Content

The Departmental Announcements Dissemination System

PC Notebooks and Desktops for Purchase at Lower Prices

New Arrangement for Student Print Quota

Introduction of Wireless LAN on Campus

Transition Plan for Millennium Rollover

Video/TV Broadcasting Services Available on Desktop PC's

Video-On-Demand (VOD) Service

Putting Video Materials on the Centrally-supported Video-on-Demand Server

Reiteration on the Use of Proxy Servers

Support Policy for Macintosh Users

Setting up of a Telnet Gateway

PC Upgrade for OEE-702, BAC and Staff Users

A New Chinese Input Method Introduced to HKBU Users

Kiosk Terminals Planned for the Lam Woo International Conference Centre

New Multimedia Laboratories Opened in Library and CAEP

New AS/400 System to Replace the Two Obsolete Systems

New RS/6000 System Available for Hosting Large-scale Applications

Seminar Statistics from October to November 1999

Planned Seminars for March to June in 2000

Computing and Telecommunications Services CentreCentre

This Newsletter is accessible at the following URL address:

http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ctsc/

If you have any comments on our Newsletter, please send to us at:

ctscadm@hkbu.edu.hk

For any other business, please call the CTSC User Services Hotline at 2339-7899 (or within the campus, dial the numbers corresponding to "CTSC" on your telephone key-pad), E-mail at:

hotline@hkbu.edu.hk

Thank you!

The Departmental Announcements Dissemination System

To minimize E-mail traffic, the dissemination of the departmental announcements has been changed from the previous E-mail duplication scenario to Web-based approach. After soliciting more comments from staff users, the dissemination system has been further improved. The operation of the existing system is briefly described in the following paragraphs.

All departmental announcements must reach the CTSC by 4:00 p.m. in order that they can be broadcasted in the evening of the same day. When CTSC has gathered all departmental announcements, an E-mail will be posted to all staff. The E-mail contains a list of the announcements with topics and the respective announcing departments/offices. By clicking a hyperlink which comes with this E-mail, a user will be directed to the Web page containing the details of the individual announcements. User will be able to browse through the topics

that are of interest to him/her.

On the Web page, a hyperlink is also built for users to recall the previous announcements if necessary such as when the user is just returning from

leave. The previous announcements are kept for 7 working days. Tentatively, these Web pages will be kept for three months. In other

words, a user can maximally recall an announcement that was around 97 days ago. The retention period will be subject to review.

On these Web pages, animated banners and hypermedia links are sometimes provided for users to access other University activities. For example, the announcement of the HKBU Longevity Banquet '99 and the on-line teaching evaluation exercise were publicized through this channel.

The above dissemination procedure applies to staff users only. For students, the departmental announcements are posted to a Web site which is displayed whenever the students logon to one of the PC's in the User Computing Centres. No separate E-mails are sent to notify students of the new announcements in order to save the tremendous effort (processing time and data traffic) for duplicating about 5,000 E-mails daily.

For remote users or those in the departmental PC laboratories, they need to access the URL: http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/student_announcement to read the announcements. To minimize disk storage, this Web site is cleared up weekly.

The recent feedbacks from some users are quite positive about the new arrangement. You are most welcome to forward your comments to CTSC for the on-going improvement of the system.

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PC Notebooks and Desktops for Purchase at Lower Prices

The CTSC is very pleased to announce that after negotiating with three suppliers (IBM, Dell and COMPAQ) and the Hang Seng Bank (for low interest installment scheme), all our full-time students and staff can purchase the respective PC notebooks and desktops from these vendors in cash or by monthly repayment. There would be about 20-30% discount comparing to street prices.

The vendors will set up promotion booths on one or both of the HSH Campus and Shaw Campus. You can gather more information from these booths and order your favorite PC notebook or desktop over the counter. The dates of the promotion programs will be confirmed through our E-mail notice.

Hang Sang Bank has arranged a special low-interest-installment plan for students and staff. No income proof is necessary. All you need is your HKID card, student/staff card and the PC notebook or desktop invoice. Then you should apply the loan at the Hang Seng Bank in the HSH Campus. In return, you will be given a cashier order (it will take about 2 to 3 days) which you can then present to the vendor and collect your item (or to wait for delivery where appropriate).

