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Summer I Volume 5, Number 4

1. NYU Computer Store Getting the Most out of Your Laptop s Batteries Kevin J Edwards edwardsk acfcluster nyu edu Summer is upon us and for many of us that means travel and portable computers If you ll be travel ing with a portable computer there are several steps you should take for maximum battery life e use power management software e avoid using backlighting hard drives and flop pies when you don t need them e charge and maintain your batteries properly e on Macintosh PowerBooks turn off AppleTalk when it s not in use Older portables including the Mac PowerBook 100 used lead acid batteries Nowadays two other types of batteries are more common nickel cadmium NiCad and nickel metal hydride NiMH and a third lithium ion is coming into use NiCad batter ies the same sort that s used for most rechargeables are more common but have a couple of disadvan tages the use of toxic cadmium and the memory ef fect which TIl discuss in a moment NiMH and lithium ion batteries avoid these problems but are more expensive and thus less common Lead Acid Batteries If you have a notebook with a lead acid battery make sure to keep the battery charged These batter ies don t suffer from memory effect but they can suffer from being drained too low Once a lead acid battery has drained too low it will be unable to be recharged If you will be storing a notebook with a lead aci
2. or archived on a remote mainframe On the down side however no standard practice has been devel oped that guarantees long term access to these journals Electronic journals are not yet fully incorporated into the world of scholarly research Most scholars consult specialized indexes to conduct the literature review that is essential to the research process To date most producers of scholarly indexes have not determined how to deal with electronic journals The contents of unindexed scholarly e journals are sim ply lost in cyberspace Until their status is secured both by indexers and the academic community elec tronic journals will not consistently attract respected scholars or be considered a viable alternative to tra ditional print publishing With new titles appearing weekly electronic jour nals are clearly here to stay But it remains to be seen how they will secure their place in the universe of scholarly publishing In a future issue of Connect we ll discuss issues of publishing and scholarship in elec tronic journals as they relate to academia E Copernicus Redivivus continued from page 25 about and employ parallel computing technologies Several science departments and research groups at the university have followed the ACF s lead in this area of high performance computing by acquiring their own multiprocessor parallel systems To apply for an account on one of the CAPC sys tems fill out a request for an Ind
3. If you leave a battery inside your PowerBook 150 while it s unplugged it will drain much faster than if you remove it It will drain even faster if your PowerBook is in sleep mode perhaps in a couple of days If you leave a drained battery inside the PowerBook 150 you will corrupt the PowerManager The PowerManager is the part of the computer that coordinates where the power is going to and coming from If it gets corrupted your PowerBook will not turn on until the PowerManager is reset The only way to reset the PowerManager is to open up the PowerBook which requires an authorized Apple Ser vice Technician Make sure to either remove the bat tery or leave the PowerBook plugged in When traveling with your notebook batteries uninstalled make sure that their contacts are cov ered by something that is nonconductive Exposed contacts can be shorted by a paper clip coin or other conductive material that is loose inside the carrying case and that of course will drain your battery Many batteries come with covers that slide over their contacts make sure to use them Intelligent Batteries and the PowerBook 500s The batteries of the PowerBook 500 series com puters are intelligent which means they contain a microprocessor that monitors the battery s status The system software can thus tell you how much time is left and whether the battery is charging The 500 series PowerBooks don t automatically perform a d
4. Using Unix at the ACF 11 00 18 Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 11 00 Using Unix at the June 12 August 27 Wednesday Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 1 00 Using a PC atan ACF Lab 11 00 Summer Session II begins 12 Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 1 00 Using a PC atan ACF Lab 11 00 SPSS for Windows 6 00 Thursday I5 EMIS Accounts expire Individual Account holders who will not renew for 1995 96 should store files by August 30 16 Getting Started on Your New Mac 12 00 23 Getting Started on Your New PC 12 00 30 Summer Session I ends Choosing Your Computer 2 00 Choosing Your Computer 2 00 Summer Session II ends Student Class Accounts issued for the Summer Sessions expire 18 Getting Started Sat Sun JULY 1 2 Independence Day weekend Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 1 00 Fall Semester begins on Thursday September 7 on Your New Mac 12 00 25 Getting Started on Your New PC 12 00 New Individual Accounts and those renewed for the 1995 96 academic year begin on September 7 L 36 Summer 1995 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Important ACF Access to the ACF s Instructional Computer Labs Telephone Numbers NYU faculty staff and students in degree or diploma programs ACF HelpLine 998 3333 may use the PCs and Macintoshes in the ACF s computer labs for Account Information 998 3035 limited hours without charge as general u
5. I spent a couple of weeks in Paris last summer and decided well in advance that I would take a pile of work along I also arranged to borrow a Powerbook Since the computer had a modem and I receive an unhealthy amount of e mail each day I thought it would be useful to set up some type of Internet access while I was away I liked knowing that I could stay in touch but I also imagined that it would be a good test of the state of the art in global communications In the past maintaining network access from abroad meant either paying expensive long distance bills to call systems back home or begging a courtesy account from a nearby university or research center My first approach was naive and proved to be a complete failure I tried to arrange for access informally through people I know or have done business with around Paris It quickly became clear that this was not going to be a productive strategy Shortly before I was prepared to give up the idea I received through a mailing list an announcement of a service called EUnet Traveller which seemed to offer everything I wanted A Simple Solution EUnet runs a backbone network across Europe It sells Internet connectivity to businesses and individuals EUnet Traveller is a relatively new service targeted at business and academic travelers who need a straightforward reli able way to stay in touch with home but who are unwill ing or unable to incur the cost of transatlantic telephon
6. MasterCard or EuroCard If you are uncomfortable typing your credit card infor mation through the WWW form or in an interactive ses sion registration can also be arranged by contacting the Netherlands office voice 31 20 623 3803 fax 31 20 622 4657 You can send inquiries via e mail to info eu net The EUnet Web page also offers information about local power and telephone connections in each country including information about voltages and adapter plugs I found it useful to carry a small screwdriver and several adapters that I had bought at Radio Shack In one loca tion I needed a telephone plug adapter to attach the modem to the phone line In another I plugged the mo dem into the back of an answering machine Terminal Access Only At the present time EUnet Traveller is limited to basic terminal style dialup similar to dialing the NYU NET modem service EUnet does not yet offer SLIP PPP ser vices to Traveller accounts though the online literature suggests that this feature will eventually be available Nor is host service on the European side available to Traveller accounts you must have an account at home to which you can make a Telnet connection All you get from EUnet is the ability to make one Telnet connection at a time For my purposes that was more than sufficient I continued on page 23 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 21
7. A new IBM C10 server is being acquired by the ACF for social science users it boasts the latest RISC ar chitecture and runs on the AIX operating system IBM s version of Unix This new machine will house SPSS for Unix as well as data files and such pro grams as the newest Motif version of SAS Moving to a new platform is a milestone of sorts one that gives us a Chance to review the history of SPSS at NYU SPSS on Different Platforms at NYU In the late 1960s and into the 1970s we had WYLBUR and punched cards WYLBUR is a pro gramming environment to edit and handle files on the IBM mainframe A proud very expensive ma chine the mainframe IBM was once the best pro gramming platform available now it is several years past being the brunt of antediluvian jokes Later in the 1970s and through the 1980s new versions of O NN A Frank LoPresti heads the Statistics and Social Science Group at the Academic Computing Facility 2 Summer 1995 SPSS were developed for the Control Data Cyber machine and then for the DEC VAX Both the VAX and the Cyber allowed the use of a simpler control language JCL to direct input and output while run ning a job Each of these machines was less expensive and required less system support than traditional IBM mainframes They also offered faster running speeds and simplified the tasks editing and file manage _ ment needed to create and run statistical jobs At the same time there were changes in t
8. Students who expect Incompletes in Summer Session II courses should apply for extensions of their computer accounts instructor s signature required Students with Summer Session II Class Accounts should store files they wish to keep after Aug 11 August August 11 Summer Session II ends August 11 Student Class Accounts issued for the Summer Sessions Expire August 30 Individual Account holders who will not renew for 1995 96 should have stored files by now September Sept 1 New Individual Accounts and those renewed for the 1995 96 academic year begin Sept 2 3 Labor Day Weekend Accs ins wacky cnt opie iaa d ad holiday hours Sept 7 Fall Semester egi ns sisses iera seat Nee eek ores Sales awa ene a ed Pere otal toyed aden regular fall hours University holiday t Please note Confirmed holiday schedules will be posted on the NYU CWIS and via our online news and bulletin board facilities or can be obtained by calling the ACF HelpLine at 998 3333 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 33 Classes Workshops and Talks ABCs of Computers Choosing Your Computer Mac and PC This talk is intended to help you select the best personal computer for your needs It will cover the basic components of a computer as well as the other hardware required for various tasks We will also discuss how you can assess your particular needs to establish your
9. Visualization Scientific Visualization at NYU A Color Sampler of Recent Research David Frederickson with Estarose Wolfson and many researchers david frederickson nyu edu estarose nyu edu Modern computers are capable of modeling objects making more or less realistic representations of any thing from buildings to molecules to cloud covers and showing them on the screen or printing them on paper Scientific visualization can provide images of objects that are real or ideal or theoretical as large as galaxies as small as molecules as abstract as data flows And color by now an assumed capability of any computer monitor provides a dimension that can be seen on the page only when printed in color Hence this sampler The use of color goes beyond making objects look more real or more beautiful though those of course are valuable objectives It can For More Information also be used to show varying density of solids or gases or differing atomic structures or subtle gradations of surface change In some cases color can be used to compensate for the relatively low resolution of a com puter screen which is inherently coarser than poor newsprint In all cases it can make the image more revealing and more intelligible A basic problem in planning recon structive surgery on the face and cranium is deciding upon the best way to cut the bone and reposition the resulting bone fragments This problem
10. begin to take access to electronic mail and online resources for granted and as the world becomes more reliant on networked computers we will eventually find ourselves forced to consider security and pri vacy issues associated with such use whether or not we want to concern ourselves with such matters More Publicity More Awareness If the Internet is the most talked about aspect of computing computer system security is close behind As I was writing this article the fugitive cracker Kevin Mitnick had just been apprehended by federal authorities with the assistance of Tsutomu Shimo mura a researcher who specializes in system and network security The story emblazoned across the front pages of newspapers across the nation quickly took on heroic proportions Where six months ago the wonders of the information highway were the hot topic of conversation now everyone s talking about system crackers and security In the popular imagination our computers are perpetually threatened by evil teenage techno geniuses who tirelessly probe the nation s computer systems snooping on credit reports erasing billing records and stealing private data Such stories help sell newspapers but the reality is considerably more mundane Although systems are sometimes probed by crackers exploiting weak Tim O Connor of the ACF s Core Technology group helps to keep the systems running and answers many of the questions that arri
