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Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale
From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.college
Subject: Re: Free and undirected campus computing facilities
Message-ID: <425@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Nov-84 15:09:36 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.425
Posted: Tue Nov 13 15:09:36 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Nov-84 03:44:06 EST
References: <457@utcsrgv.UUCP> <649@watdcsu.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 25

Herb (watdcsu!herbie) points out that "free" computing is still available
at Waterloo.  Yes, but not in the same manner that Peter Rowley was
talking about.  In the environment Peter described, a group of students
- some grad, some undergrad - had complete access to a machine.  They
debugged and rewrote parts of the operating system.  Virtually no one
has that sort of access now, even on the PC's, because sources are not
available on the small machines and the VAXes are shared by too many
people for anyone to be able to do any operating system hacking (except
for the people who are employed to do that, of course).

So, though many people can get processor cycles without paying money
for them, they don't have the sort of "free" access to the entire system
that created the group of UNIX gurus that developed here in the 70's.
A few months after first opening the cover of a UNIX manual, I was being
encouraged to fix a bug in the lineprinter driver in the kernel (even
though I was scared of the idea of tampering with the operating system
itself - I was still in first year, and thought I didn't understand
any real computer science yet).  Five months after I first logged on,
I had a summer job that involved writing a device driver and configuring
a UNIX system that used it, without any help - and I had just finished
first year.  In that kind of environment, you learn fast.  But that kind
of environment just is not available anymore, except perhaps to a very
few exceptionally lucky people.

	Dave Martindale