a question. . .

[Blackearth]

what if someone downloads the workunit that conains the radio waves that contain imperative information about extraterestial life and he/she for whatever reason never completes it. what then? is that information lost forever, or is that data unit sent out again after a cetain amount of time, or what? same goes w/ folding@home.

[SpeeDj]

They send out multiple copies of each work unit. Those that receive and complete it would all be mentioned for being the discoverers of ET :) Now it would take some kind of fiasco for all the unit that are multiples to not be completed.

J

[13oots2]

This is a quote from Seti@home

"What happens to work units that never get returned by us? Are they lost forever?

We keep track of every work unit that goes out - if it is taking too long getting the results back, the server will automatically send it out to somebody else. Only after we get results back and confirm them we will remove the work unit from disk."


Hope that explains it for the seti question.

[Blackearth]

yes it does, thanks.