Please consult the Hang Seng Bank branch office in HSH Campus for more details of the installment plan.

New Arrangement for Student Print Quota

In our last Newsletter (August 1999), we announced the decision of the IT Users' Subcommittee to adjust the student print quotas as follows:

Year 1 - 400 pagesYear 2 - 500 pagesYear 3 - 600 pages

This arrangement was started on 1 September 1999. Furthermore, to encourage print savings, it was also decided that 60% of the unused quota can be carried forward to the next academic year.

With the introduction of the on-line teaching evaluation, the University has agreed to award 50 pages quota to those students who have successfully completed the teaching evaluation exercise. In other words, a 50-page quota will be added to those accounts in January for the first semester teaching evaluation exercise and in September for the second semester teaching evaluation exercise.

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Introduction of Wireless LAN on Campus

The wireless LAN technology is maturing though an industry standard has yet to be agreed among the vendors.

A mix of wired network infrastructure and the wireless LAN technology will be the trend in the coming years. As such, the CTSC has started to test on the products from a couple of the vendors. We have performed some benchmarking tests on different products and will be able to decide on the most favourable vendor very soon. Tentatively, the CTSC will install wireless LAN transmitters in the lecture theatres, conference rooms, some classrooms and laboratories. Other potential areas could be the A.C. Hall, the University Chapel, the Sports Centre, etc. At this stage, only PC users are supported. If budget allows, we may extend the support to Mac users.

With limited resources, departments/offices are requested to submit their needs with justifications. To help our planning, please state the location and the anticipated number of wireless data ports required for connection to the University network. The CTSC may be able to lend a limited number of wireless network cards on short-term loan basis, if resources permit. Please submit your request by end of January 2000.

Additionally, to cope with the lower price PC notebook and desktop purchase programs from some vendors (please refer to the article "PC Notebooks and Desktops for Purchase at Lower Prices" of this issue), we may also consider to lend a notebook wireless network card to a student by withholding a deposit until the card is returned.

Further decisions and arrangements will be announced in due course.

Transition Plan for Millennium Rollover

While the whole world is busy preparing for the celebration of the arrival of the next millennium, we at CTSC have no exception, though with a very different approach.

In the coming new year's eve, all the CTSC professional staff and some technical support staff will be standing by in the University campus to monitor, assess, rectify any impacts on the IT infrastructure and systems that may arise during the transition period from 31 December 1999 to 1 January 2000. The central computing and telecommunications facilities supporting the data and voice communications within and outside the campus will be closely observed and contingency measures will be taken where necessary.

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Other departments/offices may, in one way or the other, be affected by the changeover. Your Faculty/School/Office designated Y2K coordinator is therefore requested to thoroughly check the IT-related mission-critical systems under your control during the changeover and report to CTSC as soon as possible for assistance, if necessary.

The CTSC User Services Hotline is 2339-7899 and 10 lines will be activated during the changeover period.

In the very unlikely event, if the PABX is inoperative due to the problem of Y2K, users can dial our backup direct line at 2794-3020.

As a guideline, if we don't receive any calls from your department/office by 6:00 a.m. on 1 January 2000, we will assume that your IT-related mission-critical systems are generally in order. Thereafter during the public holidays on 1 January 2000 (after 6:00 a.m.) and on 2 January 2000, users can page the CTSC pager at 7314-3515 for assistance if there is an urgent need.

Video/TV Broadcasting Services Available on Desktop PC's

You can now view on-line video/TV broadcast from our video servers. This means that you do not need a TV outlet in your office in order to receive the programs broadcasted throughout our campus network.

On trial basis, we are currently re-broadcasting one to two TV channels on-line as received by our satellite dish. You can click CTSC's Homepage to watch these channels on your desktop PC. If you have G2 installed in your PC, the TV program will automatically be played on your monitor with very little delay. If you do not have Real G2 player installed, simply download it from the same page and then install it to your Windows 95/98.

Owing to resource limitation, only a limited number of concurrent users (currently 100) can watch the video/TV programs on their desktops.