11. computers these days Most of us reasonably expect to be able to use computers to do accounts and taxes and letters without bothering much about the workings of the machine After all most of us can drive cars and care for them competently without knowing how they actually work in any great detail And while we may be fascinated by some details of computing and networking most of us would pre fer to leave the work to the specialists and the ma chines We simply want to be able to connect to our machines to the network and most important to our friends and colleagues Hence the new name David Frederickson Summer 1995 Statistics and the Social Sciences SPSS for Unix A Statistical Stalwart Strides to a New Platform at NYU Frank LoPresti frank lopresti nyu edu Statistical software may not be glamorous but it seems that SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences is after word processors the computer application most often used at the university level And with good reason To quote the program s user s guide SPSS is a comprehensive and flexible statistical and data management system SPSS can take data from almost any type of file and use them to generate tabulated reports charts and plots of distributions and trends descriptive statistics and complex statistical analyses The Academic Computing Facility has just ac quired a new version of SPSS for the Unix platform
12. here have to do with motion the split second twist ing of supercoiled strands of DNA the microscopic flows of gases and the motions of muscle fibers and blood in the heart The research of Professor Tamar Schlick of the Department of Chem istry FAS and CIMS deals with the motion of supercoiled DNA in saline solutions such as those of a normal cell Variations of salinity can change the behavior of the DNA which appears to be most flexible at normal cell salt levels The presence of a solvent in the cell namely water affects the forms the supercoiled DNA assumes as it moves Professor Schlick s molecular simulations seek to depict that behav ior over time Here the colored seg ments of the supertwisted strand help the viewer to follow the motion in a series of images representing the same strand in stop motion over a total of about 1 100 000 second the loops and segments can be seen to slide past each other This image was produced using Constantine Kreat soulas s interface to Per Kraulis s program MolScript a program that produces pictures of molecules from their Cartesian coordinates the latter were generated from a simulation done at CIMS by Gomathi Ramachandran Professor Marsha J Berger also of CIMS has modeled the flow of a hot dense gas as it leaves a square trench the black rectangle in the image above being cut into a medium of
13. is in re lation to the much slower book production process Journals usually include research reports case studies and other types of standard academic ar ticles often they also include book reviews and news of forthcoming publications and conferences calls for articles or papers and other news of interest to their target audience Scholarly journals distinction how Tom McNulty is at the General and Humanities Reference Desk at Bobst Library Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU LibLink New Library Listserv NYU Libraries is starting a listserv for the NYU community It will provide announcements of new services and databases tips on database searching and other items of interest LibLink will provide the entire campus with news about Bobst Library the Real Estate Institute Library the Courant Institute Library and the Institute of Fine Arts Library To be the first on your block to receive the latest library news subscribe to LibLink Send a message to listserv acfcluster nyu edu with the following text subscribe liblink yourfirstname yourlastname ever is a result of the value added by certain qual ity control and editorial functions of the publishers Whether paper or electronic scholarly journals seek to ensure high quality by employing peer review in the selection of articles for publication This pro cess usually consists of one or more scholars passing judgment on a submitte
14. performances and the like but also to key in their credit card or account number and have the object or tickets delivered to their home The NYU Web Gallery The ACF Arts Technology Group has created a Web Gallery for NYU artists and arts pregrams The Web Gallery is organized by department and each NYU department juries its own area There is room for more than a hundred simultaneous exhibits and over time we will assist both traditional and computer based artists in preparing their works for Internet display The gallery already houses several exhibits and we expect to sponsor many more in the next academic year and into the future Web Gallery exhibits can include painting photogra phy film clips and posters recorded music video and audio performance documentation animations and inter active works as well as text for artists statements class descriptions biographical material and so on Exhibits can be organized as informal showings of class related works as formal curated events sponsored by an NYU program with broad external participation or anything in between The NYU Web Gallery has been created as part of the continued on page 13 Instant Art More or Less Although the press often represents the Internet as the Information Superhighway it s far from it The bandwidth needed for real time video and audio is not at all here even with NYU s recent upgrade of its Internet link to T3 speeds When cruisi
15. those for virtual LANs video conferencing and interactive multimedia instruction 10 Wash PI Major Goals of the NYU NET II Project 1995 96 Education Eta The immediate steps for improving NYU NET are pel Centers e To increase the bandwidth the carrying ca pacity of NYU NET s connection to the Inter da Sem Weaver The Internet net by a factor of thirty e To increase the bandwidth within NYU NET from building to building tenfold e To install fiber optic lines for all interbuilding data transmission e To improve wiring within all significant build ings with vertical Ethernet or fiber optic spines connecting hubs on each floor that can easily be reached by computers on that floor e To enhance the network architecture through Ethernet over Fiber Optic Cable 10 megabits per second NYU NET University Place Summer 1995 a 715 719 721 representative locations Broadway Washington Sq N use of multiprotocol routers that facilitate net Education Denial amp block work management and security pci e To improve the capabilities and reliability of Vanderbilt Kevorkian Bobst Warren the basic underlying communications services Weaver necessary for the network to function AAN FDDI over Fiber Optic Cable 100 megabits per second e To develop a true network operations center staffed and equipped to provide proactive man agement of the network as well as user assis University P
16. triangles too much data to deal with in a rea sonble amount of time For the pur poses of the program that map was simplified to a few thousand trian gles a much more manageable num ber This is a common problem in such research the need to balance large datasets against constraints of time As a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Computer Science CIMS Andr Gu ziec now with IBM worked with Professor Robert Hummel CIMS to develop a Wrap per Algorithm designed produce an accurate surface modeling of a com plex physical object such as a skull or brain The first stage was to analyze 28 Summer 1995 Connect Academic Computing and Network the electronic data from an MR or CT scan as a multitude of minute tetra hedra rather than the usual cubic voxels or volumetric pixels which results in a continuous surface of triangles Then the algorithm can be used to simplify the surface where there is little change from one triangle to its neighbors they are grown into larger triangles this is done again and again until some of the triangles are quite large shown in shades of blue where change is abrupt the triangles are small shading through green to yellow and red The result ing images shown here both as a mesh of triangles and as the complete surface spanned by the mesh are both precise and efficient in their rep resentation of the surface geometry The other images
17. 400 995 3600 9600 14 400 995 4343 300 1200 995 4335 There are ACF facilities at the following SLIP PPP only 995 4242 locations Use this number if you have an older 1 The HelpCenter 251 Mercer St 2nd floor modem with no error correction 2 The Innovation Center 251 Mercer St 2nd floor 3 Tisch Hall computer lab 40 W 4th St lower concourse Rooms LC 7 and LC 8 4 14 Washington Place computer lab basement 5 Education Building computer lab 35 W 4th St second floor For More Information 6 Third Ave North Res Hall computer lab 75 Third Ave level C3 Please call the ACF HelpLine at 998 3333 NYU Shuttle service is available check the Info Center for schedule Summer Hours at ACF Labs for exceptions see below Sun Mon Thurs Fri Sat 14 Washington Place closed closed closed closed Tisch Hall closed 8 30 am 11 30 pm 8 30 am 11 30pm 8 30 am 5 30 pm Education Building closed 8 30 am 11 30 pm 8 30 am 11 30 pm 8 30 am 5 30 pm Third Ave North 10 30 am 1 30 am 10 30 am 1 30 am 10 30 am 5 30 pm 10 30 am 5 30 pm Open to general users from 8 30 am to 1 00 pm Mon through Fri and to priority access account holders during all hours of operation Exceptions to regular hours Confirmed Holiday schedules at the labs will be posted via our online news and bulletin board facilities ACF offices in Warren Weaver Hall are closed on University holidays Connect Academic Compu
18. David Frederickson Search Proteins See aa the one on the leftis the ice since there are fewer molecu Inthe box O o From Bobst Library The Electronic Journal Is It Here to Stay Tom McNulty mcnultyGacfcluster nyu edu In past issues this publication has given a great deal of attention to the many new and emerging forms of electronic communication available to the interna tional community of scholars and researchers By now we re all more or less familiar with electronic mail e mail discussion groups listservs and electronic books and journals The first two are well accepted and seem to be fairly straightforward Electronic books are not close to supplanting books but elec tronic journals occupy an uneasy middle area Here I d like to compare the electronic journal with its print equivalent pointing out the pros and cons of electronic versus print publishing and identifying the unique problems this new form of scholarly com munication presents to the modern researcher Journals in General The American Library Association defines a jour nal as a periodical especially one containing schol arly articles or disseminating current information on research and development in a particular subject field ALA Glossary of Library and Information Science 1983 Journals provide a rapid way to disseminate relatively current information rapid that
19. I tance and troubleshooting NYUNET nivei Piace PERIS representative locations Broadway Washington Sq N Ethernet over Fiber Optic Cable 10 megabits per second Increased Bandwidth to the Internet The first of these goals increased bandwidth to the Internet has already been achieved The connec 10 Wash PI tion was recently upgraded from one operating at a speed of 1 5 megabits million bits per second to one at 45 megabits per second For details see the No vember 1994 issue of this publication Many people have commented on the noticeable improvement in mmo reer Weaver reaching other sites on the Internet Dental amp Medical Centers The Internet Education block FDDI over Fiber Optic Cable 100 megabits per second Ethernet over Fiber Optic Cable 10 megabits per second Increased Bandwidth within NYU NET The predominant networking technology used within NYU NET has been Ethernet which has a communications bandwidth limit of 10 megabits per second As more and more computers used by more and more people share a segment of the network this capacity once viewed as enormous can soon become insufficient The next step up from Ethernet is a technology called FDDI which stands for Fiber Distributed Data Interface It operates at a speed of 100 megabits per second and is potentially more reliable than Ethernet However since FDDI equipment is more expen Thr
20. New Media Center home page includes detailed information about digital resources available to artists at NYU and pointers to a large number of off campus Web sites of interest to artists Those using the Web can enter the NYU New Media Center home page as the URL http www nyu edu nmc and the gallery as http www nyu edu nmc gallery NYU artists who want to participate in the Web Gallery should contact me Philip Galanter galanter nyu edu Philip Galanter is the ACF Arts Technol ogy Group Manager Summer Cover Image Spring 95 Among the works I ve completed over the past decade are three large paintings that feature a central spring or coil Spring 95 on the cover is a realization of this motif through digital media Though the greater part of my output falls within the category of painting I have never had any philo sophical qualms about using any tool available for artistic expression Indeed for my own work the com puter is a natural outgrowth of the direction the painting was taking Increasingly my paintings have tended to multiply illusion and opti cal effects even to the point of caus ing doubt in many viewers that they were realized in painted media at all Recently I have furthered this ambi guity by employing liquid photo graphic emulsion in combination with painting as well as by painting on tiled computer printouts mounted on wood The cover image created in Alias Sketch and modifie
21. Rainbow dye sublimation proofer Echo Graphics prepared the halftones from electronic files and printed and bound the publication Volume 5 Number 4 Summer 1995 Editor David Frederickson david frederickson nyu edu Schedule Section Editor John Quinan john quinan nyu edu Production Assistants Vijay Jodha Stacey Peters Stacy Seecharan Design David Frederickson Contributors Deljou Khorram Abadi Peter Bardazzi TSOA Gary Chapman Joe Citta Kevin J Edwards Com puter Store Edward Friedman Philip Galanter Bob Griffin SEd Andr Gu ziec IBM Estelle Hochberg Robert Hummel CIMS Frank LoPresti Tom McNulty Bobst Tim O Connor Marvin Rich GSAS Estarose Wolfson Thanks also to David Ackerman Lisa Barnett Jeff Bary Vincent Doogan David Fung Joseph Hargitai Jeffrey Lane Lu Ratunil Shelley J Smith copyright O 1995 New York University From the Editor Connect with Color Welcome to Connect Academic Computing and Net working at NYU You ve probably already noticed a couple of changes in this publication The new full color pages temporary and a new name permanent Both de serve some comment And ACF Director George Sadowsky has graciously let me have the front of the book lectern for this issue so comment I will Color I ve been sitting at the editor s desk now for two years and more For much of that time I ve been hoping to print a few pages in color n
