misconceptions?

I'm confused about exactly what you people are looking for. Are you looking only for signs of intellegent life, or there other more probable celestial thingys that you're looking for at the same time?

I'm a SETI fan, and i'd like to know that myself.... lol

What exactly ARE we looking for?

Maybe this will help.

An excerpt from an email I received from SETI@Home:

SCIENTIFIC NEWS

Using the processing power of SETI@home participants,
we've amassed a huge database of candidate signals -
3.2 billion spikes and 266 million Gaussians.
Now we're sifting through these signals.
The first step involves comparing the redundant results for each work unit,
making sure they agree, and discarding erroneous results.
Then we identify the times and frequencies at which man-made
interference has occurred, so that we can filter it out.
Finally we look for signals that are "persistent" -
that occur at the same place and frequency, but at different times.
Currently we have checked our Gaussian and pulse signals,
and have found several thousand persistent signals; see
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/Candidates/index.html
We are applying for telescope time at Arecibo to reobserve
these points in the sky.

We continue to record data on the Hydrogen line band at Arecibo.
Our receiver was out of operation from August 2001 to March 2002
because of hardware problems at Arecibo.
We installed a new receiver and have started recording again.

We've also started using the SETI@home data tapes for two
completely different purposes: making a map of hydrogen gas
in the Milky Way, and searching for broadband pulses that might
be evidence of evaporating black holes - a phenomenon
that has been predicted but not observed.
We also might detect broadband pulses from ET; no one has ever tried this.

Basically, looking for non-natural radio pulses from Space, possibly indicating extra-terrestial life.

As an aside, also "making a map of hydrogen gas
in the Milky Way, and searching for broadband pulses that might
be evidence of evaporating black holes"

So we're not only listening for ET, we're helping astronomers gain a better understanding of space.....

All good stuff!