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SETI@home Project Responds To School Firing
SETIGuy writes "SETI@home Project Scientist Eric Korpela has responded to many of the allegations made by Higley Unified School District administrator Denise Birdwell regarding the difficulties caused by the installation of SETI@home, which led to the recent firing of the school's technology supervisor. One of the project's founders, David Gedye, takes issue with Dr. Birdwell's claim that 'an educational institution ... cannot support the search for E.T.' Meanwhile, the fired supervisor denies misusing school computers."
Idle computer resources that are not getting used for anything else are worthless. Might as well fill them up with something, although I'd go with folding@home over SETI@home.
GFA/M/S d-- s: a--- C++++ UBL++$ P+ L+++ !E- W++ N+ !o K- w--- !O !M !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP+ t+++ 5- X+ R tv@ b++ DI++++ D+ G
Who knew leaving a bank of computers on 24/7 costs money?
I guess they're too busy allocating all their resources trying to find intelligent life in their class rooms...
From TFA: '"Unfortunately it says a lot about people who are theoretically educating our children," said Dave Farber, distinguished career professor of computer science and public policy in the school of computer science at Carnegie Mellon.'
It seems that the folks who are in charge of education become further and further detached from technological advancement as time goes on. These are the same individuals who are given access to technology for use in the classrooms and barely use it for more than a glorified typewriter. Add to that those who refuse to utilize the technology either out of ignorance (don't know how to use it) or fear (refuse to know how to use it), you have a large number of classrooms with expensive space heaters.
cloud computing fails to win.
There's no ignorance in her remarks, she knows exactly what she is doing. I've worked at a school district in Arizona for the past 5 years and what is happening here is typical. A new superintendent comes in and wants to fill all the high paying jobs with cronies. This guy just didn't leave quietly so they trashed his reputation (they do that all the time). Arizona school districts are some of the most corrupt organizations that i've ever dealt with. BTW don't feel too sorry for him, he more than likely got his job the same way, its the way things are done here.
This sad truth will continue to occur until intelligent, capable people begin to devote their lives toward the education of our children. Unless that happens, the majority of our public educators will forever be the people who couldn't pass math because they weren't able to figure out their calculator.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
people who couldn't pass math because they weren't able to figure out their calculator.
Or, alternatively, people who were given a calculator way too early and thus couldn't pass math because without one they couldn't say what 7*9 is.
BTW don't feel too sorry for him, he more than likely got his job the same way, its the way things are done here.
Wow! Nice drive-by innuendo!
Not only does the lady who fired the guy demonstrate how ignorant she is, the reporters demonstrate astounding ignorance too: http://www.fox5vegas.com/video/21785181/index.html
How the fsck do people not know about this program or not consider it research? My wife (not a technically adept person) has run this program for years and in schools, too. Ask the guy to uninstall it if it costs to much in a recession (he had approval of the previous administration to run it though!). Don't fire him because you're stupid.
"There's no ignorance in her remarks, she knows exactly what she is doing."
I'm not too sure about that. All of the quotes sound like they came from an empty shirt who thinks she knows everything just because she has some paper and got to where she was not by achievement but who she knows. Similar to all the CxO's who run companies into the ground, escape with the golden parachute then land another cushy job to do the same thing over again.
sounds like you've got something to hide. Did you let the children out of your basement yet?
( Cant be assed to login ) Tbh, They would get better teachers if they paid more.. However this isnt going to happen, So out children will continue to be taught stupid things by stupid people .
I worry what is being taught in science, maths etc.. ( Parts that i dont understand nor care about ) however if they get I.T wrong. What other shit are they getting wrong?
Memorizing a 10x10 table is certainly an indicator of intelligence. After all, it requires a lot of brain power to memorize 7*9. Can you tell me what 17x16 is?
The school should take pride in assisting with research and promote itself on the idea that it is the leading school in searching for alien life on other planets.
I want my kid to go here where the bleeding edge is observed "/end sarcasm" Seriously ? science is ban at this school?
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
Memorizing a 10x10 table is certainly an indicator of intelligence. After all, it requires a lot of brain power to memorize 7*9. Can you tell me what 17x16 is?
Sure. Since 2 + 2 = 22 then 17 x 16 = 1716.
Can you tell me what 17x16 is?
It's a multiplication, sir!
What would the product of such an educational system look like?
.sig withheld by request
I think SETI@home is great and all, but it sounds like the school board didn't authorize this person to install the software on the machines in question. Whatever the pros and cons are in the abstract, he shouldn't have unilaterally decided to do this. It does cost money to run CPUs at 100% (the SETI@home FAQ estimates over $60 a year) and if there were thousands of machines running it, as there apparently were, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run. Maybe the school district wants to spend its money on that, but it should be decided by the board, not by one employee.
.sig withheld by request
My school was built for the 1997-1998 school yeah. I attended it from 98-02. We had bran new computers in almost EVERY classroom, complete with 20 port hubs and ethernet cable drops in every classroom
The only time I touched the computers in my entire 4 years in high school, was for my typing classes, and my 1 engineering class.
