zcaveman: Not, I don't think it's ok. But why is the superintendant zeroing in on the SETI@home stuff - and doing it so BADLY? If you actually knew anything about it, there is NO EFFECT. And here's another clue - if the computers in the district are set up to go to sleep (power saving) after a certain amount of time, SETI doesn't keep them awake. You said "what about the power" - there was NO EFFECT. If it was district policy to leave the computers on 24/7, there's no difference. If the district turned them off, then SETI was off.

As a side note, I find it interesting that he only amassed some 5 million workunits with 5000 computers (the number quoted in the stories).

Here at home, I had a maximum of 4 desktops and a laptop. I've been with the project for 10 years and I've amassed just shy of 2.5 million workunits. This tells me that there weren't 5000 PCs running 24/7 for years - his numbers would be a LOT higher. Based on those numbers, the PCs were probably hibernating or going to sleep mode after a certain amount of inactivity.

The part that gets me is that there seem to be some FAR more serious charges - not being authorized to take *18* PCs home with him and running some sort of home-based business on them, questions about procurement and whether or not proper bidding procedures were followed, etc.

But those are "boring" news stories.