On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 16:56:43 GMT, "David Martel"
<marte005@earthlink.net> wrote:

?

I agree that RF may not be the ultimate marker of intelligence, but it is 
the most efficient in our current toolkit.

  If your toolkit contains tools that are inadequate or poorly designed it 
might be wise to recognise this fact and perhaps research toolkits rather 
than seek ETI using the current toolkiit if funding or resources are 
limited.

Plus, the "water hole" is one of the few things we can assume common with 
an intelligence we know absolutetly nothing about...

  Sorry, I don't buy this. While water may seem important to Earth based 
life we have no idea what is important to life elsewhere. The water hole 
seems pretty anthropomorphic to me.
  The whole microwave window might be a better choice but it's pretty 
broad. And it assumes that that intelligence and technology go hand in hand. 
We have little evidence to support this assumption.
  I think that we know very little about life or intelligence. Our 
experience is limited to life and intelligence on Earth at present, a small 
toolkit of uncertain adequacy.

Dave M.

Okay Dave, tell us where you would spend your money? What technology
would you use and how would you do it? The people involved currently
are doing what they can with what they have, if you have a better idea
please present it. Remember funding is the key, without it your ideas
are just that, ideas. So come up with ways to convince people that
can't see the forest for the trees, that searching your way will work.
Currently Berkeley is doing it thru the 'back door'. They got money to
prove that distributed computing can work, and oh by the way, are
looking for ET to do it.
Let's assume you think Silicon is what ET is made of, how would you
design a project to search for that? Or do you think ET is made of
something we have not even thought of yet, how would you find it?