Please note that the quality of video/TV received using G2 is just bearly acceptable. The CTSC is searching for alternative solutions to transmit video/TV at a higher bandwidth, hence better video quality. Currently, this higher bandwidth solution is still under testing. It will require additional network cards and network ports. Therefore, users need to apply to CTSC for the hardware and software installation and the outcome will depend on justifications and available budget. Announcement will be made once this service is available.

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Video-On-Demand (VOD) Service

You can also view archived video clips from our Video-on-Demand (VOD) server through the CTSC's Homepage. Star Player software should be installed on your PC to play these video clips. Please down load the Star Player plug-in from the same page and install it to your Windows 95/98. Again, limited number of concurrent users are allowed at one time. Those who cannot get onto the network will have to wait until someone drops out.

Please also refer to the article "Putting Video Materials on the Centrally-supported Video-on-Demand Server" of this issue for more information.

Putting Video Materials on the Centrally-supported Video-on-Demand Server

The CTSC is pleased to announce that a centrally-supported video server, the SUN Enterprise 450, is now installed and is ready to accept video materials for broadcasting in the campus. Currently, the distinguished lectures from Prof. Lee Yuen-tseh and Prof. Samuel Ting and "Introduction to HKBU" have been put on this server for public viewing.

To facilitate users for viewing from this video server, we are building up a multimedia Web page (under the CTSC Homepage) such that users can select different channels for viewing. Examples are the TV programmes, video broadcasting (e.g. broadcasting of video conference) and video-on-demand programmes. On this Web page, facilities will be provided for users to download the appropriate viewer.

Users wishing to fully enjoy the benefits of multimedia applications must equip their PC's with a multimedia kit. For higher quality reception on some applications, a second PC network card may be needed for connecting to the University video network. In general, the existing University data network can only support relatively low quality video applications. The IT Committee has allocated a budget to equip some PC's with multimedia kit and second network card in the Faculty/School/Office areas.

Examples of pre-recorded video materials are seminars/conferences/symposiums, functional activities, multimedia learning packages, video clippings, etc. These materials can be pre-recorded in different media such as VHS tape, VCD, mini-DV tapes, LD, DVD, etc.

For submission of video materials and further details on this topic, please contact Mr. T.H. Ng at 2339-7408 (E-mail thng@hkbu.edu.hk).

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Reiteration on the Use of Proxy Servers

The surcharges on using the shared Internet link to US are still significant. One of the ways to economize on our share of the US link is to make use of proxy servers to the fullest possible extent. An advantage of using the proxy server is that those previously visited Web pages can be saved in the server for subsequent access by other users without re-downloading from outside.

As announced in our September 1998 Newsletter, the centrally-funded student PC rooms have already been set up such that all Web accesses originated from these rooms must go through the proxy servers. The other users were encouraged to use the proxy server as well. In that article, we also mentioned that, subject to the approval of the IT Users' Subcommittee, we would prohibit all overseas Web accesses if proxy server is not being used.

In the last IT Users' Subcommittee meeting held on 24 May 1999, it was agreed that the University should enforce the use of proxy servers for all Web accesses as soon as it is feasible.

Given that users may need more time to switch to the new environment or to set up their own departmental proxy servers (in some high usage departments) and to minimize the system changes before Y2K, we propose to enforce the use of proxy servers early next year. In the meantime, users are further encouraged to use the proxy servers for saving the international traffic. On the other hand, if the situation warrants that an immediate action should be taken, we will move the enforcement forward.

The procedures for setting proxy server in Netscape browser are listed below:

1. Open the Edit Menu from the Menu Bar and select the "Preferences" option.

2. In the Preferences Menu, double click the "Advanced" option in the items tree.

3. Under the "Advanced" tree, click the "Proxies" item.

4. Select the "Manual proxy configuration" and click the "View" button.

5. Enter the following items in the Manual Proxy Configuration Window and press the "OK" button when finished:

a) For users located at Ho Sin Hang Campus, the proxy could be configured as follows:

FTP Proxy proxy.hkbu.edu.hk Port: 8080Gopher Proxy proxy.hkbu.edu.hk Port: 8080HTTP Proxy proxy.hkbu.edu.hk Port: 8080

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b) For users located at Shaw Campus, the proxy could be configured as follows:

FTP Proxy proxy01.hkbu.edu.hk Port: 8080Gopher Proxy proxy01.hkbu.edu.hk Port: 8080HTTP Proxy proxy01.hkbu.edu.hk Port: 8080

c) For users located at Baptist University Road Campus, the proxy could be configured as follows:

FTP Proxy proxy02.hkbu.edu.hk Port: 8080Gopher Proxy proxy02.hkbu.edu.hk Port: 8080HTTP Proxy proxy02.hkbu.edu.hk Port: 8080

You are also welcome to contact the CTSC User Services Hotline for any assistance.

