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From: scco@ur-tut.UUCP (Sean Colbath)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: A slightly different topic...
Message-ID: <393@ur-tut.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Feb-86 23:46:12 EST
Article-I.D.: ur-tut.393
Posted: Mon Feb 24 23:46:12 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 01:09:28 EST
Reply-To: scco@ur-tut.UUCP (Sean Colbath)
Organization: Univ. of Rochester Computing Center
Lines: 79

I'm a little hesitant about posting this topic for various reasons, but
it seems fairly appropriate to this group, so here goes...

I'm interested in hearing what attitudes various people have to 'billed
computing' in an academic situation.  I have had experiences at various
universites where different attitudes were taken, from no billing what-
so-ever, to extremely strict 'billing'.  It seems to me that this attitude
that all computing time must be 'billed' to someone, and accounted for in
terms of real money is rather defeating, if you are not in a profit-making
situation (ala CompuServe).  In addition, since these funds are usually
'funny money', it is rather silly to impose a limit at all.

Most of the setups I have seen work along the following principle:  Each
user is allocated some amount of funds (funny money?) for some period of
time.  At one university (university X), this amount would run something
along the lines of $10/week, while at university Y, students could get
personal accounts of yy/YEAR! (where yy is *very* small), and class accounts
would be allocated some amount like $300-400/semester, depending on 
expected usage.  In both of these cases, once the 'limit' was reached,
either through extensive CPU consumption, printing, or what have you, 
the users were 'locked out', and could not log on again.

However, at university Z, CPU time was essentially free to all.  The only
users billed were external to the university.  It was fairly easy to get
an account, and CS majors (+EE and some other sciences) got accounts
when they declared their major that would last their whole 'academic
career', thereby saving a lot of paperwork.  Printing was free (although
standard printout was greenbar), and there were no other extra charges
(tape mounts, connect time).

At universities X and Y, users would also accrue extra charges, ranging
from disk space to tape mounts and connect time (on local direct connect
terminals!).  However, in some cases there seems to be a double standard
at work.  At a specific university Y, only the large IBM mainframe was
strictly account controlled - VMS and Unix machines (of which there were
many more) had essentially unlimited time/printing/whatnot.

Please forgive my ambiguity - the names are left out to protect the 
innocent/guilty.  

It seems to me that the administration at the various billed facilities
took several rationales to justify their system.  One, it simply helped
control system load - i.e. you could play games all you wanted, but
you had to 'pay'.  Two, it was 'necessary' because of external 'customers'.
Three, it eliminated much disciplinary action (i.e. Six copies of War
and Peace on the laser printer).

All of these rationales are valid, I suppose, but I believe that they do
more harm than good.  Having accounting restraints puts unnecessary pressure
on students - not only do they have to worry about getting a project done
before a deadline, but they must meet their funds deadline as well - and
a student who is simply having a little trouble one week might be left
out in the cold.  Second, it restricts creativity.  I know many students
who like to do *serious* programming in their own time.  They are unable
to do this because of these restraints (sure, they could use PCs, but
it *really* isn't the same thing).  As far as the disciplinary argument
goes, University Z simply took disciplinary measures on a case-by-case
basis.  If you screwed up (printed 80,000 lines of printout in prime-time),
your id would be 'yanked' (i.e. you couldn't log in) and you had to make
an appearance in front of the operations manager, which was really enough
to strike the fear of god into you.  Invariably the id would be restored,
but you would be unlikely to do that particular thing again (sorry, voice
of experience ;-)).

Sorry for this long diatribe, but this is something I feel rather strongly
about, and many universities have turned toward this (even Dartmouth, 
where until recent years, *all* students had free & unlimited access to
the mainframes).  As a result of this billing, CPU time is surely going 
down, but some CPUs are left almost entirely idle (University Y).

I'm interested in hearing your opinions on this, either via mail
or to the net.

Sean Colbath
UUCP:    ...allegra!rochester!ur-tut!scco
BITNET:  SCCO@UORVM

"You can and must understand computers now!"  
             - Ted Nelson, Dream Machines/Computer Lib