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McOwen Case Settled

Posted by michael on from the hardly-any-bloodshed dept.

ewilts writes: "Back in July, you ran a story about David McOwen, a computer adminstrator at DeKalb Technical College in Georgia, who was being charged for installing SETI software on school computers. This case has now been settled. See also the EFF press release on McOwen's web site." Update: 01/18 16:11 GMT by M : It was software from distributed.net, not SETI.

2 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Fire 'em by rjamestaylor · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...the precident set here is that sysadmins can no longer choose to install software at will.

    Perhaps it's a precedent for telling sys admins to stick to their jobs and keep the best interests of their employers in mind when installing software. This isn't about "sys admins choosing" it's about the appropriate use of someone else's property.

    When I discovered that a developer had installed SETI on my co's production ecommerce servers ("but I nice'd it!") I had the loser fired -- after disabling the software. Am I against SETI? No (nor am I "for" it; I don't care). But the purpose of our servers, bandwidth, etc., is not racking up points in the SETI project.

    Now, we have other servers that are intended for fun and exploration. But our production servers?

    --
    -- @rjamestaylor on Ello
  2. Re:It wasn't SETI@home! by SirSlud · · Score: 5, Interesting

    >he stole company resources for personal gain

    I hope you're not at work today! You're stealing bandwidth and CPU power to post to slashdot, for the personal gain of .. well, posting to slashdot!

    Honestly, what, you wanna start counting electrons .. which ones make my company how much money, and which ones lose?

    distributed.net does have a goal that benifits those who believe in privacy and ecryption. it's not some sort of time-sharing scam or anything. in fact, if anything, distributed.net has a far higher likelihood of affecting our world (while we're still alive) than the seti project. like, sure, if his college didn't want it, I understand .. but to have been criminally charged instead of simply reprimanded? thats simply ludicrous. i'm liable to believe that someone in georgia does not believe in high encryption and privacy ..

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"