X-NEWS: spcvxa alt.folklore.computers: 191 Relay-Version: VMS News - V5.9C 19/12/89 VAX/VMS V5.3; site spcvxa.spc.edu Path: spcvxa!njin!princeton!udel!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!milton!blake!mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: fascist computer centers Message-ID: <6081@blake.acs.washington.edu> From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) Date: 1 Mar 90 03:23:21 GMT Sender: news@blake.acs.washington.edu Distribution: alt Organization: Mendou Zaibatsu, Tomobiki-Cho, Butsumetsu-Shi Lines: 167 This brings back old memories. I was an undergraduate (1973-1977) at Stevens Institute of Technology. The Stevens Computer Center had, at that time, a DEC PDP-10 model KA10 with 80K of memory (that's about 368K bytes), a (5MB?) fixed-head swapping disk, and two DEC RP02 (20 MB) disk drives for the filesystem. This was when model 33 and 35 Teletypes were the standard terminal, although they did have a couple of "high-speed" (300 baud) dial up lines. However, even for the time this was a serverely limited system. This computer center was a cost center. Departmental accounts were more or less "funny money" although the billing did translate into some form of support that the department was expected to cough up. They also accepted outside customers. The end result was a strict hierarchy. At the top were the hard-money paying outside customers and their student-employee minions who got the lion's share. In the middle were the departmental users. At the very bottom were students. The only way a freshman was able to get a timesharing account (class accounts were all batch punch-cards) was to join the local chapter of the ACM. This gave you an account which would let you log in after 5PM, provided that no more than 4 other students were logged in. Students were given a disk allocation of 57.6 KB; later this was cut to 28.8 KB. You could not log out if you exceeded your disk allocation. Any files which you had not accessed in a week were deleted by the system. The only way you could get more space was to buy a DECtape, which was a 3/4" mylar reel of tape holding 332 KB. The Computer Center bought large quantities of DECtapes from DEC at wholesale, unformatted. They would format the tapes and then sell them at DEC retail price. There were 8 DECtape drives, and they were always busy (and SLOW). The other alternative was to buy a 2400' magnetic tape, but since there were only two 9-track tape drives (and one 7-track drive), typically always in use by the outside customers or by the operators, this was not a popular option. Students resented the fact that outsiders were given the bulk of the resources of a school computer that wasn't even adequate for the student load. This was the early 70's in a *very* conservative school, and the students were essentially took to stuff it where the sun don't shine. There were three other levels in the feudal hierarchy, parallel to the hierarchy noted above. There were those in the Computer Center's "in group", there were those who were definitely "out", and all others. The "in group" consisted of the Computer Center employees (mostly students) and their friends. The "outs" were those who for one reason or another had been put on the shit-list by the "in group." I was one of the "outs". All sorts of special privileges were given to the "in group". One of the most important of these, albeit unintentional, was open license to electronically harass the "outs". The management of the Computer Center consisted of well- meaning but poor managers who, in any incident between an "in" and an "out", would believe the "in". Discipline, such as it was, was harsh, but never directed against an "in". What resulted was the segregation of immature college kids into a group that got away with anything and a group that got blamed for everything. What was worse, the former were in effect the system cops. The "ins" had access to the machine room. There were no self-service printers or DECtape drives; only "ins" could do this. This meant that your printouts, no matter how personal, were subject to intense perusal by the "ins". There were a few cases of "ins" stealing homework assignments before we wised up and did our computer work elsewhere or in the wee hours of the morning (making all printouts on the teletypes rather than the lineprinter). It isn't hard to imagine what resulted; an arrogant nasty group of thugs with a license to kill (like the cops in A Clockword Orange) on the one hand, and a bitter, resentful group of kicked-around users on the other thirsting for revenge. The situation got worse when the manager quit and his subordinate took over. The new manager was a scientific programmer by training, and had acted as sort of a mommie-figure to the Computer Center staff, the "ins". Because of this, she was almost completely blind to the goings-on of her staff. All she got to see was the other side -- that is, the counter-measures (and, I must admit, attempts at revenge) by the "outs". That is, she saw an escalating progression of nasty stuff being done at her Computer Center by a group of "bad apples" who needed to be thoroughly monitored and stomped on. And she delegated the monitoring and stomping-on to her staff. They did so, far beyond the mandate she gave; but since they were the cops there was no check on their acts. When they did something that was patently wrong (or even illegal), they would cover it up. In one incident, I found out that my private tapes were being read and their entire contents printed out and examined. The Computer Center manager had not authorized this; this was a private adventure on the part of the student programming staff. When I complained about them doing this they threw me out of the building. It was a Sunday, and I could not go to the manager about this, but the next day I went to her office with my complaint. I found out that the student programmers, witnessed by the student operator, had filed a complaint against me for "vandalism" and I was going to be sent to the dean. Unbeknownst to her, the student operator was a friend of mine. I immediately tackled him and asked him what the f*ck was he doing. He apologized profusely. He told me that he was forced into it, even though he objected to perjuring himself. He was told that if he didn't witness the imaginary "vandalism" the same shit that was being done to me would be done to him too. Obviously, they couldn't push the perjured "vandalism" charges; they would have fallen apart since nothing of the sort happened. However, it did neutralize me. The situation did get better for a short while after that; apparently this level of cover-up was a bit much and the student staff was told to cool it. After I graduated the war became hot between the "ins" and "outs". To some, I had become a folk hero credited with all sorts of miraculous deeds for the betterment of Users against the Computer Center. Needless to say, the reports were greatly exaggerated; I was far more interested in getting my own work and programs done, having given up long ago on the Computer Center. I knew that it was better in the real world, and was doing my best to move there ASAP. My successors declared open warfare on the Computer Center. There was no longer any effort to accomplish anything; it was just to return harassment with harassment. About 6 months after I left, a bug was discovered in the operating system that would put a user task into a hardware privileged mode where one could execute any machine instruction. They would execute the machine instruction to turn off the interrupt system (for you PDP-10 fans, that's "CONO 4,400") and then execute a blocking system call. Since the scheduler keyed off clock interrupts, this would hang the system, however not until after the bad guy's job context had been cleared (needless to say, they used random class accounts and never their own). I didn't approve of such things, but I have to admit that I felt that the resulting lost of credibility the Computer Center got served them right. It had one major effect upon me. After I left I ended up running a computer facility. I did almost the exact opposite of what the Computer Center did in terms of system operations. Although I had a couple of wise-guy users who thought they could out-smart me (mostly of the sort of making trap-doors), I never had any vandalism problems from any of my users. The wise-guys got an e-mail message from me -- Subject: your giving yourself root privileges Very funny. I've taken them away. and that was it. I think the only case a user ever got subject to university discipline was a sex-harassment case. Today, of course, Computer Centers are almost dead. At home, I own three DEC-20 (the successor to the PDP-10) computers, each with about 2.3 MB. My office supplies me with a Toshiba PC with 1MB for home. Sitting on my desk at work is a NeXT with 12MB. With this much computing power dedicated to me, who needs Computer Centers?! _____ ____ ---+--- /-\ Mark Crispin Atheist & Proud _|_|_ _|_ || ___|__ / / 6158 Lariat Loop NE R90/6 pilot |_|_|_| /|\-++- |=====| / / Bainbridge Island, WA "Gaijin! Gaijin!" --|-- | |||| |_____| / \ USA 98110-2098 "Gaijin ha doko ka?" /|\ | |/\| _______ / \ +1 (206) 842-2385 "Niichan ha gaijin." / | \ | |__| / \ / \ mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU "Chigau. Gaijin ja nai. kisha no kisha ga kisha de kisha-shita Omae ha gaijin darou." sumomo mo momo, momo mo momo, momo ni mo iroiro aru "Iie, boku ha nihonjin." uraniwa ni wa niwa, niwa ni wa niwa niwatori ga iru "Souka. Yappari gaijin!"