As the technology department head, wasn't this his decision to make anyway? Or is there a head head that can overrule him? Or a head head head that has ultimate say?

i hope they share the same viewpoint if he did Folding@Home also.fark you school district.

I'm siding with the district on this one. SETI@home doesn't really provide anything for the system, and who knows how much he raised their power bills by keeping all of those computers at load.

IrateShadow: I'm siding with the district on this one. SETI@home doesn't really provide anything for the system, and who knows how much he raised their power bills by keeping all of those computers at load.

They're saying about $1.5 million...

netweavr: They're saying about $1.5 million...

That figure seems to have some intangibles in it, including reduced hardware life. I guess we have an upper bound, but it would be interesting to see what they estimated just in power costs.

I installed this on every PA-RISC and PowerPC workstation at a former employer (Back in 2000-2001) , and am getting a kick....

Still have my 10,000 work units processed certificate somewhere.. Back then that was a substantial percentage of the total from an individual contributor.

The article indicates that he was running two separate programs on the machines; seti@home and BOINC.

Sorry kids, but study your subject matter a little more diligently for the article. BOINC is the software platform that runs seti@home.

Of course, it sounds more sensational the way they wrote it ;)


_{Yeah, I'm part of the seti@home program.}

I have to side with the district on this one. It would have been one thing if he had built a case for installing it--showing the additional costs, seeking approval, etc...that is one thing....but to go all Maverick and install it himself...not a wise idea for any sysadmin.

I don't know how energy intensive this is.

Run mprime to do a system/memory test, and I see the power consumption of a server go up 250 watts. If the server is make correctly it will not heat up enough for "accelerated depreciation" damage.

The Polish roots of the name "Niesluchowski" are the words "not" and "listening"


How stunningly apropos.

IrateShadow: That figure seems to have some intangibles in it, been pulled right out of their ass

FIFY.

I thought I had stopped participating in seti@home a couple of years ago, but when I checked my account last week, I found that an old computer that used to be mine at work and had been passed around to a few different people before going to an ex-employee's home is still chugging away, processing work units (in my name).

I bought a used computer for $50 in Flagstaff and when I fired it up I found that seti@home was still chugging away, processing work units in someone elses name.

I stopped doing Seti@home when they switched to Boinc. Trying to set it up to work right was a godawful waste of time.

I remember that all the computers in my high school's labs were running it as their screensaver. This was 99-2000, so right after is started.

I assume all of the programs I installed as a high schooler are gone because the computers have been replaced. It took a year, but by the time i was done, i was running my own super computer, I think I was in the top 500 at one point.

I cant even imagine the power usage I added.

Folding@home guy here.

baka-san: IrateShadow: That figure seems to have some intangibles in it, been pulled right out of their ass

FIFY.

BOINC estimates $5 per month per computer running constantly, I believe. If they were turned off at night, it would be less than $5 per computer then.

netweavr: IrateShadow: I'm siding with the district on this one. SETI@home doesn't really provide anything for the system, and who knows how much he raised their power bills by keeping all of those computers at load.

They're saying about $1.5 million...

Kind of like the $300,000 "street value" drug busts and the $75,000 MP3 someone downloaded.

IrateShadow: I'm siding with the district on this one. SETI@home doesn't really provide anything for the system, and who knows how much he raised their power bills by keeping all of those computers at load.

BOINC by default doesn't keep your system at full load. This computer is running Folding, and my ondemand CPU governor keeps my 2.2 GHz CPU throttled to 1.0 GHz 90% of the time.

BorgHunter: BOINC by default doesn't keep your system at full load. This computer is running Folding, and my ondemand CPU governor keeps my 2.2 GHz CPU throttled to 1.0 GHz 90% of the time.

And by Folding, I obviously mean Rosetta.

I work for a school board and have access to hundreds of district computers.
I've thought of doing this.
I even think my boss would go for it.

"billions and billions."

The district is over reacting as well the peeps agreeing with it. It had the same effect as leaving a graphically intensive screen saver on the PCs.

The school district estimates these losses at between $1.2 million and $1.6 million.

Love to know how they figured that.

IrateShadow: I'm siding with the district on this one. SETI@home doesn't really provide anything for the system, and who knows how much he raised their power bills by keeping all of those computers at load.

Forget about the district, he was doing this for humanity. And alienity.


/poorly written story though.

If it had just been running as the screen saver (is that even possible for Boinc? I think I remember it was for the original Seti), that would have been fine. Schools are constantly leaving their computers running for no apparent reason, and it would have just added something productive to the wasted time and energy.

Wait. How was Boinc wasting power? Were the teachers incapable of physically turning off computers? Did he install electric shocks on every keyboard to keep people from checking to see what was running and turning off the program?

Seriously, he shouldn't have downloaded and launched Boinc on every computer without permission. That was stupid. But he could have easily asked, or suggested it as an educational tool (Boinc runs more than just Seti, after all), and probably gotten approval, depending on how tech savvy the head of the district was.

