CSC the Way you've Got it

For the past three weeks, hundreds of students have been milling about in varying degrees of desperation, trying to complete their computing assignments. Their difficulties have been met with indifference, both by the departments concerned and and by the computing services centre, each of which claims that it is not their concern. The most acute problem is the overloading of the public computing facilities (punched cards being the principal medium for entering programs and data into the computer).

There are only seven such card punches, all very prone to long periods of malfunction, to serve the entire university. For long periods during the day a customer can expect to wait in the queue for half an hour to an hour before a cardpunch becomes available. This means that everyone who can possibly defer their card punching does so.

Unfortunately most of the users are faced with an assignment, which of course counts for a significant portion of their final mark. Thus the deadline must be met and so we have the spectacle of these unfortunates still queueing at 10 pm at night, turning up during weekends despite miserable weather, or skipping classes either to maintain their position in the queue or in the hope that everyone else would turn up for the lecture, leaving the field free.

All to little avail, because a number of different classes schedule their assignments for the same time. Three classes (INFO 153, INFO 253, INFO 353) in one week for example involving a total of about two hundred students.

There is nothing new about these proposals, which have been repeated for the last few years, with little result.

As to 1), the computer centre object that the only available card punches are prohibitively expensive. In fact, IBM029 rather than the IBM 129 are available.

As to 2), the computer centre object that they are required by contract to keep a cardpunch in the machine room, for the use of the maintenance engineer. In fact, this requirement has been ignored in the past and we feel that if the computer centre staff had to wait in the queue like ordinary mortals, then the position on 1) just might change.

As to 3), the computer centre object that it is not their responsibility. This is just another example of failure of communication between the various university departments, with the information science department winning the booby prize since it has not bothered even to stagger its own assignments.

However, all is not lost. Since the computer centre runs the majority of course work under the so-called student orientated batch system (SOBS), it is obviously in a position to co-ordinate the various projects.

At present SOBS refuses to accept an assignment which terminates either on a Monday or a Friday. It ought not to be beyond human ingenuity to modify SOBS so that it will insist on assignments being properly spaced. If computer centre staff cannot face up to this task, why not let the computer do it!

R.N. McLean