22. Stay Liblink New Library Listserv Dialog and Internet Classes at Bobst Important Dates for ACF Users Classes Workshops and Talks Calendar Phones Policies and Hours 21 22 24 25 26 30 31 31 32 33 34 35 37 Single helix double tension Bob Griffin s Spring 95 plays visual surface against optical surface cohesion against dissolution See page 13
23. access to research tools and materials proposals and calls for participation as well as contact with arts related businesses such as film distribu tors record companies galleries publishers and suppli ers While many of these of these links are new and a bit shallow they should become more useful over time The main attraction the Web offers artists however is the promise of being able to show their work to an inter national audience Even artists using traditional forms can digitize their watercolor paintings darkroom photo graphs script readings or string quartet recordings and present them for on demand viewing For those active in the digital arts the Web is a natural vehicle for presen tation and there are experiments with various interactive forms that are sure to grow and mature Currently most artists on the Web receive compensa tion only in the form of exposure For many such as young artists or those making a living through the sale of physical artifacts this is a very strong and exciting incen tive For example record companies are now offering singles for downloading via the Web with the hope that this will lead to album sales There are already a few fine art galleries on the Web that show pieces for sale An area of intense Web development is the creation of a secure digital infrastructure to support commercial purchase transactions This will allow someone not only to preview records art books
24. adi deljou mcirps1 med nyu edu Marsha J Berger berger cs nyu edu Andr Gu ziec gueziec watson ibm com Robert Hummel hummel cims nyu edu David McQueen mcqueen cims nyu edu Charles Peskin peskin cims nyu edu Gomathi Ramachandran ramachan franklin biomath nyu edu Tamar Schlick schlick nyu edu Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU _ Y s S ogsc yw 83330 bh ES 2n 4 0 6 ye 28 GG Us Paw O SB Hac wn O vag 5 STATES EEE YN NS a 4 32 4009 SS o g Eang PO E amp 0 n e 2 1d LESS E LAN Bie l det gr 3s YF oH N yu WS SOTESEA W O amp PO 2 PESEE S LES g L E B wy y ass Sa O oO RS y co amp a DO QA Qu O Qu Ds y E Oga o Oo y 9 828 i e ee aa gekee Za e o E ee ae a oF Gf Ss z O on r gop Evs 8 ane Su m ERRELEA L Q v ose 58ga m E o O EBB oS O DoS E SS q AT y 9 v Y 6 Zo g 6e BH 8 a gx a amp 2 tS POE eee ies go a v S ao 2s vy o abg gt O TEOVOS 3 o lY vao 2 amp 3 G amp bo 2305823 Ic UH UO DO osteotomy only one large piece of facial bone cut and moved brings slight improvement at the bottom a more complex series of eight osteotomies each shown in a differ ent color produces a better fit The surgical simulator relies on a study that mapped the skull in sev eral hundred thousand
25. alley the megabucks come from Hollywood but the producers are finding that the talent comes from New York And in many cases it wants to stay here so multimedia firms such as Voyager have set up shop here Not coinci dentally here often means within hailing distance of NYU long a hotbed of research and experimenta tion in the field Hollywood and Industrial Light and Magic awed viewers with the 3D animations in Jurassic Park a while ago lavish effects that we were told cost millions of dollars to produce They also cost weeks of heavy duty computer time since each frame had to be rendered separately and each contained dozens of elements with their own characteristics of volume motion color surface lighting and so forth each of which had to be calculated and that s after the objects were painstakingly constructed in the first place All very well but there has to be an easier way 12 Summer 1995 Here in the Animation Area of the Department of Film and TV at NYU s Tisch School of the Arts Peter Bar dazzi has been taking students through the paces of computer ani mation for nearly a decade Over the years the computer tools they ve been using have been growing more and more powerful hardware such as the SGI Indigo 2 computers and the Abekas frame buffer at the ACF and software such as the animation program Alias And Bardazzi and his students have been learning to make the most of them N
26. ams that have been con verted to run in a parallel mode are available These include Xplor from Yale University and Spartan from Wavefunction Inc they will soon be joined by MacroModel from Columbia University and Gaussian 92 from Gaussian Inc These packages are important computationally intense software offerings of inter est to researchers in chemistry biology and the medi cal sciences Documentation Silicon Graphics provides a visual tool called In sight to display most of the documentation needed to use and develop parallel high performance applica tions The user must have a multi window display such as the console of a workstation or X Window The shrinking high perfor mance computer In 1963 the Weather Bureau s computer called Stretch filled a large room right and executed 700 000 instructions per sec ond The ACF s new SGI computer called Copernicus left has four processors which together can execute 1 200 000 000 instructions per second making it about 1700 times as fast terminal in order to gain access to the online books Entire manuals or individual pages may be browsed or printed in a number of formats including PostScript Books describing the language processors and the automatic parallelizing tools known as Power Fortran Accelerator and Iris Power C are available via Insight Usage and Experience A number of NYU researchers have been using the Challenge to help u
27. art students are com monly exposed to the technology as early as the first 6 Summer 1995 year of study The ACF s well equipped Arts Tech nology labs serve a number of exciting classes Kate Fallon teaches in the Department of Photog raphy at the Tisch School of the Arts The examples shown from her Computer Imaging I class have been done by first time Macintosh users Jennifer Maloney below and Ku Ling Choy Siegel upper right opposite Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Maureen Nappi teaches the follow up Computer Imaging II class The samples shown represent some of the work by her students including Artur Makl yarevsky above Yo Lynn Hagood below and Jon Rothhaupt upper right on the next spread Peter Bardazzi teaches film students in the Ani mation Area of the Tisch School of the Arts His stu dents create animations in virtual 3D worlds using Summer 1995 7 8 Summer 1995 sophisticated hardware from Sili con Graphics and software from Alias Research Shown are some stills from motion sequences by students Diane Shapiro above and Matthew Van Dolen left and below Meanwhile in the School of Education Kathleen Ruiz teaches students in the Department of Arts and Arts Professions In her class Adva
28. can be solved by simulating surgery before going to the operating room A surgical simulator developed by Deljou Khorram Abadi under Dr Court Cutting of the Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery NYU Medical Center using the facilities of the ACP s Scientific Visualization Lab simulates surgery much as it takes place in the operating room but without the limitations of real surgery It uses a graphical model of the patient s skull extracted from CT scans it can cut and reposition each bone fragment interactively con struct postoperative graphics models for evaluation before surgery and provide surgical plans to be taken to the operating room The on screen simulation can be performed either manually or auto matically For the automatic osteotomies there is a predefined There are several ways you can learn more about the projects shown here NYU CWIS From an NYU connection and an ACF account select NYU CWIS then Academic Computing and Networking Resources then Academic Computing Facility then Science and Visualization Resources World Wide Web With a browser such as Lynx character only or Mosaic and Netscape graphical you can reach the NYU ACF Scientific Visualization home page via obvious menu choices through the NYU or ACF home Summer 1995 page or you can go directly by typing the URL http www nyu edu pages scivis E Mail You can also contact the researchers via e mail D Khorram Ab
29. can or cannot reach machines attached to the router Thus a router based network can be made more secure than a bridge based network The new NYU NET II architecture relies heavily on the use of CISCO high performance routers It can be noted that the Internet consists of a large number of such routers which interconnect individual networks such as NYU s the Internet is a router based network In evolving NYU NET to be router based we shall on a far smaller scale mirror the structure of the larger Internet Enhanced Network Communications Services A set of fundamental communications services basic programs and the services they provide underlies the operation of a data communications net work particularly one such as the Internet itself that use the TCP IP communications protocols e Domain Name Service allows connections from machine to machine by names by translating a designation such as is nyu edu to the corre sponding Internet number for the machine 128 122 250 19 which is the address actually used in transmissions e BOOTp provides network information to com puters when they start up e Network Time synchronizes time among net worked computers e Kerberos performs user authentication for access to machines e Various other programs configure network attached terminals And just beyond these most basic services there is a set of communications services more familiar to end users of significan
30. criteria for selecting computer tools Taught by staff from the NYU Computer Store Limited seating first come first served Warren Weaver Hall room 313 Fridays 12 00 1 30 June 9 July 7 August 11 Getting Started on Your New Computer Mac and PC This introductory talk will help you learn your new computing equip ment It will focus on such basic Operations as setting up your com puter setting up a printer and con figuring your operating system with the fonts and tools you need This talk will be particularly helpful to re cent or prospective purchasers of computing equipment Taught by staff from the NYU Computer Store Limited seating first come first served 1 For Mac Owners Warren Weaver Hall room 313 Fridays 12 00 1 30 June 16 August 18 2 For PC Owners Warren Weaver Hall room 313 Fridays 12 00 1 30 June 23 August 25 Using a Mac at an ACF Lab Mac A hands on introduction to the Macintosh computer Topics include working with the graphical user interface understanding the file system choosing printers file serv ers and other devices and launching software applications ACE staff Limited seating first come first served Education Building 2nd floor Tuesdays Saturdays 11 00 12 00 May 23 30 June 3 July 11 15 18 3rd Ave No Res Hall level C 3 Mondays 11 00 12 00 May 22 July 10 17 Wednesdays 1 00 2 00 May 24 31 July 5 12 Using a PC at an ACF Lab PC A hands on introduc
31. curity there are certain standards and practices that make accounts resistant to intrusion The first line of defense is to choose a good pass word A good password is a password you can remem ber but which is both hard to guess and not found in a dictionary A common technique used by system crackers to find passwords is to apply a brute force dictionary attack which means that the aspiring cracker will run a program that applies every word in the dictionary against each account s password The program reports whenever there is a match be tween a dictionary word and an account s password You can help prevent this by carefully choosing your passwords If you have multiple accounts never use one pass word on more than one account An intruder who gains access to the first account would automatically have access to your other accounts A Few Examples Good and Bad Dreadful choices for passwords e your username first or last name or any com bination of them e words like password computer Bad passwords e your nickname or student ID number e a string of identical letters or numbers e g 2222222 XXXXXXXX e your true love s name or your pet s name Wet secret Move to NYU Internet ACFcluster EMIS Accounts to Expire June 15 The ACF has begun the final stages of moving Electronic Mail and Internet Services EMIS accounts from the ACFcluster to the new NYU Internet sys tem The new NYU Inte
32. d Reference Collections and finally Connect Academic Computing and Net working at NYU the newsletter Starting with this issue much of the material will also be available on the World Wide Web at the URL http www nyu edu acf pubs connect We welcome your comments and suggestions about the articles in this issue and about articles for future issues Contributions are invited for consideration by the editor please call 998 3038 or for more information send e mail to me at the address given here Articles are written by members of the ACF staff unless otherwise indicated Opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Academic Computing Facility or of New York University Below many of the authors by lines are electronic mail e mail addresses If you do not use e mail but would like to call the ACF HelpLine at 998 3333 for information about opening an appropriate ac count This issue was prepared on Apple Macintosh Quadra and IIci comput ers using Aldus PageMaker Micro soft Word Adobe Type Manager Adobe Photoshop and Quark XPress among other programs Fonts used in this issue are Palatino for the text and Gill Sans bold for headlines along with Zapf Dingbats for special effects Camera ready copy of text and diagrams was pro duced using a 600 dpi Hewlett Packard 4si printer at the ACF color proof prints were prepared on the ACF s 3M
