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0 pointsnadams10y ago0 comments

> Think about all the things the school district could have spent an extra ~$7MM+ on...

That's assuming they didn't use computers. Your calculation assumes that the computer uses a full 350+ watts of electricity. If it had a 350 watt PSU and was drawing that full load - it would shutdown (I've had this happen). Even then the CPU doesn't require 350 watts of power [1]. The only device that I know of that will use and designed to use a full load is a bitcoin miner.

Taking in consideration that these computers might have been left on already. I would argue that he used MAYBE an extra 50 watts of electricity [2]. So assuming $0.10/kw/hr (which is the cost of where I live) - he wasted a whopping $0.12/day or ~$50/year.

You have to take into account if the computers were already on. He didn't waste electricity because someone left their computer on - his "waste" would be electricity use that is above that of an "idle computer". It should also be pointed out that if the computer has Mcafee or some other crappy AV the CPU usage would be 100% anyways due to poor programming of the AV software (I have personally seen this many times and you don't know how many times people complain about their slow computer because the AV is using 100% of the CPU).

There is no way he wasted $7m - and even if he did and no one noticed that is part of a larger problem. Besides they only claim he wasted $1.2m - $1.6m [3] - with no evidence of how they came up with that number. That is saying he managed to waste over $100k/year (over 9 years) in equipment purchases, electricity etc - and NO ONE noticed this? I find it hard to believe that the people managing the budget were like "$100k unaccounted for this year? no big deal...". And even if it was accounted for and signed off - there should be 2 people fired - his and the guy who approved the purchase.

Even from the article:

> would find that in a middle of a lesson, the SMART Board had turned off.

This has happened to me personally on my own laptop. Not because I was mining bitcoins or running seti@home. In fact I've seen them installed and they are such POS that no instructor I know actually uses it as a SMART board.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CPU_power_dissipation_...

[2] http://i.stack.imgur.com/4HQPY.png

[3] http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/11/30/20091130se...

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Alupis10y ago· 2 in thread

Even using your math:

~$50 per year per computer * 5,000 computers = $250,000 in additional power consumption per year

He ran this scheme for 9 years:

$250,000 per year * 9 years = $2,250,000 total additional electricity costs

No matter what way you run the math, he blew millions of the school district's budget.

nadamsOP10y ago

> No matter what way you run the math, he blew millions of the school district's budget.

And the school blew millions by not turning off the computers when not in use. Power management is built into Windows - this can easily be done/managed with group policy.

> $250,000 per year * 9 years = $2,250,000 total additional electricity costs

This is all assuming he went around in a ski mask before he left every day and turned on all the computers across the school. Sure he might have used WOL but from the article I don't think he was that devious. From reports of what I read this was something the previous system admin guy did and just passed it along what to do.

I'm not saying he could have wasted money - I'm just giving him the benefit of the doubt and trying to make sure we don't frame him as some sort of criminal mastermind out to rip off this school district. There are a lot of reports out there about this and it's obvious the school wanted to spin it to look like he was the bad guy.

Alupis10y ago

He was the IT guy, so for all we know (and can likely safely assume) he had a GPO to not turn off the systems, but instead schedule this app to run after students left for the day.

I do believe somewhere someone stated the district had wanted the systems put to sleep (not turned off) and believed it was happening.

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