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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."
Who knew leaving a bank of computers on 24/7 costs money?
Unfortunately in the world of reality, the difference between Idle and Used CPU is at the very least money. My computer idles at ~180W use. When it's at 100% CPU, it's closer to 450W use.
If that CPU time is being used, it has to be paid for.
I guess they're too busy allocating all their resources trying to find intelligent life in their class rooms...
That's not completely true. A computer that is idle uses less power than one at 100% cpu utilization. So it is costing the school more money for their electricity. It could also lessen the life of the computer. A computer that is shutdown at night would likely last longer than one crunching numbers every night.
If that CPU time is being used, it has to be paid for.
We've come so far since the 60's mainframe days.
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What the hell are you talking about? How can something use the same amount of power, but emit different amounts of heat under different circumstances? Unless it has a *very* large capacitor or some other form of energy storage, or it emits radiation (light, etc), every watt used comes out as heat.
If it is getting hotter, it means it is using more power.
This is slashdot, news for nerds. Nerds don't buy computers from Best Buy. Real nerds don't ever even shop for anything at Best Buy. Best Buy is where wannabe nerds go so they can pay higher than advertised prices on products that the salespersons know little about, but they still know more than the wannabe nerds. I could go on, but I think you get the picture, and the rest of the people reading this already knew these facts.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
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.
We're talking about school computers. Not the rig you built to play Crysis at 4096x3092 with all settings maxed. And I'm not knocking that, my rigs are self built, but most people (including schools) usually purchase pre-built computers from companies. And those pre-built machines usually have low end processors (thus using less electricity) and use the IGP. And, because of that those machines usually have lower end power supplies.
It could also lessen the life of the computer. A computer that is shutdown at night would likely last longer than one crunching numbers every night.
This is completely false and has been proven with reams of empirical data. Keeping a computer running 24/7 give a longer useful lifetime than shutting a computer down every night. It's a lot easier on the machine to keep it running and warm with a constant feed of power than it is to subject it to cold starts and sudden jolts of electricity... all of which drastically shorten the lifespan of many parts inside the computer.
Add to the fact that even if a CPU had a certain number of "hours" in a pool that it could be used before it failed - the number would be so big as to be rendered completely irrelevant by the fact that the computer would be so obsolete and useless by the time the CPU failed that it would have been long discarded anyway. Even if you lessen a CPU with a 15 year lifespan by 30% by keeping it running, do you really think you're going to be using a 10.5 year old computer? In this day and age it's possible but highly unlikely.
"It could also lessen the life of the computer. A computer that is shutdown at night would likely last longer than one crunching numbers every night."
Very true. A computer fan spinning at 100% 24/7 is far more likely to suffer a early death due to dust and hair, as you can see from these photos:
Dust in computer
What can happen to the Computers of Pet Owners; with Dirty Pictures
Computer Killers – Pet Hair, Dust and Cigarette Smoke
If the computer is shutdown or in low power the fan isn't spinning so it's not sucking in dust and dirt.... or bugs
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Can you tell me what 17x16 is?
It's a multiplication, sir!
No, you can't beat Best Buy's prices (on sale in-store items or HP machines). What you can beat is the components. By doing it yourself, you get to pick everything, so instead of having just one decent component in a heap of crap, you can have all moderate components that match up in capabilities. No point in having a 3 ghz quad-core machine with 8 GiBs of RAM if it's old, slow ram on a 400 mhz bus. And no sneaky 1 GiB of video ram on an integrated chipset that's robbing from the 8 slow system GiBs.
Instead everything will match up with no bottlenecks for your intended application, and a quiet power supply, but in a flimsy, but adequate case with sharp corners that's a little too big aesthetically.
But you're not going to save money. Get that idea out of your head.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
Unfortunately in the world of reality, the difference between Idle and Used CPU is at the very least money. My computer idles at ~180W use. When it's at 100% CPU, it's closer to 450W use.
If that CPU time is being used, it has to be paid for.
most consumer CPUs idle at ~40 watts and cap out around 95 watts under max theoretical load. That 450 watt PEAK power output is for system max load which never happens.
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
17x16? That's easy. Any self-respecting member of /. should know that 16x16 = 256. Therefore, 17x16 = 256 + 16 = 272.
Unfortunately in the world of reality, the difference between Idle and Used CPU is at the very least money. My computer idles at ~180W use. When it's at 100% CPU, it's closer to 450W use.
If that CPU time is being used, it has to be paid for.
Well unless its summer time (when schools are closed) and the school is far enough north you could just think of these PCs running SETI@home as electric heaters. 100% of the energy they use is being turned to heat, so some/all (depending on the schools regular heating system) of the cost of running SETI@home can be subtracted from the heating costs.
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.
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'd love to, but none of the schools around here have courses in fucking for me to teach.
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