Best geek story I've heard in ages:
SETI@home uses volunteers' computers when they go into screen-saver mode to crunch data from the Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico. The computers are trying to spot signals in the radio noise from space.
They've found no aliens yet, but they have at least turned up one missing laptop.
Jodie Foster is not actually using SETI@Home in the photo above, since "Contact" came out two years before SETI@Home got started. However, she is brilliant, talented and gorgeous.
James Melin, a software programmer for a county government agency in Minnesota, runs SETI(at)home on his seven home computers...
Seven home computers?!? Clearly we're in serious geek territory here. (I'm, uh, running it on nine.)
...seven home computers, which periodically check in with University of California servers. Whenever that happens, the servers record the remote computer's IP address and file it in a database that people running the SETI software can view.
One of the computers on which Melin installed SETI@home is his wife's laptop, which was stolen from the couple's Minneapolis home Jan. 1.
Annoyed - and alarmed that someone could delete the screenplays...
Screenplays? Maybe a new movie for... Jodie Foster? Sorry. Got distracted. Proceed:
...screenplays and novels that his wife, Melinda Kimberly, was writing - Melin monitored the SETI@home database to see if the stolen laptop would "talk" to the Berkeley servers. Indeed, the laptop checked in three times within a week, and Melin sent the IP addresses to the Minneapolis Police Department.
After a subpoena to a local Internet provider, police determined the real-world address where the stolen laptop was logging on. Within days, officers seized the computer and returned it.
"I always knew that a geek would make a great husband," Kimberly said. "He always backed up all my data, but this topped it all. It became like `Mission: Impossible' for him, looking for hard evidence for the cops to use. ... He's a genius - my hero."
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