33. d applica tions with those of their colleagues in other countries and cultures They want internationalized software A challenge to today s software programmers the emer gence of multicultural multilingual computing offers im portant new opportunities to the academic and business worlds At an upcoming ACF FAS colloquium John I McConnell will discuss the history current status and fu ture of internationalized software as well as the technical industrial national and political factors that will deter mine its future McConnell an expert in the area now bears principal responsibility at Apple Computer for working with soft ware companies to develop internationalized products for the Macintosh Formerly a member of Apple Computer s International Engineering group he is Apple s representa tive to the Unicode consortium and helps represent the US at International Standard Organization ISO meetings on character set standardization Come to hear McConnell on Friday April 28 at 2 p m in Room 109 of Warren Weaver Hall 4 Summer 1995 puters and its IBM mainframe as a base for social science computing SPSS for Unix has been installed at the ACF and has been extensively tested by NYU researchers It runs in the three distinct modes that have been men tioned in this article e Old fashioned command files may be submit ted and run e The SPSS PC interface is available to users who want some sort of menu inte
34. d article s merit i e a yes or no vote on whether to publish usually accom panied by comments to the author This process is often completely anonymous that is the reviewer s identity is not revealed to the author and vice versa Peer review has implications beyond mere publica tion it affects the review for tenure in academia and the status of the electronic journal is still not firmly established in this realm What Is an Electronic Journal Electronic journals with a few exceptions follow the criteria for quality established much earlier by the print journals In terms of content electronic jour Summer 1995 31 nals often resemble their print counterparts they pro vide a unit comprising one or more articles and are sometimes supplemented by regular columns and news But whereas print journals are mailed to sub scribers or purchased in bookstores electronic jour nals provide a number of distribution options E journals are sometimes posted on listservs or Go pher servers where anyone can read them Subscrib ers to e journals usually receive each new issue by e mail While some journals distribute their entire issue this way others might send only the table of contents the latter method requires that subscribers order desired items individually from the journal s listserv Individual issues or single articles can usu ally be e mailed by researchers whe
35. d battery make sure that it is fully charged and recharg it every three to six months Kevin J Edwards is the Service Manager for the NYU Computer Store 22 Summer 1995 Charging a New Battery The manufacturers recommend that all new PowerBook and IBM ThinkPad model batteries be charged for about twenty four hours before their first use The user s manual of any new notebook com puter will describe proper procedures for its battery it pays to follow those instructions carefully You can use the notebooks while they are charg ing however this increases the amount of time needed for a full charge Recharging and the Memory Effect For most notebooks it takes a full eight hours to recharge the battery completely The battery can charge about 75 percent in about an hour the last 25 percent goes much more slowly Be sure to check the manual for your model s charging time It s important to let the battery drain completely before starting to recharge The habit of recharging a battery that is not fully drained will cause it to lose its charging capacity it will act as if it s been dis charged when it reaches the level it was at before the last recharging the memory effect You can reduce the memory effect slightly by reconditioning the bat tery completely discharging it and then fully re charging it Keep in mind that your battery likes to be drained completely and recharged completely The worst thing you can
36. d in Adobe PhotoShop is destined for similar treatment Admittedly my approach to art making is somewhat over the top Tension and instability are key ingre dients for visual impact For example I exploit the computer s strangely precise rendering capabilities and then undermine the clarity of the image by importing optical or con flicting surfaces I feel the work to be the most successful when the fight between cohesion and dissolution seduction and denial reach a fevered pitch In many ways I subscribe to Andr Breton s dictum that beauty should be convulsive or not at all Bob Griffin griffin acfcluster nyu edu Bob Griffin teaches Fundamentals of Art and Media in the Department of Art SEd Summer 1995 13 NYU NET Il The Communications Network for NYU s Future Gary Chapman gary chapman nyu edu This spring the Academic Computing Facility is em barking on a major project to enhance NYU NET After the gradual growth of the network in the 1980s the early 1990s brought explosive growth in demand and usage NYU NET serves the community with a highly reliable and increasingly important communi cations capability it is now time however to intro duce improvements that will permit continued growth as well as enhanced network reliability se curity and manageability To state it simply the goal is to provide all mem bers of the university community with a versatile reliab
37. do to the battery is to drain it and leave it drained or habitually to recharge it be fore it has fully drained Batteries and AC Adapters at Home Many owners of notebook computers keep them at home on their desk There is nothing wrong with Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU leaving your PowerBook plugged in all the time you can even leave it on in sleep mode However you would want to drain the battery occasionally If you know that you ll be using your computer for a couple of hours unplug it and run it off the battery until it drains Then plug it back in On the other hand if you won t be using it turn it on and let it drain completely before plugging it back in Try to do this at least once or twice a month A few notebooks have peculiar rules about being used without a battery installed or when you can install a battery The PowerBook 150 can be used from its AC adapter without a battery but be care ful you must have the adapter plugged in before installing a drained battery Inserting a fully drained battery in a PowerBook 150 before plugging in the adapter can cause a fuse on the logic board to blow If you will be storing your PowerBook for a couple of months or more charge the battery completely and then unplug the adapter and remove the battery from the PowerBook When you get back the battery will have drained on its own after about a month This is normal for NiCad batteries On the Road
38. duced by the com mands in the syntax window at right Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 3 syntactically correct The code can be manipulated in the syntax window Output and graphics windows display the output Perhaps because all windowed applications are functionally similar and because more and more students use MS Windows by the end of a one hour tutorial most students are able to define data sets and run simple commands Instant gratification SPSS for Unix Today the Windows version is the one most often used at the ACF labs NYU But there are problems and situations that can best be handled on a larger shared computer such as the old IBM mainframe or the new Unix machine That the new version of SPSS is for the Unix plat form is no coincidence more and more research in the social sciences as in other fields is being done on Unix machines In line with this trend the ACF is moving away from its DEC VAX cluster of minicom April 28 Colloquium Software for Multilingual and Multicultural Computing Computers and networks have become global phenom ena touching the business professional and academic lives of millions of people around the world Computer users today in Egypt China India Japan and the rest of the world demand systems that understand their languages and their cultural conventions And they want faster easier and more accurate interchange of their data an
39. e calls EUnet operates points of presence POPs in many As we go to press an Academic Computing Facil ity World Wide Web page is being prepared The first edition should be accessible by the time this publication hits the stands Its URL will be http www nyu edu acf The ACF pages will continue to be developed over the summer months Keep checking for improve ments and additions European cities As long as you are near a POP you can dial a local number log in and Telnet to your system back home without running up a long distance bill EUnet charges a registration fee of 30 European Cur rency Units The ECU was trading during the summer at roughly 0 85 US dollars to one ECU Beyond the regis tration fee the cost is 30 ECU per month which includes three hours of connect time at no additional charge For connect time beyond three hours EUnet charges 10 ECU per hour During the summer EUnet offered dialup ac cess at speeds up to 14 400 bps I used both MacKermit and ZTerm as my communications software I frequently experienced some garbled characters with ZTerm but MacKermit performed flawlessly Getting More Information EUnet operates a World Wide Web home page the URL is http www eu net and offers online account creation To apply for an account select EUnet Travel ler on the EUnet home page or telnet to traveller eu net log in as new Payment is accepted by credit card American Express Visa
40. e list instead of to the author of a message Now imagine if you were an untenured professor the harm that could be done if remarks disparaging your department chair were sent to a list by a malicious third party in your name It might appear that you wrote it and accidentally posted it to a public list rather than to a private individual In addition an intruder who gains access to your account has a foot in the door of your system Since 18 Summer 1995 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU many systems used for Internet access are shared systems and since shared systems are cooperative ventures the intruder represents a potential threat to everyone else on the system The threat is tiny but is no less a threat Since NYU NET like the Internet itself is a coop erative enterprise the intruder might be able to inter fere with service beyond the single compromised system perhaps causing problems that can affect other people who rely on the network at NYU Worst is the intangible damage security problems create The integrity of systems may become suspect and so by extension might the network itself Picking a Password Be Obscure Be Very Obscure Some people find it bothersome to use difficult passwords so they select easily remembered words Unfortunately in all too many cases a password that is easy to remember is a password easy to guess Although there are few absolute guarantees in computer se
41. ed We came to under stand just how hard it had been to program from a command prompt For instance you had to know the entire programming language and you had to enter each command in the correct syntax Once we found out what programming from a menu was like the old way seemed brutal SPSS came out with SPSS PC its first version for a desktop computer SPSS PC offered several meth ods to run jobs You could run interactive jobs from a command prompt entering the commands a line at a time which modified the active data file as the com mands were submitted Or you could submit a com mand file the old fashioned way which you had created from the menus or by using a text editor Or you could use a mouse and pull down text to create commands It was almost like a Mac Almost After our initial excitement we found it to be a less than satisfactory product SPSS PC was difficult to use and not user friendly It was rich in features and commands The menus for creating commands permitted incorrect syntax to be included which made the commands invalid The program was hard to teach and learn Years passed SPSS PC did little to make them fly We waited In the late 1980s MS Windows ap peared and matured Finally in 1992 SPSS came out with SPSS for Windows around the time the 486 chip came out The wait was worth it While SPSS PC was a sub set of the SPSS language available on the mainframes SPSS for Windows was t
42. ee phases of NYU NET II intended to increase connnectivity and capacity throughout NYU over the next eighteen months sive than Ethernet equipment and since some seg ments of the university s network do not yet need speeds greater than those of Ethernet the challenge has been to design a step by step process in which FDDI is used to maximum advantage where its need is greatest The figures above show roughly how the faster FDDI networking equipment represented by the heavier lines will be phased into NYU NET Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 15 Please note that these diagrams are not meant to show all locations on campus nor the precise dates when the upgrades will be introduced Fiber Optic Transmission High speed FDDI communications between build ings requires fiber optic cabling This spring the NYU Department of Telecommunications is performing the major role of managing many new fiber installations for this project The second diagram shows as examples a couple of buildings that are not in the first in the second they are connected to NYU NET via Ethernet over fiber optic cabling Several buildings such as Meyer Hall are presently connected to NYU NET via broadband cabling This older cable is in wide use at NYU for video transmission and still for a major amount of Ethernet data communications at a trans mission rate of 5 megabits per second A ma
