CIS News: General News

Wireless Expansion Project Status

Last summer CIS embarked on a large-scale project to expand wireless networking service to campus areas including dormitories, classrooms, outdoor areas, and other locations. To date, 34 of the 48 dormitories have wireless coverage reaching all student rooms and common areas in those buildings. However, this coverage has come at a higher cost than anticipated due to both technology and construction issues. The project is taking some time out to assess the situation and re-plan the remainder of the work. Further information about the wireless project will be forthcoming in the near future.

Winter Break Closing Details

Beginning Monday, December 18 through Sunday, January 21, the CIS Help Desk hours will be shortened to weekdays from 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM, and will be closed on weekends.

CIS expects its technical services to remain operational during the closing. CIS staff will monitor critical services, such as the network and email and will check help messages twice daily, responding to critical outages immediately. All non-critical service outages will be addressed after January 2. To report an issue, call 863-HELP (4357).

The CIT building, CIS Help Desk, and the computing clusters will close at 5 p.m. on December 22, 2006. The CIT building and Help Desk will reopen at 7:30a.m. and the clusters will open at 9:00a.m. on Tuesday, January 2, 2007

Welcome new students

Basic information about getting ready is here: http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/CIS/welcome/.

You can email our helpdesk at help@brown.edu if you have specific questions.

Women Writers Online

A new version of Women Writers Online has been released:
http://textbase.wwp.brown.edu/WWO/index.html.

The new version is published using Philologic, a new, fast, open-source XML publication system built at the University of Chicago (http://philologic.uchicago.edu). It offers WWO users a number of excellent features for exploring the WWO collection, including:

--detailed word frequency statistics
--context-sensitive searching
--sequential search refinement
--searching on similar words
--keyword-in-context display
--word in clause position
--collocation analysis
--detailed results bibliography

Women Writers Online serves an international community of universities, colleges, and research libraries totalling over 230 institutional subscribers. The collection covers hundreds of texts by women authors from 1450-1850.

May 2006 Graduating Class – Email Account Closing September 25th

If you're graduating May 2006, your Brown email account will be closing on September 25 th . Please read the below information as it will affect your existing Brown electronic services.

· Clean out your Brown mailbox and forward any important email messages to another email account.

· Copy your Contact List and your Address Book to a pst file.

· Clean up your MyStuff Account.

· Any attachments will be deleted with your email messages and should be saved to your computer or to an external storage device.

If you already have another email account and would like your Brown email messages to be forwarded to your new email account, clean up your Brown mailbox (once you change your email to a external address, your Brown account will be disabled and mailbox will be deleted) and then go to the following url to update your delivery location ( www.brown.edu/myaccount ).

If you have questions, send email to Help @brown.edu or call the Help Desk at 401-863-HELP (4357) .

Humanizing Computerized Literary Criticism

The Computing in the Humanities Users' Group presents

Humanizing Computerized Literary Criticism

Stephen Ramsay
Department of English
University of Georgia

3:30, Friday April 14
STG Conference Room
Graduate Center, Tower E

The emerging field of "digital humanities" is still grappling with its dual intellectual roots in the humanities and computational sciences. Its central questions still revolve around the relationship between computational processes and textual interpretation: do they intersect, compete, cohere at all? Computation comes to us, along with the cultural burden of science, as an activity associated with the inexorable calculus of fact and truth. As humanists, we usually regard computation itself as occupying the realm of objectivity and fact, although the results of computation may form the basis for interpretation and subjective evaluation.

This talk probes this pairing, considering texts as various as ancient Sumerian tablets and the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and examining the computational, analytical, and interpretive strategies we bring to the encounter. Ramsay suggests that even computational processes, at least in those areas of interest to the humanist, are already rife with the subjective--and indeed, that computation itself is not only an interpretive act, but one that requires the perspectives and contexts of humanities scholarship.

Stephen Ramsay is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Georgia. He specializes in the computational analysis and visualization of literary texts, and is one of the co-investigators for The Nora Project . He has written a number of software systems for humanistic inquiry, and is currently the lead developer of Tamarind -- an automatic XML preprocessor and corpus builder for scholarly text analysis. He has lectured widely on subjects related to text analysis theory and software design for the humanities.

This talk is organized by the Scholarly Technology Group at CIS.
For more information, contact stg_info@brown.edu or see http:// www.stg.brown.edu

Slight Revision to Password Policy at Brown

We have modified the Password Policy slightly to discourage the use of desktop "password lists". Saving your passwords in your Web browser's saved password list (or anyplace else on your desktop) can expose the data it protects to anyone else who uses your computer, and possibly to others on the Internet.

