Ethically wrong?

[WarPhalange]

That happens to our computers sometimes in the student computer labs and physics lounge. They are hooked up to the network and sometimes a research group runs their program/simulation off of all of them at once, grinding the computer to a halt on everything else. I don't mind sharing, since I only ever browse my email or wikipedia for help with homework so I don't use much of the computer anyway, but shouldn't I get preference over some program running in the background? I can't even kill it or limit its CPU usage.

 

[cristo]

That happens to our computers sometimes in the student computer labs and physics lounge. They are hooked up to the network and sometimes a research group runs their program/simulation off of all of them at once, grinding the computer to a halt on everything else. I don't mind sharing, since I only ever browse my email or wikipedia for help with homework so I don't use much of the computer anyway, but shouldn't I get preference over some program running in the background? I can't even kill it or limit its CPU usage.

That happens in my department too. Our solution: a quick restart of all the machines in the office. That'll teach them to run labour intensive programmes on other people's machines. Of course, you've got to just quickly delete the "I've just lost 3 weeks' work" email...

 

[WarPhalange]

Yeah, that's what I did, but by accident. Instead of logging off, I hit "shut down". At first I said "Oops!" but then I said "Pfft, whatever. They had it coming."

There are programs that do protein folding or whatever that work in the background, using idle CPU power, so there's no excuse for doing the same.

 

[binzing]

Why not just Ctrl Alt Delete some of them...just restart it when you leave...

 

[rootX]

We get software updates every two-three week or so...

And we cannot log in on the computers that are getting them :(. Restarting doesn't help

 

[WarPhalange]

Why not just Ctrl Alt Delete some of them...just restart it when you leave...

I don't know if you're referring to me or the OP, but in my case I am given a prompt saying I don't have permission to do that, so I have to let it run.

 

[JasonRox]

I found a NICE solution!

I tucked the computer away in the corner, but then I got the MAC number off the computer first. Changed my laptop MAC number to this new numbers and now I am connected directly through landline to the internet. It's 10X faster than the wireless.

Nice.

Way better setup.

Note: I only use the laptop at school. In fact, I don't even bring it home as I have another at home.