The Scottish Boinc Team

It seems that NEZ, by far the top Setiest & overall Boinc #6, has been sacked for allegedly using his employers PCs [5000 of them!]without their permission. They are also suing him for $1.6million for electricity and other costs.

The official S@H account is here.

So be warned.

100% on board there.

Whatever the background and whatever his motives he broke the rules - big style (and probably broke the law too).

There appears to be a bit of a ground swell at Seti to defend him, but I can't say that I agree with that stance.

From an IT administrators perspective, if he had been in my team, his feet wouldn't have touched the ground. It really doesn't say much for his professionalism that he should wish to borg company machines for what amounts to a hobby.

Sad that he would want to put so much a risk really......

Some of the reports suggest that he had previously been given permission to run Boinc. Rather bizarrely the spokeswoman for his organisation said that had it been Cancer Research rather than SETI then it would have been okay!

I suspect that like a lot of dismissals the back story is as important as the official sacking offence.

The moral though, is don't try this at work folks. (if you must, then Cancer Research might well play better at the Employment Tribunal than say Sudako or Chess960!)

Hey, I run boinc on my empleyers computers all the time.... Mind you I am self-employed!

But have you your landlord's permission to drill holes everywhere to route network cables?