I will agree with you there. Though, I do think the $1mil price tag is likely overblown, since the largest contributor is likely power usage, and many places have a policy that the machines stay on regardless. The machines probably wouldn't have been sleeping anyways as a result of scheduled AV scans, software pushes, other various security software or network administration utils, people who leave the workstation logged in with apps running, and windows installs that simply refuse to sleep for various other reasons even though they are set to do so. I think if they were truly concerned about power consumption the policy would have been to shut the machines off at night. Just my 2 cents... --off topic-- Also, where his theft is concerned, I happened to have worked for a school district in the past, and yes we also had a mountain of decommissioned hardware sitting in a storage area. Since these are considered hazardous waste at disposal, we initially attempted to handle the issue by giving the machines away to economically disadvantaged students, but were instructed to stop after some concerns were raised over legal liabilities in doing so. I can easily see where it would have seemed feasible to take home junk hardware that was otherwise going to end up in a dumpster anyways.

I would buy into your analysis except that schools spend money on research and other potentially "useless" projects all the time. I would venture to state that schools ought *not* to be run as a business (in the typical sense of the word).

and the results had been directly attributable to the CPU cycles this school district was "donating" to the cause? I'm sure this would have been a PR grand slam for the school district with the same detractors holding this guy in high praise for doing such wonderful things for the community.

The United States, on the other hand, is not running as a functional country in any sense of the word. The competence of the leadership is very much in question, and many of their past actions suggest a level of delusion that has already lead to very destructive behavior.

I am still shocked at how many people in the States are still blissfully unaware of the fact that as part of the E-911 regulations all phones made circa 2000 through present already contain a GPS device and/or support an automated method of triangulation via cell phone towers. During a 911 call in a supported region the GPS/Locating system can be activated to transmit your coordinates back to call-center where they are in turn relayed to the proper authorties. The accuracy of the system depends on the generation of your phone, but anything purchased within the last few years already contains enough hard/software to provide an accurate location. Typically, if you go digging through your options menus, you will find an option to enable/disable the GPS from operating all the time, however it can always be activated by calling 911(which begs the question can it be activated any other time through some software means - not trying to start conspiracy time but I'm willing to bet that it can be.)