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Worker Fired For Running SETI On State-Owned PCs
Formica writes "A programmer working for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services was fired for running SETI software on a state server. As quoted in this article,
department head Tom Hayes says, 'I think that people can be comfortable that security has beamed this man out of our building.' More articles from Google."
"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."
What an ass Tom Hayes is! Come on now, there is no need for personal attacks, especially because this statement was publicly released in a news interview and they have already fired this guy. I am half tempted to find Tom's email address and tell him just that.
So the issue is: Was there a policy that prohibited use of those systems for that purpose? Granted, since the machines were taxpayer funded, this should have raised some red-flags for Charles Smith (the fired employee), however...... immediate termination rather than a warning seems a bit harsh. Any time you are using publicly funded resources for personal use, there should be extreme caution, and my bias is to never, ever go there in the first place unless there is a prior agreement for reimbursement.
Of course we do not know all the circumstances, but Tom Hayes is still an ass for publicly attempting to humiliate this guy. Tom, whats wrong with you? I suspect you are a former high school football player turned college frat boy who has to put people down to make yourself feel better. Ass!
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
"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.
However justified the firing of the employee, there was no reason to make such a denigrating comment about that employee. Smith should file a complaint and Hayes should publicly apologize. I hope that if Hayes ever makes a mistake he is treated a whole lot better than he chose to treat this man. I sent an email to them asking how this manager can behave in such an awful and slanderous manner. If you feel so inclined you can go here and do the same.
http://www.busyweather.com/
*winces* context clash! Please, don't mix your metaphors. Star Trek!=SETI. At all.
hayest@odjfs.state.oh.us
T: 614/466-6282
This qualifies as "Useless waste of government resources", just like browsing Slashdot. See ya, buddy.
Life in Orange County
I guess that the SETI program won't find any signs of intelligent life at Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
maybe he was searching for illegal aliens stealing jobs in ohio
I have to agree with Hayes' decision (though not his commentary).
Wasting cycles looking for ET = wasting tax dollars.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
Because SETI@Home is such a security risk.
My mother works for the County Gov't, and I've seen some of the spyware infested cesspools that they call computers, and they fire this guy for doing what? Wasting clock cycles?
This sounds like a typical "find an excuse to fire someone you don't like" type of thing.
Wouldn't it be useful if we could run these distributed programs on these fast servers when they're not in use?
After all, they are public servers --- they should be serving the public at every moment.
"Unauthorized software" means just that. Just because he was in the IT department doesn't give him free reign to do what he wants to with a production server.
Remember: Those servers, routers, switches, and workstations aren't yours, they belong to your employer. You're paid to do what your employer wants to them, and not do what said employer doesn't want. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you're stupid (yes, STUPID) enough to flaunt the rules because you think they don't apply to you, you deserve what you get.
It's stupid to fire someone for running this on company/institutional computers (whatever happened to warnings?), but it's also stupid to just decide to run it on the assumption that your boss isn't stupid.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Finally we have the proof. The state is covering up the existence of ET's I can see "they" now - "One computer less for them to know the truth MUAHAHAHAHA"
What a small, petty minded, turd. I hope he gets 'visited' by Them soon.
If I worked for the state and used say a government car for personal use they wouldn't just fire me. They would arrest me for misuse of public funds and materials. This theft just the same.
Running SETI costs tax payers money if the form of the electric bill and ware and tear on the equipment. I am running on my personal system GRID.org to fight cancer and my electric bill went up $20 a month for just 3 computers. This shit adds up, fast!
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I wonder what the reason actually was. Sounds like he has a history.
Just goes to show why you need to use "nice" more often...
Not a simple computer, a server (as stated in the article). Furthermore, he ran a CPU (energy) intensive (and useless, in my opinion) program on a computer he didn't own, consuming power. Imagine all state employees start doing the same thing. A simple warning would have been enough; he served as an example. Sad in a way...
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
...just so you know.
If you're going to call other people stupid, it's a good idea not to reveal your illiteracy in the process.
1. If that's all he did, the comments made about him and the firing is a bit harsh.
2. If it's not your personal machine, don't be an ass yourself and treat it like one.
I had it running on 5 servers at one time at a gov agency I worked for. Soon it got around that SETI was running on 'production' servers and I was told politely to quit running it for all of the common reasons,, misuse of public funds etc. Keep in mind the servers were only using a fraction of their capability doing what they were doing in the first place,, and what they were doing was pretty useless and just bureacratic pork programs on a small scale.
And I suppose Tom Hayes never reads personal e-mail at work? That computer is for work Tom!
And Tom Hayes never takes an occasional break to surf the web and check out the sports scores? You are abusing office equipment Tom!
And Tom Hayes never takes personal telephone calls while at his desk? The telephone is for work Tom!
Seriously, this is complete bullshit.
At the most this rated a reprimand and uninstalling the software.
I could see a more severe reaction if there was something else involved (e.g the SETI software caused some kind of problem, or the programmer repeatedly refused order to uninstall it or something like that), but as it stands it sounds like a clueless over reaction.
And don't tell me about the legality. Just because its against the rules doesn't mean you have to go the most severe penalty.
dude, there is far more fraud, waste, and abuse in government then this piddling little thing. In the scheme of things, it probably cost more in administration costs to fire the poor bastard and hire a new guy than any expense brought on by the SETI program.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
The chick in HR who's downloaded the "kitty-cat screen saver" spam zombie is doing just fine.
I think next they should fire anyone who installs Windows XP on a government owned computer because it would waste publicly-funded CPU cycles displaying all that hideous eye candy.
Seriously- does SETI@home have such a huge impact on computer performance that it causes losses in productivity?
Probably not- it just uses CPU cycles that are going to be wasted anyways. And as for bandwidth consumption, I think uploading/downloading a work unit isn't going to be significantly more of a load than doing a little surfing during the lunch hour.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Well, mixed feelings...
On one hand what this guy did is clearly wrong - even according to SETI rules - you're warned not to run this shit on computer on which you're not allowed to do so.
SETI uses up a lot of CPU cycles and makes outgoing network connections on its own (well he could have set it up in different ways, I guess) so it's dumb to have it run on a government SERVER without getting explicit permission.
On the other hand - this sort of shit shouldn't get someone fired* - maybe some embarasing talking to followed by an office-wide memo reminding everyone that "in light of recent transgressions, PLEASE BE ADVISED not to do this kind of shit"
*The stories that I've seen do not indicate whether there's been any prior incidents. Perhaps in this workplace, the "don't install shit on the server" policy is so ingrained into the office culture that someone can't be unaware of the severity of the consequences, in which case the firing is in order.
But actually I hink the comments by Tom Hayes are truthful (but unprofessional). Someone who values his SETI workunit count to such an extent as to fuck around at work, isn't brilliant.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
What about if someone only runs said program while they are logged on? This really then only affects their own computing, and they are technically using all the electricity anyway. I agree though, servers are a totally different thing.
http://www.governor.ohio.gov/releases/080404hayes. htm/
Looks like he's done anyways. For shame!
I hope you're joking.
I hope you don't surf the web from your office, because you are wasting your employer's dollars!
PS: I do detect your sarcasm
It's pretty clear you've never worked in a corporate IT department. So the issue is: Was there a policy that prohibited use of those systems for that purpose?
Any employer worth his or her salt has an item in the employee handbook that prohibits employees from installing stuff on systems without permission.
Furthermore, and I have to point this out to users ALL the time- the computer they use is not theirs. It belongs to the company, as does the telephone, the power that PC uses, and its internet connection.
Granted, since the machines were taxpayer funded, this should have raised some red-flags for Charles Smith (the fired employee)
That would be an understatement.
, however...... immediate termination rather than a warning seems a bit harsh.
Not if the employee handbook says that's the consequence. Not if Smith was doing other things deserving of termination. Not if his actions endangered adherence to security protocols, placed sensitive data at risk of disclosure, or caused a department to loose certification. As a professional system admin, the mere fact that he considered it appropriate to install stuff like that on government systems shows his judgment is impaired.