Support Policy for Macintosh Users

Back in 1994 when the then Working Group on IT Development formulated the "IT Strategic Development Plan into the Triennium 1995-98", it was recommended that, given the limited resources, the support on Macintosh platform by CTSC would become secondary as compared with the support given to Intel-based PC's.

In spite of this recommendation, the CTSC has not drastically changed our support policy and continued to support the Mac users with our best possible efforts. However, since our staff are trained and more lined up to support Intel-based PC users, the Mac users may not be getting the same

level of expertise from CTSC to support their needs and subsequently much time and efforts have been spent less efficiently by CTSC to solve the Mac problems for a small group of Mac users.

In the recent IT Committee Meeting, it was further agreed that CTSC's resources are better spent for the University at large, but not on individualized platforms and applications. The CTSC is suggested to place higher priority in supporting Intel-based PC's than the Mac's. This policy will also be incorporated into the upcoming University-wide IT Strategic Plan.

Setting up of a Telnet Gateway

To safeguard our UNIX systems from hackers all over the world, the CTSC has restricted 'telnet' access (remote login) from outside the HKBU network (modem users included) to our IBM RS/6000 (Net1) and Alpha server (Net2). Restricted telnet access is the most common measure in enhancing UNIX security.

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However, staff travelling overseas may need to login to the hosts by 'telnet'. Hence, there is a necessity to set up a telnet gateway, a kind of "firewall" dedicated computer equipped with safeguards, that acts as a single and more easily defended Internet connection.

For those who want to telnet to the access-controlled host computers from "outside" could connect to this gateway computer first and then use the UNIX 'rlogin' command to login to the destination. Using 'rlogin' avoids typing in their usernames/passwords twice.

The CTSC is aiming at setting up this telnet gateway and will be available soon. Further information will be announced when this system is ready for service.

Meanwhile, users who have the need to telnet from the non-HKBU network could still do so via a computer setup temporarily. Please contact the CTSC User Services Hotline for further details.

PC Upgrade for OEE-702, BAC and Staff Users

We are pleased to announce that the IT Committee has approved and provided resources to upgrade the Pentium 133 MHz PC's in the OEE-702 User Computing Centre and WLB-508 Business Automation Centre (BAC).

With the recommendation of the CTSC PC Evaluation Team in the tender exercise, an order has been placed for purchasing the Dell machines with the following configurations:

Processor : Pentium III 500 MHzMain Memory : 64MBHard Disk Storage : 6.4GB

These machines will be installed with the Windows 98 operating system platform and configured with the same working environment as the other machines in the User Computing Centres. The new machines will provide a faster access and processing speed.

The upgrade process is planned to be carried out during the term break. It is expected that users can use these machines at the start of the second semester.

In addition, the IT Committee also approved to replace the 386- and 486-type machines reported previously by departments/offices with the Pentium machines. CTSC will make a replacement by both the new IBM Pentium III 450 MHz machine (with 64MB RAM and 6.4GB HD storage) and the old

AST Pentium 133 MHz / 166 MHz machine (with 48 MB RAM and 2GB HD storage) released from OEE-702 and BAC.

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A memo regarding the machines allocation had been issued to the head of department/office concerned. After this replacement exercise, the University will no longer have any 386/486 machines for production purpose (except those in the laboratories for research studies).

The replacement in the staff office will commence upon the arrival of the new machines. The CTSC expects to start this process before Christmas. However, the replacement by the old AST machines will not begin until they are released from the User Computing Centres. The Assistant Director (US), Mr. S.H. Tong, will contact the department/office directly on the replacement arrangement.

