Floppy/ZIP crunching on public machines - is it legal?

I was just thinking at the public machines I have access to everday.

Out of this group of machines, there's maybe one or two that I use for more than half an hour, up to maybe two hours.

Would it be legal to carry around a floppy or a ZIP, and have that computer crunch only while I was using it? I think it'd be cool to start turning in WUs that I crunched on seven or eight different machines, but I certainly don't want to get in trouble for it.

This is something of a slippery slope. The legal precidents are not yet set on this issue. If you do not use their bandwidth to send any units and only use the "spare" cpu cycles while sitting at the machine that is one thing. But, most public settings have rules against loading unauthorized software on them anyway.

Overall I would just say its not worth it. To blurry a line and who wants to be the next McOwen in DC?

Cy

Oh, I can say that the unauthorzied software thing isn't that big of a problem. People carry ZIP disks around with 'Zaa and Winamp and God only knows what else to use on the machines. I installed ICQ on several of the machines last fall (to ZIP disk, of course), and after pointing out to a concerned teacher that the stuff I needed was on the ZIP and not the HDD, she thought it was cool.

If it's on a ZIP, apparently they don't care - it's when they leave the crap on the machine that the lab attendents get ****ed.

I'll read up on it.

How are they going to know if its on a removable disk? Unless they are watching you.

i do it all the time at uni
just run it off the floppy, or a temp directory and move it back to the floppy when its done.
theres no real installation of software going on, since the cli is just an executable..

Well, I still say its a slippery slope and I would not want to be on the wrong end of some smuck admin/official who does not understand but wants to make a point using me as the test case! As I said, just ask D McOwen how much fun that was!

Cy

How are they going to know if its on a removable disk? Unless they are watching you.

Click to expand...

Because they *do* watch you.

And anything you install/save is pretty much as good as deleted if you leave it on the machine.