Any time you are using publicly funded resources for personal use, there should be extreme caution
I've been a sysadmin for years, and it's pretty much common sense, as in the "don't walk off building tops" kind of common sense, that you do not use your employer's systems for anything you haven't specifically sought authorization for. Reasons, off the top of my head:
I can hear the kids yelling "but commercial software could be insecure too!" Well, that's right- but the difference is that if you're running something the IT department said was OK and the company gets h@x0r3d, they're the ones who take the heat. If it's because you were running some clownish search-for-ET thing or a program that puts a dancing ape on your desktop, well, then you get your ass canned so fast your head spins, and possibly get slapped with a lawsuit for damages as well.
Maybe the IT department has picked that official program because it's more secure, or has been certified by another government agency. Or they've actually tested/explored its security, or an outside consultant says it's more secure, or the maker of the software has signed agreements that their application meets security requirements of the government agency using the software.
Please help metamoderate.
Do any of these things ring a bell Weatherbug Webshots Hotbar Gator Any of those damned games off MSN
His installing Seti@home is at best a very bad precedent to set ofr people that are being told they can't have frivolous software on government computers. At worst its a major management and security policy violation for the office.
I spend alot of time trying to convince customers that they need to keep their PC'S clean. When someone in a position of authority does something like this you know there will be whining about "But so and so let us"
They would only arrest you if you weren't powerfull enough to get away with whatever youw anted...
We fired someone over the summer for running Folding@Home on multiple computers. It wasn't because of what he was doing, but because he had installed and run software that was not approved by the university, and therefore considered a security breach.
I don't necessarily agree with the firing, but if the rules state explicitly that you can't do it, then don't.
Maybe he should have done something useful like Folding instead.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
dude, there is far more fraud, waste, and abuse in government then this piddling little thing.
Yes, and much of comes from people having that attitude.
1)
The server would already be running full-time. No extra significant electricity used here.
2)
Isn't SETI@Home a government program to begin with? So technically, you're using a public computer system for a PUBLIC use.
If it's not allowed to be used in the government systems, it damned well should be.
Wear and tear? What, if you push too many electrons through the logic gates they wear a little groove? Most servers use the same amount of power heavily loaded or just sitting there doing nothing.
And they would not arrest you for using a state car for personal business.
I e-mailed the bastard!
3 9&tid=126&tid=1
Here's the message:
Good morning/afternoon/evening Mr. Hayes!
You have just appeared on Slashdot as the asshole of the day today (09 October 2004), the largest geek news website. Expect many many more e-mails and possibly telephone calls and faxes from other geeks like me!
Use of such software on production line equiptment isn't a good idea in the first place. SETI does not cause damage, but may slow things down. Warning, pay cut, write up, whatnot might have been a more suitable punishment, but fireing the dude and saying:
"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."
is just uncalled for. And because of your actions, this is now on slashdot and you have basically been deemed asshole of the day.
Your personal info is in the comment tree of the article such as address, this e-mail address, fax, etc.
Here is the link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/09/17402
Good luck!
"And so the Trekkies were executed in the mannor most befitting virgins - thrown into volcanoes" - Futurama
There are, in fact, lots of different kinds of "unauthorized sofware".
There is the kind that introduces viruses, the kind that is used for trading porn, the kind used for trading Windows source code, the kind for sharing MP3's with a million of your closest friends, and the kind that people use for running a side business.
And then there is the kind that people use to contribute to a not-for-profit scientific effort at a public university for no financial gain, software that only uses idle cycles and is known not to interfere with anybody's applications.
Unauthorized use of sofware of those different kinds demands different kinds of responses. The use of the latter kind of software use warrants at most a warning.
..eater.
One eyed, one horn, flying purple people eater.
One eyed, one horn, flying purple people eater.
One eyed, one horn, flying purple people eater.
He's applying for metal disability right now.
Dear Governor Taft,
I am writing regarding the despicable conduct of one of your appointees, namely, Tom Hayes of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. He recently fired an employee, a computer programmer named Charles Smith, for running a program called SETI@Home on the department machines. The program uses spare computer time (when the computer isn't being used, like when a screensaver is running, for example) to do mathematical analysis on data received via radio telescopes by the SETI Program.
The SETI@Home project is well-respected in the scientific and technology communities, and there was no need for Mr. Hayes to fire the programmer for installing the program on department computers. However, the issue goes much deeper than that.
Mr. Hayes demonstrates not only a lack of knowledge on the subject, but also an unwillingness to learn about things he doesn't already know about. A very small amount of poking about on the Internet would have revealed a wealth of information on the SETI@Home project, including its endorsement by a variety of educational organizations and industries.
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Instead, Hayes indicates his assumption of intellectual superiority with such witty repartee as this quote from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
"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."
Hayes's complete lack of tact when dealing with the media over what is actually an unjust firing demonstrates that he is incapable of performing his duties in a way that reflects positively on the State of Ohio, and I hope you will take appropriate action in this situation.
I am half tempted to find Tom's email address and tell him just that.
A quick Google search revealed a slew of contact info...
Mr. Tom Hayes
Director
Ohio Department of Job & Family Services
30 East Broad Street, Floor 32
Columbus,OH 43215
Phone: (614) 466-6282
Fax: 614-466-2815
Email: hayest01@odjfs.state.oh.us
And all those constant cycles keep your computer nice and warm, no sudden drops in temp, the screensaver keeps customers from trying to read your email and classified info, the crons doing their jobs at night: really I think it was a personal thing. I hope he finds a job with an HR that suits him more.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Here's the email I sent:
I am floored at the lack of maturity and managerial skill the department head Tom Hayes has shown himself to possess through comments made regarding a recently-fired employee by the name of Charles Smith. I'm interested to know how a person with such a small amount of managerial skill can be put in a position as head of one of your departments, and I feel for the current employees that have to put up with a person who could make such slanderous attacks on a coworker. I hope Mr. Smith considers legal action in this situation.
The more people who send the better.
Hayes was stepping down Oct 1. Why he's still there, I don't know. (Or is Slashdot posting weeks-old news again? No, couldn't be!)
I don't really see it. One Google result showed the difference in power consumption between an idle and loaded 3.4GHz P4 to be about 80W. I pay about $0.09 for a KWh of electricity. That works out to about $5.62 extra per month per computer - assuming that the CPU would otherwise be completely idle for the entire month. This is for a particularly power-hungry CPU, and most would be cheaper to operate.
Note that the same system (from the source above) would already cost $10.60 per month per machine to run at the price I'm paying, no you're not exactly getting to use it for free anyhow. This has nothing to do with the discussion; it's just a side observation.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
SETI fires you!!!
Okay the guy installed some software when he wasn't supposed it and got fired. I don't care. It happens all the time, why is this big news for slashdot?
Even on a desktop it can be 50 Watts.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
All modern CPUs draw significantly more power when loaded than when idle. Some CPUs increase this difference still further by reducing clock speed and power supply voltage when idle.
A dual Xeon server could potentially draw 100 W more under load than when idle. For more powerful servers, this could be even higher.
Tinpot military types *always* recur. I don't know
enough of the context to know if seti@home etc. was
put on the server out of sheer bloody-mindedness or
out of ignorance of company policy, so it's difficult to know how to call it. In general, anyone
stuck with the miserable job of being firefighter and sysadmin ought to at least *try* to have a sense of humour and defuse incidents without screaming to
the PHB. Humour works. People really really won't do
it again (if you describe what *might* happen to them).
Would I work for them. Uh. Heck no. I wouldn't even work for myself (cough).
Like "networkBoy" I use (esp the old seti@home
cmd line client) to burn the hell out of new
machines.
Every time I hear a story like this I'm glad I chose to work in small outfits (or even for
twilight zone ones halfway to heaven or hell).
Not good job security. Just good job interest.
They never, ever want anyone to know they have hired people and made it possible and actually preferred if they sit at their desks and do nothing. Sign me up I want to get paid and not be given any work.
Does this have anything to do with his age? At 63, having been fired, will he still be eligible for all of his retirement benefits?
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
According to this, Tom Hayes no longer works for ODJFS, so sending an e-mail to that address may be pointless.
One - the guy was fired, and he's 63; many organizations attempt to get rid of people before retirement, because then the person doesn't get the full package. They were probably looking for a reason, and this was it.
Two - When media says "computer server", it doesn't have to be a "server" in the sense that slashdotters think. Media doesn't know; this could've been a sparc 10 used to generate a report or something.
this isn't a sig. i type this (including the two dashes), every time i post, just to make it look like a sig.
Tom Hayes is set to step down as director this month. I wonder if he maybe had a personal grudge against this guy.
