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

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Guy Antony Halse <G.halse-3pOAqoja4/[email protected]> wrote:

>
> 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.
>
>
  Speaking of rucus, and irc, irc.ru.ac.za (I think back then it
  pointed to the RUCUS server ) was one of (if not the first)
  irc servers in .za open to general public, and upon being
  asked for a "nick" (had no idea back then what a nick
  was) I typed in rucus, it said try again, so took rukus.

  I had internet access thanks to SEAWIFFS, the project
  that predicted the el-nino effect (before it happened) and
  was a collaboration of scientists around the world
  pooling data to predict trends, and did that via the
  Internet as it was known then (minus the hordes of
  teenagers on cell phones and bored housewifes)

  20 years ago ? *sigh* -Daniel

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