News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to S... by drzaiusapelord on Wednesday September 16, 2015 @10:46AM (#10226970)
>A system administrator was fired for installing/running seti@home on school computers.

Actually, I agree with this. I remember when this got big and suddenly every IT department, school, etc had these things installed, clearly without permission. If you tried talking about wasted electricity, added pollution, and the social cost of running power hungry processors 24/7 for "alien points" on their forums (or any forums) you'd be shouted down.

The reality is that sysadmin and helpdesk staff shouldn't have this kind of power. If they want to run these types of things on their employers hardware they need to get permission.

You occasionally hear about this nowadays with Litecoin and Bitcoin mining, but it seems we've learned our lesson here. Power doesn't grow on trees. There are real costs and environmental effects here to seriously consider. This attitude of "fuck you, I understand computers and you don't" really needs to go the way the way of the dodo. Real professionals don't act this way. Also, comparing this guy to a 14 year old who was pulled out of his class and handcuffed for making a clock is fairly weak sauce.

Re:14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to S... by Karunamon on Wednesday September 16, 2015 @02:12PM (#10228599)
In an environment where kids are literally arrested for sending popup messages over the network, I think that attitude has some value. People are overreacting based on things they have no understanding of.
Re:14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to S... by Gorgor on Wednesday September 16, 2015 @04:10PM (#10229483)
Do you have a link to this story about being arrested for sending messages?