The policy change can be reviewed at http://www.brown.edu/cis/policy/password.html, which is linked from http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/CIS/policy/.

Please see the change in section 3.0:

3. All passwords are to be treated as sensitive, confidential information and should therefore never be written down or stored on-line unless adequately secured. Note: Do not use the password storage feature offered on Windows or other operating systems. This feature creates a password file that is vulnerable to hackers.
4. Passwords should not be inserted into email messages or other forms of electronic communication without the consent of IT Security.

Any questions can be directed to ITSecurity@Brown.edu.

Read the latest edition of Secure IT! News

The latest edition of the Secure IT! newsletter is now online, featuring:

:: Botnet 101: Don't Get Own3d!
:: Working from home safely with VPN
:: Discover what keeps a network manager busy
:: Stocking up for e-storms
:: New IT Security class listings (register now at http://comped.brown.edu/)
:: Securing your laptop
:: Plus a word-finder game and the latest security news

Presented by the Office of IT Security.

The Computing in the Humanities Users' Group presents

The Computing in the Humanities Users' Group presents

Scholarly citation and web mashups
or
What happens when Aristotle meets Google?

D. Neel Smith
Classics and Archaeology
College of the Holy Cross

Noon, Friday Feb. 10
STG Conference Room
Graduate Center, Tower E

Smith will offer examples of citation practice in manuscript and print scholarly traditions in order to introduce his recent work at the Center for Hellenic Studies, translating traditional practices of reference in classical studies into formal definitions of network services.

He will then consider examples of "web mashups" (of the sort made
popular by integrating other information sources with Google Maps).
Coordinating text references across different translations and editions of a text, indexing historical or linguistic information to a passage of text, and following the account of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps in book 21 of Livy on satellite data in a Google Maps interface—the resulting mashups illustrate how formally specified reference systems can help us reflect on both familiar combinations of material and interactive scholarly creations without precedent in static media.

D. Neel Smith is a professor of Classics at the College of the Holy Cross and a classical archaeologist with many years of field experience in Turkey. His research interests lie in historiography and ancient science, and he has for many years been interested in the implications of information technology for humanists. He was one of the developers of the Perseus Project, a multimedia database of materials on classical Greec and has used GIS technologies both for his archaeological research and for research on Greek geographical texts. for the past two years leading a technical working group to define standards for digital publication at the Center for Hellenic Studies (Washington, DC)

This talk is organized by the Scholarly Technology Group at CIS.
For more information, contact stg_info@brown.edu or see http:// www.stg.brown.edu

Free File Services for Students

http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/CIS/mystuff/

keep IT safe: Security Awareness Month

October is National Cyber Security Awareness month, which CIS is observing locally with the theme "keep IT safe & secure, because IT's not secure without U".

During October we'll offer a variety of ways to learn how to "keep IT safe & secure", with a kick-off event on October 3 from 2:00 to 4:00 PM at the Science Library south patio. Everyone is invited to stop by and pick up tips on safe computing, learn about the laptop "lojack" software, CyberAngel, munch on fresh-popped popcorn and enter a raffle.

The month-long observance includes hands-on security training, film screenings, a second cyber-on-the-green on October 19, and Brown Bag presentations on security hot spots: identity theft, copyright and file sharing, secure wireless computing, and managing malicious code (worms, viruses, phishing, etc.).

The complete schedule of events is located at http://brown.edu/cis/keepitsafe.

NetIDs are going away

For several years, members of the Brown community have used one of two IDs in order to login to centralized computing services and systems: their NetID or their AuthID. This situation has proven confusing and we would now like to standardize around one ID called the Brown Username.

On July 26th, you will no longer use your NetID (typically Firstname_Lastname) to access Brown's password protected computing resources. In places that previously required you to use your NetID, you will use your Brown Username (formerly AuthID). After July 26th, only your Brown Username (AuthID) will allow you to access password protected computing resources such as email, cluster computers, reverse proxy, central printing, wireless, WebCT, and web applications like WebGrades and WebLedgers.

* Your email address will remain the same - generally firstname_lastname@brown.edu. You will use your Brown Username (AuthID) to login to access your email, but your address will not change.

The format of the NetID (which has no length restriction and allows for special characters such as hyphens) cannot be used with many of the Brown computing systems, so the format of the Brown Username will follow the convention of the AuthID - usually your first initial followed by the first seven characters of your last name (e.g. Josiah Carberry would be jcarberr). If your last name doesn't have seven characters, your Username will be shorter and if your last name is a common name, your Username may include your middle initial or a number.