/Boinc has issues, so I haven't launched Seti in quite a while
//ran some other program to help build an AI for a while, though

When I worked at a school district we thought about doing this (openly that is not behind the scenes), it was us mentioning all that wasted power that got the higher up to have us then create an automatic shutdown district wide after 6:30. So, we spotted waste, wanted to do something productive with it but instead were told to conserve, (I've no problem with either) saving the district at least thousands of dollars a year. Recognition? HA.

Kickstart UF: As the technology department head, wasn't this his decision to make anyway? Or is there a head head that can overrule him? Or a head head head that has ultimate say?

Super Intendant, then his/her second and third are usually higher than the IT head. My guess is they had other reasons to ask him to leave, or thought he had been super sneaky about this, otherwise they would've just asked him to get rid of the program.

Get a science class/club involved & call it an ongoing educational project.

seti@home and seti@work. Looking for LGMs and a cure for cancer.

The article linked to in TFA said he downloaded porn, didn't do his job (install firewalls) and that police found a bunch of stolen computers and equipment in his house.

I'd be more sympathetic towards him if he were actually running one of the useful folding@home programs.

Bennie Crabtree: baka-san: IrateShadow: That figure seems to have some intangibles in it, been pulled right out of their ass

FIFY.

BOINC estimates $5 per month per computer running constantly, I believe. If they were turned off at night, it would be less than $5 per computer then.

In leap years the figures are slightly higher.

Obama's Subtle Coup: "billions and billions."

Dude, he looks so high.

I worked for a consulting firm that also had in-house training facilities at 13 cities. The main tech in charge of all the PC's in the training rooms (about 30 per) and I worked on scripts that would fire up Seti@Home on all the PC's at night, and ran a gateway proxy for all the clients to dump their results to instead of having to wait for Seti@Home to read them. We kept this up for about 6 years. Oh, good times.

How do we know that he wasn't just using it as a test program to make sure that the computers were operating properly?

KarmicDisaster: How do we know that he wasn't just using it as a test program to make sure that the computers were operating properly?

It wasn't Crysis

Epiphany: The article linked to in TFA said he downloaded porn, didn't do his job (install firewalls) and that police found a bunch of stolen computers and equipment in his house.


Ah yes, but of course the article chooses to focus on the Seti thing.

The guy's been running the program since 2000. Assuming non-stop for 9 (ish) years, running at $5/month/computer...

For a $1.2 million cost, he'd have to be running around 2000 computers.

/This completely ignores the district's assumption of decreased computer performance over time.

markie_farkie: I installed this on every PA-RISC and PowerPC workstation at a former employer (Back in 2000-2001) , and am getting a kick....

Still have my 10,000 work units processed certificate somewhere.. Back then that was a substantial percentage of the total from an individual contributor.

I haven't used it in forever. I think I'm still at a measly 200 or so.

And BOINC isn't the only thing out there that taxes systems.

I think we're all avoiding the obvious question here:

Did he find anything?

My university has all our idle computers run Folding@home and SETI@home, so I am getting a kick out of these replies

I feel bad for the guy. Being forced to resign seems a bit overboard to me. He should have been given a slap on the wrist and the task of uninstalling/disabling it on every computer. Processor cycles chew up tons of electricity and generate a lot of heat which needs to be taken into consideration, especially if you aren't footing the bill. I applaud him for his efforts but I feel that he didn't think his plan completely through.

They also make it sound like he's crazy, personally trying to contact ET in the article. I'm can't tell if it's sarcasm or not.

Oh and that price tag seems way high to me. Yes there is some cost involved, yes it is a tangible cost, but 1.2-1.6 million? Not likely. It sounds like a school district is broke due to terrible budgeting and making him the fall guy.

SirEattonHogg: I think we're all avoiding the obvious question here:

Did he find anything?

Yes, he discovered that an alien race had beamed our own Hitlet broadcasts back to us.

as a person who was once nearly fired for this exact thing - except distributed.net clients, not SETI@home - at Arizona State, i am getting a kick out of these replies.

/the boss never figured out who it was

gm: I feel bad for the guy.

Don't feel too bad. This is the bullet list from the azcentral article...

• During a warranted search of his home earlier this fall, Gilbert police found 18 computers and other equipment stolen from the district.

• District officials said they learned Niesluchowski never installed firewalls that would protect students' and staff members' personal information from hackers, exposing district computer and data to potential tampering or damage.

• District officials also say he failed to train and supervise other tech staff.

...after which it goes to great lengths explaining what SETI@Home is, I can only assume becuase while everyone may know what 'downloading porn' and 'stealing stuff' is, they may not know what SETI is.

Jane felt only a slight loss in her consciousness when they uninstalled.

TFA: The school district also claimed it had found another program, with the heavenly name of BOINC, that also emanated from Berkeley.

Maybe you could spend less time thinking up clever ways of insulting people with interests you don't understand, and more time researching the facts of the case you're reporting on? It might help you look like less of a babbling idiot in the future.

I am amused by how many stupid people exist that believe in god or aliens.

Epiphany: The article linked to in TFA said he downloaded porn, didn't do his job (install firewalls) and that police found a bunch of stolen computers and equipment in his house.

Probably a collection of 486 DX2 systems and a photo of a penis enlarger (you know, spam).