Computer Changes Implemented

When first-years visit the Science Center computer labs this year to open their e-mail accounts, they'll be in for a little surprise.

Their accounts will already exist.

The Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS), expecting about 97 percent of the entering class to have e-mail accounts, has precreated accounts for the entire class of 1999 to save both HASCS and first-years time, according to HASCS director Franklin M. Steen.

That change is just one of many that the computer services organization has made in an effort to improve and expand network service.

Another significant change is in computer etiquette.

After criticism from students in past years that HASCS did a poor job publicizing its rules on etiquette and that the rules themselves were vague, HASCS has apparently shifted to a reliance upon common sense in network etiquette, according to a HASCS user assistant (UA) who asked not to be identified.

According to the UA, when first-years access their accounts for the first time, they will be taken to a shell program that allows users to confirm their name and address, choose information to be displayed on the finger and ph commands, activate room datajacks, change their password and take an etiquette quiz.

The quiz consists of 10 questions about etiquette that can be answered by common sense, such as, are you allowed to look at someone else's account, the UA said.

Each person must answer all the questions correctly. If a person incorrectly answers a question, the correct answer will be displayed and the user will be given the option of retaking the test, which consists of random questions from a bank of around 50 questions, the UA said.

Only when the user passes the quiz will he or she be allowed to access his or her e-mail account.

Students who require help can receive it from a newly revamped user services system, which will help students as the network expands from 2,200 students room connections last year to about 3,000 or 3,500 this year, according to Steen.

The new user services system features user assistants for each residential house. About 30 UA's already live in the houses and will provide services for their fellow students.

The House UA's will also monitor new house computer labs.

HASCS" goal, according to Steen, is for each house to have a lab that has five computers and is open 24-hours a day. That goal is just two houses short, as one will not be open 24 hours a day initially and another is too small for five computers.

The UA's are also undergoing a new week-long training camp before the start of the school year.

The UA said that the training was very solid, going through the changes in the system and bringing everybody up to speed on how to handle common problems.

The training program also included tips on how to treat customers.

Finally, the HASCS help line has been renamed the Info line and "will have live people answering questions as before, but standard questions will have answers on a phone tree which should save some callers some time," Steen said.

Other changes made for this year:

* A new classroom containing new multimedia Pentium 100s with CDROMs has been created in the Science Center basement to go with the Macintosh classroom already in the Science Center.

* Older Macintoshes in the Science Center were replaced with new PowerPCs.

* Multiple Serial Line Dial Up (SLIP) lines have been installed for students and faculty who live off campus.

* The Network Appliance Box (NAB) installed last spring "has sped up our UNIX operation considerably," Steen said. "We have expanded the box and will continue to adjust the systems to make them run more smoothly."

* HASCS now supports Windows 3.1 and will soon guarantee support for Windows 95.

* An instructional computing services group with three full-time employees will work with faculty to "help them with the use of the computer for instruction," Steen said.

* A new information system automatically announces new services, problems, changes and down time. The announcements will be displayed on Web pages on in the harvard.hascs.announce newsgroup.

* The Web site has been reorganized and now contains much more HASCS and FAS information.