Meanwhile, the English classrooms computers sat there and were vandalized and stolen.
I got a pair of speakers, thanks to the tax payers in Florida. Thank you, tax payers.
All of this because some stupid politician said something to the voters about "computers in every classroom" and the voters, like ignorant lapdogs, went along with it. The budget HAD to be huge for that school, and it was all an incredible fraud and waste.
Hey, least I got some speakers, and my friends got some hubs...at least we put them to use, instead of letting them collect dust in an English/Math/Science classroom.
Arizona school districts are some of the most corrupt organizations that i've ever dealt with.
I assure you that Arizona doesn't have a monopoly on school corruption.
Want to hear an example of how it works in my state? There's quasi-state agencies called 'Boards of Cooperative Educational Services' (BOCES) that provide various services to the school districts that join. The theory is that shared services between districts will offer cost savings. Good theory, but it comes with a few catches. Once a district joins BOCES they can't ever leave and must continue to pay their membership dues even if they elect not to use any of the services offered.
I used to work for a company that was contracted with two local districts to supply internet services, workstations and servers. We were always able to beat BOCES by a fair margin when the annual bids rolled around. Then New York State changed the law so that the school districts couldn't receive matching funds from the state unless they went with BOCES, even if the overall cost of doing so was higher.
The internet services that we were offering were cheaper, provided more bandwidth and were eligible for a large amount of Federal funding out of the universal service fund. The internet services offered by BOCES were more expensive, provided half the bandwidth and weren't eligible for Federal funding. But the districts had to choose them anyway, because they were "cheaper" (due to the state matching funds granted exclusively to BOCES) and the fact that they were wasting their contribution dues to BOCES if it didn't use their services.
In effect, my state is subsidizing a monopoly to do a worse job for more money. In the end almost everybody loses -- the school districts, the taxpayers and the private enterprises that could offer a superior product but find themselves shut out of the market. The only winners are the employees of BOCES. Our local one happens to be staffed with ex-politicians at the administrative level and their cronies at the lower levels. Nice, isn't it?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It isn't so much the application to find E.T. that astounds me, its the use of a distributed networking. I don't follow SETI, but I assume the power they have in distributed computing is something like or above a Super Computer. The students can learn about distributed computing, and maybe be the guy who builds the next big network. I mean, imagine a commercial system that pays for processing. So you turn your computer and get paid by the team. The team in turn gets paid by scientists with very difficult problems and need distributed computing.
Don't focus on it being "searching for aliens", focus on it being "distributed computing".
God spoke to me.
If it cost money for the institution they should be able to write off the cost as a donation to SETI@home. Just sayin, if its about money the SETI@home guys could make the offer and make this a win/win instead of more of the usual zero sum game we usually see. Dr. Knowfun "The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat." --Confucius
Shit, there's no wikipedia article on 17x16. So i guess the answer then is no... Well played, sir.
Yes, I know, and you want a pony. But we're better than that, aren't we? We have to be.
Maybe we should start by teaching a bit of history, starting with the Reformation and the Rennaisence.
We have had personal computers and the internet for about a decade now. A decade. We have utterly no clue how that's going to affect civilisation in the future. But do we want to look back and say "Yes, for the longest time there we could have had it all, but nobody wanted it" ?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Sounds like your state needs to look into something that Washington and Oregon (and perhaps other states) use. We call them Educational Service Districts (ESD's) and they operate in a highly entrepreneurial fashion. If a district does not like the service and/or price they are getting from one ESD, they are free "join" another ESD even if it is hundreds of miles away. They would still be in their original ESD's legislative area (determined by geography), but are not bound by their prices or policies.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
17x16? That's easy. Any self-respecting member of /. should know that 16x16 = 256. Therefore, 17x16 = 256 + 16 = 272.
7*9 was the Borg on Star Trek
17x16 is likely a multiswitch, according to Google
Can you tell me what 17x16 is?
Let me plug that into my computer here. *crunch crunch* Ah here's the answer: 42.
Health Freedom is almost as popular as Freedom itself.
Do not, -do -not tell me the SETI did not cost the school money in electricity , whether it was $100, or $100,000. Any tech person could tell you it did. If just one, just one PSU or part burned out, so much the worse. "Well I didn't know that would happen" boss "well you shouldn't have been doing it in the first place". Grow up people. Running a business is hard, and the boss sees this and goes "wtf, your playing with my money" 'My Money'. A school is if anything worse because it's public funds.
I heard its costing more than a million dollars to fix everything. How many computers did they have? thats a ton of money. http://www.memoryfoamslipper.com/
This sad truth will continue to occur until intelligent, capable people begin to devote their lives toward the education of our children. Unless that happens, the majority of our public educators will forever be the people who couldn't pass math because they weren't able to figure out their calculator.
