Oooh, create a GOD@Home app... I'll be there... prove the existence of a divine creator on your PS3

Actually in some ways it's about the same as the SETI@Home app...

I mean I can understand the whole Carl Sagan/semi-scientific thing, but if you're going to use CPU cycles, surely folding at home is a better option.

With longer lives we might actually find an extraterrestrial intelligence (notice I didn't use ET, beca Steven use Spielberg has kind of loaded that term with additional meaning thanks to the movie).

Yeah, the obvious angle is the SETI thing... no doubt this kind of thing happens all over the country, but you DON'T hear about it because SETI@HOME isn't involved.

LOL, Aliens = $ ... now why can't SETI@HOME play on that to get their app onto every PS3/X-Box... (you might find proof of alien intelligence and be immortalised forever... download SETI@HOME today).

From the comments it's obvious that the site was Slashdotted...

If this guy ran SETI on 5K computers under his control without specific authorisation, then he gets what he deserved. There IS a significant cost.

He either knew that or was incompetent (although there may be an argument that he didn't fully appreciate the costs, though SETI@Home seems to understand them and he was a significant contributor, so he should have too).

Seriously, the guy was doing something personal that cost serious $ on the school boards money. Whether political or not, the guy deserves and opened himself up to this kind of treatment.

The sad part is if it took someone willing to take political advantage to "fix" the situation.

It's not called a 200W, 400W, 600W or 1000W power supply just because the numbers look pretty.

Try running top end CPU and top of the line graphics cards on a 200W power supply (btw, folding at home, SETI at home are more efficient using GPUs not CPUs) and see how far you get.... enjoy the BSOD.

Hmm, well the school administrator has decided that the budget for THE SCHOOL DISTRICT... doesn't include looking for ETs.

I wouldn't support the school district looking for cures for cancer either mind you... the school district has a budget for educating children.

Now an innovative approach would be a large technology company like IBM etc. granting money/equipment to a school district and using those "spare" CPU cycles to find a cure for cancer... basically win, win, win... school gets cheaper computers, IBM gets kudos, folding at home gets muchos CPU time.

If a network admin whose job it is to administer computers didn't remove software he installed for effectively his own use, he was asked to remove and cost the school district $300K/year in electricity costs because of that, I'd EXPECT criminal charges to be laid...

Otherwise why not let him steal one of the schools vehicles (much less) or perhaps 10 computers (a mere 30K no doubt).

Maybe something less like a couple of laptops... sure it's not feeding a drug habit or something similar and it's not so obvious, but it IS costing the school district far more in REAL money.

That money COULD probably have paid for another teacher.

Electricity via CPU cycles costs money... REAL money... sure it doesn't add up for the individual, but for 5,000 PCs, it adds up quickly.

Hmm, and you don't think that dealing with warranty issues wouldn't have cost time (and therefore money). If this individual spent 10% of his time dealing with support and warranty issues caused by the software (never mind the end user), that's still a cost, even if it's free to replace the parts.

Seems like a blatant troll, but anyway, I'll bite.

No the website has no RIGHT to know about screen size and so on, but that kind of information IS useful to a designer/programmer. If there's no room for a sidebar on 60%+ of my user's screens, then what's the point in having a sidebar. Conversely if 60% of my visitors browse with the browser maximised on a widescreen monitor, then maybe I should give them something to do with all that extra space.

As for proxies... maybe you haven't worked in the real world, but most businesses operate an Internet proxy and many ISP's route their users through one as well.

As for "what people don't like: "attempting to monetize a website""... servers, bandwidth and time aren't free... well not in the real world I inhabit anyway.

Enjoy your free, hobbyist Internet... I'm sure you feel dirty every time you shop online, post on Slashdot, or read anything that isn't someone's shitty two penny blog.

The laugh here about "monetizing" is it's very often congruent with giving your users more of they want and better targeting ads, so your users spend more time on your site and click on a larger number of ads they find interesting.