[35] in Resnet-Forum
Re: Printing services from dorm rooms
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Sommerfeld)
Wed Nov 3 17:22:47 1993
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 16:57:30 -0500
From: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@apollo.hp.com>
To: resnet-forum@MIT.EDU
[I'm an MIT/Athena alumnus, reading resnet-forum through at mit
bulletin board].
I expected someone from MIT to comment on MIT/Athena's experience with
"free laser printing", but they haven't, so I'll butt in..
Basically, free laser printing at MIT was abused -- badly, both in
terms of abuse of printers and waste of paper (some people were
observed printing out copies of 20+ page papers ever 10 minutes as the
paper was being written). Many DEC LN01's and DEC LN03's died at the
hands of abusive students :-).
The technical solution was the introduction of print quotas into the
print spooling system (a modified Berkeley lpd); each student gets a
specified number of pages per term free (something like ~500
pages/term, which should be adequate for most purposes); anything more
than that is billed to them. This acts as a significant deterrant to
paper-wasters.