Bullshit, my wife is a teacher here in NC. Been teaching for 7 years now and she makes under 35k a year and spends 60+ hours a week at school. She loves teaching but has had to go back to graduate school in order to escape the bullshit pay, no planing period, no assistant and the ridicules paper work. Why don't you go become a fucking teacher and take care of 20 to 30 children with little to no help from anyone for less than what you could make at Wendy's flipping burgers...
You want good teachers? Fucking pay them. Not the text book companies or all the other leeches.. Pay the fucking teachers.
Let me plug that into my computer here. *crunch crunch* Ah here's the answer: 42.
Nobody writes jokes in base 230.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Q. Do I need permission from my employer to run SETI@home on computers at work?
A. Yes! Of course! We've been saying that for 10 years, and despite what some bloggers have said, Niesluchowski wasn't the first person to lose his job over this. The first time was many years ago.
This should have been the beginning and end of the Q&A. Regardless of the relative merits of SETI@Home or what it does or doesn't do to a computer or network, the bottom line is pretty simple: Install unauthorized software on computers that aren't yours and you get spanked.
A public school can't "write off" an expense. Only a private company or individual can write something off--i.e., count it toward a tax deduction. For the school board, the money comes out of tax revenues.
.sig withheld by request
"Writing off" an expense is only a relevant concept if you are a tax paying institution, which public schools are not. The extra electricity for this is a pure out of pocket expense for the school, however minor.
On my computer, which idles at 130 watts, running seti@home increases power draw to ~180 watts, according to the lil kill-a-watt meter I got from Think Geek. I have a quad core intel 9450 ( i think). I can't imagine the school computers are going to be any worse than that. So, 50 watts an hour, say 20 hours a day, =~ 1 kW/day. I don't know what arizona power rates are, lets assume 12 cents/kWh. That means this would cost around $43/year. If he installed to a couple of thousand computers, that's real money.
It would be interesting to know what proportion of the power bill we are discussing here. This could be a rounding error in comparison to the AC bills.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
Wow that sounds like some cheap ass shit components there. I'm not looking for no el cheapo parts for my computer, I want to make sure this thing is gonna run good and for awhile, damn the prices!!
Btw how are you going to play any decent games on your on-board video? Picture editing, video editing, surfing the web, watching hi-def videos, and so on and so forth. Good luck with that one Mr. Tightwad.
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
I am yet still waiting to hear a response from the EFF on this matter.
New Economic Perspectives
This sad truth will continue to occur until intelligent, capable people begin to devote their lives toward the education of our children.
She loves teaching but has had to go back to graduate school in order to escape the bullshit pay... You want good teachers? Fucking pay them.
My impression is that, even if you go back to grad school, you're still not going to be paid anywhere near what you'd get paid if you went and got a job in industry with that same masters or PhD. As long as our society expects bright people to suck it up if they want to teach, we're not going to get as many of them to teach as we'd like.
Of course, I still don't understand why we require teachers to have a bachelors or masters degree to teach grade school, or why schools need so damn many administrators and experts to "optimize" the teaching process.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
It's a United States thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
Can you tell me what 17x16 is?
Imperial or SI?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Anyone who saw this and said "OOH. Mod this informative!" needs to get themselves an Intel datasheet sometime and look at it. The CPU couldn't possibly sink anywhere near 450 Watts of power. Most likely when ones "CPU is at 100%" it is also rendering graphics and accessing the hard disk because the applications using the CPU are also using those devices, which do sink lots of power. These things don't happen with SETI@home. It loads into memory and accesses the net via the NIC. Welcome to the real "world of reality".
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I wonder if the response would have been as negative if he was running something less "fringe" like Folding@home.
My impression is that, even if you go back to grad school, you're still not going to be paid anywhere near what you'd get paid if you went and got a job in industry with that same masters or PhD.
She has a degree in Psychology as well as her K-6 teaching license and national board certification. She will triple her pay by leaving teaching public school and have time to live a life outside of the classroom...
Anyone thinking of becoming a teacher.. don't... it's not worth it, no one cares about the children regardless of what you might have heard...
Let me plug that into my computer here. *crunch crunch* Ah here's the answer: 42.
Nobody writes jokes in base 230.
But there are people who don't get D. Adams references. BTW: There is no integer base such that 42 = 272 decimal.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It doesn't. It saves money. Computer failures are much more likely as a result of regular power cycling than extended use, and the cost of parts replacement and down time far outweighs the cost of powering them regularly in low power mode.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
1. Highlight 17x16 ..." from www.tradekey.com.
2. Right-click "Search Google for '17x16'"
3. Return "17x16 multiswitch - offers from 17x16 multiswitch manufacturers
4. Amend search to "17 x 16"
5. Return 272
-Or-
17x6
34x8
68x4
136x2
272
and the ridicules paper work. Pay the fucking teachers.
Maybe if they werent always ridiculing the paperwork...
Machines last longer if it is in use, and the estimated cost of running SETI is a measly $1 a month.
