We've dealt with a number of confused and outright foolish school administrators in our time, but it seems like Arizona's Higley Unified School District might be run by the most bonkers of the bunch: they've fired IT director Brad Niesluchowski for running
SETI@Home on some 5,000 of the district's machines. Why? According to confidently-underinformed superintendent Denise Birdwell, Higley Unified "certainly would have supported cancer research," but does "not support the search for E.T." Well, that's just peachy -- except that her flippant dismissal of SETI belies a complete ignorance of one of the oldest and most respected distributed-computing projects in the world, and what it's actually looking for. Oh, but it gets worse: Birdwell thinks SETI@home -- which primarily runs as a
screensaver -- was somehow slowing down "educational programs in every classroom," and magically estimates that it's cost her district "$1 million in added utility fees and replacement parts," with a further huge cost required to remove the software. Completing her transformation into the worst-possible stereotype of a school district superintendent, Birdwell's even got the local cops on the case. Yeah, it's idiotic, but it could be worse -- we can only imagine the hell that would have broken loose had Higley's machines been a part of the renegade
Engadget Folding@home team.
Update: So there's apparently more going on here as well, including allegations of stolen equipment and -- inevitably -- downloaded porn, but none of that explains why Superintendent Birdwell is giving press conferences where she slams SETI. Check the more coverage links for the full story, and make sure to hit the source link for the video.
posted December 2nd 2009 3:24PM
I liked the article. As suggested, I researched the story further, and found there are many issues and allegations.
I am very disappointed that Superintendent Birdwell chose to slander a respected educational initiative by making false statements regarding the seti@home project, and using the alleged harm caused by the district's participation in the project as a fundamental reason for firing her IT Director. Her estimates of the cost and consequences of having district computers participate in seti@home are exaggerated at best and clearly sensationalized, with no mention of any positives or benefits. I agree with the author, Mr. Patel, that Ms. Birdwell's statements referencing seti@home demonstrate how uninformed and ignorant she is regarding the project. To me it suggests a political agenda or vendetta at the expense of legitimate science.
I now question why Ms. Birdwell felt the need to go public with the story, and whether any of the allegations against the IT Director, Mr. Niesluchowski, are true. If they are true, charges should be filed, and he will have his day in court. As it stands, this story adds to my disappointment in mainstream media, and their increasing willingness to publish sensational stories without research or substantiation.
Thank you Engadget for providing a different perspective.
@ritchiesd It seems a little hard to claim any benefits from using the program before they find alien life, doesn't it? You know, other than teaching kids that they haven't found anything.
@ritchiesd RTFA: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/11/30/20091130searchforaliens1202.html
He was not fired fired for simply running SETI@Home on the school computers. I agree that SETI@Home should not have been slandered like it was, but there is more to the story than what Nilay posted. The estimated cost includes the newer, more powerful computers the guy purchased with district funds.While the superintendent may be ignorant about SETI@Home, I think she was justified in terminating "NEZ" because of the way he went about running it; not to mention all the other job duties he failed to perform, his theft of district property, and the porn he downloaded at work.
Hmm...I've read the article, and it seems she's right, but for all the wrong reasons.
As a school teacher I can say that while this shows a lot of ignorance on the part of the administrator, this person wouldn't even be in the running for the stupid administrator of the year award. It's a crowded field.
Here's the other side of the story from.. well.. next door: http://gizmodo.com/5417595/number-one-contributor-to-alien-search-program-fired-from-his-day-job
Fox news in now disgusting to me. Disgusting is a term I don't throw around lightly.
According to the article and the man's wife "the software was authorized by a previous administration".
her email is dbirdwell@husd.org
it would be a shame if ya know . . . some of little green men email bombed her if ya know what i mean
@overpwredbyfunk That's really not appropriate. At least read the full story before you start hatemongering and inciting malicious behavior.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/11/30/20091130searchforaliens1202.html
I guess I'm a little confused here. Engadget post says that the administrator's "flippant dismissal of SETI belies a complete ignorance of one of the oldest and most respected distributed-computing projects in the world, and what it's actually looking for." Is SETI not looking for extra-terrestrial life? I've been led to believe that's what the "E" and the "T" in the acronym stood for. Or did Nilay Patel believe that the administrator actually meant the little alien with the glowing finger?
