Saturday, October 09, 2004

SETI - nope, not in Ohio!

Here's the link to the Slashdot post, and here's the actual article from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette -

The search for extraterrestrial life has ended at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services in Columbus, Ohio.

The department Thursday fired a computer programmer who admitted to using a state-owned computer server to process data for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project, run by the University of California at Berkeley.

Charles E. Smith, 63, told administrators he didn’t think loading the SETI software on the server was much of a problem because he ran the program only when the server wasn’t being used, according to a disciplinary report.

Department head Tom Hayes disagreed.

“I understand his desire to search for intelligent life in outer space, because obviously he doesn’t find it in the mirror in the morning,” Hayes said. “I think that people can be comfortable that security has beamed this man out of our building.”


So OK then. If you are a programmer or systems admin or computer professional working for ANYONE - you shouldn't be loading shareware software onto their servers. I'm down with that. He deserved to get fired in my opinion. No need to kick the man when he was down though. You fired him - you don't need to basically call him stupid as well. Just my two cents.

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