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C00002 00002	dinosa[w85,jmc]		In defense of time-sharing
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dinosa[w85,jmc]		In defense of time-sharing

Computing facilities:

1. Compared to 10 years ago, CSD has adequate facilities in some
absolute sense.  Anyone wanting to prepare a report, a file or
even a book can do it at a rate limited by himself rather than
by computing facilities.  Anyone wanting to run a Fortraan, Pascal
or Lisp program can do so provided his requirements for memory
and crunching are moderate.  Only a few CSD people are limited
in their accomplishment by computer facilities.
I know of no recent squabbles where some people claim others are
hogging the resources.  This is in sharp contrast with ten years
ago.

2. There are still some shortages.
	a. What some people want to do imposes immoderate
requirements on speed, memory size or graphics.
	b. Disk space is still expensive enough so that some
people delete report files when they leave --- even though
we now have library areas for them.
	c. Not everyone who wants one has a home terminal.
	d. The facilities for working with extended character
sets are poor.
	e. The present workstations lack certain important
programs, e.g. Lisp and Tex.
	d. Not everyone has even a terminal on his desk.
	e. Many have no desk who should.  For many this
limitation is more important than compute limitations.

3. The babble over dinosaurs not withstanding, many who have
the financial resources to do otherwise continue to do most
of their computing on the time-shared machines.  There are
a variety of reasons in my case.
	a. Inertia.  For most of what I do, writing, there is
no obvious advantage.
	b. I have compatible facilities at home and in my office.
	c. Neither terminal is bulky, contains a fan, or emits
significant heat.
	d. Lisp and a variety of document compilers are available.
	e. I, personally, don't have to worry about maintenance.
	f. My tens of megabytes of personal files are backed up.
At least I haven't lost any since 1969.
	g. Whenever I have made inquiries about getting facilities
with a larger screen, one or more of the preceding lacks has
persuaded me to wait a while longer.

	Most of the senior faculty is not inclined to change at
present even though we could get the resources.

4. Perhaps I would benefit greatly by changing.  Who at Stanford
has the very best facilities at home and in the office?  What are
they?  Can I get them just for money, i.e. without doing maintenance
myself either of hardware or of files?  This question is addressed
to the faculty dinosaur baiters, e.g. Vaughan Pratt and Brian Reid.