SETI finally finds something

After all those years of searching for E.T. and finding nothing, the SETI@Home program has finally found something: A stolen laptop in Minnesota.

This could be the basis for an interesting anti-theft strategy for your PC: Sign up for one of the popular network-computing volunteer programs (SETI@Home, Genome@Home, Protein Folding@Home, etc.). It helps a good cause and, if your PC is ever stolen, just wait for it to "phone home." Like the commercial PC-recovery services (like "Lojack for Laptops"), but free.

Worth considering, at least. And it gives your PC something to do while it's sitting there blinking its cursor, mostly bored all day.