IT school head fired for SETI download

He downloaded the SETI helper software that allows a computer user to help in the search for ET. It ran on the school's computer system for 10 years before anyone noticed. Sadly the school district does not consider this endeavor a scholastic worthy cause.


From www.chinaview.cn - A school district employee in U.S. lost his job after being accused of using school computers to find space aliens, according to media report.

Brad Niesluchowski, who was heading the information technology department of Higley Unified School District in Arizona, was believed to have added to more than 5,000 district computers a University of California-Berkeley program to search for aliens. More of article here.

The computers belong to the school, not him, and SETI at home takes up memory (although while the computer is NOT is use, I believe) and more importantly, network bandwidth. Spread across 5000 computers, I can see why they'd have a grievance with him.

He also stole computers from the school and kept them at his home for the same purpose.

Sounds like he may have had a OCD on discovering aliens?

I still believe half of these so called software programs were and still are ways for companies to steal CPU time.

Ever hear of some software TOS's that state they may use some of your CPU for other purpose than running the software?

Imagine having 100,000 computers networked on the web and they can be accessed for say 15% of their CPU. You would have the equivalent of 15,000 computers CPU time, for no cost. Sounds like to me SETI was using this software for other than the stated purpose.

That is why I hate the Adobe Software so much. It does things to your HDD that no software should be allowed to do.

Yup.

What belongs to your employer, does not belong to you.

He should have suggested it as a SCHOOL SCIENCE PROJECT and first gained approval.

we need more people like this guy.

may the man/woman have mercy on his soul.

The man also stole computers, downloaded porn on them, and messed around with other software/hardware. I think those reasons alone are enough to get him fired..

East Valley Tribune

Originally posted by endisnighe
Sounds like he may have had a OCD on discovering aliens?

I still believe half of these so called software programs were and still are ways for companies to steal CPU time.

seti@home and other distributed computing applications are opt in, no one is forced it use them. This guy is the one who committed the offense, not the software or those behind the software.

Ever hear of some software TOS's that state they may use some of your CPU for other purpose than running the software?

No. Care to provide any such example? Any at all? And even if there was, which I highly doubt, nobody is forcing you to accept that TOS or use that software.

I bet if he had just asked they would have allowed him one or two computers for that.

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