Sure, Niesluchowski screwed up by installing the Seti@Home software on the district's computers without permission. I would expect that his lawyer is now going over the district's AUP with a fine-toothed comb to see if there was an actual policy violation to justify his firing. A reprimand should have been the first step; firing should have been the final step. I'd tell the guy to take the software off all the systems on his own time before I'd fire him. I'm betting that there must have been some long-term friction between the two for this to come to a firing.
The claim that it cost a boatload of money to fix the "problems" sounds familiar, doesn't it. There is rarely a computer break-in or misuse that hits the news that doesn't claim that it cost millions to restore the system to working order. (Really? Does it really cost one's employer that much money when a server is restored from am backup tape? A couple of those and I could retire.) Makes you wonder if she went and hired some overpriced consultant to click through to the Windows Remove Software menu selection to get Seti@Home off the systems.
The funny side of this is some of the wild assertions that the Superintendent made about the side effects of running the software. For example, one has a very difficult time thinking how leaving the computers on 24hr/day can cause the processors to wear out. Hell, I've got a Pentium MMX motherboard that has been running nearly continuously since it was purchased back in the mid-90s. Damn thing won't die.
Oh, well. Yet another data point that further confirms my theory that the cluefulness of school district superintendents is inversely proportional to their salary.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Unless the school is (a) being heated with electricity and (b) not having to *cool* its computer labs, this is untrue.
Electrical resistance heating is a terrible waste of high-grade energy.
If you *were* to want to heat with electricity, a heat-pump would give you two or three times the heat for the same electrical input. (And thus $$$, CO2 emissions, etc.)
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Maybe if they werent always ridiculing the paperwork...
Yup I'm a horrible speller... Product of our wonderful U.S. public education system!
FTA: "We support educational research and certainly would have supported cancer research," said Higley superintendent Denise Birdwell.
SETI makes for decent Sci-Fi and story telling, but it is a far, far cry from "research." This is especially true of the screen-saver analysis of radio frequencies. Humans are only just now barely capable of observing the reflected light from a planet around another star. Unless alien civilizations are beaming huge quantities of radio energy into deep space, we won't see it above the noise. Further, the round-trip time of light to any but the closest stars makes two-way communication impossible. You might as well try to communicate between Australia and the USA with smoke signals.
Sure, SETI has a romantic pull to it, but there's no justification for it. Cancer research, or any of a number of other distributed tasks, could end up having a positive effect on human well-being. Not to say THOSE applications SHOULD have been installed, but at least it might have counted as a mitigating factor...
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
Maybe she could spend some time teaching you spelling and grammar?
Wouldn't that be the definition of somebody who either isn't that bright or who is bad in math? Spare me the "she does it because she loves it" crap. If that were truly the case then just STFU and enjoy that which you say you enjoy.
If there were so many resources squandered over a decade then the loss should have been apparent immediately. Since this fellow adequately managed the school districts IT resources all of this time, then clearly he should be the best judge of the demand. And since he works for executives and a school board that are responsible for the oversight of all resources, then either Seti@Home had little or no noticeable impact on the operations, or else it would have been an issue in a few weeks. To say that after 10 years of complete oblivion that now suddenly, this is grounds for dismissing a 10 year veteran, is total and complete political bull pucky. These ego-maniacal incompetent power trippers are simply embarrassed at the fact that they were completely clueless about their school districts involvement in something clearly present in any search engine: Their network listed as the number one seti@home support. Clearly this is an educational usage, was not an embezzlement of resources, and contributed to a very credible UC Berkeley experiment. One must bear in mind that when Seti@Home was first released that its appeal was how it functioned as an internet wide application that utilizes unused CPU headroom. That concept does pertain to IT management of resources, irregardless of merit of alien white noise. I think these jokers showed exactly how clueless you have to be in order to fix a decade long IT problem by firing the guy who demonstrated that its clearly not a problem.
I love the part in "It's a Wonderful Life" when you sucker punch George Bailey and Martini kicks you out of his bar. You were totally believable.
Or maybe public school in America isn't really about education, in most places.
How about we break up the family by pressuring the mother in to working outside the home, either by putting an extreme tax the husband's wages, or showering her with propaganda which implies a woman's traditional role in the home is some form of vile repression -- chains from which she must liberate herself.
With mother and father out of the way, working long hours, we can send the children to a state institution where they will be "educated". While they will receive perfunctory instruction in reading and writing, the primary sociological function of this institution is to indoctrinate the children with the state's version of history, to teach them obedience to authority, and to condition them to view agents of the state as authority figures. Ideally the child will come to view the state as a kind of surrogate parent, since they will likely spend more time in our institution than they will with their parents.
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Not everyone believes SETI is real science - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI#Criticism
Is it possible this guy was fired for trying to help prove something that would offend the religious beliefs of the supervisor - who may believe that we are alone in the universe because we were specially created by god?
