News

Eighteen months into the University’s e-learning project, the first focus of the Information Systems Strategic Plan 2005-2010 (Ref: Network Computing Issue 46 - December 2005), every credit-bearing course is now provided with an e-learning component on the Blackboard (Bb) Academic Suite. This arrangement streamlines the process of Bb course site creation, relieving teachers of the burden of course management, allowing them to easily make use of the e-learning platform to communicate with their students as well as involve them in teaching and learning activities not only within, but also beyond designated class times. Now that a major milestone has been reached, the next phase of the e-learning project is to enhance the value and usefulness of the e-learning platform by further enriching it with more Bb built-in functions and add-on packages. The aim is to enable and encourage both staff and students to continue to make use of the e-learning platform to maximize their own productivity.

On 29 January 2007, Microsoft launched Windows Vista, the latest major version of their operating system for PCs since the launch of Windows XP five years ago. A team of IT professionals from the Computing Services Centre (CSC) have been engaged to evaluate Vista and determine when and how it should be deployed. Initially Vista will be made available in all lecture theatres, classrooms and the CSC Terminal Area. Details and timeline of the CSC’s support plan will be outlined in this article.

It is a known fact that Email Spam (or Junk Email) cause annoyance and pose security threats to our users. What is not trivial and yet has significant impact to users is that these spam emails use up a lot of system resources and affect the quality of the Email services. Since last fall, the amount of total emails received from outside has sharply increased to a level that our Email services were seriously affected.

Over the last 2 decades, the CityU's Email Infrastructure has undergone several major changes. Back in the 1980s, the email system was provided as an optional service which offered assistance to staff and students to carry out their academic and administrative works. Nowadays, email system is not only part of the IT infrastructure in the university but has become an indispensable and primary communication tool for the whole university community. Demand on the usage of email systems has increased tremendously, especially in the last decade. Thus it is necessary, at this stage, to review and improve the current email infrastructure in order to cope with the rising demands.

The CSC (the Computing Services Centre) will conduct the 3rd major upgrade to the campus network within the coming 3 years.  A tendering exercise has been started for a total network upgrade solution which included a comprehensive network upgrade plan, plus the supply, installation, testing and commissioning of all the networking hardware and software required for the upgrade.

It is obvious that maintenance support for desktop and notebook computers can be costly if it is not managed properly. However, it is less obvious that, without a good strategy in selecting and purchasing computers with the aim of reducing the total cost of ownership, it would make not only our maintenance support inefficient and unmanageable, but, worse still, many of our users unhappy.

There will be suspension of electricity to the Data Center (Computer Room) of the Computing Services Center (CSC), around the Lunar New Year's holiday period next year.It is a statutory requirement by the HKSAR to have all fixed electrical installations to be inspected and tested in a five-year cycle. To do that, all electrical sockets, panels, power source, etc, inside each room in the whole university campus need to be shutdown and tested. Anything that is found to be malfunctioned needs to be replaced on the spot.

Microsoft (MS) has formally announced the availability of Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) for Windows XP SP2 and other Windows environments through the Windows Update Service.  In order to let all internal service providers have time to train their staff for supporting IE7 and application developers have sufficient time to resolve any compatibility problem between IE7 and their application systems, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) has decided to defer the automatic upgrade of

Spyware and adware consume computing resources and seriously affect the security, performance and stability of a computer. In order to protect users from the infection of these unwanted programs, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) had included the McAfee's Anti-Spyware module (MASE) in addition to its antivirus products. The MASE module will detect spyware, adware, remote administration tools, dialers, password crackers, jokes and other potentially unwanted programs. When it discovers unwanted programs, it will try to clean them, and then put them into the "quarantine" folder if the clean action fails.

Virus, Worm or Trojan is no longer a technical jargon. They are so common and their impacts are so severe that they have appeared many times in the headlines of newspaper and media, such as CNN at http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/08/16/computer.worm/index.html.Although anti-virus vendors are trying their best to stop these attacks, new types of virus/worm are discovered everyday. New techniques must be employed to supplement our existing methods to detect and stop these attacks.