We did that as well on a bunch of spare Sun SPARC servers that were considered powerful back in their day. A part of me always wondered if I had been tricked into cracking encryption for the assorted agencies and that this had nothing to do with monitoring the quietest frequency in the galaxy.
Lol! I worked for SETI@home as an undergrad. If something nefarious was going on then my coworkers were extremely good actors, right down to faking an entire codebase and a database filled with processed work units. Hey, I'd probably be suspicious of SETI too if I hadn't worked for SETI. Cheers!
I believe you. I think the missing pieces that triggered those little voices in my head were the lack of the project being open source code at the time and the inability to listen to the signals. I spent my childhood talking on the radio so it just felt like something I should have been able to do.
The open source aspect is a good point. I'm guessing the team thought making the source open would increase the risk of cheating; misguided I know, but cheaters were a pain in the neck at first.
Many of the folks there were into music (in bands, wrote music related software, etc), so I'm guessing the signals were boring to listen to.