Mr. Hayes is apparently as ignorant as he believes the programmer was. I imagine there are a LOT of people who would get fired if all managers were as ignorant as this tool.
Either way, it's too bad neither of the phone numbers that show up on Google for "tom hayes, ohio" were actually him. I'd certainly love to for him to realize his ignorance.. 24x7.
They (Intel, AMD, ...) want that you use SETI@Home!!!
There is not erection, errr, election!!!
You might not be able to e-mail him, but you could always phone in your concern...
Firing this guy is severe and unwarranted. A simple warning should have been enough.
Since he's a state employee, I hope his union takes up the case and files a grievance.
Hayes is basically using public resources for his own ego gratification.
Most gov workers have unions. Unions usually intervene to allow one to keep their job, but with some kind of punishment. At one gov place I did a contract, a perm employee was caught running a small business out of her cubicle. She was reprimanded instead of fired because of union intervention. But she started it up again and was eventually fired.
Table-ized A.I.
Running Windows-3D screensavers is even worse, since this exercises both the GPU and the CPU.
Until SETI@Home uses the graphics processor as a coprocessor, I'd say fire all the windows users first.
The message that you sent was undeliverable to the following: hayest@odjfs.state.oh.us (user not found) well, shit. looks like we'll have to scold him some other way.
Interviewer: "So, why were you let go of your last position?"
TheGuy: "Well, I was fired for using company equipment to find space aliens."
Interviewer: "Space aliens?"
TheGuy: "Yip!"
Interviewer: "Um, okay, nice meeting you, we'll call you, don't call us."
Table-ized A.I.
Been running Folding@Home. Like to see them fire someone for that. "Oh yeah, we fired him because he was using spare governement computer resources to try to find cures and other medical breakthroughs."
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Also note that some places may pay more for electricity than you do. Here in Austin, TX, the first 500 kW/month is relatively cheap, then the next 1000 kW/month is about twice as much, and the rest is even more. My average price per kWh works out to about $0.10, but using more power costs me more like $0.12 per kWh. (Also, the electric company shows a nice profit, which goes into the city coffers to pay for libraries and such. It's like another tax.)
As a general rule of thumb, when you try to use real world numbers and math to show that somebody else's estimate is way off, it's a good idea to use figures that don't agree with theirs quite so closely :)
Assuming that a single person owns three desktop computers, and is a pretty typical user, and leaves them all on 24/7, I'll bet their cpus are idle over 95% of the time, unless he runs something like a fancy screensaver or Seti. So `completely idle' is pretty close to the truth. Actually, it's also possible they were all (or maybe two) turned off when not used, but now are left on to run GRID, and that'll increase the power usage greatly. And if he lives somewhere hot, the extra heat generated will require more air conditioning to keep cool. Sounds like he got off cheap at $20/month, doesn't it?so its roughly equivilent to leaving a light on?
i think there is probablly more to this than we are being told
for wasted resources.
It would be great if as many Slashdotters as possible could write a letter of protest to the Ohio Governor over this. And send it as a letter. Speaking as someone who has worked in the past in a Governor's Office for one of the largest States in the Union (I'm being vague), I have to report that physical letters are taken more seriously than e-mailed comments.
We don't know if the IT person had any other demerits against him, but the head of the department's comments are way out of line. Such ignorance of shared distributed processing programs like SETI and Folding@home are causing State and federal government computers to not be used to the maximum during their product life cycles which means the taxpayers are not being served to the maximum. We need a pro-science approach from all our forms of government and bureaucrats such as these relieved from their duties...
The Lynxpro
I would have been fired some 6 times then..
And since it's impossible to get anything completely clean, we might as well perform surgery in a sewer.
Dear Mr. Dachannein,
Regardless of how respected the SETI@Home project may be, those servers were purchased for a reason and running SETI@Home was not it. We find that the employee was vioating policy and his termination was appropriate.
As for his remarks, we agree that they were perhaps inappropriate, and.....
.
.
.
I got my share of calls at 5am from system admins freaking out back in the distributed.net days because I was the DNS contact. We've had people get fired for running Folding@home too. This is actually not as rare as you would think.
We do everything we can to tell poeple NOT to do this, and they KNOW they are doing something wrong.
I feel bad for the guy, but only as bad as I feel for people that choose to live in Florida and then bitch about hurricanes.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
*My* "attitude" is one of perspective, not laissez-faire management.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Most state government employees can easily file a grievance to challenge any termination. No lawyers or representation is usually necessary, but just to be safe he might want some.
If this firing were challenged in my state, especially considering the derogatory and defamatory comments issued by this employees boss, a grievance committee would almost certainly give his job back.
I suspect this employee was given no warnings about the conduct for which he was fired. In addition, he probably wasn't violating any direct orders or specific policies. Sure, he was in violation of general policies regarding personal use of computers. But when his boss publically accused him of being crazy, he almost certainly overrode any minor policy violations by the employee.
In my state, the comments made by his boss would have violated any number of state regulations and policies regarding correct termination procedures. And considering that this employee could sue for defamation, I wouldn't be surprised to see his boss actually fired over this.
One might ask why he would want his job back? Certainly he wouldn't want to work for this jerk again. Because state governments are large, and he could immediately apply for a transfer to another agency. One where he would no longer have to work for the ignorant fool that is Tom Hayes.
Nice Job
About Tommy http://jfs.ohio.gov/director.stm
Please read this.
Maybe the man was a border-line screw-up and this was the last straw. Or maybe he was too close to retirement, lost the political infighting, hit on the manager's wife, who knows.
It does seem, however, that the manager's ignorant attitude towards the SETI project had a strong influence on his firing decision. To be expected from a PHB.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I think you are very much mistaken! Are you telling me that state funded employees such as police officers, never use their patrol vehicle for personal transportation? If you don't think they do, you should think again. I see cops all the time doing things like this.
Would they get fired? Maybe in extreme circumstances, like if they were speeding, dealing drugs, and taking a cross country trip in their patrol vehicle. Would they get reprimanded, maybe, possibly, but there is usually a leeway for this kind of use.
In an obtuse view, yes, this is stealing, but with minor things like this, it is rarely ever escalated to the level of being terminated.
I'm not saying I think what the guy did was right, but I am saying that if he was fired soley for this reason, it's a bit over the top. Furthermore, the comments made by his previous employer were rude, and unprofessional, and that simply shows the caliber of employer. (And I personally hope he is repremanded for it.) I would never treat any employee that way, regardless of what he/she did.
I find that most often I end up learning from necessity, rather than for enjoyment.
Most government employees -- federal, state, and local -- have strong job protections once they've passed probation on the job. There have to be levels of warnings and chances to correct improper behavior first. To escalate this to a "misuse of state equipment" charge and fire the guy where it's hard to show that any damage or lost to the state occured sounds to me like there's more than happened than we've heard.
As for the guy's "boss", based on his statements, that guy doesn't even seem to understand the technology he is supposed to be managing. He seems to have gotten his entire scientific education from watching reruns of Star Trek.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not where I work. I'm supposed to do some thinking, based on the fact that I have an electronic engineer's degree. I'm allowed to say "fuck the IT department". But I also bear the responsibility for the results. So, the big question isn't if the guy was running SETI. Was the server running OK? If the server under his responsibility wasn't performing as expected, then he should answer for it, no matter if the cause was the SETI software or anything else.
And it dissipates 100 watts more of power. Which is clearly 'wear and tear' on the hardware.
And there's probably yet more.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
You never know the full story when reading a press article like this.
There could have been a pre-existing conflict between the terminated employee and his management, or it's possible that unauthorized software installation was a sensitive issue in the organization as a whole.
Or maybe management was just under pressure to reduce staffing anyway, and this guy's activities handed them a golden opportunity.
We'll never know.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Is this fucking Star Trek or something?
Why do people call for others to be arrested for every little thing?
..why to stealing .. why not to other things? What other things that people dont get arrested for that maybe they should be?
..caused you deliberate trauma ! Arrest her! 5 years jail should be enough vengeance.
He stole 25 cents? Arrest him! Etc.
Let's apply this whole thing of throwing people in jail all around
Here are some ideas:
He broke your heart? Arrest him!
She lied to you? That's deception
Seriously though, at what level is being inconvenienced require a person to get arrested?
