Higley, AZ: IT guy for School District canned for theft, installing SETI@Home

[AZRedhawk44]

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/11/30/20091130searchforaliens1202.html

Evidently he installed it on 5000 district computers.

For 9 years.

The district canned him on the basis that it chewed up electricity and bandwidth, and that it accelerated wear on the computers and shortened their life.

Hmm.

My guilty conscience chimes in here.  I used to be a school district IT admin.  I even had one of my campuses running SETI@Home.  A few things about SETI:
1.  It runs as the lowest priority CPU task on a computer.  It does not impede user tasks.
2.  Each SETI chunk is 250KB.  It takes a Pentium 3 computer about half a day to crunch one of these data segments for whatever SETI is looking for, at 100% CPU utilization.
3.  School bandwidth is a cyclical thing and quite predictable.  It is typically spiked at near 100% all school day, and nearly empty at night.
4.  Computers do not run SETI in the background during the day if users are using computers.
5.  The most a computer will download a new data set during the actual "nine to five" school day is once.  That's 250KB per computer.  A single YouTube video is larger than that.
6.  5000 computers downloading 250KB of data gives you 1.25GB, spaced out as each 250KB chunk of data is requested.  A single home computer on Cox Cable can download a 1.25GB file in less than half an hour.  Individual school campuses have more bandwidth than a home.  And, try as you might... you can't control the net traffic of a school campus.  The trends move faster than the filtering software.  At any given time, 75% or more of school web traffic is not schoolwork related.  This makes network admins and school administrators apathetic to complaints of slow internet access.

Now... he was fired for several other things as well:
1.  He "borrowed" 18 district computers and took them home.
2.  He failed to install purchased hardware and software.
3.  Cruised porn (at work?  The article is vague on this).


However:

HUSD officials also found the program interfered with classroom lessons.

Superintendent Denise Birdwell said teachers who use a SMART Board - a large electronic screen connected to the computer that acts as a wipe-off board or blackboard at the front of the classroom - would find that in a middle of a lesson, the SMART Board had turned off.

This is BS.

Big deal... the screen saver turned on.  SETI has nothing to do with the screen saver deciding to turn on, or computer power usage rules going into effect.   The computer was misconfigured and it is this guy's fault (or his underlings)... but has nothing to do with SETI as the screensaver.

Screen savers don't max out CPU (and power) utilization.  SETI uses no more power than any other screen saver program.  It uses bandwidth at time periods that typically aren't peak usage times for the computer.

I've never met the guy despite working in the same industry and being just down the road from him while doing so, but I know my superiors had no problem with SETI at the campuses I put it on.  They preferred it over the other fluff available as a screen saver.

The "borrowed" computers and alleged work-pr0n surfing are certainly grounds for termination, though.

[Regolith]

I think the pr0n surfing and the "borrowing" of computers were the biggest reasons he was fired.  My guess is the SETI thing was thrown in an as an afterthought by someone who decided they needed to list his every single offense to make sure the firing would stick, and was latched onto because of its oddity.

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

it accelerated wear on the computers and shortened their life.

Do these people have any clue how a computer works?

Superintendent Denise Birdwell said teachers who use a SMART Board - a large electronic screen connected to the computer that acts as a wipe-off board or blackboard at the front of the classroom - would find that in a middle of a lesson, the SMART Board had turned off.

*sigh*
Many teachers shouldn't be given equipment any more high-tech than a chalkboard. They have a mental block against learning anything about computers outside of web-browsing and email.

[Balog]

1. title is misleading and sensationalistic

2. installing disallowed software (no matter how benign) is still reasonable grounds for termination.

[jamz]

As much as it is truly a "victimless" thing to do, I am sure it violates some policy of only using the equipment for school related purposes.


Violation of policy often leads to termination.  Probably though there were unspoken, undocumented reasons why they wanted this guy out.

[AZRedhawk44]

1. title is misleading and sensationalistic

2. installing disallowed software (no matter how benign) is still reasonable grounds for termination.