43. eep discharge of the batteries before re continued on page 32 Vive la Telnet continued from page 21 found the response time to be astonishingly good be tween Paris and my ACF account except for one session when there were significant delays between the time I pressed keys and the time the characters echoed on my screen Access was always available no matter what time of the day or night I called In fact the only real trouble I had was entirely of my own creation In previous visits to Paris I had never placed a telephone call So the first time I tried to connect I heard France T l com s dialtone and ring signals through the modem s speaker It sounded so unlike any thing I had ever heard that I was convinced I had done something terribly wrong I immediately terminated the connection Then I sat looking out the window convinced that the local gendarmes would soon arrive to seize me and the borrowed computer After some time had elapsed with no trace of the police I picked up the telephone and dialed the EUnet number by hand It sounded on the phone exactly as it had through the modem so I con cluded that I had perhaps been a bit too jumpy I tried again and made a successful connection Would I Do It Again I was in Paris for nearly two weeks straddling the end of June and the beginning of July I paid the setup fee and was charged the monthly fee for both June and July I used the service for a total of nine hou
44. eople who have been work ing with an EMIS account to discuss related issues with members of the staff Seating is limited only the first to 30 attendees can be accommo dated For more information please call the ACF HelpLine at 998 3333 Warren Weaver Hall room 313 Fridays 12 00 1 00 May 5 12 19 34 Summer 1995 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Statistics Spread sheets and Databases SPSS PC Unix and WYLBUR SPSS Statistical Package for the So cial Sciences is a comprehensive integrated system for statistical data analysis While these presentations will use either the Windows or the newer Unix version of SPSS the programming concepts are applicable to all versions of SPSS Getting Started on Your New Mac 12 00 Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 11 00 Using PC at an ACF Lab 1 00 ACF s Summer Hours begin Summer Session I 30 SPSS for Unix 2 00 Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 11 00 Using Unix at the ACF 1 00 Memorial Day all labs closed Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 1 00 Using Unix at the begins ACF 1 00 Introduction to SPSS for Unix Unix An introduction to the Unix based version of this package which has a graphical user interface This talk will introduce basic Unix shell commands along with data input and transfor mations of data will be discussed Frank Lopresti Limited seating first come first served Warren Weaver Hall room 313
45. es ions k oe ae ol IS NYU NET Il Upgrading the Communicat A d o e ia Di t NY Number 4 me a ime from Scientific Visualization Color Images Reearch Network for NYU at NYU Sampler of Student Mult for Studying Dance Volume 5 a d Network S 50 S ic Comput IC Academ gt e 4 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU is edited and published by New York University s Academic Computing Facility ACP Its scope includes information about computing and networking activities at NYU s various schools depart ments and administrative units and outside developments of interest to the NYU community Copies of Connect are mailed to university faculty and staff and are also available from the ACF s Infor mation Services Office room 312 Warren Weaver Hall at the ACF Help Center second floor Warren Weaver Hall and at the ACF com puter labs listed inside the back co ver Students holding ACF indi vidual computer accounts are in cluded automatically in the mailing list Selected articles from this publi cation have been made available on the NYU CWIS starting with the March 1993 issue To locate these articles choose Academic Comput ing and Networking Resources from the main CWIS menu then select Academic Computing Facil ity then Publications an
46. filiation and the type of ma terials you wish to post A member of the ACF staff will get in touch with you to discuss how to proceed Gary Chapman ing systems and tools devoted to maintaining the network and solving problems as they arise The ACF staff members who form the core of the NOC are e Bill Russell responsible for oversight of the evolving network architecture router configu ration and our link to the Internet e Jimmy Kyriannis responsible for network moni toring and management _ e Mario Clagnaz responsible for network wiring and hardware installations with the assistance of the ACF technicians known as the Datamen e Gary Rosenblum responsible for Unix system continued on page 20 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 17 A aaa Keeping NYU NET Up and Running System Security Starts with You Tim O Connor tim oconnor nyu edu In New York City we quickly learn about safe and unsafe behavior Certain actions while polite entail definite risks Most of us probably would not let strangers into the lobby of our apartment buildings We might think twice about holding open the door to a 24 hour cash machine We would certainly not want to leave a window open at night if it is by a fire escape Many people do not realize that similar principles apply to using computers for Internet access As we
47. he edi tors we used for the SPSS command and data files The earliest programs and data were punched a line at a time onto cards that were fed through the com puters in stacks that were sometimes huge In the 1970s we advanced to teletype terminals which al Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU lowed us to type at a keyboard and printed the out put on paper We would edit a file with line editors still a line at a time There was no concept of using a cursor to move freely around the file there were not even any screens to display the data CRTs cathode ray tubes used for TV screens or monitors and then desktop computers took us to where we are today Monitors made it possible to see the files as they were being edited The PC s func tionality with word processors like WordPerfect raised programmers expectations and full screen editing soon came to all computers SPSS files were now created in a full screen environment but the jobs were still submitted from a command line prompt Data were still stored either in traditional files large arrays of numbers with no spreadsheet like display or in files that couldn t be edited di rectly since they were in binary code SPSS Moves to the Personal Computer The advent of the GUI the graphical user inter face such as the one on the Macintosh with menus and mice took us to a higher level Click click click and something happen
48. he real thing The people at SPSS had been waiting for a more powerful personal computer even after Windows was created And they had used the time to develop a powerful nearly flaw less statistical programming package SPSS for Windows is able to handle large data sets in the hundred megabyte range about the equiva lent of ten Manhattan telephone directories It is able to run most simple statistical procedures and many advanced statistical tasks on these large data sets Sorting aggregating merging and computing new variables from old data it is happy with data in many personal computer formats from plain vanilla ASCII to tutti frutti Excel as input or output The data are displayed in a spreadsheetlike format the data win dow The menus create commands that are always X Windows is a graphical user interface GUI that allows pro grams running on a Unix computer to be displayed in multiple windows whether on the computer s own monitor on another Unix machine on an X terminal or on a desktop computer Several applications can be open at one time and programs like SPSS will usually have several windows open At left a gray dialogue box allows the user to design an analysis of variance which can be run immediately on the data in the next spread sheet like window or pasted into the syntax window behind that for future use Other windows will display the ouput such as a table or graph or a test like the T test pro
49. hone all can speak but only one can drive and a num ber of viewers participating via the Internet or modem in a videotext window The YORB is a project in the Interactive Telecommuni cations Program of the Tisch School of the Arts Nick West acts as producer with many collaborators from the ITP program and from the rest of NYU and the city Philip Galanter galanter nyu edu 10 Summer 1995 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU The Web Gallery A New Exhibiton Space for NYU Artists Offered by ACF s Arts Technology Group Over the last year the World Wide Web WWW has grown quickly to present images video clips music sound text and other media to anyone with access to the Internet Because the Web presents a such wealth of multi media information to a worldwide audience it has quickly become a topic of great interest in the arts Users of virtually any computer connected to the Inter net can use a program called a browser to navigate the Web a multimedia ready system can take full advantage of the Web s riches Two popular browsers are Netscape and Mosaic The information is presented in a page for mat The initial page for a particular topic or Web site is called the home page and it usually serves as the index to the contents of related pages There are thousands of home pages covering a multitude of topics and many new pages are added every day The Web offers artists
50. ill be too Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Connect The predecessor of this publication began modestly in 1980 as the Academic Computing Facility Newsletter a few pages of typescript that were offset and stapled together Under Estelle Hochberg s able editorship the newsletter grew in size scope and sophistication reflecting the growth of computing in the research community In 1991 computing was moving out all over the campus and the world and Dr Sadowsky encouraged a broader scope for the newsletter it became Academic Computing and Net working at NYU and regularly featured work and submissions from all over the university The publi cation has continued to evolve we ve tried to make it interesting and informative for computer people and nonspecialists alike I m certainly not a computer specialist which I hope helps keep this publication accessible None theless I may be a computer person though of a late generation Time was when I considered myself a Luddite generally unsympathetic to computers and indeed anything that I couldn t fix with a ham mer and a screwdriver I m not sure I m a convert though I m pretty comfortable with computers now But I m certainly not a computer scientist and to claim that I could program a computer would stretch a small nugget of truth beyond recognition Even that though probably marks me as more of an insider than most people who use
51. introduction to SPSS for MS Windows PC Data input transformations of vari ables creation of system files and other manipulations of data will be discussed Frank LoPresti Reservations required call 998 3333 during week of class Tisch Hall room LC8 Wednesdays 6 00 7 30 May 31 June 7 July 12 Calendar May June I Tuesday 2 00 3 30 May 30 June 27 Wednesday Thursday 10 Spring semester final examinations Student Class Accounts issued for the spring semester i Commencement Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 1 00 Using PC at an ACF Lab 11 00 31 Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 1 00 Using a PC atan ACF Lab 11 00 SPSS for Windows 6 00 7 SPSS for Windows 6 00 Friday Sat Sun 5 User Q amp A EMIS to NYU Internet 12 00 12 User Q amp A EMIS to NYU Internet 12 00 19 User Q amp A EMIS to NYU Internet 12 00 27 28 Memorial Day weekend holiday hours 3 4 Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 11 00 Using a PC at an ACF Lab 11 00 10 11 Using a PC at an ACF lab 11 00 Choosing Your Computer 12 00 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 35 Calendar 10 Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 11 00 Using a PC atan ACF Lab 1 00 17 Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 11 00 Using a PC atan ACF Lab 1 00 Tuesday SPSS for Unix 2 00 Independence Day all labs closed Using a Mac at an ACF Lab 11 00
52. iption of the R8000 This system complements the ACF s IBM RS 6000 workstation cluster which is configured as a distributed memory parallel processor intercon nected by a high speed crossbar switch For more about types of multiprocessor computer see page 20 of the September 1994 issue of this publication Hardware l Copernicus is configured with four of these R8000 processors over 256 megabytes of high density memory and over 16 gigabytes of fast wide disk stor age Each processor has a stated peak floating point rate of 307 megaflops resulting in an overall peak of more than 1 2 gigaflops megaflops stands for million floating point operations per second a gigaflop is of course a billion of them Although the peak rate is theoretical we were able to obtain over a gigaflop by running the Linpack benchmark test on this system Linpack is a tuned compute intense application used as a measure of performance a way to verify manufacturers claims Most real world applications run more slowly and a yield several hundred megaflops on a 64 bit single precision system is still Edward Friedman heads the Scientific Computing Group of the Academic Computing Facility impressive and important to the NYU researchers whose work is computationally intensive The cost and performance of this system compare very favor ably with expensive shared memory systems avail able from Cray IBM and DEC Software Copernicus b
53. ividual Computer Account form ACF770 Make sure you give a com plete description of your project and an explanation of how a parallel system can effectively be used in your research or classwork Accounts on CAPC sys tems require that the project involves significant use of parallelism al Laptop Batteries continued from page 23 charging them nor is a deep discharge recommended Deeply discharging an intelligent battery would cause the voltage to dip below the level needed for its pro cessor to perform properly The recommended pro cedure is to use the PowerBook on battery power until the battery level warning dialog box is displayed at that point be sure to save any files that you are working on since you may not be able to save them later Continue to use the PowerBook until the unit goes to sleep automatically then connect the AC adapter and fully charge the batteries You should do this every three months or so a Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 795 at the ACF Important Dates for ACF Users Users of ACF facilities should be aware of the following dates and deadlines when schedules change accounts expire and files must be stored For schedules of the ACF facilities see the inside back cover for information on general indi vidual and class accounts see the inside back cover for e mail NYU Internet accounts see the Networks section May Current Current Current Cur
