Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2002 22:33:06 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm-dated-1016137017.93980d@mired.org>, Paul Robinson <paul@iconoplex.co.uk>, "Nickolay A.Kritsky" <nkritsky@internethelp.ru>, Peter Leftwich <Hostmaster@Video2Video.Com>, Miguel Mendez <flynn@energyhq.homeip.net>, Cliff Sarginson <csfbsd@raggedclown.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: http://users.uk.freebsd.org/~juha/ Message-ID: <3C8AFE22.72C005FA@mindspring.com> References: <20020306191854.C2150-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> <3C86C11C.8A31C8BB@mindspring.com> <15494.52528.125952.145716@guru.mired.org> <3C86D7D6.C11D7E@mindspring.com> <15494.58407.33613.314390@guru.mired.org> <8457986570.20020307135407@internethelp.ru> <15495.57385.993281.469551@guru.mired.org> <20020308113108.G32897@iconoplex.co.uk> <15497.12783.643757.175742@guru.mired.org> <20020309144158.K32897@iconoplex.co.uk> <15498.28088.976841.7441@guru.mired.org> <3C8A75A1.C567BB02@mindspring.com> <15498.34475.395754.932338@guru.mired.org>
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Mike Meyer wrote: > Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> types: > > Mike Meyer wrote: > > > In that case, you've got to purchase proprietary hardware to do it, > > > and it's liable to be expensive. But wanting to satisfy your > > > curiousity doesn't justify your stealing from other people. > > > > He's right. Computers that are running software take more > > electricity than those running the idle loop. This works > > because idle loops aren't software, and because CPU cycles > > cost money when you use them to do work, but cost nothing > > when there is no work to do. > > 8-). > > Assuming, of course, that they were running an idle loop, and not > doing real work. People don't normally spend 8 figures on computers > that they then let sit idle a lot. Apparently, you were not around when they charged for CPU seconds, and each student was required to pre-buy them for their lab time, and the machines didn't have "HLT" instructions that saved "wear-and-tear" on the CPU, and the administrators either didn't understand that idle resources cost the same amount of money to maintain, or they didn't care. Until the system is fully loaded, the cycles are not a scarce (and therefore contended) resource. It costs the same to run a DEC 20 with or without people running programs on it, so the cycles might as well be doing computation. > One other comment - how many of you who felt like you had to break > into computers to gain access to them thought about simply asking for > access? I tended to give it away whenever I could, and I know other > places that had similar policies. For that matter, the university I > attended seriously undercharged for CPU time, so you could buy lots of > CPU time for not a lot of cash. Apparently, you had the cash, and your university didn't put quotas on the total amount of CPU time you could use, total, no matter how much you paid. Lucky you. People who came after the charge-for-CPU cycles really had it a lot easier than those who came before. The PC broke the stranglehold, making it impossible for the big iron to be used as a profit center any more. Of course, as previously discussed in this thread, the people who had unshared resources during their education have failed to learn a number of important lessons that can only be learned with shared resources. So the PC was probably the ruination of most recent computer science graduates. At least now we are getting to the point where bandwidth is the major limiting factor, so there might be some resource constrained growing that results from that. Unfortunately, it seems that many companies are following in the footsteps of the computing centers, charging for technical support. Now technical support is being considered a profit center. I think we can blame the shareware people, like "PC Write": the money they made was not in selling software, it was in obfuscating their software to the point it was unusable without a manual... and then selling manuals. Frankly, I'm almost happy Word Perfect died as a result of charging for technical support, when before they started doing that, they were the preemminent word processor, and MS Word didn't even have a toe-hold. It's quite amusing to see that people are still teaching -- and learning, and then entering the workforce using -- software design that makes usability such an afterthought... as if the "sell the documentation" model were still the fundamental basis of software economics. And people wonder why MS is so draconian about having their software "phone home"... when they're obviously trying to extend the lifetime of a dying revenue model. Back to break-ins... I personally know many people who broke into systems to learn. And the vast majority of them stopped immediately, as soon as it became illegal to do it, in their jurisdiction. I know of more than one person who got their start in the computer industry being made an operator or an intern to put their talents to use on the side of the gatekeepers, rather than the gatecrashers. Actually, just like I'd like to see someone claim "adverse use" in an intellectual property case, I'd also like to see someone claim "attractive nuisance" in defense of a computer break-in, where the sole motive was curiousity about how things worked. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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