> My tinfoil hat is still on ...
Sounds like the SETI team is being very cautious.
Keep in mind that they had to break this story. Had
they not, someone else would have, with incomplete
info, and no effort to frame alternate explanations.
If ET is out there, and transmitting stuff we can grok,
expect numerous false alarms before paydirt.
The problem I have with the whole effort is what I'd
call the "technological window". The typical civilization
may transmit easily comprehensible signals for only a
century or two, a very brief period relative to the
life of that civ. We may be looking for one-shot
flashcubes.
Imagine Marconi intercepting a CDMA cell phone signal
in 1920 (heck, even a simple FM signal) on his primitive
AM gear. It would have been gibberish. Increasingly, the
stuff we send looks more and more like noise.
Now if ET is deliberately trying to reach us, that's
a different ballgame.
But, if the signal was strong enough, he'd know there was a signal there. He might have figured out the FM pretty quickly, the CDMA would have been beyond his capability to analyze. If there is modulation on the signal, you might be able to decode it, but today you could tell it was there.
I suspect that the real problem is that, as you hint, that advanced civilizations won't be using radio frequencies for long distance communications. Much more bandwidth available up higher in the spectrum for space to space communications or relay.