54. jor goal of the NYU NET II project is to elimi nate Ethernet communications over the broadband cable Fiber optic cabling is to be used wherever pos sible both to enhance bandwidth and to eliminate problems associated with the use of aging equipment Improved Intra Building Wiring There are about a dozen major buildings on cam pus that do not have easy access to Ethernet based network connections Such connections typically in volve an Ethernet riser an Ethernet cable run ning vertically in a building through each telephone closet Each closet contains networking equipment to which computers on the floor can be attached One of the goals of the NYU NET II project is to make sure that all buildings have Ethernet risers Network Architecture Heretofore the network architecture of NYU NET has been based on the use of devices called bridges These devices have proved invaluable in segmenting the network into different areas they keep local com munications traffic local for instance confining it to one floor within a building but permit information flow across campus and out to the Internet as de sired Modern network design however calls for use of a more sophisticated type of infrastructure device called a router A router performs the same functions as a bridge but in addition permits far greater man agement and configuration options For example with a router it is possible to specify which remote loca tions
55. k Thereafter Alias treats the Buddha as it does any other 3D object allowing the viewer to move around it but not too far since the statue will ultimately be revealed as a bas relief with a hollow back Dimension without volume Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Surface mapping can provide the effect of animated titles too Caulfield and Bardazzi found Set ting type on a computer is old hat by now it s been done commercially for thirty years or so And it can be done in Alias as well with letters turned into 3D objects that can fly around the screen or chug after each other in a train or whatever Unfortunately that takes a lot of computer time But if you let the type stand still and reflect it off a surface that appears to be moving you ve got apparent motion Picture a funhouse mirror reflecting the type now pic ture the various dips and bulges of the mirror in motion sending the type swirling around Here however the reflective surface is defined as the inside of a hemisphere which re reverses the type that would have been reversed by reflection Caulfield insists that it s only the surface map on the hemisphere that appears to be moving he apparently thinks the hemisphere is real and stable and only the map is an illusion Welcome to Hyperreality 203 David Frederickson Web Gallery continued from page 11 ACF support for the New Media Centers program The NYU
56. le high capacity data communications network This evolving network has been dubbed NYU NET II Background NYU NET is New York University s data commu nications network which supports research instruc tion and administrative activities at the university It provides the means for sharing and delivering infor mation within NYU and is the university s link to the larger Internet the worldwide network made up of interconnected networks like NYU NET By the early 1990s several characteristics of NYU NET were becoming impediments for example severely limited communications bandwidth and a reliance on devices that could be configured man aged and monitored only to a limited degree In the same period we have seen a major expansion in use of the network and in types of use especially in the transmission of graphics and other image data The popularization of the Internet and emergence of Mo Gary Chapman is Associate Director of the ACF saic and the World Wide Web have been major fac tors in this growth Further there are increasing con cerns about the reliability and the security of the network as so many people access its resources from around campus and from remote locations via the Internet or dial in modems In 1993 under the leadership of Assistant Chan cellor Richard Stanley a high level working group was formed to draw up plans for improving the network Members of the group came from the Academic Co
57. low density and temperature Ulti mately lasers will be used to dig Connect Academic Computing and Netwo micron scale trenches in integrated circuits she writes Before this can be done itis important to under stand the dynamics of the laser induced flow so that debris patterns can be categorized or even predicted as a function of energy deposition In this case color is used to represent the varying density of the flowing gas Professor Charles Peskin of the Department of Mathematics FAS FIGURE la and Research Scientist David McQueen of CIMS have developed a computer simulation of a human heart modeling its motions and the flows of the blood through it In the paired series of images below the upper row shows a relaxed heart being filled with blood oxygen rich blood from the lungs in red and oxygen poor blood from the veins in purple and the lower row shows a heart contracting to eject the blood The first image in each row shows the exterior of the heart as a rendered surface the second is a cutaway view revealing the blood flow the third enlarged is a wireframe model indicating the muscular fibrous struc ture and revealing the flow in greater detail a HA MATHMOL K 12 Mathematics and Molecules woke Pug Learning about Math and Molecules on the Web Having found the World Wide Web
58. mputing Facility Bobst Library the De partment of Telecommunications the University Computing Center the Medical School and the Stern School of Business The group developed a plan that calls for major improvements over a two year period as well as ex perimentation with new technologies to enable their future use as part of NYU NET Thus the project now beginning represents the first stage in a disciplined evolution of NYU NET to enable it to meet the data communications needs of the university as they emerge in coming years It is meant to set the foun dation for future stages in which NYU NET becomes a fully integrated multimedia capable network The vision for this future network to evolve step by step over the next decade provides for the full capabilities within the university and out into the larger network world now being plotted for the na tional information infrastructure NII capabilities that are or soon will be integral to the research instructional and administrative work of the univer sity community These include applications for shar ing information such as those for virtual libraries museums and art galleries and for electronic pub 14 Summer 1995 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU NYU NET University Place February 1995 715 719 721 representative locations Broadway dd Washington Sq N lishing as well as applications to enhance productiv ity and study such as
59. n using the jour nal via Gopher or retrieved via FTP file transfer protocol Because they are maintained electronically e jour nals have certain distinct advantages over their print counterparts volumes or single issues are never off the shelf or in the bindery as the crucial issue always seems to be in a library so even when they re in use by one researcher they remain available to others Also e journals can be produced and distributed faster than their print equivalents and do not take up valuable library shelf space So What s the Problem The electronic journal provides an entirely new venue for scholarly communication but electronic publishing brings its own unique problems to schol ars researchers and librarians Over the past decade the skyrocketing cost of aca demic journals has become a major concern for li brarians and electronic publishing has been seen as a potential money saver Individual issues of elec tronic journals are usually maintained as a collection Dialog and Internet Classes at Bobst Spring and Summer DIALOG training sessions Thursday April 20 10 11 am Friday June 2 10 11 am 10 11 am 10 11 am 10 11 am Friday June 16 Friday July 7 Friday July 21 Bobst Library offers the following Internet classes Internet Basics Introduction to FTP and Introduc tion to World Wide Web Ask for a schedule of classes at any Bobst Reference Desk 1st 6th and 9th floor 32 Summer 1995
60. nced Projects in Art and Media students with previ ous digital art experience work Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU v o E Q 4 om gt 50 E g E 27 anh af So o y oO S v ca T Mar a o Y AnS a ts that and top left jec i mothy Shaney bot ht opposite Sodetz above and below and Sang Joon at right ty of pr i on a varie tom r E by students Ti J ITP sYORB Just An Ordinary New York Cyberneighborhood backwards Feroc c mon you guys let s count to Stacy no let s have a party where everyone types calas you re weird Pay attention to the show The YORB is an experiment in building communities through the creative use of communications technologies The illustration below provides an overview of the virtual community that YORB participants can interact in Vari ous locations offer games information art exhibits and other interactive features Each week the YORB is broadcast throughout Man hattan as a public access television show channel 34 from 11 pm to midnight Thursdays during which view ers can interact via telephone voice and keypad control as well as via the Internet the local Echo electronic bulletin board and even by fax The screen at left shows a typical broadcast view in the virtual community a number of characters corresponding to viewers connected by tele p
61. ng the Web your rate of access will be deter mined by where the files are coming from what kind of media they are and how large they are Files downloaded from within NYU will be con siderably faster than those from outside Internet connections to the home using even the fastest modems and SLIP PPP software are slower yet CD quality sound is perhaps the most expen sive form in that one minute of audio is about 10 megabytes of data A three minute pop song can take several hours to download to a home system Animations in both QuickTime and MPEG format are slightly faster to download at 3 to 10 MB per minute of play time the wide range of sizes is accounted for by different compression methods and whether sound is included Finally still images are best stored in a JPEG compressed for mat For images intended for presentation of a computer display the upper limit is usually no more than 1 megabyte Many thumbnail images and icons are stored as GIF images no greater than 20 to 50 kilobytes which take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or so to retrieve PG Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 I Movement without Motion Dimension without Volume New Wrinkles in Computer Animation at NYU If you ve been following the press you re aware that New York City is becoming one of the centers of multi media production the technology comes from Silicon V
62. nity and the technologies in use can be viewed as still in an early stage of their development Data com munications is perhaps no more mature as a technol ogy than was telephony fifty or seventy five years ago And just as the telephone system of fifty years ago could not have met the subsequent growth of demand and applications our current data commu nications technology cannot meet the anticipated needs of even the next decade or two Consequently part of the NYU NET II project is a mandate for the ACF in cooperation with other or ganizations in the university community to closely monitor technological developments and experiment with emerging technologies We invite interested members of the community with innovative and chal lenging uses for the network to work with us toward their implementation at NYU E 20 Summer 1995 Connect cademic Computing and Networking at NYU Vive la Telnet or Finding Comfort and Security in Europe through a Modem Connection to NYU Many of us take advantage of the summer to get away from New York to travel abroad or to find a fruitful and ideally comfortable place to research and write But when e mail and other features of NYU computer sys tems are an integral part of our work lives we may find it impractical to be out of touch for weeks or months Even tually many of us will find it impossible to forgo network access while we are out of the country For example
63. nt of Music and Performing Arts Professions The illustrations on this page are from an interactive CD ROM being developed at NYU intended to facilitate the study of a single important dance This project focuses on L Apres midi d un Faune choreographed in 1912 by Vaslav Nijinsky to music composed by Claude Debussy with scenery and costumes by L on Bakst The CD ROM opens with a brief introduction then presents the main menu pictured above where choices allow the user to compare different videotaped interpretations of the same dance passages view the ballet in synchronization with its printed Labanotation view photographs and design sketches from the original production read notes and reviews and much more The project began in early 1994 when Naomi Jackson dance scholar and PhD candidate in the Department of k 4 L on Bakst Stage design for L Apr s midi d un Faune 191 2 Performance Studies TSO A came to Howard Fink o Gouache on paper Mus e National d An Modern Paris SEd approached Naomi and me expressing a desire to use the Faun project as part of her PhD thesis under Professor Donald Payne Department of Educational Communication and Technology SEd Nancy s thesis involves the qualitative study of graduate and undergrad uate dance maj