@emetophobia777 I think Nilay is referring to the way in which she said it. It seems to purposely reference the movie to make light of the issue and to invalidate or discredit SETI@Home. I am almost certain that the quote is being abused by the media to make story seem more controversial. The actual issue is not with SETI@Home itself but with the abuse of district resources the guy committed to run it.
I also am pretty disappointed in this post. This guy was rightfully fired for running SETI on 5000 machines along, let alone all the other things he did. The Gizmondo article mentions that he was the #1 contributor to SETI. Staying on top was probably an ago thing for him, and if that required spending the schools IT budget to do it, then I'm sure that's what he did.
@Eric51 I agree with you, spelling errors notwithstanding. It really seems like this guy was on a power trip and abused school district resources not to further the SETI@Home project but to maintain his status as the #1 contributor. The comments made by the superintendent about using the same resources for cancer research being ok but not for SETI are a bit irritating, but I still think she was right to fire him.
Doesn't anyone realize journalism is usually one sided? What's the big deal with engadget having a side that not everyone agrees on for once?
The Arizona legislature recently had a legislator say that the earth is only 6000 years old. It is not surprising that an administrator in a school does not believe that there is life somewhere else in the universe and that we might want to say hello. That coud be perceived as an educational use of the computers.
Unfortunately, Seti is the issue we are talking about when the idiot sysadmin allegedly had district equipment in his home, was looking at porn, and didn;t get permission.
@Willards What does that legislator have to do with this school administrator? Are they neighbors or members of the same church? Are you saying that because they're from the same state they must have the same anti-science agenda? Also, the existence of extraterrestrial life is not something we have proof of. I don't disagree with the search for it, but using school resources to fund a private organization's needle-in-a-haystack search for aliens is foolish, especially given the unknown nature of what they are looking for.
@emetophobia777 And I suppose the Earth is flat and the center of the universe too huh? Your ignorance is astounding.
@Brokinarrow Howso? What did I say that was incorrect? Is there scientific evidence of extraterrestrial life outside of conjecture? It's all well and good to say that my "ignorance is astounding", yet you didn't refute anything I said; you just threw those same tired cliches at me about how I must believe in a flat, geocentric universe (which are, by the way, logically incompatible). Yawn.
Again, I don't disagree with the search for alien life, but if the SETI@home program was bogging down resources needed for actually teaching kids about those things which we can prove to be real, then it should not have been used in that way.
Slightly off topic, but this is the same school that halted a touring production of The complete works of shakespeare abridged I was a part of 2 years ago. They Are not the sharpest tools in the shack.
Look I'm from phoenix and I can tell you the Higley USD has grown four-fold in the past ten years.
@Cobra4455 I live in Tempe and can attest to your statement being approximately correct, but what's your point? Are you trying to say that the district has a bloated budget? Would that make it ok to abuse district resources and spend that money without permission?
well... turning on and off a computer everyday can do more harm to a cpu and harddrive than to leave it on. so this guy shouldn't be charged for computer damages. also, if no-one is using that extra bandwidth at night, I don't see what does it change if it was done at night.
@phearme You may be right about wear and tear on the computer hardware and idle bandwidth, but you're forgetting about the power consumption for having the computers running an extra 16 or so hours per day.
totally agree on the power usage... that was a bad decision for the it director. but if birdwell had a clue what was going on she could have had it shut down in the early stages.
hate to say it but stupidity is becoming more typical of the people running our businesses and country now days. it's not what you know but who you know. she probably has no clue with technology in our world. very typical.
@emetophobia777-- Some people in authority do have a non science stance. There is a history in Higley of a large amount of LDS and fundimentalist members who also have a high amount of anti science background and the resources (money and power) to use their position as a platform for their religious beliefs. I make that connection.
"Unfortunately, Seti is the issue we are talking about when the idiot sysadmin allegedly had district equipment in his home, was looking at porn, and didn't get permission." to use the equipment.
Teachers should be teaching science, the scientific method in a science class. The search for life in other parts of the universe is the goal of Seti and could be taught in a science class; however, there is no suggestion of that in the story. The teaching of a faith based theory should be taught in a philosophy or religion class.
@Willards Ah. I stand corrected.
That said, what this comes down to is resources. If SETI@home was bogging down the technological resources of the school, it stands to reason that those resources could be better used in those areas of science which are known to, you know, exist.
Dude! Thats like 5k computers off the seti project. NOW WHAT!!!
