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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."
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.
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.
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.
Who knew leaving a bank of computers on 24/7 costs money?
Answer: The school administrators, who turned down a previous IT request to turn the machines off when not in use and impliment a power management policy some years prior to this incident.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
With BOINC , you can easily set the amount of system resources that will be used , so you don't have to use 100% is the systems resources.
The point is , it's the schools money , and so it's their choice what they do with it .
Personally , i think this is a great opportunity for schools :
- the distributed computing project benefits from it , so they might make mention of the school on there sites . ...
- it has some educational value : students will be interested in it , it can be discussed at classes , etc
But in the end , it's their call.
Slipping shoelaces ?