It seems we're selective in deciding what actions are considered malicious and what actions are worthy of being thrown in jail for.
At least if we wanted people to be thrown in jail so they could be "rehabiliated" that would be something.
Has civilization gone mad?
Not in Columbus, Ohio. The village idiot is heading the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
you cannot fire someone so easily and call him crazy. You have to give him chances. If he does something stupid like running SETI@home on a production server he could be told in writing that his actions caused harm to the company/departement and that he should not do it again. After 3 minor warnings he's fired. Of course you can always give someone the boot if he does something really stupid like not come to work for three weeks without warning.
-
If I worked for the state and used say a government car for personal use they wouldn't just fire me. They would arrest me for misuse of public funds and materials. This theft just the same.
Well, but this is a bit murkier. It's arguable that the SETI project is for the public good, so in this case it would be comparable to you driving an accident victim to the hospital in the government vehicle, something I really doubt you'd be fired for. (And yes I know it's not exactly the same but it's hard to get something closer using the car analogy.)Not to say he was right, but it's not as clear cut because of the nature of the software. If it had been a game or something it'd be much clearer, but this is grey area.
But installing software on your employers computers without permission to do so, should be an offense worthy of firing.
Would you get pissed if someone installed something on your computer without permission to do so? I would.
but seriously, would you call this man sane? 63 years old (a time you would think more about your pension than aliens) with a US$ +60000 per-year salary (that you can just buys a server and a DS L account home!, then running SETI not on a stupid client machine, no! on server itself! In this article is mentioned that he was a 'programmer', would a programmer get access to a production server just like that? I guess he hijacked something too. What a loser.
I won't comment on the story ... but ...
... it's an awesome tool for stress testing a system's memory and CPU.
... of course.
A number of years back when Sun was having all their problems with the Ultra SPARC II processor, I quipped one day to "The Boss" that if you ran SETI@Home on those processors for 72hours straight, we'd isolate the bad CPU's on any new hardware purchases (later we found the same for memory).
He said, "And how did you come to this conslusion?"
I remarked, " 'cause SETI@Home will pound the CPU and local cache (where the issue was) into the ground. If they last 72 hrs straight running SETI@Home, they are near production ready. We still have to do the in-house software testing. We won't have to worry about CPU's flaking out once we get them to a production environment, SETI@Home will stress the hardware more than we ever will."
We've been running SETI@Home on new hardware ever since
YMMV
But every employer I've worked for has made it very clear that using their resources for non job-related business is a no-no.
I suspect Buddy had already pissed off el jefe. After doing that, running SETI on el jefe's computer was just plain stupid. Buddy needed to be fired for stupidity.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
More proof that the GOP are the SCUM of the EARTH!
So you're saying that if you worked for a government agency you'd never stop enroute to grab a burger in your government car?
uC
Cape's in the cleaners.
Sig? No, thanks. I don't smoke.
Client confidentiality. He installed an unapproved program, that potentially would have compromised security, and thereby client confidentiality.
"But SETI doesn't do that" you say. Doesn't matter, because it COULD and you CAN NOT fuck around with client confidentiality. Ever, under any circumstances, period.
All you people shouting about slander lawsuits, imagine the shitstorm if 100,000 client records got compromised by some dumbass installing a supposedly safe program. That's why he should have been fired.
From his SETI@home website:
:-) "
"I'm a consultant in the computer business, in Columbus Ohio. SETI@home is running on machines on my network around the house, using 5 Sun processors in the 400MHz range amd one P4 1.8 GHz."
and
"I'm sure extraterrestrial life exists. Will we ever discover it or visa versa? That's anybody's guess. But SETI@home seems like a great idea, and certainly worth putting on machines that sit here and run 24/7 anyway! It does screw up my workload average statistics though
That gives us a little insight on his thought processes about using computers that just "sit here and run 24/7 anyway!"
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Shop owner finds city computers with residents' personal info in http://www.morningjournal.com/site/news.cfm?newsid =12944909&BRD=1699&PAG=461&dept_id=46371&rfi=6
http://www.morningjournal.com/site/news.cfm?newsid =12952176&BRD=1699&PAG=461&dept_id=46371&rfi=6
http://news.google.com/news?q=lorain%20computers&h l=en&lr=&safe=off&sa=N&tab=wn
yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaah....
Unauthorised software on servers ?
Supervise him clearing his desk and get him escorted out of the building.
"Tzu Chang said, 'What can be called the four vices?'
Confucius said, 'To put to death without teaching can be called cruelty. To judge results without prerequisites can be called tyranny. To impose deadlines on improper orders can be called thievery. As when giving in the procedure of receipt and disbursement, to stint can be called officious."
Sigh... More than 2000 years later people still don't have a clue...
The press release about Hayes' retirement states that he has ~4K employees and a budget of $15B. My guess is that Hayes not only did not bear a grudge against the employee, but he probably never even met him.
On Saturday 09 October 2004 4:23 am, John Burrowy wrote:
>
s tinfo/colug1
>
> http://www.newsnet5.com/news/3793629/detail.html
Actually, he wasn't a programmer. He was a database application specialist
(Oracle). And it wasn't just a server. It was a 4 processor LPAR running on
an IBM p690, with 6GB of RAM assigned. I've known about the SETI project,
but who would have guessed that they made an AIX version?
And contrary to his claim about the system not being used on the weekend, he
was discovered precisely because some of the other developers were
complaining about the reduced performance on the system.
_______________________________________________
colug1 mailing list colug1@colug.net
http://www.colug.net/mailman/li
Governor Bob Taft 30th Floor 77 South High Street Columbus, Ohio 43215-6117 Phone 614-466-3555 or 614-644-HELP http://governor.ohio.gov/contactinfopage.asp
Dear Mr. Dachannein,
Regardless of how respected the SETI@Home project may be, those servers were purchased for a reason and running SETI@Home was not it. We find that the employee was vioating policy and his termination was appropriate.
Dear Governor Taft,
I am a taxpayer in your state and, therefore, partially responsible for the funding of this computer. I would rather this computer be used to its fullest potential, and I feel that whenever it sits unused, it is wasting tax-bought resources.
It is common knowledge that computers typically become obsolete before they actually stop working. Therefore, getting as much use out of them as possible before they become obsolete is important. It is the same principle as using any product to its fullest potential before its life cycle is ended. I would assume that, for example, your state cars are not retired while they are still in good shape.
SETI@Home, and other distributed applications, are a good method of using computers when they would otherwise sit unused. The applications are designed to benefit the public (ie, taxpayers), and is therefore a method where the taxpayer dollars are directly beneficial to the taxpayer. In my opinion, running such applications on tax-bought machines should be required.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
You can find an online feedback form for Governor Taft here:
http://governor.ohio.gov/contactinfopage.asp
user@host$ diff
Mr. Hayes demonstrates not only a lack of knowledge on the subject, but also an unwillingness to learn about things he doesn't already know about.
(cue Quentin Tarantino)
Do you see a sign over Mr's Hayes' desk that reads: SETI Scientist? No? Do you know why you don't see that sign? Because being a SETI scientist aint his fucking business.
Seriously though, your letter is well written and such, but every geek has to respect the fact that they like control over what goes on their system. This guy (Hayes) is the head geek in that particular flock, and he said "no". Granted, I don't agree with him being a dick about it, especially in a media outlet, but regardless, it's not his job to "learn about" or become "enlightened to" the concept of SETI@home software. He's put put in charge of a fleet of servers, his bottom line is the integrity of said servers.
Does the presence of SETI software compromize the secutity of those machines? No, probably not. But Charles HAD TO ASK PERMISSON TO PUT IT ON or risk the consequenses. He risked them and got bitten. Bummer.
He left the department on 10/1:
. htm
http://www.governor.ohio.gov/releases/080404hayes
But the artile listed above was printed 10/9. So this guy's dismissal had to have happened on or before 10/1. I suppose if this thing blows up, this quote "...what I am most looking forward to now is spending more time with my family" may not be as easy-going as he hopes.
I work for a software developing studio that has systematically ensured the firing of two programmers, who were over 40. The reason each time was a fuzzy argument about not being as productive as they once were. Garbage? Yeah.
I am close to 40 now and already remarks have floated my way about not keeping up with trends and identifying with the younger coders.
