The Times They Are A-Changin' Part 2

• Network Services Kit
• Netids: A New Computer ID Brings New Services
• Printer Changes
• Any Questions?

• send or read email (including some types of files that mail on CMS can't handle)
• interact with remote computers, both login and file transfer
• browse the Internet
• participate in ongoing discussions on a myriad of topics
• back up the files on your desktop machines disks without touching a diskette or tape

The Kit Contains:

TCP/IP

for basic communications services, FTP file transfer and TELNET remote login. You'll use these yourself, and they are also used by the other packages in the Network Services Kit. (Macs connected to the ADN-ii usually have appropriate TCP/IP software, but most DOS machines don't. You'll need to upgrade your Windows or DOS PC to use the rest of the Kit.)

ADN Datasave

to backup or restore the data stored on your desktop computer whenever you want, the easy way -- by entering a single command, without touching a single diskette or tape! Copies of your files are sent over the ADN-ii network to Computer Center tape storage. You can backup all or some of your files, or have the program select only those files which have been changed.

Gopher and/or Mosaic

for fast and easy access to information from around the world, via the Internet. We regularly talk about gopher in The ADN Connection; articles on Mosaic will be coming soon. Mosaic is a World Wide Web (WWW) browser produced by NCSA; it does gopher, and much more, including hypertext, graphics, audio and even video.

Grateful Med

for bibliographic searches of the MEDLINE/MEDLARS medical databases from the National Library of Medicine. Grateful Med helps you formulate your search, then connects to the database and carries it out. These searches normally cost money, but the UIC Library has purchased a license for unlimited searches for the U of I community. To take advantage of this, you must use this version of Grateful Med, which asks you to identify yourself with a netid or an ADN userid.

Newsreader

to browse or post to the over 3000 Netnews conference groups carried by the Computer Center, including electronic newspapers and conferences where people discuss every topic under the sun. (See The ADN Connection article about Netnews/Usenet.)

POP mail client,

which allows you to keep your email address on uic.edu (which is up and receiving mail all the time), but lets you read and send your email from your desktop, without logging on to CMS. (The March/April issue of The ADN Connection has an article on Eudora, the Kit's POP client for Windows and Macs.)

$50

for the installation of any or all of the Kit on any one machine; we do the installation for you and leave the program diskettes with you, -- or --

$15

for the diskettes and brief installation information for any or all of the Kit.

U09872 No Longer!

For many years, the userids that we've used to logon to CMS were impersonal U-numbers; mine was U09872. But the astute reader might notice my address at the end of this article is now bobg@uic.edu. Hey, now I'm a real person! This new type of logon id and email address is a "netid." And you can have one if you're listed in the faculty/staff phonebook, even if you don't have a CMS account.

A netid is more than just a vanity plate. As we move toward more distributed computing on campus, a netid will also be your ticket to a number of services. You can get one now or wait until you need one of the new services. But if you want something specific, register it now, while it's more likely to be available. Getting a netid is painless; all you have to do is ask. Not us, though, please ask your phonebook contact person. To find out who he or she is, in CMS enter:

pbcontact department name

The new netids are a bit different from the mailnames we introduced last year. My mailname, Robert.F.Goldstein, describes me better, but it has a serious drawback it is too long to be used as a logon id. We will be adding new machines and services in the future, and you'll need to have accounts to use them. You might need an account on a machine to access a database server from your desktop machine, for example, even if you never actually log on to that machine. It will be very convenient for us, and also for you, if you have the same logon id for every ADN Computer Center machine and service; naturally netids will serve this purpose well.

In contrast to the current mailnames:

• The netid will have a maximum of 8 characters (and a minimum of 3); dots are not allowed.
• The netid will be given out on request, not automatically as the mailnames were.
• Almost any unique netid will be accepted. First come, first served.
• Once chosen, the netid will not be changed. This is an important difference. When you select your netid, please choose carefully.

But if you do choose a netid now, what happens? I chose "bobg", and mail to bobg@uic.edu is properly forwarded to my ADN account. Also, the online phonebook (and finger) return bobg@uic.edu as my preferred email address, although Robert.F.Goldstein@uic.edu and U09872@uicvm.uic.edu still work. And the same will be true for you -- after you choose a netid, your old mailname and U-number will continue to work for incoming email. So you don't have to worry if you're known electronically by your U-number or if you've printed business cards with your mailname, you'll still get all your incoming email.

Like the Xerox 8790, the new printers can print on both sides of the paper, but at 600 by 600 dots per inch, their resolution is four times better than the old printer. Most services will continue -- we will bin output in SEL and BGRC, and print on mailing label stock and acceptable user-supplied paper. We anticipate similar throughput and less downtime.

An important difference is that the new printers can print PostScript, but cannot use the proprietary Xerox 8790 print language. You will not see any changes for most normal printing, either with the print command on CMS, or printing from the Computer Center's public PCs, except that you'll be able to select SEL or BGRC distribution when printing PostScript. But if you do word processing (including printing labels) or graphics on CMS, using SCRIPT/9700 or TeX, SAS or DISSPLA, you must use the appropriate commands and options to output PostScript instead of 8790 or EPIC output. If you have printed anything on our old Xerox 8790 document printer recently, then you should have received a pink cover sheet announcing the printer changes and explaining what you need to do in each of these cases; you'll find more information in INFORM, under the search keyword postscript.

Comments are appreciated; send them to
Robert Goldstein, a.k.a. bobg@uic.edu