How would you like to help search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? That's the premise behind SETI@Home. This nicely done program consists of two parts: an application and a screen saver. The tray-based application uses your Internet connection to download blocks of data from radio telescopes across the world. It then performs the number crunching on that data, looking for orderly patterns that might be artificial, returns the results, and retrieves another block of data. The screen saver protects your monitor during inactive periods by displaying color pictures showing the data analysis process. Normally the application processes data only when the 'saver is running, but you can choose to have the application process data all of the time. With your assistance, the University of California at Berkeley can increase the odds of locating E.T.
