by John Wong
Both incoming and returning students will have new and expanded options in accessing on-campus computing facilities beginning in Autumn 1995. The 251 Engineering Terrace Lab, traditionally the primary engineering computing lab on campus has undergone changes that will improve performance and increase access. Terminal rooms in Journalism, Math, Butler, and the dorms have also been upgraded over the summer to help quench the thirst for computing power at Columbia.
Service for All
Starting in the Fall semester, all students in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Columbia College, and the School of General Studies will have access to all the facilities in AcIS labs. Formerly, there was a $45/term instructional account fee for those students who chose to pay for this additional access. Now, all students in these schools will hold instructional accounts, and be billed $17/term automatically. Privileges of the upgraded account are: unlimited connect time, a 5M disk quota, and an allotment of 100 sheets of laser printer paper per week.
251: A Familiar Place for an Engineer
A cluster of computer labs are situated on the second floor in Engineering Terrace. The nucleus of these labs is 251 Mudd Lab. Robert Cartolano, a consultant at Academic Computing Consulting Services, said that all facilities will be "lifted to a higher level." Surveys taken in the past year have indicated that students are looking for big screens, fast processors, and more Hewlett-Packard (HP) machines, which support the Unix operating system and Macintosh and IBM PC platforms. The HP machines feature 17" high quality color displays that accentuate the full-color capability of the World Wide Web, a graphical interface for the Internet. These HPs will have their disk space doubled, providing much faster service. In Gussman Lab, adjacent to 251, 30 new HPs will replace the NeXT statioms, providing greater access to these popular machines. Also adjacent to 251 are electronic classrooms are available for use. Many professors have used these classrooms to teach a variety of courses, including calculus, where Mathematica was used to solve problems. One of these classrooms, 252 Engineering Terrace, has 15 PowerMacs suited with 16 megabytes of RAM, SoftWindows 2.0 (which emulates a 486 PC). These classrooms are furnished with ceiling projections, a podium which contains audio-visual equipment, a PowerMac, video disks, and CD-ROMs. When these labs are not used for classroom purposes, they can be used by students for independent purposes.
Electronic Library?
It's true! All the Art Humanities slides will now be on the World Wide Web at the new Columbia University homepage. Now, a virtual museum will be available at your fingertips. Materials from other courses such as Contemporary Civilization and Literature Humanities may soon be available as well, depending on the cooperation of the professors involved.