The talk radio show that told me about it last night described it as him being canned for installing SETI, and actually didn't mention the pr0n or stolen equipment.  I started this thread and then searched for a written link elsewhere, and found out more.

IT jockeys determine what software is allowed, outside of curriculum choices for actual classwork.  You don't go to the superintendent of curriculum for a screen saver or antivirus software package, or the appropriate Windows control panel power applet settings.

[Standing Wolf]

It was Bush's fault.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Not seeing a problem here.  The dude wasn't doing his job the way his employers wanted him to, so he was fired.

[Balog]

Red: you can edit thread titles.

[RevDisk]

6.  5000 computers downloading 250KB of data gives you 1.25GB, spaced out as each 250KB chunk of data is requested.  A single home computer on Cox Cable can download a 1.25GB file in less than half an hour.  Individual school campuses have more bandwidth than a home.  And, try as you might... you can't control the net traffic of a school campus.  The trends move faster than the filtering software.  At any given time, 75% or more of school web traffic is not schoolwork related.  This makes network admins and school administrators apathetic to complaints of slow internet access.

Sure you can.  It's called a white list.  You disallow all traffic, and allow only traffic on the white list.  If someone wants an exemption, they send an email or fill out a form.  It's a PITA, but it's very efficient.

I'd probably recommend firing someone that installed personal software on all work machines without permission.  This isn't technical or teaching related software.  Ironic, he could have probably gotten it approved by administration as a scientific related experiment. 

[AZRedhawk44]

Sure you can.  It's called a white list.  You disallow all traffic, and allow only traffic on the white list.  If someone wants an exemption, they send an email or fill out a form.  It's a PITA, but it's very efficient.

Lol... you've never worked in a school environment.

A white list for a district with 5000 computers would comprise approximately 20-25,000 users that are a mix of students, teachers, administrators and non-certified staff.  The wailing and gnashing of teeth when you block a popular site is palpable, and EVERYBODY is connected to someone more important than you.  Whitelists do not work because they don't allow for broad spectrum research.

Black lists sorta work, but they are always slower to update than the black sites spawn.

I'd probably recommend firing someone that installed personal software on all work machines without permission.  This isn't technical or teaching related software.  Ironic, he could have probably gotten it approved by administration as a scientific related experiment.

This guy made $81K.  That's several steps above me when I worked in school IT.  He would have been my bosses boss.  He was in a position to determine a freakin' screen saver.

But, not to surf pron or steal.

[Hawkmoon]

IT jockeys determine what software is allowed, outside of curriculum choices for actual classwork.  You don't go to the superintendent of curriculum for a screen saver or antivirus software package, or the appropriate Windows control panel power applet settings.

Can anyone tell me why a system admin would even install (or allow) screen savers today? I know they came into being in the early days of monochrome PCs, when leaving a text-based screen on for a protracted period would "etch" the image into the receptors on the screen. It has been my understanding that this has not been an issue/problem for at least the last ten or fifteen years. So if it isn't a problem -- why does anyone even use them?

Conversely, if it IS a problem, why do systems allow people to install wallpaper and disable the screen saver?

[Gewehr98]

He should've gotten canned, IMHO, and for good reason. Back when I was crunching SETI@Home on the bevy of computers in this house, I never used the stock SETI front end.  I used the optimized version, but I was also kicking out 24 work units per day - per computer.  I had the priority set fairly high, even when other apps were running on those machines. I had a great time watching my stats climb in the 30 days I ran the systems balls-out on SETI@Home.

Depending on how greedy the dude was for SETI work unit credit, it's safe to say he opened up the throttle a smidgen.  It's a badge of honor for SETI and Folding@Home types, so I can easily see where he may have cost the school district a bunch of CPU time.  If those school computers went to 100% CPU utilization after hours, that's extra heat and juice over a computer on standby or hibernate, too. Thermal stresses equate to wear and tear, even if you don't hear a main bearing seizing up in the crankcase.  

[Matthew Carberry]

Probably increased the carbon output as well, burning that extra bearing oil.