Age discrimination is real and rampant. "Seasoned" people are a LIABILITY; they are closer to retirement, ask more questions, and actually expect proper remuneration for their "Seasoned" skills.
Madison Ave only shows older people in Medicare commercials, while 20-year olds fill the remaining advertising bulk. This culture has permeated IT long ago. There's only room enough for "fresh" perspectives.
To you 20 and 30-year old IT managers out there, I say: Time will catch up with you, too.
The truly stupid employees do not flaunt the rules; rather, they flout the rules.
These are points that I believe and that I have expressed in my email:
1-Publicly insulting someone without any reason was unacceptable.
2-Tom Hayes is a public servant and it makes is act much more critical because he receive is pay from taxpayers.
3-Charles E. Smith is 63 and I think that we should have much more respect for our seniors.
4-I support the SETI project as many other million people and because Tom Hayes as a lack of culture, education and sight, that doesn't give him the right to insult is ex employee and at the same time all supporters of SETI project.
5-They should have give Charles E. Smith a warning; it's not like if he did something with malign intentions. Installing Internet Explorer is probably much more dangerous than installing SETI@home.
6-Tom Hayes should be sacked for is lack of judgement.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Hello,
I couldn't help but notice that your facility fired a computer programmer (Charles E Smith) who installed the SETI@home program on a state-owned computer server.
As Charles no doubt tried to inform his superiors, SETI@home does not constitute a security threat, nor does it reduce the capacity of the server for handling its normal tasks. In fact, SETI@home is entirely innocuous, and is performing a public service by not wasting the spare time of computing resources your facility maintains at no doubt great cost to the taxpayer.
I think it most likely that the decision to fire Charles E Smith was in fact based not on his use of SETI@home - installing this harmless (and beneficial - SETI@home does more than search for extraterrestrial intelligence) software was in fact manufactured into an offence to facilitate the removal of an older staff member before his retirement, in order to save money.
This is entirely illegal, and grounds for a law suit, which Charles E Smith will win.
Discrimination in the workplace on the basis of age is an offence against not only the laws of our great nation, but against the anti-discrimination clauses in the heart of even the Bill of Human Rights.
I would suggest therefore that your facility should strongly reconsider its actions.
Sorry for the URL I typing and talking at the phone at the same time :) I meant Ohio Department of Job and Family Services
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
and see if there is some "unauthorized" material on his box. As a sysadmin/engineer for too damned long now, you can keep the hard line and watch as you become a target for your own inflexible attitude. It WAS dumb for that to be on a production server. WHo knows maybe the production server was Tom's personal mp3 system library for all we know. I do know this. I won't ever work for that guy. HIs asinine comments and attitude show poor leadership skills, and his lack of technical understanding show through as well. The worst possible person to work with much less for. However I won't be in Ohio anyway...I think the only decent thing to come out of Ohio is Drew Carey, but I could be wrong.
biff tannen vs. george mcfly
why not fire them for that? If they increase our taxes, fire them.
The job motto should be, what can I do to reduce taxes for everyone?
Why do companies so dislike these kinds of projects? For one thing, as long as the employee was only setting it up as screensaver, and not trying to take any personal credit for this I don't see a problem.
Also, it advances human science, you would think that a company would be proud to be a part of that.
Then again, he probably should have gotten permission for something like this. Though, I think he should have merely been reprimanded for this, is a firing really necessary? It may be that he didn't even consider that they would be upset about this.
I realize some people are hijacking company networks to earn themselves fame for possibly finding cures or life beyond our world with these distributed projects. That should be frowned upon. And, SETI's license specifically states that this WILL be frowned upon.
However, I have a feeling this company's leadership is just being ignorant, like so many others. They somehow feel their computing power (while screensavers are on) is being stolen. They'd rather have it leak into the environment than do something noble and good for mankind, that says something about their respect for society.
"On some level, every networked computer is a server."
In what way? In most places, workstations are prohibited from sharing disks, they're prohibited from running anything except what management has approved.
What exactly are they "serving" that makes them a server?
I was raised in Ohio. I lived there for (right now) half my life!!! I am so AMBARASSED by this article! It is the intellectuals in Ohio that have the open mindedness to even consider there IS other life out there. These statements by some Director of Obsolete Technology at the state level, clearly indicate that he is not from Ohio. SETI is a federally funded program, it is run on nearly every univeristy computer lab work stations not is use. Indiviuals across the world have set up small SETI "processing stations", processing teraflops per second of radio and signal data. All this, in effort to PROVE ONCE AND FAR ALL; That "MAN-KIND" is to self centered to realize that it may not be the most superior life in the universe.
It seems like every month just creates another reason for me to be embarassed to say I am from Ohio. Maybe I should claim Utah...
Auger Duval - AD
--AD
He may not be popular, but he has the attitude that I want when I hire a sysadmin. He *gets it*.
Its like the kids with 2 years out of school telling me how they need more languages approved, or more operating systems approved, or how they need some new product that they read about on a web site, or how after that solid 24 months of experience, they think the existing architecture is *stupid* and anyway, its so easy to do in Visual Basic, why do I have to document anything?
I say, fire his sorry ass.
[Submitted through http://jfs.ohio.gov/feedback/]
Hello. This afternoon, I read an article on Slashdot.org -- one of the pre-eminent sources of information for those in the IT industry. In this article, it turned out that an employee of OJDFS was terminated for using the "SETI" @home client to parse data.
To say that this is a common practice among programmers and engineers is a vast understatement. Most companies have no issue with it, so long as it remains on the end-user's personal computer. However, Mr. Smith chose to run it on a server, which was perhaps an unfortunate choice. The client has "smarts:" it refrains from using system resources unless the system is idle; thus, it has virtually no impact on regular workloads. Nevertheless, it seems likely that it is against OJDFS policy to run most any personal program on a server. Given that this is probably the case, at the absolute WORST, a stern "Don't do that" would more than likely have sufficed. When we it was run -- on servers -- at Cisco Systems (the largest manufacturer of networking equipment in the world), we were merely asked to stop. Period.
So, what happens at OJDFS? He gets fired. Then, to add insult to injury, he gets publicly humiliated by Tom Hayes, the director of OJDFS. Who, if the stories about him on news.google.com are even close to correct, has managed to lose track of OVER ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS [Cincinnati Enquirer,http://tinyurl.com/4uf4d] on his watch. No wonder he's "retiring." I'm just surprised his retirment doesn't involve having his uniform sewn by Marth Stewert.
I live in New Hampshire, and I think it's a great state. However, I went to school in Ohio (Wooster), and thought that Ohio was pretty nice, too... so it saddens me to see someone in power who is obviously trite, incompetent, and petty. Good riddance to Tom, and may the best of luck follow Mr. Smith.
That is a rubisah rethorical question.
Asking employees not to treat their employer's computers as if they were their own is perfectly reasonbale.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... expose your firm.
It is akin to leaven the door of the office open when you are the last one to leave the office.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I hope you fo to jail the next time you do anything that is even remotely wrong...instead of breaking into a long rant i will just tell you flat out that you are totally pathetic.
what?
" Can you quantify that? "
Where I work, we have a set of about 20 servers that bring our revenue in. Customers buy stuff from us, we fulfill. Those servers are important.
They keep me employed. They pay my salary, and all 4000 people who work for the company.
If a sysadmin put on some non-approved software on those machines, risking the jobs of 4,000 people, not only would I fire him, I would put in a word with every major headhunter, every major employee about what a fuckup this guy is. I would do everything in my power to ruin his life, BECAUSE HE'S THREATING THE JOBS OF THOUSANDS PEOPLE. People who have families, mortgages, car payments, hospital bills and on and on.
How *dare* some asshole decide his little hobby is more important that the greater good.
Man, I'd follow this guy around and RUIN him for this, and then salt the earth behind him. Sue me? Go for it. But his ass would be RUINED in the IT industry for 200 miles around.
You Americans piss me off with that "sue them" atitude.. *sigh*
The guy was running unapproved code on state owned equipment.... Simple, he broke a rule he pays concequences.
... some around here are pretty dumb when it comes to their suppositions.
I have seen alegedly "innocous" software bring services to their knees (DNS, NIS+ DHCP) by doing stupid things.