Instead of SETI they support the search for the Higley Boson, a key component in support of the Higley Unified Field Theory.
Did I miss something in this story? Were the computers doing some sort of cancer research before this guy re-tasked them for SETI?
I think there is a lot of misunderstanding going on here, including Nilay. I recommend that everyone read the full story at the More Coverage links above(here: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/11/30/20091130searchforaliens1202.html and here: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/147847) or whichever trusted news source your prefer.
Brad Niesluchowski was not terminated simply for running SETI@home on the school district's computers. He actually was not technically terminated at all because he resigned first, as advised by his lawyer. He was going to be terminated for multiple violations of his contract and ethics policies, including not installing/maintaining firewalls, not training or supervising his subordinates, stealing computers and equipment from the district, and downloading porn on district computers. Installing SETI@home is only one piece in a larger puzzle.
Superintendent Birdwell may have made comments to the affect of not fully understanding the SETI@home project, she does seem to be aware of what it is and how it works. SETI@home may only run when the machine is idle, but that is on an individual basis. The SETI@home software running on all the idle computers will be using resources, such as bandwidth, that are used by the non-idle computers. This was apparently causing problems with SMART Boards and other tools. The district also found that running SETI@home 24/7 was causing CPUs to wear out faster than they would have otherwise. That, plus the electricity consumption, the cost to pay people to remove the software, and the unauthorized purchase of newer, more powerful computers contributed to the estimated $1.2-1.6 million cost to the district. The SETI@home software is also seen as a security risk because of the ports it needs open in the firewall.
The police were involved because of the legal issues surrounding the case and they found the stolen equipment when they searched Niesluchowski's home.
So it's not as idiotic as Nilay says, the reason Birdwell thinks SETI@home slows down "education programs in every classroom" because it really does, and there is no magic involved in the estimated costs to the district from all this. As for why Birdwell is slamming SETI@home in her press conferences, that is the one thing on which I agree with Nilay.
I used to work for a large school district several years. Back when UD (distributed research for cancer) was still around I ran it on 120+ file servers. I eventually was ranked around 80-something in the world. About a year after I left it was found out what I was doing and I was afraid of this exact thing. They were even claiming the same losses, although on a lesser scale. Nothing ever happened though.
I'm in High School and I thought my the admin in my district was IT tarded. These people make cave men look like the Geek Squad...
I'm in High School and I thought the admin in my district was IT tarded. These people make cave men look like the Geek Squad...
Yeah, space must be boring and empty and therefore SETI is worthless. Why else would the University of Arizona be involved with so many NASA projects? Didn't they also assist with some of the largest telescope mirrors?
Since she mentioned cancer, I wonder if they'll switch out the SETI software for the Folding@Home project?
I'm one of two IT guys in our private education company (500+ staff, 10 schools). We lack the strict formal accountability one finds in some public schools (apparently the one at issue). Unless someone is insanely stupid, folks are very forgiving -- preferring to correct and move on rather than fire folks.
There's no WAY I'd install SETI around our facilities -- certainly not without briefing management concerning how it would affect things -- yes, increased power consumption, yes more fan wear on the machines, yes, more bandwidth consumption (competing with other best-effort application traffic in QoS and potentially bogging down even priority traffic due to queue issues beyond our control in the near cloud).
I wouldn't do this for entirely rational reasons, but from a standpoint of the level of trust in our organization between folks who treat each other really well, I just wouldn't violate that by taking advantage of it.
In a sense, this was really stupid. SETI@home has been an utter failure. Of course, in a way that's precisely its success. To have run this long and found jack, supports the hypothesis that there ain't nobody home out there, so to speak. At least, no one who bothers communicating using basic physics principles of electromagnetic waves. E.T. freaks not content with that lonely diagnosis can prognosticate on the basis of "undiscovered means of communication" all they want to explain the project's failure to find ANYTHING AT ALL, but the fact remains -- tethering 4000 of your schools machines to this project is dramatically more stupid than using the machines for something like folding@home, that actually DOES something useful.
I'm not saying this because I have a personal brief with the SETI project. I used to run it myself. I say this because this IT guy screwed up, and the only explanation is NOT that supporting SETI@home was such a wonderful idea for his institution to be up for. The only explanation is that this chucklehead personally imagines that of all the distributed computing projects he could have considered, the FAILED search for E.T. was the most worthy one.
He pooched it. Any I.T. guy in education who's not a dufus knows that.