'an educational institution ... cannot support the search for E.T
Is this in the same vein as "An educational institution cannot support the teaching of evolution" ?
I'd love to, but none of the schools around here have courses in fucking for me to teach.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
That sounds entirely too logical for New York State to ever consider doing it. More's the pity.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm afraid it's worse than that...the administrators who act as gatekeepers, whether through hiring or certification decisions, have nothing to gain from letting those devoted people into the profession. I'm a casualty of that myself (hence the AC).
Teaching people ways to break down problems into smaller problems, ones that they are hopefully more familiar with, is one of the most important things you can teach someone. I keep doing this with a young friend of mine who frequently asks "how can you do that in your head?" because it seems impossibly hard to her. I've watched her gradually learn to do it herself... it's a very rewarding feeling to see her get better and better at it. And it's amazing that she was never taught this in public school.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Yes!!! Can't agree more. Everybody bitches about this stuff, then turns around and blames the teachers, which is total horseshit. Shows where the priorities lie when the people given the task of educating or healing the populace get such shitty wages. Teachers and nurses always get shafted.
I think he should have gotten permission. He could have argued that BOINC (not just S@H) can do real science and promote visibility of the district. And if the answer was no he should have left it at that.
Researching components is a sunk cost - unless you want to get mismatched components and pay too much for them in your pre-built computer of choice. The other thing doing your own component research will do is allow you to optimize your computer for low power, silence, speed, reliability and price. Do I want to spend the next 4-6 years putting up with a loud, slow, expensive to run and unreliable machine? I'll spend many more hours regretting my purchase if I don't spend the research hours up front.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
272. It's about breaking up a problem into small parts, a very useful skill.
You are an idiot, and your response typifies the arrogant geek who thinks (a) it is really not necessary to know anything as long as you can eventually work it out/look it up; (b) understanding simple concepts requires a special insight normally reserved for the select few. One does not learn his times tables as a substitute for understanding, but as an aid to applying his understanding. This in itself is barely something that needs to be taught, except to those who have particular difficulty in grasping number: it's a natural consequence of understanding division/factorisation/etc. It is how I have observed those with no particular interest otherwise in mathematics always make use of their times tables.
For the example you give, since I would also expect a competent educator to recommend learning of squares up to the 20th, the student would instantly apply 16x16+16. If not, he would perhaps mentally perform 2x(2x10x8-3x8). More painfully but available, 10x16+7x12+7x4.
So what you are trying to tell us is that your state is governed by a government?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
... or how to reorganize their sentence so it doesn't end in a preposition?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I'm a math teacher in DC public schools. I just had a whole lesson on how to solve problems just like that one. Broke down the work arounds for all of the basic operations. Some were "got it" and were impressed. Can't say I did as well with the rest.
what 7*9 is
end in a preposition
Well, that depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.
Pay the fucking teachers.
Obligatory
Suppose it was Folding@home or Rosetta@home instead. Would it have been any different?
Dear Dr Denise Birdwell,
How can you hold your head up high and call yourself a doctor of education? A doctor in any field is such because of a higher ideal of pursuing excellence and the pursuit of knowledge. It doesn't just stop with a piece of paper you can post on the wall. You might as well have received yours from an internet site. Clearly you haven't a clue as to what the meaning of doctor really is.
Using the district's computers for the search for knowledge, especially within the education system, could not be more appropriate.
You are an embarrassment, not only within your own district and the state of Arizona, but now around the world. You have amplified the international perception that Americans are weak on science. Shame on you. If anyone should be fired it is you.
***If everyone sends this email to the following recipients, the first being (Dr ;) Birdwell, there might be some action.
dbirdwell@husd.org
Cc: pcarpenter@husd.org, gland@husd.org, paul.howell@husd.org, kanderson@husd.org, dstandage@husd.org, vwhitener@husd.org, info@ostp.gov, dstine@ostp.eop.gov, rweiss@ostp.eop.gov, news-tips@nytimes.com, managing-editor@nytimes.com, national@nytimes.com, letters@nytimes.com
You forget again that teachers only work for 180 days of the year in New York State, sure the 60hr weeks may not balance out the 180 days of work but it is something to consider. Also consider that teachers receive good benefits like most public employees. Also does the teacher in question have tenure?
This sad truth will continue to occur until intelligent, capable people begin to devote their lives toward the education of our children. Unless that happens, the majority of our public educators will forever be the people who couldn't pass math because they weren't able to figure out their calculator.
Bullshit, my wife is a teacher here in NC. Been teaching for 7 years now and she makes under 35k a year and spends 60+ hours a week at school. She loves teaching but has had to go back to graduate school in order to escape the bullshit pay, no planing period, no assistant and the ridicules paper work. Why don't you go become a fucking teacher and take care of 20 to 30 children with little to no help from anyone for less than what you could make at Wendy's flipping burgers...
You want good teachers? Fucking pay them. Not the text book companies or all the other leeches.. Pay the fucking teachers.
