Jury-Law books

Nowhere was this tinkering impulse better reflected
than in the operating system that powered the lab's
central PDP-6 mini-computer. Dubbed ITS, short for the
Incompatible Time Sharing system, the operating system
incorporated the hacking ethic into its very design.
Hackers had built it as a protest to Project MAC's
original operating system, the Compatible Time Sharing
System, CTSS, and named it accordingly. At the time,
hackers felt the CTSS design too restrictive, limiting
programmers' power to modify and improve the program's
own internal architecture if needed. According to one
legend passed down by hackers, the decision to build
ITS had political overtones as well. Unlike CTSS, which
had been designed for the IBM 7094, ITS was built
specifically for the PDP-6. In letting hackers write
the systems themselves, AI Lab administrators
guaranteed that only hackers would feel comfortable
using the PDP-6. In the feudal world of academic
research, the gambit worked. Although the PDP-6 was
co-owned in conjunction with other departments, A.


Pages:
87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111