64. oasts a variety of software running under version 6 of Irix SGI s variant of Unix The programs include language processors such as For tran Pascal C and C the full complement of Unix utilities and a number of graphical tools for debug ging developing and measuring the performance of applications Most important from the point of view of system management is a product called Load Sharing Facil ity LSF from Platform Computing Inc LSF gives users and system managers the ability to control work in this complex environment where resources are constantly being competed for A guide is available 24 Summer 1995 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU The MIPS R8000 Chip Set The R8000 chip set jointly developed by SGI s sub sidiary MIPS and Toshiba supports four instructions per cycle 75 MHz clock 16 KB instruction cache 16 KB integer data cache 4 MB of secondary cache 64 bit IEEE ANSI single precision arithmetic double precision is 128 bits The SGI Power Challenge also boasts a high speed I O subsystem with a transfer rate of 320 MB sec and a total weight of only 160 pounds For more details consult the NYU ACF Scientific Computing WWW page at http www nyu edu on the appropriate use of LSF and the system re sources Users are expected to employ the batch sub mission facilities of LSF when running large jobs if not they will be denied access to the system Several third party progr
65. of networking experts and a set of monitor sible to make ftp nyu edu a larger and more official anonymous FTP site for the university Faculty members researchers and staff members are invited to make materials available to the Internet com munity by depositing them on ftp nyu edu Personally developed software data sets and copies of papers and other academic documents are all appropriate materials for this site The ACF will soon move its own anony mous FTP archive including copies of free communica tions software for use by members of the NYU community to this site Although FTP was the original means for data trans fer across the Internet with the rise of tools such as Gopher and Mosaic it appeared for a time that use of FTP would begin to decline In fact the ability of Web browsers like Mosaic Lynx and Netscape to themselves perform file transfers via this method has given anony mous FTP archives a new lease on life With a Web browser you can reach ftp nyu edu by typing in the URL ftp ftp nyu edu This is an attractive easy method to explore anony mous FTP archives and download files of interest Fur ther it has become common for people to describe available files in a World Wide Web page and to use a ftp URL as a link to enable immediate downloads If you are interested in making materials available on ftp nyu edu send an electronic mail message to cwis nyu edu indicating your NYU af
66. ome first served basis Call the ACF HelpCenter for more information at 998 3333 e the name of your computer or your system Well meaning but misguided passwords e your mother s maiden name e names from mythology or science fiction e any of the above examples typed backwards e any examples that are cited in this article or in any other document about password security Good choices for passwords e two or more words run together pledgefratZ e aslightly mangled word e g ba eball SonShine Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 19 e a significantly mutated name or phrase e g FranZ amp KaFKA Share and Share Alike but Not Your Account Some people share their accounts with friends A friend using your account holds complete control of your online identity Is there anyone you trust that much It is a bad idea to share an account with anyone on some systems it is strictly forbidden On multiuser systems such as those operated by NYU s Academic Computing Facility each person receives an individual account One condition gov erning use of the system is that the account may not be used by anyone except the person to whom the account was assigned New accounts are created with a temporary password that must be changed at the time of the first login The new password you select sho
67. ormally a character in a com puter animation is built up out of various geometrical objects spheres cubes cylinders which are distorted and modified and added together and colored and animated with various computer tools until the creator is satisfied or runs out of time One of the tools surface mapping lets the artist apply a picture of a surface or texture mar ble or woodgrain say to an object But the surface map itself can become the object it seems Working with Brian Caulfield a PhD candi date in the Department of Computer Science GSAS Bardazzi has man aged to create some strong 3D effects on a relative shoestring Starting with a couple of picture postcards they took images of a statue of Buddha and a temple wall gave them dimension and animated a sequence that has the viewer mov ing through the space looking at the statue Part of the effect is the result of having the statue and the back ground move relative to each other an effect that s long been familiar in animation where foreground objects Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU drawn on a transparent cel short for cellophane by the way the precursor of today s transparent plastics are moved in front of an opaque back ground But in Alias the postcard Buddha can be turned into a simu lated 3D object by using lightness and darkness to define dimension pushing brighter objects forward and darker bac
68. ors use of multimedia for learning dance history She will be conducting videotaped sessions with students this spring With the feedback from these inter views Naomi and I expect to complete the CD ROM this summer Joe Citta joe citta nyu edu Joe Citta a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program TSOA is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Communication and Technology SEd He teaches at the New School for Social Research and works at the ACF as a computer lab technician Sechert Nijinsky rehearsing Az in Berlin December 1912 Photograph reproduced in The Tatler London showing Nijinsky crouching on his left L Tchernicheya in profile on steal B Nijinska in profile leaning with elbow on the plano L Nelidova L on Bakst Costume design fora Nymph Nijinska ina summer 1993 3 blue patterned tunic 1912 Gouache and gold on paper Collection Parmenia Migel Ekstrom New York The Digital Arts Teaching the Digital Arts at NYU A Color Sampler of Student Work David Frederickson with the ACF Arts Technology Group david frederickson nyu edu Digital technology is changing instruction in the arts as the curriculum adapts to the new media and as artists explore new modes of creation and expression Increasingly the computer is used both as a subtle and effective tool in traditional forms and as a catalyst in the invention of new ones As digital art goes mainstream
69. ot only because they re prettier and people have come to expect color in magazines and brochures but because much of the most important work being done with computers uses color in ways that can t be shown in black and white And when such good work is being done with computers here at the ACF and elsewhere at NYU it s a shame not to show it off properly Unfortunately our modest publication budget doesn t normally support color But we ve decided to cut back from five to three major issues a year and some of the savings can be put into printing color not as a regular feature but now and again when it seems imperative As it does now For a long time I ve been admir ing what shows up on the SGI screens in the ACF s Scientific Visualization Lab when people like Deljou Khorram Abadi are rewriting and testing their pro grams refining both the displays and the workings to a degree of subtlety that is incredible to a layman like me her work and that of other NYU researchers and programmers is shown on pages 26 through 30 I m just as impressed by some of the renderings and animations by students from TSOA and the School of Education working in various areas supported by the ACF s Arts Technology Group their instructors kindly let me see the best and I selected a handful for presentation here on pages 6 through 10 Perhaps I still have too much of the gee whiz neophyte in me but I m impressed and hope you w
70. ous FTP and when it asks for your password you enter your e mail address Over the past couple of years it has become custom ary for organizations like NYU to provide a simple and predictable machine name for their archive of materials available via anonymous FTP naming the machine ac cording to the form ftp sitename Thus for NYU this would be ftp nyu edu There are of course variations for example copies of NCSA Mosaic are obtained via anonymous FTP from ftp ncsa uiuc edu where nesa stands for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and uiuc for the Univer sity of Illinois at Urbana Champaign At NYU the Acadentic Computing Facility main tains a very small anonymous FTP collection on a ma chine called ftp nyu edu although our main FTP distribution has been from acfcluster nyu edu We have recently obtained additional disk space to make it pos ning special software on multiple network service machines ideally with enough capacity and re dundancy to keep the services running at all times As part of this network enhancement project the ACF will be able to markedly enhance the provision of these core communications services New high performance workstations will duplicate these ser vices and will be linked in a way that will let one take over when another is overloaded or not running for nearly fail safe service Network Operations Center A network operations center NOC comprises a core staff
71. rent Current May 10 17 May 17 May 18 May 22 May 27 29 June June 15 June 19 30 June 19 30 June 30 July 24 Aug 11 July 24 Aug 11 Students who expect Incompletes in Spring Semester courses should apply for computer account extensions Instructor s signature required Students with spring semester Class Accounts should store all files they wish to keep after May 17 Individual Account holders should apply for renewal of their accounts before leaving for the sum mer Individual Accounts expire on Aug 31 Individual Account holders not returning for 1995 96 should store files that they wish to keep Instructors apply for summer and fall coursework computer accounts Spring semester final examinations ir ia hours to be announced Student Class Accounts issued for the Spring Semester expire Commencement Summer Session I begins ACF s Summer Hours begin oooooooo o hours to be announced Memorial Day weekend necia a A A holiday hourst EMIS Accounts expire See page 34 for information on User Q amp A Sessions on EMIS to NYU Inter net migration Students who expect Incompletes in Summer Session I courses should apply for extensions of their computer accounts instructor s signature required Summer Session I Class Account holders should store all files they wish to keep after June 30 Summer Session I ends Independence Day weekend ooocooocoommmoo os A E holiday hourst Summer Session II begins
72. restricted undetected ac cess to one or more accounts Such access becomes possible when an innocent account holder relies on a poor choice of a password or figuratively holds the door open for the intruder If experts on network security agree on anything it is that no technological solution is absolutely se cure However by carefully following the basic guide lines you can reduce the likelihood that your account and your online identity will be compromised No matter how sophisticated your hardware your soft ware or your network connection system security starts with you NYU NET II continued from page 17 administration of the machines that provide net work communications services e Carlo Cernivani responsible for modems and dial in network access services e Gary Chapman responsible overall for man agement and evolution of NYU NET The NOC group can be reached via electronic mail at noc nyu edu The NYU NET II project provides for enhancing the NOC staff and its tools to a major degree The ACF has already hired an assistant network man ager and will be adding an operations specialist to work from 4 pm to midnight with responsibility for solving network problems that arise in the evenings The Future This article describes the beginning of a long term process of enhancing NYU NET Only recently has data communications become integral to the academic and administrative work of the university commu
73. rface but don t have graphics functionality with their connection to the network e Finally the full windowed interface presents even the largest files in a spreadsheet style data window with a mouse you can zip from case 100 to case 1 000 000 and has other resizable windows for syntax output and graphs Researchers and instructors have the choice of whatever interface they are most comfortable with This newest version of SPSS is able to run most com mand files from other systems without changes in syntax Files brought in from WYLBUR or any other system should run on this new installation Large gigabyte storage will facilitate running jobs that were problematical on other systems I will be giving introductory talks on SPSS for Unix this summer see schedule on page 35 and fall for further information call me at 998 3398 or send e mail to the address above Unix RISC Server for Anonymous FTP As mentioned at the beginning of this article the ACF is acquiring a new server for statistics and social sciences a small but powerful RISC System 6000 Model C10 PowerPC Compact Server that has been christened Lambert On this Unix server windowed versions of statistical packages like SPSS and SAS will run just as they do in their MS Windows ver sions Files can be transferred between the two plat forms Windows and Unix Furthermore the Unix version of SPSS can be run from a windowed envi ronment on any desktop compu
74. rnet accounts provide general Internet access to all NYU faculty staff and adminis trators and all students enrolled in degree or di ploma programs People who currently have a menu only account on ACFcluster can now move themselves to the new system by using the leave command at the main menu of the ACFcluster The leave procedure will ask you a series of questions Answer the questions indicating that you wish to leave your account be hind and you will start the process that will create an NYU Internet account You will have access to the old account for thirty days after the new account is created After that time the files will be erased and the account will be removed from the old system All EMIS accounts will expire on June 15 1995 These accounts cannot be renewed and access to files and services offered by these accounts will cease as of that date and the files stored in the accounts will be removed from the system If you choose not to use the leave procedure be fore June 15 and your old account is removed you will be able to apply for a new NYU Internet account at any time in the future Files that had been stored in your EMIS account will not be available To learn more about NYU Internet accounts and leaving the EMIS account come to an EMIS Transfer session These are held each Friday in April and May from noon to 1 00 pm in Room 313 Warren Weaver Hall 251 Mercer Street Seating is limited and on a first c
