digg_url =’http://digg.com/software/School_District_Fires_IT_Admin_for_SETI_on_5_000_School_PCs’; 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.

Confused school district fires sysadmin for running SETI@home: ‘As an educational institution we do not support the search for E.T.’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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