University Computing Services Update April, 1998 More UCS news to keep UMBC users informed. Should you prefer not to receive these updates, please send email to address majordomo@lists.umbc.edu In the message body enter unsubscribe ucs-news *Faculty Annual Report UCS acknowledges that the Web version of the Faculty Annual Report was not the success it should have been, and sincere apologies are offered to all. UCS will work closely with the faculty community to insure that subsequent versions work better. A more detailed explanation can be found at http://research.umbc.edu/~ohara/news/fac-an-rep.html *Applications Advisory Panel New on campus is an applications development advisory panel, comprised of leaders from various divisions of the University. Charged with reviewing requests for application development to insure that they are consistent with the goals of the campus, the panel will help define priorities and work with the Information Technology Steering Committee to determine needs. The group consists of Tom Taylor, Nancy Ochsner, Mike Morgan, George Preisinger, Mike Bretton, Donna Taylor, Jack Suess, Joe Kirby, and Tony Moreira. For more information on the panel or to submit a project request please visit the URL: http://www.umbc.edu/ucs/application-req.html *LDAP Directory Lookup Comes to UMBC UCS is in the process of implementing a new directory lookup system that can be configured to perform directory searches on the campus's existing PH database to locate any UMBC faculty or staff member or student. Known as LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), the system is equally useful for finding people at other sites where it has been installed, allowing users one generic way of performing "people searches." Read more on this at http://research.umbc.edu/~ohara/news/ldap.html *WebCT Course Tools UCS is hopeful of presenting two more 11-session series on WebCT course tools, one in June and another in August, for faculty members interested in using the World Wide Web in conjunction with their courses, but who now lack the skills to do so. If you are interested in participating or to learn more about these popular workshops, contact Marie Toomes at ext. 3679. *If You Use Netscape Email Many campus users who send email from Netscape don't realize that Netscape can use HTML code to format their messages. If a recipient gets such a message it may not be readable if his or her mailer can't interpret the code. The safest thing to do is to "turn off" HTML in your messages. If you use Netscape Communicator, find Preferences in the Edit pull-down menu and then look at Message preferences. There's a button there called More Options. Toggle in a check next to the Always Convert choice to make this your default. Other versions of Netscape have similar preference screens, so you should have no trouble converting your mail into straight ASCII text. For more information on using Netscape 4 as your Email program please look at the URL: http://www.umbc.edu/ucs/doc/netscape4 . *Internet Cookies No Threat, Despite Rumors Popular rumors about Web cookies describe them as programs that can scan your hard drive and gather information about you including your passwords, credit card numbers, and a list of the software on your computer. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Read what cookies are really all about at http://research.umbc.edu/~ohara/news/cookie.html *VMS Phaseout Due The campus' VMS systems, UMBC2 and MIS003 are now outdated, despite their long years of service to UMBC. Obtaining software for them is increasingly a problem, and the systems are slower than many personal computers. UCS is working with the Faculty Senate Computer Policy Committee on a phaseout plan for these systems. We currently plan to stop offerring student accounts on these machines starting Fall 1998 and remove them from Faculty usage Fall 1999. We're very interested in your feedback on this subject and provide more information at the URL http://research.umbc.edu/~ohara/news/vms.html *What To Do With "Don't Delete This Message" Messages If you are annoyed by a persistent DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE--FOLDER INTERNAL DATA notice, you are not alone. These messages are created when you use an IMAP client such as PC-Pine or Netscape version 4. If you delete it, the next time you use an IMAP client for email the message gets recreated. So it is best to just let it sit in your mail folder and try to ignore it. *Electronic Calendar Committee Formed With the phaseout of VMS has come the need to find a new calendar manager package to replace the version of Russell Calendar running on MIS004. A committee has been formed to review three packages with the goal of summer implementation and user migration by next winter. More on this at http://research.umbc.edu/~ohara/news/calendar.html *Year 200 Update Read about progress on this critical issue at http://research.umbc.edu/~ohara/news/2000.html *Virus Protection Software UCS plans to update the virus software on LAN servers Novell 1 and 2 to the most recent version available. This will allow Windows 95 and Windows NT users to be protected along with those with Windows 3.x. When users log in, they will be asked if they wish to install the software, and if they respond affirmatively, they then will be asked to type in the directory path where the software should go. The virus protector will then install itself on their workstations automatically. We are installing the virus software in this fashion because many staff and faculty have purchased other virus protection packages. There is no reason to run both systems. While we feel the system we are installing will work well we don't want to force our selection on people. New virus updates will be pulled down by the servers each week and then distributed to users' workstations. This will guarantee that virus pattern files will be no more than 7 days out of date. Stay tuned for more information on this in future newsletters and other email from UCS.