Re: 2011/11/24 - 20th Anniversary of Internet in South Africa

On Sun 2011-11-20 (08:54), Mike Lawrie wrote:
> Make no mistake, this approach led to headaches, but for sure it generated
> a set of computer-competent graduates (and dropouts). I recall being asked 

I suspect that I am a product of the environment Mike created.  As such, I
have some recollections of being a student at Rhodes, albeit a couple of
years after Mike left.

IRC was one of the few things that was categorically banned in labs.  We
used it anyway, and frequently got in trouble for doing so.  Nevertheless, I
met a lot of interesting people that way, all of whom were also feeling
their way around the Internet and around new open-source projects.  It was a
great way to share ideas and learn, much as I guess e-mail was a few years
earlier.

RUCUS, the student computer users' society, was well tolerated which gave
students a reasonably controlled environment to play around.  I suspect that
from the computing centre's point of view, it was self policing and kept us
from playing with more important computers.  

There were unwritten rules about what was okay to experiment and play with,
and what was not.  The rules were passed around by word of mouth, mostly
from people who'd been caught trying to do things that were not and who'd
received a stern talking to for their efforts.  This pool of collective
knowledge was part of the geek culture that existed, and probably played a
significant role in keeping things from getting out of hand.

Which brings me to when I first met Jacot as an undergrad.  I was invited by
means of a post-it note on a PC I'd annexed in the CS honours lab.  It
simply said "see me", and working out who "me" was took some doing.  It
turned out that I had (inadvertently) brought down most of the Novell
network on campus, for which I received one of those stern talkings to.

From that I learnt to come and speak to people before (or more likely
immediately after :)) doing something that might be perceived as stupid. 
Like when a friend (now also working at Rhodes) and I discovered that there
was a vulnerability is CatOS and wondered if Rhodes' core switch would be
affected.  We carefully timed our experiment to minimise disruption.  At
8.25AM we discovered it was, at 8.30AM we were waiting at Jacot's door as he
arrived at work, and by 8.40AM it was business as usual.  The result of
buying into the culture was that we got to do our experiments, and the rest
of the University didn't suffer much as a result.

Of course the world has changed.  The list of things that it is not okay to
play with has grown as people get more dependant on ICTs (these days the
core switches would probably be off limits).  Students have become more
computer literate and, with their burgeoning numbers, some of the ethics
have been lost or diluted.  However, I'd like to think that at least some
the culture that Mike helped foster is still alive at Rhodes.

- Guy
-- 
Systems Manager, IT Division, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa
Email: G.Halse-3pOAqoja4/[email protected]   Web: http://mombe.org/  IRC: [email protected]
*** ANSI Standard Disclaimer ***                                   J.A.P.H

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