The machines to be delivered to staff offices will be pre-loaded with both English and Chinese Windows 98 operating system with network access capabilities, Microsoft Office 97, Netscape Web Browser and cc:Mail for Windows. Before the machine migration, staff users are advised to back-up their own data files in the old machine before it is handed over to CTSC. All the confidential information should be removed by users themselves. CTSC will treat all old machines as obsolete items. Moreover, the CTSC User Services staff will assist the users in data migration during the replacement process.

For further queries on the replacement, please contact Mr. S.H. Tong at 2339-7414 (E-mail shtong@hkbu.edu.hk).

A New Chinese Input Method Introduced to HKBU Users

In October 1999, CTSC organized a seminar to introduce a new Chinese input method (縱橫漢字編碼法) and a lot of positive comments were received from the audience. Subsequently, a more in-depth training has been offered which attracted more than sixty attendants. This training session was conducted by an expert of this Chinese input method from China.

<Mr. Chow demonstrating the Chinese Input Method>

<From left side: Mr. Joseph Leung, Directorof CTSC; Dr. Daniel Tse, P/VC; Mr. C.K. Chow>

This method is designed according to the Chinese stroke constructs. The idea is to use the numerals 0, 1, 2, ….. and 9 to define a Chinese character and each Chinese character can be represented by at most six numerals. Users can use the numeric key pad of the keyboard to enter the Chinese characters. Another beauty of this method is that it has phrase group feature. For example, we can enter '093020' to retrieve the Chinese phrase 「香港特別行政區政府」. There are more than ninety thousand such phrase groups implemented in the current version. Users can also define their own phrase groups.

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The inventor and owner of this method, Mr. C.K. Chow, has generously donated the software to our University. This new input method has already been implemented in the CTSC's User Computing Centres (OEE-702 and RRS-302) and will soon be extended to other computer rooms and staff offices as well. From now on users will have one more choice for inputting Chinese characters and more training on this method will be scheduled.

Kiosk Terminals Planned for the Lam Woo International Conference Centre

From time to time, the CTSC is asked by the organizing departments to install some temporary PC's for the use of the conference participants to check E-mail and for Web browsing.

To reduce the on and off installation effort, the CTSC has planned to install 4 kiosk-type PC stations outside the Lam Woo International Conference Centre for accessing the University network and the Internet all the times. The kiosk stations have been built and the data cables laid. We are now asking the kiosk manufacturer to install the PC system unit, keyboard and a track-ball (for use as a mouse) inside the kiosks.

We expect that these kiosk PC stations will be ready early next year. If this service is welcomed by users, we will consider to install more in other strategic locations.

New Multimedia Laboratories Opened in Library and CAEP

Subsequent to the opening of the User Computing Centre at RRS-302 where 52 Pentium II 450 PC's were installed at the start of this new academic year, the CTSC is pleased to report that in co-operation with Library, a new multimedia computer laboratory is opened on Level 4 of the Au Shue Hung Memorial Library building. This laboratory is managed by the Library. There are 32 PC's available for library users.

Additionally, the multimedia language learning laboratory in the Centre for the Advancement of English for Professionals (CAEP) is equipped with the most up-to-date PC's, LCD display monitors and other language learning equipment. The management for this laboratory has yet to be determined by the University.

New AS/400 System to Replace the Two Obsolete Systems

Upgrade progress has been carried out on our near obsolete IBM AS/400 systems. By middle of December 1999, the two existing AS/400's will be replaced by a single more powerful AS/400, model 720-2061.

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The new AS/400 will have a 25% increase in interactive processing power over the combined power of the two existing AS/400's and more than 7 times increase in batch processing power over the existing AS/400's.

This new AS/400 is built on RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture while the existing AS/400's are built

on CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) architecture.

With the new AS/400 in operation, the processing of applications of the Academic Registry and Finance Office will be significantly enhanced.

New RS/6000 System Available for Hosting Large-scale Applications

CTSC is pleased to announce the availability of our new IBM RS/6000 SP (Scalable POWERparallel) system, a new member of our existing UNIX servers.

The SP's scalable architecture, high communication performance, and PowerPC architecture are best in handling data-intensive, computing-intensive and I/O intensive jobs.