Simply put, after July 26th, all Brown students, faculty, and staff will use only their AuthIDs to access all Brown computing systems and services and the term “AuthID” will be replaced by “Username.” You can look up your Username/AuthID by going to myAccount.

Please email questions and concerns to Stephanie Birdsall at cis@brown.edu.

Debut of SecureIT! Online Newsletter

Find out how to avoid some dangerous 'phishing' holes or go wireless at home and keep your network compromise-free in CIS's new publication, SecureIT!.

The first edition is now online offering informative (and hopefully fun!) summertime reading:

• Discover how 'A place for everything and everything in its place' could save you time and aggravation
• Learn how a simple action can keep intruders from accessing your computer
• Plus features such as a security word finder game and the latest IT Security news.

All this and more in the first edition of the newsletter SecureIT!.

Educating Change: Latina Activism and the Struggle for Educational Equity

CIS's
Student Technology Assistant program has assisted Professor Matt Garcia and his team of students in mounting a major virutual and physical exhibit on Latina activism and the struggle for educational equity in Coachella Valley. The physical exhibit is on display at the John Nicholas Brown Center. The virtual exhibit is on display at www.brown.edu/coachella.

**STG Faculty Grant Program Call for Proposals 2005**

Computing and Information Services is seeking proposals for the fourth year of the Scholarly Technology Group Faculty Grants Program.
This program seeks to encourage innovative research at the intersection of information technology and the academic disciplines in the humanities, exploring new modes of analysis, creation, and dissemination of information in which technology plays a significant role. We welcome applications from faculty in the humanities and related areas. As part of the application process, we offer one-on-one consulting prior to the application deadline to help applicants focus the proposal and make sure its scope is realistic and in keeping with the program's goals. We don't assume that the faculty members are already engaged in a technology project, we welcome interested novices who want to explore new methods and models.

Each faculty grant award will cover STG consulting and implementation, and may include some additional production costs, such as data or software, as resources permit. Faculty release time is not covered. Further information is available in the application guidelines.

More information on STG and its projects is available at http://www.stg.brown.edu.

Examples of Faculty Grant Projects from previous years can be found at http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/facultygrants/projects_2004.html

Wednesday March 30, 4 PM Information session, STG (Grad Center, Tower E)
April and May Individual consultations
Monday, May 16 Proposals Due
Friday, June 17 Notifications to grant recipients

For more information, contact:
Email: stg_info@brown.edu
Phone: 863-7231

Thank you, Elli Mylonas

CIS Help Desk Summer Hours

During the summer the Help Desk's Call Center will be open Mondays through Thursdays from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM, and from 7:30AM to 4:00PM on Fridays. It will be closed weekends and holidays. Staff will also be available for Service on Site (SOS) calls from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM each business day.

The Help Desk's complete summer schedule is available at: www.brown.edu/cis/helpdesk/hours.html.

CIS begins move to Davol Square

On Monday, January 12, around 50 CIS employees reported for work in their new quarters at Davol Square. The majority of the Administrative systems groups are now located in the Davol Square business park at Eddy and Point streets. These include the Applications Development and Administrative Systems Technology staff as well as administrative support and CIS's Vice President, Ellen Waite-Franzen.

Staff and services key to supporting the Brown academic community will remain in the CIT: the Instructional Technology Group and Computer Education on the second level, the Help Desk, Service & Repair and dispatch printing on the first, and computer operations in the lower level. The Scholarly Technology Group (STG) will continue to be located in the Graduate Center.

Computer Science (CS) expansion needs have prompted the move from the CIT building, which has been CIS's central home for 15 years. "CIS Central" will shift to the Jewelry District once the CS department expands its classroom and office space (now on the 4th and 5th floors) to eventually fill the 3rd floor of the CIT as well. As of January 12, CS will occupy the north half of the 3rd floor, while Network Technology, Systems & Services,   IT Security and Telecommunications temporarily work in the south half. In June, those CIS staff members will also move to Davol Square.

Note that with Telecomm's move, basic telephone questions can be answered at the Help Desk off the CIT lobby or via email or phone.

Vendor selected for student information system

The University has selected SCT as its vendor for the student information system. Contracts were signed late on 9/30 after an extensive evaluation process over the past year. After another round of contracts for the necessary database and hardware products, CIS will begin development of Brown's online registration and related services for students. [see the GSJ's 10/17/03 issue for more details]

Can't remember the phone number?

Just dial 3-6001 (863-6001 off campus), say the name of the faculty, staff member or department, and you'll be automatically connected by the PhoneticOperator.