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From: ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: Computer Billing
Message-ID: <5245@kestrel.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 22:26:57 EST
Article-I.D.: kestrel.5245
Posted: Thu Feb 27 22:26:57 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 17:57:43 EST
References: <393@ur-tut.UUCP>
Organization: Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 24


In article <393@ur-tut.UUCP>, scco@ur-tut.UUCP (Sean Colbath) writes:
> I'm interested in hearing what attitudes various people have to 'billed
> computing' in an academic situation.  

Excellent choice of topic. I worked in UCB Computer Center, which has
a *strict billing* policy. The Computer Science Department didn't,
as I recall. My dispositions favor no-billing, for the reasons
you mention, and still do. However, I found myself playing the
billing bureaucrat too easily, for the reason that I could not
see any workable alternative to strict billing in a 
scarce-resource environment. We also billed for connect-time
and CPU-time separately on Unix-PDPs and Vaxs, in order to 
discourage backgrounding as a means of avoiding 
resource limitations. Needless to say, we had the games turned off, 
so people just brought their own.
Some institutions require PCs of their students, as a way of
avoiding most of the resource problem.
And the strict billing is required in an environment where
the computers are used on government-supported research of
certain kinds (e.g. DARPA).
So the PC way may be the only possibility.

Peter Ladkin