Wow, does NC have a super low cost of living?
Move to NJ
I work at in a school district and I just pulled it up on http://php.app.com/edstaff/search.php
The numbers vary depending on subject taught and grade level.
There is a HS Biology teacher with a BS and 7 years experience making 77k.
On the lower side there is a health/gym teacher with a BS and 7 years experience making 45k.
The short length of our school year is another piece of bullshit that hurts both teachers and students. It's true that teachers only work part of the year, and that seems to be a consideration for their pay scale, but what sort of professional job is going to be available for only two months in the summer? They may work less, but they have no way to convert that extra time to (decent) revenue.
having one man in charge of 5000 computers where all the users are either adolescents or educators is asking for trouble. what exactly is premature CPU failure? and why would 2700 cpus fail at the same time? ( i don't get it i have a 486 that has been running sense it was introduced!) or is it that the school system has to much money to spend on technology and not enough on computer literacy and basic computer matinence!(or education in genral) miss allocation of educational funds has been a long and reoccurring problem, annything to help inept educators and over paid administrators slip by the media.
I think your wife may be a good example of the solution, not the problem.
I did not mean to offend. In fact, I very much agree with what I believe to be your central point. Money might be a good way to entice a decent teaching staff. Unfortunately, public institutions will never be able to meet professional wages.
But it looks like we do have a good teacher in your wife, without the better pay. Like I said, the solution is for quality people to sacrifice good pay and a higher standard of living for the education of our children. This seems to be the choice your wife has made.
I thank her for making the world a better place.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Moderation has gone directly into the toilet. It might not be that funny, but it's no troll; it's a counterexample to an ignorant comment.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Real nerds always build their own because finding exactly what you need off the shelf is pain in the ass. Yes, I want a silent case and hard drive, Intel graphics (so the 3D automatically works and I don't have to deal with graphics drivers every time I update), yes I want at least 2 PCI slots for those other cards that I have, etc, etc.
It takes less time to just get the parts and put it together yourself than to try to find something that has all the characteristic you need.
My son is learning to calculate, multiply etc. at the moment. I use the reduction method at every opportunity, showing him different means of reducing the sums to manageable proportions. Today we discussed 7x8. It took him a while to add up all the eights. Then I told him that 7x8 was 5x8 and 2x8. He knows that 5x8 = 8x5 = 40, so now he only needed to add 16. "Wow, that's easy dad!" was the reply.
He started asking about adding and counting a few months ago and ever since then I'm teaching him: break down the problem. He understands perfectly how it works.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
I know what you intended to say is "pay my wife more for the teaching she does." What I heard was "Offer teachers more and you can find a better teacher to replace my wife."
If there was any way to claim a tax subsidy or a grant for using these resources for research, in the context of the educational establishment, then maybe the people running the institutions there would think differently.
The problem I have with all this, is if the person in charge of IT at a school can't make IT related decisions, then there is an issue. At the same time, where should the final authorisation end up? Does it really need to go right to the top?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Your wife should also teach you proper grammar and spelling. Ridicules is not the same as ridiculous.
Knee jerk much? The response you're attacking is correct. It stands to follow that intelligent, capable people demand better compensation. Nowhere in the comment you're attacking was the statement that such people needed to selfessly give themselves away to the school districts. We clearly do need better educators if people can't read and comprehend stuff online and resort to assuming that random statements are made when they clearly are not.
"If that CPU time is being used, it has to be paid for."
Why? Support your sick point of view with argumentation.
Its not being used for anything else. They should help science if they pretend to be an educational institution
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Of course, I still don't understand why we require teachers to have a bachelors or masters degree to teach grade school
Depends on the subject of course, but you'd be surprised how much expertise you need in math for example to properly teach students the concepts behind the mathematics they are supposed to learn at the grade school level. The current standards call for them to learn number and operations (arithmetic etc), algebra, geometry, and data analysis and probability all with understanding. It doesn't take much mathematical knowledge to be able to do these things yourself, but current research is building that it takes a lot of knowledge to understand what a student is thinking and how best to help them learn a given concept. The knowledge of a subject that a teacher needs is in many ways deeper than that which a practitioner needs. In fact probably the biggest problem in math education today is that most elementary education teachers go into elementary ed partly because they hate math and their math skills are very poor. The bachelor's degree they get only gets them started on the mathematical knowledge they need to teach properly.
"In the end almost everybody loses -- the school districts, the taxpayers and the private enterprises"
You forgot the most important thing to say when trying to make a point about schools.... ....think of the children!
You want the teachers to get paid? Then stop with ridiculous retirement plans that siphon off huge amounts of money to pay the retired teachers.
My grandmother was a teacher, stopped teaching 30 years ago but still makes over 30k/year in retirement, plus medical.
