Welcome! This issue is divided into three sections: accounts and email, bandwidth, and other announcements. For more information on any of these and other topics, see http://cms.simons-rock.edu, where you can find announcements, policy, frequently asked questions (FAQ), quick links, and contact information. Additionally, you may contact the C.A.s (computer assistants) by email at ca or by calling the C.A. beeper between 8 PM and midnight at 1-800-512-5152.
Manage Your Account: As you may or may not know, you have one account (username and password) for email, minerva, and a number of web-based services. You can manage your account by going to http://cms.simons-rock.edu and clicking on the Manage Your Account link. If you haven't changed your password recently, we encourage you to do so. Here you may also set or change your mail forwarding or subscribe to a mailing list. Additionally, you may check your email using webmail and look up the email addresses of others at Simon's Rock. If you do not know your password or have never used your account, please stop by CMS (College Center basement) to have your password reset.
Mailing Lists: At the end of last semester a new student mailing list, student-discuss, was created in an attempt to reduce the number of messages sent to student. Before sending a message to student, please remember that all students are subscribed to this mailing list and cannot unsubscribe. If your message is likely of interest to only some students, please send it to student-discuss instead. If you have not subscribed to student-discuss and would like to, follow the link in the above paragraph. If you would like to create your own mailing list, send email to action.
Reducing Spam in Your Email: We've been working hard to reduce the amount of spam you receive (to your simons-rock.edu email account) while trying not to block any legitimate mail. We're far from perfect though, and you can help us out by (1) reporting any spam you receive (you must include full headers) to abuse and (2) by letting us know if you believe legitimate email is being blocked. We are also tagging (not blocking) some email as possible spam so that you can use your mail client to filter these messages. We hope that you will take advantage of this and other spam filtering features in your mail client to reduce the amount of spam that you receive. For more information, see the spam subsection of the FAQ.
Policy Changes: The bandwidth quotas used last semester were not as successful at relieving network congestion as we hoped. This semester we're trying something different: Rather than have one blocking period and one free period per day, we have broken the day into four 6-hour blocking periods. For each period there is a 400 MB quota, and if you reach that quota, you will be unblocked within 6 hours. Please take the time to review the bandwidth sections of the Network Acceptable-Use Policy and the FAQ. If this policy does not prove effective, it may be changed again. Please send email to action if you have specific concerns about this policy; we would like to have a policy that is agreeable to us all.
Reduce Bandwidth Usage: Bandwidth (our upload/download capacity) is a shared and limited resource. Do you know how much bandwidth you use? You can check by going to Bandwidth Usage from cms.simons-rock.edu. There are several things you can do to reduce your bandwidth usage. You can set your web browser to use proxy.simons-rock.edu:3128 which caches frequently accessed pages to reduce the amount of off-campus bandwidth used. Additionally, if you are using a file sharing program, please limit or disable file uploads and make sure that you have disabled the SuperNode option. (See http://cms.simons-rock.edu/fileshare.html.) This will not interfere with your ability to download files and will improve the network for us all.
Problem Reporting System: Computer Services now has a web page for reporting computer and network problems. You can report your problems by going to the Report a Problem link from cms.simons-rock.edu. Enter as much information as possible to submit a problem to our jobs database. Someone should then contact you ASAP to arrange to resolve your problem. You can return to this page at any time to check on the status of your request. We hope that this new service will improve our ability to help you, and we welcome feedback.
Backups and Viruses: We strongly recommend that you backup important work (especially senior theses). We provide space on minerva for just this purpose. If you are not doing backups and would like to do so, please see the FAQ or get in touch with a C.A. Additionally, if you are running Windows and do not have anti-virus software or are unsure if you have current virus definitions, please get in touch with a C.A.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? To respond to any of the articles in this newsletter, send email to underground@simons-rock.edu.