I could not resist blogging this story: State Employee Fired For Using State Property To Search For Aliens. It is about this guy that ran the Seti@home program on his work mainframe.
The guy ran the program only on weekends and on weekdays between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., when the server wasn’t being used. For those not familliar with Seti@home: this program uses grid computing to process the data from the Aricebo research facilty.
Obviously some companies just look for excuses to fire people. I have no clue what kind of policy they had (if any) but I guarantee you that such things can not happen in Holland.
One quote from the article is rather cool (though pretty damn harsh on the 63-year old guy:
“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.”
All good and well, but why fire a 63-year old man for something stupid as this. I think I’m gonna send a hate-mail to this director. He sucks!