Man loses job after searching too hard for aliens

[NeoGen]

The search for intelligent life apparently has stopped for Brad Niesluchowski, the network systems administrator who led Higley Unified School District's technology department.


Higley Unified School District records obtained by The Arizona Republic show that Niesluchowski, of Gilbert, resigned in October after an investigation into suspicious activity, including the use of a program that searches radio signals collected by a giant radio dish looking for extraterrestrial life.


According to the documents, district officials said they found Niesluchowski had abused his authority in purchasing and oversight of district technology and equipment, downloaded pornography, and added to every district computer a University of California-Berkeley program that searches high-frequency radio signals for signs of intelligent life in outer space.
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Higley officials so far estimate the damages, energy usage and equipment losses linked to Niesluchowski at $1.2 million to $1.6 million.

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He was known by the alias "NEZ" and was SETI's most active volunteer explorers for intelligent life, scoring more than 575 million "credits" - hours of data searching in nine years of participation.


Admirers often pondered in their Internet chats about SETI@home in 2007: "What is NEZ? Who is NEZ?" Some even offered the theory that he "is a god."

Full article: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/11/30/20091130searchforaliens1202.html

[NeoGen]

Let this be a lesson to us all... don't get greedy! :icon_wink:

[liuqyn]

ouch......

[Nflight]

Now that was a story worth posting. Thank You NeoGen :blob3:

Shame on you professionals: If you are going to use excess cycles of computer uptime for a project like DCing please for the love of your own life in employment "ask your superiors if your actions are allowed?"

NEZ - On the other hand now we know who the great NEZ was and now with out him the rest of the huge DC crunchers can catch his excellent work ethic of never shutting down his systems no matter what! Woo Hoo :icon_razz:

[txt.file]

I think he got fired for more then just running SETI on every computer.

• During a warranted search of his home earlier this fall, Gilbert police found 18 computers and other equipment stolen from the district.
• District officials said they learned Niesluchowski never installed firewalls that would protect students' and staff members' personal information from hackers, exposing district computer and data to potential tampering or damage.
• District officials also say he failed to train and supervise other tech staff.
Some better reasons to get fired?

[Brucifer]

Berkeley should sue him too since he violated their terms of usage of the software. They have said all along not to install their software on computers that you don't have permission to install it on. Should be a big wake up call to other though that take care of systems funded by the taxpayers. Would be hard for any manager to support a decision to run something like seti@home unless it was in direct support of a specific class for instance. But anyway, his lawyer sure stands to make some money as his case could get drug out for a long long time. Lots of billable hours.

[Brucifer]

So has anyone read anything new lately on this case? Has it gone to trial yet? Have any of the GPU folks bypassed his crunching record yet at Seti??