Looking at this week’s poll I wonder if people actually read the question. The question was not “which project do you like the most?” but “which project is the most useful?”.

Seeing SETI in position 3 is weird I think. Yes! I love the project, but useful? What possible use could SETI have except knowing that we are not alone?

Don’t flame me for this  I’m a big sci-fi fan. I watch everything (Star Trek, Battle Star Gallactica, StarGate, the 4400, you name it, I watch it (disclaimer: when it’s airing in the Netherlands)).

Searching for cures for cancer, AIDS, malaria, helping build a particle accelerator, it’s (in my opinion) much more useful than looking for aliens.

So, what are your thoughts on this?

Willy,

I tend to agree with you, while the space science projects may be the most interesting, the biological science ones are the most useful.

BTW - Thanks for doing such a good job at keeping this site working.

I agree. I did read it and voted LHC. I did this because I am an engineer (for 30yrs)and an engineering project is close to my heart. If Malaria was open I would (possibly) voted for this as my wife is Thai and there is much Malaria in SE Asia expecially in Indonesia and the other nearby islands

Bob

You're right Willy,I read this as "what is most important to ME"

Since the poll I decided to change my allocation and put Rosetta in the rotation and will work ir up to a significant percentage (as soon as I reach a personal goal with S@H ;-)

Good poll - thought provoking for me...

I voted for Rosetta. It seems to be really useful.

But I had really strong temptation to vote for SETI. Everytime people ask me, if looking for aliens makes any sense i try to imagine the day, when we positively confiirm that space is not empty... If it ever happens, it'll change everything...or pretty much...

It's really interesting to hear these different opinions. Although I decided to crunch one BBC-Climate WU on my 'biggest' box, I voted for CPDN, because it's the initial project for climate simulations/studies. I hope that these studies will bring people to the point not to waste too much ressources of our small planet.

Btw: Don't we all love SETI? For many of us it was the first step into Distributed Computing and BOINC, so without the enourmous popularity of SETI probably we had not that much projects today.

Good point Cory


Even though I'm trying to ramp up my Rosetta work, it's very hard to "ramp down" the SETI work

[quote]Got that "first project" loyalty thing biting me

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Rosetta itself just a project to improve the search method itself ("...to develop methods that accurately predict and design protein structures...&quot?
As far as I know WCG works with the scientific results.

Adding another dimension to willy's comments, (i think) i voted for what i consider the most important right now which was a hard choice between rosetta and CPDN, but CPDN got my vote (if i remember correctly).

The main reason was because humans have lived with desease for eternity, and we're always getting better at preventing it, but cures are always good to have.

I see climate change as a bigger problem, and a totally different one to anything else we've ever had to deal with before, yes our ancestors might have had to move to a different regein when the current one became uninhabitable. We've never had to deal with something which could potential have such large and global impact, so i personally believe a lot more resources should go to predicting and preventing it rather than trying to cure disease (at least for now)


you're completly right ThEfT, that's exactly what they're doing, you could argue that because of that they're not doing much good, but i'd have to present the opposing case, that because they're improving the fundamental tools (which is the main issue in the field) that they'll have a significant positive impact on many other sub-fields, which with better tools will be able to improve their own research to make better cures etc.
so i believe rosetta's work is rather critical to the whole scheme

for anyone that's interested, have a read of their scietific pages (links on the front page and other info in the forums)