It is not up to an employee to decide of his own accord what software is innocous or not, that is the responsibility of the people puting in place IT policies, who restrict employees' freedom to do certain things because it is in the best interests of the company.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"I can do this wrong thing because it's not the most wrong thing being done" isn't perspective, it's lack of civic responsibility.
I will match your timecube and raise you $10,000.
what?
.... and unknown software in your systems may cause unintended consequences.
I have seen it myself, things like top in Linux or some "browsers" (that use IE's engine with nice skins) in Windows can do real damage to s network, because, lets be honest, not all prgogrammers are as good as we would like to believe.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The entity owner of the systems is he employer. Which in this case it happens to be the State that does not change that simple fact.
Thinks that are paid with tax payer's money do not become public property.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
However, this kind of violation normally should not rise to the level of a firing (not considering the slander his boss committed). It may have simply been the last in a series of violations; we don't really know (and his boss would be out of place spelling those out in the media, as well). So maybe in the broader picture, the time for a firing had come.
What I think should be done is reprimand (with a financial penalty) the boss in this case for the slander that is done. Then there should be an investigation to verify if the firing was justified (it may have been).
Mr. Hayes certainly sounds like someone who has a chip on his shoulders, based on the way he made these remarks. I'm sure this incident will result in a lot of resumes being sent in by others willing to take the job (and leave SETI@home at home). But mine won't be among them (even though it's the kind of job, and location, I could do) because I do not like working for unprofessional people.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Yeah, he wanted to prove how clever he was to waste everyone's time by hiring someone stupid. I'm afraid that this is definitive proof that Hayes is incompetent and that incompetents in general don't know how bad they are at things. We can assume much else about the workings of his office. Yep, Windoze, what a dumb fuck. Nothing but the best waste of taxpayer money there.
Sooner or later, he's going to figure out that the "standard" non free software he's using on that "server" is:
He'll notice it as CNN and the other ways he spends his time run slower and slower. Then he will wish that he had someone to help him fix it and SETI to blame. At least with SETI, he knew what he was running
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"As much as Slashdot readers name-call world leaders (and world-leader-wannabes) that they disagree with, there's outcry over an average joe getting insulted?"
People who insult world leaders are clearly anti-world. Love it or leave it I say.
-- thinkyhead software and media
I was in this poor admins position in 1999 and yes i did have all of the servers (all of 16) running Seti@home clients running. ,,, off hours... but it looks to me that this bonehead Tom Hayes is just way too out in left field.... I mean come on ... how many companies have in thier IT goldenhand book that says NOT to specifically run Seti@Home.....???
This just makes me ill when i see these kinds of articles...
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
Reading my URL you'll see I posted about this friday (Oct/8/2004) morning. . .A few hours after posting it, I got an email from a headhunter about a sysadmin job opening at the ODJFS! I cracked up.
To Ohio DJFS:s sf?/base/news/1097228025306530.xml) for one, I am more than a little shocked that a Department Head in the State of Ohio would slander an employee in such a manner. If the 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" is correct, it is my fondest wish that Mr. Hayes be publicly reprimanded by Governor Taft and removed from his position. Even assuming that Mr. Smith's termination was somehow justified (and unless there is a long history of similar offences, I suspect that it is not) there can be no justification for such remarks to be made, and most CERTAINLY not in public.
Shame on you Mr. Hayes for the discredit you bring to yourself, the employees of DJFS and the office of the governor. Shame.
If there is a more direct way for me to contact Mr. Hayes, I would be glad to use it, but I'm unable to locate it on your web site. With regards to the recent termination of Charles Smith, as publicized in several news articles (http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.
Office of the Governor:
Governor Taft,
I am sure you are already aware - or soon will be - of the shameful actions of Tom Hayes, the director of ODJFS with regards to the termination of Charles Smith, a computer programmer on the DJFS staff as chronicled in several news articles (http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.s sf?/base/news/1097228025306530.xml), for one. Whether or not Mr. Smith's dismissal is justified (and on the surface it certainly does not appear to be so) the remark attributed to Mr. Hayes following Smith's termination leaves me shocked and aghast. If Mr. Hayes was correctly quoted "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" is correct, it is my fondest wish that Mr. Hayes be publicly reprimanded by your office and removed from his position. There can be no justification for such remarks to be made, and most CERTAINLY not in public.
I believe - and certainly hope - that you will hear from the technical and scientific communities, both loudly and publicly, about Mr. Hayes' appalling action. I see no possible way for someone so callous, unthinking and uncaring as Mr. Hayes to serve successfully as the director of an agency like DJFS.
And no, I am not related to Mr. Smith of Ohio...
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
Oh yeah, Tom, that's some high security operation you have there. I'm sure you know exactly what's running on those "servers" and have not been owned by any of the 5,000 or so new worms born for it each month. Considering that you hire people who "can't ... find [intelligent life] in the mirror in the morning" to run said junk, the taxpayers know how zealously you are looking after their resources. The poor guy obviously did not find intelligence in upper management. Nice work, you have your 15 seconds of infamy.
Next time, earn your employee's loyalty by sweeping the thing under the rug. Say something nice like, "Holy crap, if my overseer/master/boss sees this, we'll both be canned. We'll take it off and forget it ever happened, OK?" What on Earth gave you the idea to make your former employee, yourself and your organization a laughing stock by telling a reporter what happened?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He's retiring. Maybe him and the fired employee are working together to sue the Department for wrongful termination?
Mmmm.. Donuts
Because we all know that SETI@Home is some unsecure fucking shit, yo. It's far more unsecure than that Internet Explorer shit we're running. Or that Windows 98-fucking-se.
GOOD. FUCKING. CALL.
Ohio has been batting 1.000 since that power failure in the late 1800's.
Yes, there was a policy in place to forbid use of equipment for anything other then state business ( this is standard practice )
Was his remarks uncalled for? yes.. and it leaves it open for a suit against the state. He violated both confidentiality, and good manners..
Not a good move..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
At least the spyware infested workstations are not intentionally infested.. Unlike the case we are discussing...
And people have been let go for re-infecting their pc due to their 'habits' after being educated of why its happening...... So it DOES happen.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This article was written by some knuckle-head journalist, not an IT guy. What exactly was this "server"? My home Linux box is a server with Apache, MySQL, Samba, etc. My work WinXP box is a server with Apache, Tomcat, etc. Where I work, we programmers have a bunch of Linux and Win2k test "servers" that we get to control. We can put what we want on them to test different things out. However, our production servers we do not have access to install things. We go through the admins for that. The article says this guy was a programmer, I'd like to know what type of box he installed SETI on. Was it his workstation, a dev server or a production server. If it was a production server, then there are more problems where he works then just running SETI. He should not have had access to a production server as a programmer, that is what an admin is for.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
The other thing is people that say "Only three years? How about some *real* time, like ten years!"
The problem is that there's just no realization of what they're asking for when they're demanding "tougher sentences". We work hard to segregate criminals and "everyone else" and to psychologically separate the two, so there doesn't seem to be any bad points associated with "tougher sentences". It just seems to have benefits. People say "Well, if you hadn't stolen that money,
you wouldn't be in this situation. Have fun being Bubba's bitch!"
My usual reaction is to wonder how people would feel if *speeding* (something that risks other people's lives for the benefit of being able to spend maybe 10% less time in your car) was punishable by their "hard time" -- say, five years in prison. All of a sudden, they realize that crimes are maybe something that people decide on doing in a flash, that people screw up and can be trusted not to do so again.
May we never see th
I think that his point is that the *firing* of this guy for a fairly minor infraction when others aren't being *fired* for much worse things isn't particularly fair or beneficial. He's not trying to justify abuse, just pointing out that the punishment is out of whack.
May we never see th
If a company sues its own employee's then its suing itself since its employee's are covered under its own insurance in most countries by law. If the employee isnt covered under their own(companies) insurance then the employee is working as a business/private contractor. This would dictate that the "employee" would then carry their own insurance. This is the difference between an employment contract and a business contract
I have to say that I find it more objectionable to fire and then insult ("He won't find any intelligence when he looks in the mirror") an employee, especially one who is clearly right on the edge of retirement and is about to leave with pension than it is to install a piece of software.
Also, contacting this boss guy isn't going to do anything other than make him more pissy and angry. If you can express your unhappiness to his *boss*, things might be different.
May we never see th
What would really be funny is if one of the packets this guy processed for SETI ended up being verified as the first reception of an alien signal.
