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How much off-time resources does SETI take?

R

RKS

Diamond Member

Article



The search for extraterrestrial life has ended at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

The department on Thursday fired a computer programmer who admitted to using a state-owned computer server to process data for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project, run by the University of California at Berkeley.

Charles E. Smith, 63, told administrators he didn't think loading the SETI software on the server was much of a problem because he ran the program only on weekends and on weekdays between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., when the server wasn't being used, according to a disciplinary report.

Department director Tom Hayes disagreed.

"I understand his desire to search for intelligent life in outer space, because obviously he doesn't find it in the mirror in the morning," Hayes said. "I think that people can be comfortable that security has beamed this man out of our building."

Smith, who earned $60,000 a year, didn't return a phone call seeking comment from The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. There was no immediate response to messages left Friday by The Associated Press at the two phone listings in Columbus under the name Charles E. Smith.


Personaly I think if the department director knew how little SETI effected his kingdom this would not have even been news.
 
What is so hard about asking for permission??!

IMO, if you know what the answer is going to be, you should be prepared to take the heat when you get caught.

Cheers!
 
ROFL I love this quote:

I understand his desire to search for intelligent life in outer space, because obviously he doesn't find it in the mirror in the morning," Hayes said
 
Originally posted by: z0mb13
ROFL I love this quote:

I understand his desire to search for intelligent life in outer space, because obviously he doesn't find it in the mirror in the morning," Hayes said
Click to expand...

That just sounds like him trying to be witty (and failing) for the newspaper
 
If he ran it at 50% or something on nights and weekends, I doubt it would affect performance much, if at all. I mean, it gets the lowest CPU priority, so everything else gets executed before it. I wouldn't think that this would be a fireable offense. Ah well, maybe I'm biased, since I'm a minor F@H junkie.
 
Personaly I think if the department director knew how little SETI effected his kingdom this would not have even been news.
Click to expand...

Yeah, well....he probably can't see reality, which is so far below his ivory tower. And apparently they have a sad sense of humor up there...that guy sucks at making jokes.
 
Originally posted by: Crucial
He should be happy they aren't trying to charge him for it.
Click to expand...

That's the only thing that made dmcowen's case even remotely special. He 100% deserved being fired, but charging him was a little ludicrous.

Anybody who runs apps like that without proper approval is a moron, & deserves to lose their job.

The director does strike me as a dick though with the mirror & "beamed out of the building" crap.

Viper GTS
 
considering the whole deal with SETI is that it only uses cycles that aren't being used for anything else, and considering it only uses like 12 MB of RAM, and considering he only ran it on off hours, i really can't see what the problem was. just another clueless manager who doesn't know his head from his ass trying to flex his corporate muscles.
 
we need this guys email so we can hammer his ass. what a moron, it only runs when processors idle..bah.

my guess is he wanted to save money on that guys salary. hire a young programmer for cheap. age discrimination.
 
It's a fact in the real world. Most companies have policies about run no company approved software on their systems. He should have gotten permission. However they could have been a more lenient with him and disciplined him instead of firing him.
 
What a fscking crock of sh!t.

I mean, I can understand not wanting him to run it. But come on, terminating him and then slandering him?

Too far.
 
I'd have fired him too, running it on his workstation would be fine with me, running it on a server is a huge no-no, nothing runs on a server except what the server needs to serve it's purpose.
 
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