> On Aug 29, 2026, at 6:08 PM, jim stephens via cctalk <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 8/23/26 03:47, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
>> I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late 1960s kind
>> of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system, maybe for
>> inventory or check-processing?).
> I think this is the company which was the carrier involved in Clifford
> Stoll's "Cuckoo's Egg" story. Nit picking time billing lead to finding a
> hacker guy.
>
> My friend Ron Vivier who was a co-worker before the issue moved to the Bay
> area and is mentioned in Cliff's book. He worked at Microdata in Irvine when
> I worked with him and moved north and went to work for tymshare.
>
> BTW, the timesharing model sucks if you're forced into it. Never ending
> charges for service vs. having a system. In the early 80s i went to work
> with a company which had a timesharing business they'd inherited. We had
> minicomputer which at the time for cost considerations and needs allowed for
> sharing the resources. But some companies were predatory and not nice with
> rates or services.
Timesharing is an OS structural model. It isn't a charging model, and you're
confusing computer usage charging schemes with operating system structures.
My primary experience with timesharing is DEC's RSTS system, which indeed had
mechanisms allowing system owners to implement usage charging, but nothing of
the sort was done at the university where I used it. Nor was there a charging
scheme for usage on the University of Illinois PLATO system, which is
essentially a special purpose timesharing system.
On the other hand, the U of I did implement a charging system on their OS/370
batch system.
In other words, OS structure (single user interactive vs. single user batch vs.
multi user batch vs. timesharing) is completely orthogonal to usage charging
vs. no usage charging.
paul
