The ITS computers are not an infinite resource and we must establish priorities for their use. Their primary purpose is to support faculty, staff and students in their endeavor to carry out MIT's Sponsored Research. While tourists are expected to contribute to MIT's research objectives, they are unlikely to be in the mainstream of the on-going work and should therefore consider their role and use of the MIT ITS machine a privilege. A tourist should at all times conduct himself or herself with this in mind. The most important principle is that tourists should not interfere in any way wit[) a laboratory member's use of the machine. This means that a tourist should not do anything which annoys other users, and also that he should not use the computer resources when a laboratory member needs them.
2. Tourists are limited to "off hours" so as to minimize interference with laboratory members' use of the machine. This means, at present, that, on weekdays between 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 midnight Eastern time, tourists should avoid connecting to an ITS machine unless they have received prior permission to do so from their advisor (see item 5 below). Remember that just connecting to the machine uses resources even if you do not log in.
3. If a machine is loaded, no matter what the hour or day, tourists should not attempt to log in. What constitutes "loaded" will vary from machine to machine, but if a tourist receives a message from any Al/LCS member or from the SYSTEM OVERSEER or GUNNER, asking him or her to log out, he or she should log out as quickly as possible (within a minute or two, which should be enough for a clean-up of what lie or she was doing).
4. Each tourist will receive an account on an MIT ITS machine, depending on his (or her) interests and the load. The tourist should not connect to other ITS machines without prior approval of his or her advisor. If the machine on which he (or she) has an account is down, he (like all local laboratory users of that machine) will have to wait for it to be back up. Tourists should riot let others use their account.
5. Each tourist will be given an "advisor" who is an Al/LCS member. The advisor will be the tourist's contact with MIT, and in general is the person to whom the tourist should direct questions or problems. If a tourist runs into a problem, he or she can request help using the :LUSER program, which informs certain other users that he or she needs help.
6. The first time a tourist logs in he will get a reminder to run the :INQUIRE program, so that he can fill in his entry in the on-line register of ITS users. A skeleton entry is made when a tourist account is granted, but it is the tourist's responsibility to finish filling it in. INQUIRE entries stay around without any attention, but if the information changes (for example, if a tourist moves), then he or she should run :INQLJIRE again to update the entry.
7. The message at first log-in will also give the names of on-line files containing additional policy statements for responsible use of the system. Tourists should read and follow them.
8. Every file on ITS lives on a "directory", and each directory has a name. A tourist will be