5 ms·
As far as I know, yes, it is by design. MIT's philosophy toward just about everything is famously open. - You can walk around in just about all of the buildin
by eob 16y ago
As far as I know, yes, it is by design.
MIT's philosophy toward just about everything is famously open.
- You can walk around in just about all of the buildings during the day, and many even at night without a special access card.
- A CS professor here was the one who founded OpenCourseWare, which helped ignite the fire that led to many universities putting their courseware up for free online)
- Course registration is amazingly relaxed, to the point where halfway through the semester it is common to hear a professor say "by the way, if you haven't signed up for this course, you probably need to as the deadline is approaching"
- MIT's network is not behind a NAT box.
In terms of internet access, this culture means that anyone within radio-range of MIT's campus gets free, unprotected WiFi. A very different reception than you get at that other school down the street cough. :)
(Of course, the flip side of this is that you are responsible for your own security).
EDIT: I also remember during grad student orientation, the campus police representative explicitly told the auditorium full of new students: "The Cambridge homeless community is part of the MIT community, too. Just because you don't have a home doesn't mean you are not welcome here, so if you see someone who appears homeless on MIT campus, treat them with the respect they deserve." Approximate quote, since this was 2 years ago, but I was pretty blown away at the culture here from day 1.
- icefox 16y agoLast year while at the library there was a room to a lab (where the printers were). To get in you could either punch in the code or next to it was a whiteboard with 5 or so problems each of which gave you one digit in the code.
- brlewis 16y agoI was a student there 1986-1990, then worked full-time on Athena until February, 1998. What you say has been true a long time. There are no-trespassing signs at all MIT entrances only so that the MIT police can legally eject people who cause trouble. Casual visiting is normal. In 1994 I pushed hard to get kerberos-authenticated telnet into the Athena release. The general sentiment from others was that, sure, sniffing passwords was possible, but distributed computing was advancing to the point where people would be able to do everything from their desks, and wouldn't need remote logins. So kerberizing other services was a higher priority.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- drewcrawford 16y ago> In terms of internet access, this culture means that anyone within radio-range of MIT's campus gets free, unprotected WiFi. My university requires you to register MAC addresses, change your hostname, turn on SAMBA, and use PEAP authentication before they will let you connect to their packetshaped and heavily filtered network where you can download a full gigabyte per day. :`-(