My Father was a teacher, stopped teaching 10 years ago and still brings in 25k/year in retirement, plus medical
You realize in Minnesota we spend 11,000 dollars per student per year (Gen E-12 education fund plus property tax levies (9 Bil)/ 823k students) - or $330,000 dollars to teach a class of 30 students. In some districts, over half the money spent on education goes to pay teachers that arn't teaching anymore.
You want more money for teachers and students? Say FUCK YOU to the Union, take the pension away and give them a 401k like the rest of us. Then in 30 years once the current entitlement tit-suckers have died off we might have a chance.
Your wife is one of the relatively few highly dedicated teachers. Most teachers don't put in that much extra time simply because they don't have to, or don't know what to do with their time to become better teachers. One of the problems is that the teacher that clocks in when school starts and leaves as soon as it ends gets paid the same as your wife. Until teachers have the proper incentives to be good teachers and be truly professional about their jobs, the opinion of the profession and the pay will not improve.
The other problem is that almost universally, teachers get paid more only by having more experience. So your wife is probably a new teacher. An experienced teacher can easily make well over twice that much money and not put in that much time. So many teachers are over paid.
The answer is pay for performance and proper incentives, but that is extremely difficult to do well and not have it turn into a system that distorts learning rather than supports it or one where the administrator's or union president's friends are the only one's that get the bonuses. Because of these issues and the unions not wanting to give up power, pay for performance will likely not get implemented any time soon, even though there are answers for the issues.
35K?? I made under 35K doing technical work on airplanes and people could die if I make a mistake. If you think 35K is low for teaching my sister made about 25k as a teacher in Nebraska under worse conditions and after nearly a decade at it.
A computer that is truly idling consumes, for example, 100 watts without doing anything useful. The same computer running a distributed project, consumes for example 150 watts, while contributing to scientific research. Therefore, in many cases a distributed project has a much better bang/buck ratio.
Of course, scientific research is being done in any case. If there are no volunteer computers, then it is the research institutes that spend money on computers and electricity. In either case you could argue that money is being wasted, if you think science has no value.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
the failure of micromanagement a authoritarian leadership..
Great!
Does your wife happen to teach English? Maybe she can give you some pointers.
Please help metamoderate.
But there are people who don't get D. Adams references.
Some of us are real nerds and some are posers.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I don't believe that 60 hour estimate. Neither should you. Maybe she is spending time with another fucking teacher.
While they will receive perfunctory instruction in reading and writing, the primary sociological function of this institution is to indoctrinate the children with the state's version of history, to teach them obedience to authority, and to condition them to view agents of the state as authority figures.
Yeah like that is working well, we have a bunch of increasingly Narcissistic, ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder kids that are stupid in ways that transcend being poorly educated, ignorant, uncritical thinkers or lacking in native intelligence. I'm almost glad they view the state as the authority figure instead of me!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You forget again that teachers only work for 180 days of the year in New York State, sure the 60hr weeks may not balance out the 180 days of work but it is something to consider. Also consider that teachers receive good benefits like most public employees. Also does the teacher in question have tenure?
Yes she has tenure, and she did have good benefits but they are being cut each and every year. As far as the fable that teachers are off summers I can assure you that it's mostly untrue or at least here in NC. My wife spends most of her summer in workshops learning new ways to add numbers or about new requirements for this or that. Most of workshops sound like nothing more than a paycheck for some publisher or curriculum specialist to me. She's a bit more positive about them and only thinks 50% or so are total bullshit.
NC is pretty bad when it comes to education pay so NY might be better. We talked about moving to another state where she would make more but the pay isn't the only problem with being a teacher. The main problem for her is that the job doesn't have anything to do with teaching children anymore. It's all about the "statistics" and filling out paperwork that never even gets looked at, the fabled "permanent record" we all remember. This paperwork isn't a bad thing but she isn't provided with any time to do it. Ends up working from 7am to 5pm every day. Last Thursday and Friday she didn't get home until around 7pm and that happens all the time.
What I find pretty insane is how they throw all of the kids in the same room now days. Imagine having children with IQ's between 77 and 120 all trying to learn the same thing. And we aren't talking about 2+2=4. They teach algebra (using shapes for variables), history, science, etc.
I work in IT and honestly sit on my ass doing 1/1000th what she does each day, make more money and don't even have a degree. (I dropped out of college)
Maybe she could spend some time teaching you spelling and grammar?
I would love to spend time with my wife, she currently has a 4.0 in grad school and is best spelling. good gramering. Teach me lots if only not at work.
Wow, does NC have a super low cost of living?
Lower yes, but NC doesn't pay teachers jack. She teaches k-6 so you can check that. We live in Western NC which makes the pay even lower from what I understand. Yes we could move, talked about it even but it will not fix anything other than her pay. Such low pay pisses me off more than her. She hates the long hours, inhuman requirements and bureaucratic bullshit.
We have an "education Lottery" here in NC but that money doesn't really go to education. It goes to all the contractors for their substandard services , to buy new math books every other year with the chapters moved around and to whoever else pays the politicians off.
