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Hi folks, posting this here because I dont have rights to post in other sections yet.

Basically, I am a university student and I noticed that at our university all of the design labs remain powered on and open during nighttime/weekends. Ive done the math and I've come to the conclusion that I can get around 100Gh/sec should I utilize all of the pcs in our one lab from 10pm till 6am (When they are empty)

Last night I had cgminer running on 10 of the pcs there and got to about 5gh/sec and this morning at around 6am I went to shut them all down just in time before class starts.

I obviously have permission to *use* the pcs as I am a student at the university, but do you guys think its wrong of me to make use of these powerful design pcs even though they are usually on straight throughout the month including weekends in the afterhours? Am I costing the university a lot of money doing this?

At the moment im doing pooled mining @ deepbit.net.

You obviously have no permission to use all those PC's and what's more important all the electricity required for you commercial endeavours.

It is not so much about "ethicality" as about criminality.

That's obviously not fair usage of your University labs. If you get caught you risk getting expelled from the University and maybe even criminally prosecuted.

So basically, if I continue then I will go to hell. or Jail. (Or both) ?

My reasoning is that I pay for the usage of these facilities and as long as I do not break or damage them then I am okay?
The thing is, even some of the lecturers use these labs for mass downloading/torrenting and thus we are also allowed to use the labs for torrenting and downloading. What is the difference between shooting up the bandwidth bill and shooting up the electricity bill?

Those computers use much more power when mining than when idle.

We have this absent minded notion of "leaving the lights on" when we think about computers.

My computer idle consumes less than the 3 incandescent lights in this room. Until I start mining.

This is the problem with rhetoric. It allows to try reasoning without the numbers.

The university most likely doesnt get an invoice per MB traffic. They will most likely get an invoice per KWh. Either way, its simple, ask permission from whoever has that authority.

So you're already doing it?

It's a lucrative but risky business. You can ruin your career easily doing that, and no judge would believe you can possibly be stupid enough to think you were doing nothing wrong, in case you challenge your expulsion.

You can also get away with it, but it's unlikely as it will show clearly in the bills.

No, I was doing it last night for about an hour on 10 of the 100 pcs in the one lab. The university has 3 labs with 100 pcs each.
I will consider asking for permission. Maybe I can work this into one of my *projects* somehow. I am a networking & communications student and as such, I have to be able to write distributed networked software... hmm

Im just thinking, utilizing _all_ of these pcs for only one hour every night at 00:00 could have considderable yields for myself =|

I hate making the choice between right/wrong  :'(

Go ahead and read the the fair use statement you signed probably your freshman year. Any use of school property for profit is prohibited.

Don't you have to log in?  Wouldn't these processes be running under your username?

on average then, each gets 500 mhash/s.  pretty decent for lab computers, which normally don't have decent graphics cards installed.  almost too decent. are you sure?

either way, get permission first otherwise that is stealing.

Wow, Really? A "will i goto hell?"
Yea, You would. OH BUT WAIT NO YOU WONT BECAUSE XYZ WILL FORGIVE YOU IF YOU DO XYZ

My religious hatred aside, there are two things you can do.
Ask for permission and mostlikley get denied and !WATCHED!
Run them with a STEALTHY program (alot have been created for exactly what you need to do) One that will "mine when PC is idle" so that as soon as everyone stops using them, The mining starts, Then as soon as someone touches it, The mining stops.

This will cause you university to have an extra $1000-$4000 increse on thier monthly powerbill, While you kick back raking in $500-$1000/mo
Doing NOTHING because you made it all automated, And stealthed.

On of my friends has control of a Librarys network of computers, Hell it's all CPU's mining, But he's getting a free 375mh/s so he isnt complaining.

Perhaps you could explain it to the IT department and say you will pay them something to offset the increased power bill? I would imagine they would just say no, since doing this will wear out all their fancy design computers faster than anticipated.

At 100 GH/s you would increase the power bill of the computer lab by about $4 to $6K per month (depends on the efficiency of the hardware).   I think the University is going to notice that.

I've heard of people doing this and getting expelled. I don't remember if it was for mining or whatnot, but the idea of surreptitiously installing software and harvesting is usually frowned upon. I've even heard of IT members losing their jobs over it.

Is it ethical? I don't know if I can be a good judge here. Ethics are essentially personal questions. You obviously have worries about its ethicality, so it sounds like you are already convinced its a bad idea.

i wanted to do similar at my school, but i couldn't for lazy 8)

This is a design lab, all of the pcs were bought with the intent of servicing design/architectural students and they have fairly high end cards.
The cards run hot though. Im concerned that Ill break something and have to pay for it so I guess ill give this one a slip. :/



This was a joke man.

Forgive me... But i do not see where the "joke" was.... I thought, "maybe the 'ethicality' but you continued

I tried to do the same at my university.

But after seeing that they run a pentium 4 and an integrated gpu I aborted the operation.

Not even with all the 30 pc's I could get a decent amount of hash/s.

back in cpu day i could have made good profit. i didn't want to for bad luck

You should be concerned, as that's a very likely scenario. Even if you are experienced with safely configuring GPU mining machines, you don't know how robust the electrical service is for the lab. Don't assume they designed it for handling a several hundred percent increase in average power draw for hours on end.

GPU mining won't even make you that much any more. Even completely disregarding the ethical problems, the risk is too high for the return.

+1

Do it!  Just save any income for a defense lawyer...

Just don't get busted, then everything is okay.  :P

...this is another reason why schools only use old technology.

Wasn't there a news story about some guy who got caught running a miner on his company's server farm a couple months ago? He got in pretty big trouble as soon as they realized what was going on - this seems like the sort of thing you could get away with on a small scale, but eventually someone would catch on - and the last thing you need is to get kicked out of school halfway after spending thousands on an education. Just not worth it.

just do it and give a shit

its only some small time you have access.

use it.

when they eventually drop you, you are at least the smart guy who earned more than the faggot school cost your daddy

Oh hey, I also forgot how all the computer "labs" would turn into industrial sized office heating rooms!

I am doing it at my work. Getting only 2625 Mhash/s from 33 working computers. Its not much, but nothing else to do :).

You should ask them first otherwise its theft.

It's certainly gray area. However it will not get unnoticed. So you better have a good excuse for why you're running on all those computers. In principle you could disguise your activity within custom software so it would look like a science project. But be aware that this then is criminal intent and fraud the least. Universities support science not profit. If somebody finds out you're exiled.

the only way you will ever get them to approve the use is i you are a researcher at school of engineering and you can get grant/project approved