Well it certainly wouldn't help the poor guy who got fired but in the end it would be the ultimate way to give the just deserts to the guy that did the firing. ---Say what you are the one that fired the guy that verified first contact---.
Dave
Certainly he should have downloaded SETI@Work.
~D
"Bet you're a popular guy around the office"
He's not in a popularity contest. Sysadmins aren't there to be your pal. They're employed to make sure the system is running per spec, and that includes enforcing IT department policy. And companies have those policies for a reason. You don't want employees putting ANY unauthorized software on the system. One day it's SETI@home, but the next its a trojan because some clueless moron wanted to waste company time playing Mahjong.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Tom Hayes to leave after three years at helm of agency
according to the news release he...
yeah calling people stupid really helps to bring out the best in them...
my favourite quote though is "... what I am most looking forward to now is spending more time with my family"..Sounds like Tom has been talked to by the legal dept to me.
True dat. My dad works for the State of California, and there is a significant difference in benefits if you retire at the age of 60 instead of 65. Actually the only benefit of working for the State is the benefits; the private sector consistently pays more. Benefits in CA are awesome; 50-90% of your pay for the rest of your LIFE! This guy should definitely sue for age discriminination.
Disclaimer IAADP
>...How many companies have in thier IT goldenhand book that says NOT to specifically run Seti@Home.....???
Never worked for a large company, have you? Most of them explicitly say in the handbook that unauthorized software or non-work use of company resources without prior authorization is a punishable offense, often enough by immediate termination.
You might want to re-read your own company handbook....
The organization that hired the meathead running the IT organization should be forced to pay out a multimillion dollar damage judgement. Unfortunately, this will come out ot the pockets of the taxpayers, not stockholders, but shit happens.
Tech Public Policy stuff
and sue for a small, symbolic amount
IANAL, but your statement is contradictory. The whole point of punative damages are to punish an organization and enact policy changes within. Now, this being a state department, the only way for a lawsuit to generate change would be to force the people in charge of the funding for the department (Read: politicians) to evaluate this decision. The only way to get politicians to evaluate this internal policy would be to remove a significant portion of the department's budget, which would probably be a very significant chunk of change.
Besides, SETI is for the common good, which is what the government is supposed to be for.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Here's an Article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune with (I believe) some new info on the matter:
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.''
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
We felt the signals from your world, old fashioned radio waves reaching us long ago. Excited, we set out.
Our ships are due to arrive on your world in 4 of your earth days. We have travelled long and are hungry for conversation and meat. We come in peace. Charles E. Smith: We would like to talk to you. Tom Hayes: You will be eaten.
If this guy was sacked unduely where is the Union or are the public servants in the state of Ohio not unionised?
So many people are so scared of losing their jobs these days that they will not join Unions (for fear of workplace reprisal) and this is only compounded by the fact that the Union leadership is often to easily bought by the money of big bussiness.
WORKERS NEED TO REMEMBER THERE IS POWER IN A UNION.
Now that said, I think what he did was not only slightly dumb, but on the idiocy scale I'd call it "Collosally Stupid". The computers don't belong to him and he had no business running ANY sort of software which was not authorized by the people who are footing the bill his salary. To make matters worse, the position was in within the company appears to have been one where he should have known better, and I can somewhat understand his boss coming down on him pretty darn hard.
However, if I had been his boss, I would have given him a most stern warning... and let him know that if he _ever_ put software which was not used for conducting our business on company computers ever again, he would be discharged immediately. I would then tell him that he is suspended for one week with no pay to make sure that not only he didn't forget it, but to also discourage anyone else in the company from doing something similar.
(Any recommendation that I need a visitation from three spirits the night before next christmas shall be silently ignored)
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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This is clearly an inane rant. His "calculations" are pulled out of his ass bullshit. Keeping a 100w lightbulb on for an hour costs more than 3 cents with any power company in the United States. Shit, I pay $60 per month for my little shoebox apartment. A big iron server with cooling and supporting equipment probably draws more power per day than I do with everything in my apartment considering I don't have TV, telephone, internet or a computer (I use public labs) and I'm only home for dinner and when I'm sleeping.
But that's not the issue here. The issue is that your average, I use Windows XP and "administer" a "server" that lets me listen to MP3's in my living room know-nothing doesn't understand that 90% of all computer failures (I have attended a few research presentations on this topic) are not because of security breaches or bugs or hardware failure. They're because some dumbass thought he was doing someone a favor by reaching in and changing the production environment without telling anyone and doing it out of the change cycle.
This would have been completely avoided if this "programmer" was not given privilages to make changes to the production server. "Programmers" make code. They give it to Operations. Operations tests the code and introduces it into the system on a cycle such as once every quarter. Only operations makes changes, "programmers' aren't given the opportunity to do people "favors".
My comment was strictly addressing the original poster, who said "zOMG he's being PERSECUTED!" My point, and I stick to it, is precisely that we DON'T know the facts.
I also stand by my scenarios- all of them are realistic.
Please help metamoderate.
The guy installed an unapproved program onto to a production server without approval and bypassing change control. What happens if his little stunt had brought the server down or worse yet the network down and had cost people in Ohio tax dollars? What if the program had allowed a breach that let confidential information out?
The retort that "It was just the SETI client" isn't the issue. Smith's complete violation of process and gross misjudgement is the matter at hand.
This reminds me of one 'tard at work who decided that he was going to install MS Works on a server so he could write his school papers. Didn't matter that the idiot was provided a workstation with the latest version of Office at the time. To make matters worse he installs the x86 binaries on the NT Alpha machine we have. So here I catch him sitting at the server merrily doing his homework and of course I have to make a shift report saying that the server has unapproved software on it after telling him to get off the box and stay away from it. He was lucky it happened back then than now. With SOX and all the auditing we have to do now he would have been fired on the spot. Smith reminds me of this guy and I have no sympathy for either.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
(HOME) Voice:
:)
(614) 471-5569
(HOME) Postal Mail:
Thomas J. Hayes
2138 Genessee Ave
Columbus, OH 43211-1830
Do you think He'll be up late?
Do you think He'll be up late? :)
Home Phone:
(614) 471-5569
Home Address:
Thomas J. Hayes
2138 Genessee Ave
Columbus, OH 43211-1830
on my first day on as a system administrator in a big research institute in india, as i did a 'top' i found that the previous administrators was running seti@home. I felt very happy at this discovery for two resons:
1) someone shared the same interest
2) all that computing power was not going waste
subsequently i also started doing the same and within 2 month my WU count went from 50 to 1000. please not that i had been a seti@homeuser for last 5 years. the very idea of 6 >2Ghz xeon processors sitting idle. i suggest more people should be doing this and should even be hounored not fired.
i take care that seti@home does not interfere with the day to day performance of the services by running it at 'nice 19'
"The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be." - Carl Sagan, Cosmos
1-Publicly insulting someone without any reason was unacceptable.
My ass. Hayes was polite. Smith imnsho was a frickin' tool. Your insinuation that the comments had no reason behind them is revisionist bunk.
2-Tom Hayes is a public servant and it makes is act much more critical because he receive is pay from taxpayers.
Hayes told it like it was. Smith was on the government dole and committed a grievious security violation. A harsh opinion doesn't cost the taxpayers jack. Incompetence does.
3-Charles E. Smith is 63 and I think that we should have much more respect for our seniors.
Respect is earned. The only thing senority gets you is the benefit of the doubt. Smith removed all doubt when he did what he did.
4-I support the SETI project as many other million people and because Tom Hayes as a lack of culture, education and sight, that doesn't give him the right to insult is ex employee and at the same time all supporters of SETI project.
Hayes took the situation and gave his opinion in a quotable snip. Again, blame Smith.
5-They should have give Charles E. Smith a warning; it's not like if he did something with malign intentions. Installing Internet Explorer is probably much more dangerous than installing SETI@home.
What was installed isn't the issue. Already posted on this. Smith abused the authority and trust provided him and changed a production server behind people's backs and without approval. If that happened in my company the auditors would have a field day. Everybody talks about how incompetent governemt is but when they finally walk the walk and it affects someone trying to "help" find E.T. it's back to being the bad guy. Sometimes I guess you can't win.
6-Tom Hayes should be sacked for is lack of judgement.
