eschaton posted:

there wasn't nearly as much of a hacking scene as people think, it turns out, because not many places will let random undergrads get serious time on a $50,000 workstation that they're not even allowed to unbox without a technician present (seriously), sign an individual software license for, and pay 10-20% per year indefinitely for maintenance

and people couldn't even take decommissioned systems home or anything, Symbolics demanded proof of decommissioning in order to allow you to stop paying maintenance; if you wanted to take a system home that work was decommissioning, you had to pay a license transfer fee ($5K) and then pay maintenance indefinitely ($1K or more per year)