for aliens, finds missing laptop
More than a million volunteers have dedicated spare CPU cycles on their home and work computers to helping find signs of extraterrestrial life. So far, they've had no luck on that front, but the SETI@home project has at least helped one man find a missing laptop.Software programmer James Melin's wife's laptop was stolen in January. It also happened to be one of 7 computers that Melin had installed the SETI@home software on.
Well, it turned out the thief never bothered to disable the software, and so within a week it shared data with the SETI@home server three times. Melin gave the IP address to the police, who were able to get a an address where the computer was being used from a local intenet service provider, and the laptop was returned.
Melin's wife was duly impressed.
[via Slashdot]
After spending the better part of an hour on 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
motoq35 said 4:20PM on 2-22-2007
Ha this should be the new security feture.
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MM said 6:05PM on 2-22-2007
So If you steal a laptop, reformat and reinstall everything
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