Hayes should be applauded. They should get a picture of him with an appropriate LART and make posters with the caption "Only YOU can prevent network security breaches." It is simply assine to blame the messenger and completely overlook Smith's misdeeds. Again this is completely revisionist and shows an utter lack of understanding on how to run an IT department in the real world.
IHBT HAND
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR's and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
Are you willing to accept the consequences of what can happen if you require programs like this to be run on State and Federal computers, and a security vulnerability is discovered?
In addition, there are certain ethical issues in question here running programs like this. It's eaiser and a lot more cleaner to just forbid it.
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unbelievable
i went to send a comment to the ohio governor on their web site. i couldn't believe the disclaimer on their web mail page
-Contact Governor Taft
-Governor Taft values your views and opinions, and -his staff monitors these messages. Responses are -sent via U.S. mail. You will not receive a -response via e-mail.
how totally email illiterate can they be. no wonder someone can be fired for this. from the top down, they obviously have no understanding of technology
On my Linux machine, I manually start up SETI when I remember to, with a -nice 19 at the end, and it goes for weeks and weeks... I totally can't tell the difference whether it's there or not because it backs off when it needs to.
But I do realize that with the processor I have, a fairly fast Athlon XP, in terms of watts, it's probably sort of like having a light bulb on 24/7. There's always a light on at my house for intelligent life from outer space.
And I understand that some of these Pentium IV's tend to use up even more juice - so in any case, it is like leaving a light bulb on.
Also, I would imagine that if there was, say for instance a backup program or some sort of program that did some kind of cpu-intensive task, it might run slower, just from the OS trying to figure negotiate between the two processes - I have seen this with compression - killing off SETI, even at nice level of 19, speeds up compression - most noticably in my instance I have noticed this when creating / undoing flac audio files. I always kill seti before doing that, so a backup with gzip or bzip2 WOULD probably be affected - just a guess, but better safe than sorry, right?
So there are reasons, but that supervisor guy is so intelligent that he scares me! I've never been afraid of intelligence like that before.
Name : I am not as big of an idiot as Hayeso c1welf.html
e-Mail Address : 100million_not_@jfs.ohio.gov
Subject : $100 million vs a few CPU cycles
Comments/Question :
The State of Ohio has its priorities in order: Tom Hayes can bad mouth already fired employees in public for basically doing nothing wrong, but who and how many got fired for the $100+ million fuck up? http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/08/21/loc_l
Come on, this is what we expect from government - fire people for chewing gum at work but screw up to the tune of hundreds of million dollars and keep your job or get a promotion.
Please tell Tom to keep up the great work.
Hayest01@odjfs.state.oh.us is Tom Hayes e-mail address. God Bless Google. site: http://wdr.doleta.gov/contacts/dirs_list_new.cfm?s earchstate=OH&searchcategory=WIA+State+Contact
So what if he actually found alien transmissions with SETI? The guy would be deemed a hero!
give me a fucking break. a little seti on the side? god damn fucking nazi middle managers. There must have been other issues, cause i sure DONT see this as a big deal at all. ..company's w/ policies against this usually have ceo's/manager's watching streaming gay porn at nite anyway.
Come'on, we all know it's the FBI's duty to
learn about the "truth (that) is out there".
Not to mention potential loss of funding because
someone else is doing their job.
If installing SETI@Home is all he did wrong, I wouldn't have fired him either. I would most certainly have disciplined him and reviewed his permissions/other boxes he's touched. However, I would not have fired him for just that. He made a mistake; point it out to him, admonish him for it, and move on. If he did it again, then I'd send him packing.
Treat those who work for you with respect, especially when you're disciplining them, and yes - even when you're firing them. They're people, goddamn it - treat them like you'd like to be treated.
What consequences? I'm the taxpayer and they're my fucking servants! They'd better goddamn well ACT like servants if they want a paycheck! The 'consequences', in this case, is that they'll need to use some of my taxes to pay their wages to apply a patch, rather than using my taxes to pay their wages while they're downloading kiddie porn!
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
And I will say, spending time overseas with the National Guard in an Air-Ambulance unit, you are most certainly correct. Fruad, Waste, and Abuse were our core values! Our pilots spent more time joy riding around than anything, I'm scared to add up what they spent on fuel and parts. I heard a price quote from someone, that it costs a Blackhawk somewhere between $1,000 - $2,000 an hour while in the air, and we flew, sometimes, 9 - 15 hours a day, every day, for 8 months. Most of it to go to other NATO base and eat their food. How's that for Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.
The guy is already retired:
e s. htm
http://www.governor.ohio.gov/releases/080404hay
Part of the problem here is the foundation of the American government being based in religion. Certain people find the concept of ETs impossible / irrelevant, and possibly, wasting even a FEW CENTS of tax-payer money on that search offensive... Personally, I think we should run SETI / other things on government computers (just like governments can lease satellite observation facilities to researchers, so may they unused CPU cycles). But, that's not to say there aren't fundamanetalist christians that disagree.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
I would presume if someone is assigned use of a vehicle for work - such as a road repair person - that they are allowed to drive someplace to eat during their lunch hour.
So not every private use of public government facilities is necessarily illegal or unauthorized.
That's "wear and tear," and running a computer for this purpose - since the operation of a background search is simply running the processor, not the disk drives - does not turn any moving parts and doesn't wear anything out. If the computer would otherwise hibernate into a lower power state it will use more electricity, but I would seriously doubt it would increase wear and tear on the processor or the computer.The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
My initial thoughts w/o RTFA.. There was most likely a company policy against use the network for anything but business purposes - most all companies have these. They exist to provide protection against flagrant misuse and are rarely enforced for the vast majority of us. My guess is that they didn't like this guy.
You can also theoretically "recommend" his profile by clicking on the "Recommend" button. I don't know what this counts for, but I think this could be a good way to support him and it couldn't hurt. Unfortunately, the button didn't work when I tried it. Maybe it is because I went there thru Google and the URL is not exactly right. Maybe you have to be a logged-in SETI@Home user. Anyway, if you can figure out a way, I suggest you recommend his profile.
I think that his point is that the *firing* of this guy for a fairly minor infraction when others aren't being *fired* for much worse things isn't particularly fair or beneficial. He's not trying to justify abuse, just pointing out that the punishment is out of whack.
He doesn't have a point because he doesn't have any information. He doesn't know that this was that guy's only offense. He doesn't know if that guy was confronted and acted like a dick. He doesn't know if other people aren't being fired right and left. He doesn't even know if there are worse abuses going on there; he's just making the usual cynical (and probably correct) assumption that if it's a government, it must be crappy.
However, even if we assume that the government is simultaneously corrupt and incompetent at all levels, and that every employee is breaking every rule available, and that this guy was polite and defferential when confronted, the fact is that he broke rules that carried the potential of termination, and he got terminated. Too bad, so sad, don't be a dumbass at your next job.
You're a very naive person. What are you going to do if the government doesnt act like your "servants"? Withhold your taxes? Will you command the Secret Service agents to go away because you're their boss when they come to collect you? While you're at it, why don't you go knocking at the door to Area 51 and demand to see the alien spacecraft. You're the boss, afterall.
Ah, I see. So you'd rather just come right out and act like a slave than try to remember that the government is here to do *your* bidding. Well, go ahead, give up; slap that collar around your neck. Some people weren't meant to shoulder the responsibility of liberty.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
From the short BBC article:
Mr McOwen loaded a distributed-computing program, similar to the Seti@home screensaver, on the college's PCs so that spare computing capacity could help in a volunteer code-breaking challenge.
(Emphasis mine) Sounds like he's running distributed at home. I always tease my friend that he's just cracking his own root password... I can't believe I haven't seen anyone mention that these things take up cpu power, which causes heat and transfers into real electricity power which costs real money. Having somebody cost you money is a good reason to be pissed. I run Setiathome at work on work computers, and even on customers' computers, I know the consequences of doing so.
What annoyed me about the seti program was the lack of an option to throttle it to use, say, only 50% maximum or whatever...
Try "man nice" and "help ulimit".
Ohio University ranks #3 and Ohio State is #12.
University rankings (world wide):
http://setiathome2.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/te
Looks like it's time to get the ax out and start cuttin' even more dead wood thar in Ohio.
Even large companies/corporation participate in SETI (but please don't tell the stock holders):a m_type_3.html
http://setiathome2.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/te
Let 'em know....