75. rs I found it use ful to keep a simple log of my connection time so that I would know what to expect when the bill arrived When the trip was over I chose to cancel the account The monthly fee is a significant expense for me to pay simply to hold the account open and there was no provi sion for suspending an account temporarily Since I did not expect to return to Paris for a year at best it would be more economical simply to open a new account before I returned I spend a lot of time online so my expectations were high Given the distances involved and the number of elements that could have gone wrong my impression of EUnet Traveller is overwhelmingly positive I will defi nitely use it again the next time I m in Europe Tim O Connor oconnort nyu edu Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 23 High Performance Computing Copernicus Redivivus New SGI Multiprocessor Computer Debuts at ACF Edward Friedman edward friedman nyu edu Anew high performance computing system dubbed Copernicus is now available at the CAPC Center for Applied Parallel Computing of the Academic Com puting Facility The Power Challenge is a symmetric multiprocessor shared memory parallel computer from Silicon Graphics Inc containing the most ad vanced MIPS 64 bit R8000 processor technology SGI offers See sidebar for a technical descr
76. s test and tune the system and its software and to learn about the parallel programming tools and systems People from math ematics computer science physics chemistry and biology have successfully parallelized their own ap plications and have obtained substantial speedups due to the faster processors and the ability to use them concurrently A graduate student in biology reported that a job that took half an hour on a fast workstation took only ten seconds on the Challenge after he converted the application to run on all four of the processors In other cases the increase in speed has been less spectacular but the accuracy has been increased since the Power Challenge has 64 bit arith metic as its standard for single precision calculations and twice that for double precision the same stan dard as high performance machines from Cray and Convex and double that of most minicomputers Parallel computing environments are influencing researchers to think about solutions to their multi dimensional problem in a new way by developing algorithms and employing programming techniques to gain better insights into their problems _ The goal of the ACF s CAPC and its associated computing resources is to provide an environment for NYU researchers students and instructors to learn continued on page 32 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 25 Science and
77. sers There is no applica Computer Documentation 998 3036 tion procedure simply come to a lab with your valid NYU ID Innovation Center 998 3044 Obtaining an ACF Account Statistical Consultants 998 3434 For priority access to the labs at all times and to use most other Computer Labs ACF computers and special equipment you will need to have an 14 Washington Place 998 3457 ACF priority account There are two kinds Faculty staff and stu Tisch Hall l 998 3409 dents working on faculty sponsored projects can obtain individual Education Building 998 3421 accounts Instructors can obtain class accounts that cover all the stu Warren Weaver Hall 998 3456 dents in a course section To apply for a priority account please Third Ave North Res Hall 998 3504 contact the ACF Accounts Office Room 305 Warren Weaver Hall 998 3035 For hours of operation and availability to general users Dial in Access to and to holders of priority accounts see below ACF Computers The ACF recommends that instructors obtain an ACF Class Ac To connect via modem to NYU NET NYU s count whenever a course requires that students have access to com campuswide network set your modem to 8 puters These accounts give students priority access to ACF data bits 1 stop bit full duplex no parity computers and the application procedure helps the ACF to ensure and dial one of these numbers that the appropriate software and training sessions are available Modem Speed bps Dial 300 2
78. t technical complexity which require great reliability e SMTP Simple Mail Transport Protocol per forms delivery of electronic mail e PH provides a network accessible electronic phone book e X 500 is the emerging standard for network di rectory services white pages e Network News manages Internet news groups bulletin boards e Gopher is the basis for campus wide informa tion systems like the NYU CWIS e World Wide Web software manages hypertext information systems e FTP File Transfer Protocol makes an archive of files available to network users These services are customarily provided by run 16 Summer 1995 Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU An Anonymous FTP Service for NYU ftp nyu edu As Internet explorers know one of the primary ways to obtain material from computer systems at other loca tions is via the File Transfer Protocol FTP Using an FTP capable program software both freeware and shareware and documents of all kinds can be trans ferred between computers attached to the Internet For example new versions of an electronic mail program such as Eudora or a World Wide Web browser such as Netscape can be downloaded from a computer in Illi nois or California to a machine here at NYU You can do this even though you don t have a computer account at the remote location when the distant computer prompts you for your username you type anonymous hence the term anonym
79. ter DOS or Mac that is on NYU NET Moving the files from one platform to the other should be easier now too using FTP file transfer protocol and the new anonymous FTP service for social science users at the ACF The service will re side on the new machine Data requested by NYU researchers from the Inter University Consortium for Political and Social Research ICPSR will be stored on Lambert Connect Academic Computing and Networking at NYU L Apr s midi dun Faune Main Menu Instructional Computing Video manager of the ACF s Education Building computer lab i with the idea of putting together an interactive CD ROM Photographs After Howard approached me with this idea Naomi and I began working with the expert advice of Professor Mar cia Siegel PS TSOA Scholarly study of dance has long relied on the separate use of texts photos drawings Costumes Scenery Synopsis Notes music and videotapes The concept of this project is to combine all of those media to better serve the dance scholar in the study of a particular work Last year Naomi and I presented the project at a con L Apr es m i di d u n CD ROM ference on dance technology at Ohio State University to M aki n g a M u iti m ed a D i sk gratifying response Then in January of this year Nancy Kane a PhD candidate in the Dance Education Program fo r Dan ce Sc h O I ars Departme
80. ting and Networking at NYU Summer 1995 37 Academic Computing and Networking at NYU Connect with Color SPSS for Unix A Statistical Stalwart Strides to a New Platform at NYU April 28 Colloquium Software for Multilingual and Multicultural Computing L Apr s midi d un CD ROM Making a Multimedia Disk for Dance Scholars Teaching the Digital Arts at NYU A Color Sampler of Student Work ITP s YORB Just an Ordinary New York Cyberneighborhood The Web Gallery A New Exhibition Space for NYU Artists Offered by ACF s Arts Technology Group Instant Art More or Less Movement without Motion Dimension without Volume New Wrinkles in Computer Animation at NYU Summer Cover Image Spring 95 NYU NET Il The Communications Network for NYU s Future An Anonymous FTP Service for NYU ftp nyu edu Published by the Academic Computing Facility of New York University 251 Mercer Street New York N Y 10012 6 10 12 13 Keeping NYU NET Up and Running System Security Starts with You Vive la Telnet or Finding Comfort and Security in Europe through a Modem Connection to NYU Getting the Most out of Your Laptop s Batteries Copernicus Redivivus New SGI Multiprocessor Computer Debuts at ACF The MIPS R8000 Chip Set Scientific Visualization at NYU A Color Sampler of Recent Research Learning about Math and Molecules on the Web The Electronic Journal Here to
81. tion to the PC the IBM type personal computer Topics include working with the user menus on the PCs in the labs under standing the file system choosing printers and file servers and launch ing software applications ACE staff Limited seating first come first served Tisch Hall room LC8 Saturdays 11 00 12 00 June 3 10 3rd Ave No Res Hall level C 3 Mondays 1 00 2 00 May 22 July 10 17 Wednesdays 11 00 12 00 May 24 31 July 5 12 Using Unix at the ACF Unix machines An introductory class on using the Unix operating system variants of which run on several different classes of computer at the ACF Most are accessed at ACF labs through PCs Macs and terminals but the SGI workstations also use Unix The basics will be covered logging onto the host machines organizing files editing text printing files and using applications See also Using Unix Special Topics under Computers and Operating Systems ACF staff ACF Unix account required limited seating first come first served Tisch Hall room LC8 Tuesdays 11 00 12 00 May 23 30 July 11 18 E Mail and Network Services User Q A Session Migrating from an EMIS ACFcluster Account to an NYU Internet Account As announced EMIS accounts will expire on June 15 To help you move to an NYU Internet Account we strongly recommend you attend an ACF User Q amp A Session These sessions are unstructured opportuni ties for p
82. to be so helpful in his own research in molecular modeling Marvin Rich a visiting scientist in the Department of Biology FAS as well as a science teacher in the New York public schoools thought the Web could help both teachers and stu dents in the classroom and out Over the past year or so working at the ACF s Scientific Visualization Center and with the cooperation of the YMCA Beacon Technology Center in District Two he s been developing a series of lab projects and related activities in molecular structure and its application to basic chemistry and biology Shown here are the home page left which leads toa quick tour to the teaching modules like the one on water and ice below left part of a developing K 12 curriculum or to databases and other pages Advanced students will be able to navigate the Web for related resources starting from the Information page or the protein page below These contain links to science resources around the world which can quickly be searched by key word p owis nyu edu doos providers rioh eduoation mathmol madules water density_exp html i Summer 1995 To reach the page with your favorite Web browser type in the URL http www nyu edu pages mathmol or go to NYU home page www nyu edu and look under Information Providers at NYU For more information send e mail to Dr Rich at richm archimedes nyu edu
83. uld be secret and obscure Your password should never be stored in computer files nor sent in a mail message Additionally you should never write your password down and post it on or near your com puter or monitor On systems that forbid sharing of accounts an account may be suspended when there is evidence that it is being used by more than a single person When Should You Trust Someone A favorite trick among aspiring system crackers is to gain an account holder s confidence over the tele phone and then to get the person to divulge the account s password Sometimes the caller pretends to be a confused technician or a system administrator who is trying to solve an obscure problem Don t fall for it Never trust another person with your password no matter who the caller claims to be no matter what the explanation A system administrator does not need your password to fix problems with your account at worst an administrator would assign a temporary password and ask you to change it when the prob lem is solved No matter how tight the security the people who use the system are usually its weakest link And some faceless caller spewing jargon over the telephone seems to possess immensely persuasive technical power over us But the jargon is often a diversionary tactic to gain trust and extract a secret password Healthy Skepticism Is Good for You Computer and network mischief is most possible when an intruder enjoys un
84. ve in the ACF s comment mailboxes nesses from the outside it is more often a system s own legitimate users who present the initial risk to a system s security not unlike a trusting tenant who holds open the lobby door for a burglar There are certain basic security principles that we can remember when we use networked computer systems If we observe these guidelines we will pro vide ourselves with basic protection against the most common network security risks e Always keep passwords secret and never share an account e Select a password that cannot be easily guessed and cannot be found in a dictionary e Be cautious when someone offers you new soft ware for use in your account or for use as com munications software e Be skeptical when you are approached by any one who asks for your account information Never give your password to anyone even if the person claims to be part of the group that manages your computers or your system e Remember that the privacy of electronic mail cannot be guaranteed so sensitive information should not be transmitted in e mail messages unless you can encrypt your messages Why Does This Matter A person who has gained access to your account has for all practical purposes assumed your iden tity has access to your files and mail and can speak in your name Many of us have seen the embarrassment that re sults when a subscriber to a mailing list inadvert ently replies to th

Summer I Volume 5, Number 4

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