I did not mean to offend. In fact, I very much agree with what I believe to be your central point. Money might be a good way to entice a decent teaching staff. Unfortunately, public institutions will never be able to meet professional wages.
My wife would be fine with the pay if it didn't involve working 7am to 7pm and being 25 kids only real parents. *alright only about half the parents are too busy to show up once every 9 weeks for a meeting or help their kids with their homework. I'm exaggerating when I say all 25.
I thought her name was 37 of double-D.
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The other problem is that almost universally, teachers get paid more only by having more experience. So your wife is probably a new teacher. An experienced teacher can easily make well over twice that much money and not put in that much time. So many teachers are over paid.
There is some truth in this. She really isn't a new teacher anymore but they keep forcing her to teach different grades which makes her have to scramble every year when they don't let her know until a week before school starts. The old teachers never get asked to move grades and don't end up with the trouble makers. Since she is new'ish it's easy to blame/fire her when 100% of children don't do well on the end of grade tests and makes a handy excuse to keep new teachers from becoming paid too much. O.. odd thing is the kids still pass and move on to the next grade regardless of if they fail or not which I don't really get but eh the kids seem to figure it out pretty fast. Luckily for my wife she is a great teacher and hasn't had any problems with moving enough kids test scores but she sure doesn't have any time to do all the paper work which is why she works so late.
The answer is pay for performance and proper incentives,
It's funny you mention this. She was promised a bonus last year if she and all of the others that teach at her school met some goal. They did their part but aren't getting their bonus because of the recession. Same thing happened a few years ago but with some other excuse. Bottom line is she knows that nothing she is told means jackshit and there is never enough money to pay her even though there seems plenty to pay the administration staff their bonuses.
Most teachers are good people, to good... they get walked all over because they want to help kids, but that's ok, it's what we apparently want as a country. Stupid people do make great pets...
It's clearly the size of a small painting!
No one has yet mentioned a motivation to fire the guy by the district is the public reaction to all of this. If they don't fire the guy the tax paying public would go nuclear with the board. And bad karma between your taxpayers and your school district is really hard to turn around, it can take years. Meantime any levies you need will be significantly harder or impossible to pass.
In our district we could not pass levies because of ill will from a levy more than 20 years prior. At that time the public was "promised" that a new Sr. High School would not be required and that a second floor could be added to the existing Sr. High if needed (structurally this was actually not possible). I moved in after this event, and no one can show me documentation that his promise was made. Needless to say the district grew in 15 years and they ended up building a new Sr. High (the old Sr. High was turned into a Jr. High School as they needed this capacity as well so it was not wasted).
So a PR fiasco about this SETI issue would be bad enough that this was going on with no educational values (as no one was "teaching" from this expense), it would double the negative effect if you did not fire the person.
Personally, I stopped using the SETI@home screen saver years ago when I realized that it was burning an image in my screen - kind of the opposite of what a screen saver is supposed to do. Sure it won't happen now with my flat screen, but it pissed me off so much that I won't use it again.
. . . unauthorized software, BOINC, found on nearly 5,000 district computers which sorts through telescope-collected data . . . . Officials allege this ongoing use caused processors to burn out quickly, requiring early replacement of 2,400 processors.
1. So, let me get this straight: 2400 machines burned out? That'd be newsworthy all by itself. I'd like to see those 2400 machines that were fried by over-use.
2. I'd also like to see the other 5000-2400=2600 machines that the same software didn't fry.
I'd hate to think that these guys just identified a bunch of machines to replace and then blamed it on their least favorite employee.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
You can thank yourself, for leaving screensaver settings more or less intact but disabling monitor shut down.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Yeah like that is working well, we have a bunch of increasingly Narcissistic, ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder kids that are stupid in ways that transcend being poorly educated, ignorant, uncritical thinkers or lacking in native intelligence. I'm almost glad they view the state as the authority figure instead of me!
But don't you see? Those are exactly the kind of people we are trying to build. Selfish people who can't concentrate or cooperate. Isolated, ignorant individuals are much easier to control than thoughtful people with many friends. Ultimately they must eat, and therefore, they must work for us.
0x110
Bad choice of numbers for this site.
All this physics/engineering/computer geek mumbo-jumbo about energy use and whatnot completely misses the point. The key point is whether or not the district had a policy on what software could be installed and what could not be, whether that policy was known by and understood by the system administrator, and whether the SETI software in question was disallowed under the policy (if any) or not. If there was a policy, which was understood by the system administrator to not allow installation of the SETI software and he did it anyway, then his goose is cooked. Otherwise, the district is probably going to be paying him damages as well as possibly giving him his job back.
You haven't followed New York State politics. They're not interested in solving problems for their constituents or saving tax-payer money.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Given the amount of money this school district wastes, I don't think any seti-related costs would affect them financially. They wanted to fire the guy using seti as justification. They'll succeed but at a great cost to the community. They have exposed how myopic the educators in this district are. What long-term damage they are causing to the children in this district.