Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watcgl.UUCP 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