The SP system is further equipped with ultra high-speed disks which uses the industry-standard SSA (Serial Storage Architecture) subsystems.

Its outstanding capabilities make it a most efficient platform for all aspects of computing environment such as scientific/technical

applications. These applications require computer power for heavy number crunching and database query/on-line transaction processing type programs for large amounts of data access.

Furthermore, nowadays programs are shifting to be Web-enabled, a reliable and effective Web site is highly desirable for its contents to be updated in real-time while making them available for instant information delivery.

As such, we have moved a few of our heavily accessed Web sites to the new SP server. They are the WebCH (Web Course Homepage System) developed for our HKBU academic community for on-line teaching and learning, and our University Library's WebSPIRS system for searching of electronic resources on comprehensive subjects supplied from a large quantity of database CD-ROM's.

If users have similar applications and would like to be hosted by this server, please contact Mr. T.H. Ng at 2339-7408 (E-mail thng@hkbu.edu.hk) for assistance.

This server will be further developed to share the workloads of the University Internet gateway.

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Seminar Statistics from October to November 1999

The total number of courses offered in this period is 23. New courses had been opened such as Introduction to Barcodes, Chinese E-mail, Chinese Document Formatting and a new Chinese Input Method (縱橫碼輸入法).

Total number of people registered is 626, of which 465 showed up in class (74%). Of those 465 attendants, 404 of them filled up the evaluation form (87%). From these forms, we were informed that 161 of them are staff, 212 are students and there are 31 missing cases.

The average number of attendants was 20 per class. There were 14 classes which were attended by more than 20 people.

The average means of the attendants' assessment on our seminars are summarized in Chart 1. The rating scale for assessment is 5 = Excellent; 4 = Good; 3 = Satisfactory; 2 = Less than Adequate; 1 = Poor. Charts 2 to 6 present the percentage of the different ratings.

In choosing favorite seminar topics, most attendants preferred Corel Draw, Access FrontPage, PowerPoint, Visual Basic and Web/Internet related courses. Please take a look at the pie chart for detailed distribution in Chart 7.

Over 90 % of the attendants would like to continue to attend an advanced topic (90.6%).

299 attendants replied on seminar duration for practice and seminar hours. The preferred means for the practice time and seminar hours were 41.2 mins. and 2 hours respectively.

Chart 1

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Chart 2 Chart 3

Chart 4 Chart 5

Chart 6

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Chart 7

Planned Seminars for March to June in 2000

Seminar Title/Nature

E-Commerce How to Unzip/Zip your file Internet Resources Photo Editing 中文電郵/應用問題

Basic CGI I - GuestBook, Counter & Form

Chinese Input Method - 倉頡Chinese Input Method - 筆順碼Chinese Input Method - 縱橫碼輸入法Corel Draw - Basic

Corel Draw - Intermediate

Corel Draw - Advanced

FrontPage 98 - Basic

FrontPage 98 - Intermediate

Introduction to HTML Coding

Introduction to UNIX

Introduction to Visual Basic

MS Access 97 - Basic

MS Access 97 - Intermediate

MS Access 97 - Advanced

MS Excel 97 - Intermediate

MS PowerPoint 97 - Intermediate

MS Word 97 - Intermediate

Using SPSS

Web Animation

New Topics

You may also access some of our seminar materials at:

http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ctsc/user.training.html

The new seminars are tentatively scheduled to start on early March 2000 and will end at late June.

There will be two rounds of seminars and the topics will be reviewed when the first round is over. Seminars will continue to be held on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the afternoon at 2:30 p.m. in Room OEE-702A inside our User Computing Centre.

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More special topics will be announced from time to time. These topics will normally be held on Tuesday and Thursday unless otherwise stated.

Punctuality will be emphasized since late comers will disturb the instructor and otherattendants. Under normal circumstances, if you arrive 10 minutes or more after the seminar has begun, you may have to wait until the seminar breaks.

The CTSC will continue to regularly update seminar details through the University-wide Announcement System and users are also invited to visit the CTSC Homepage to check out the new seminars.

You are most welcome to drop a note in our training E-mail account at:

ctscadm@hkbu.edu.hk

See you soon!

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