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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."
Maybe Tom won't be the only one 'beamed' out of the building.
It's going to be amusing if he turns around and sues the state for slander. After all, it's been very publicly broadcast to millions of people that he's short of intelligence.
The one thing to be noted is that running SETI on a server is unwise. :-)
While I have never seen a problem personally I enforce my company policy that it be kept off servers. Desktops/proto machines fine, just not production environment servers. We actually use it to increase load on pre-production servers though
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
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.
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.
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.
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
Present and potential world leaders routinely display their stupidity to the world. Everybody calls them names for it, not just the /. readership.
All this guy did was run a technologically interesting piece of software on a computer he shouldn't have. To me, that hardly even warrants termination, let alone public humiliation.
GET THEM INSIDE THE VAULT!
http://www.governor.ohio.gov/releases/080404hayes. htm/
Looks like he's done anyways. For shame!
True because daplus.us also shows a D Hayes with the same address. According to the short bio his wife is called Debra.
Also take a look at the additional info: (just for fun!) Est. Home Value:$250,000 - $299,999
Years at Address: 17
Est. Household Income: $101,000 - $200,000 (haha!)
Dwelling Type: House
And then there's the small amount of bandwidth used ...
Running programs like Seti and RC5 is *not* free. Cheap, maybe, but not completely free.
The warning is when your employee handbook says not to do something.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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
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?
He should definitely sue...
He can use your argument about not being able to get a job in his field because of suing (which he was forced to do because of the slanderous comments *wink wink, nudge nudge*) to ask for even greater damages.
With the right lawyer and playing his cards right he could get a pretty hefty settlement out of this. Enough at least to finance a few years off going to school for something more interesting than server monkey.
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
Well it depends on what kind of equipment it was, and what the load is without SETI running.
Say it was a Pentium 4 that would normally be less than 10% CPU usage. The CPU would then consume about 5 watts without SETI, or about 60 watts with SETI.
Now consider the extra cooling cost created by increased electricty for the fans in the computer, and for the A/C to cool the room to be negligable, but at least 5 watts. We then have 60 watts extra consumed. This is really 60 watt hours.
60 * 24 * 7 * 52 is 524160 watt hours a year, or about 525 killowatt hours a year.
Now say the government pays 8.0 cents a killowatt hour. This puts the goverment of Ohio about $4.20 in the hole a year for running SETI on its server.
As you can see, Ohio's government is full of America's top thinkers!
Not a chance. At least one person has already been charged with a crime for this sort of nonsense.
This warning, combined with probable violations of Ohio computing policies by a programmer (who sure as hell ought to know better), would make calling the guy a dumbass entirely reasonable.
Every moron can sue, because even morons have rights that are under the protection of the law. Basically, this prevents people who fuck up once from being mauled into the ground by those who would take advantage over any other different implementation of the legal system.
Recognizing a moron for what he is is one thing. Undue public humiliation is another. He should get a good lawyer and sue for a small, symbolic amount that will cover legal fees and a few months pay as he seeks other employment. The state had no right to belittle him, especially for such a minor transgression as running SETI.
By the same token, anyone who turns on a coffee machine at work should also be fired. ...and everyone should pay extra for toilet paper and the flushed water.
Hell, I work for the City in which I live. At my facility, there's a computer lab where citizens can browse the web and do simple searches, etc. Unfortunately, all traffic goes through a proxy that has blocking software installed. This severely cripples the utility of the system, and does a disservice to our patrons. I just got fed up with it one day, and ran a password recovery tool to reset all the admin passwords on the system, then set admin rights for all users. I then reset the proxy to an open one (where I had permission from the operator to do so), and allowed totally unencumbered access to our citizens. Of course, this was completely non-authorized by management, but I felt it was the right thing to do. I then took it upon myself to become the ad-hoc local admin for the network. Is it a pain? Of course; Morons routinely load all sorts of spyware and malware onto the machines, and I clean it up. People delete critical OS files which must then be replaced. My boss knows nothing of this, and I will plead ignorance if he does. In the end, though, people have free access, and I think that trumps all concerns, even my job.
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
You people just don't get it. The guy was doing something he wasn't supposed to with his employer's PCs. Nobody would question his firing if he was using the state's computers to host a commercial website for his own profit. However, using the same server for SETI@home is somehow better, right?
Really, would you think it would be discrimination if he decided to donate some of his employer's PCs to Goodwill and got fired? Or if he decided to help poor families by giving away office furniture? Basically, he was doing something that constitutes theft of service, with somebody else's computer.
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
The chick in HR who's downloaded the "kitty-cat screen saver" spam zombie is doing just fine.
The difference? Tits. Probably blowjobs too.
"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...
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.
The modern CPUs are not that common in office environment, where Word/Excel/Powerpoint are the required applications and Doom 3 is unheard of. (The situation is likely to be different on servers, though.)
Personally, I am pondering trying to underclock some of our newer machines by 10%, in order to reduce the long-term impact of electromigration and heat-related failures (not sure it's worth the bother, though - did anybody actually performed any reliability tests of this nature?). Most tasks in the contemporary office environment are bound not by CPU, but by disk or Net bandwidth or in case of many concurrent tasks by RAM. When it's difficult to find a sub-gigahertz CPU, its computing power isn't an issue anymore.
Plus, from the way the boss held himself out in public, it sounds like he was gunning for this guy for a while or he's just generally of a dickish nature.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
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
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