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 Telecommunications
Services Interruption Update
You
may have noticed on Friday that phones for many areas of the campus were
not functional. Construction
crews were on the DSU campus Thursday and Friday. These crews were working
on the sidewalk east of the Library when they accidentally cut into the underground
phone infrastructure rupturing several lines and creating a significant
telecom outage today on the south side of campus. This required that
Telecommunications staff repair the cable by splicing in a new section of
cabling. Telecommunications
and network staff spent all of Friday repairing the line and by 5:30 p.m.
the cable splicing was complete and services were under restoration. The
primary buildings that were affected included the Library, Whitfield Gym,
the natatorium, Wyatt Gym and the President’s house.
Many thanks to facilities for
providing the canopy which helped immensely during the rain. OIT appreciates
your patience and understanding as we worked to quickly resolve this
unfortunate situation. If you
find that you are still without full service in one of the affected
areas, please contact OIT @4444 and we will work to restore you services
as quickly as possible.
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BB CE6 FAQ’s –
Popup Persistence
By Dr. Susan Hines
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In
recent weeks several DSU faculty have inquired about the pop-up browser
checker that spawns each time the Blackboard-CE6 log-in page (http://blackboard.deltastate.edu)
loads. The purpose of the pop-up is to remind users that their web
browsers are configured (or not configured) properly. According to
Blackboard, Inc., you should see this pop-up page each and every time you
enter BB-CE6. While it’s counter intuitive, the pop-up page serves to
inform users that they’re (at least partially) OK. The mere fact
that a window pops up is the browser’s way of saying “Javascript is enabled and the pop-up blocker is
turned off.” Both of these conditions need to be met to use BB-CE6
properly. If the popped-up browser checker gives you green check marks
(explaining that your cookies are enabled and that you’re using the
proper Java version), that’s the systems way of signaling to the
user that “you’re ready to log in!” If you see red
“X” marks and something isn’t configured properly,
that’s BB-CE6’s way of saying “fix it before logging
in.”
For
those of you keen to know Blackboard’s rationale for the interface
design, Blackboard’s Client Manager, Steve Krum, tells us the
“pop-up window… is not functionality that can be
disabled. In the past clients had the ability to make this check
voluntary, however, this option was removed as a result of numerous
client requests to hard code this in the application. Clients were
concerned with the amount of Users encountering issues with WebCT as a
result of their unsupported Browser/Java configuration.” So, until
sufficiently annoyed clients compel Blackboard, Inc. to alter its design,
think of that pop up as your friend--as external validation that
all’s right with BB-CE6 and that all ye who enter should have hope.
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Issue No. 89 – July 13,
2007
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 Experts Warn:
Attack of the Killer Bots
Bots are unauthorized programs that you pick
up when wandering the Internet.
Think of them like other infectious diseases that can spread from
human to human, but botnets spread from
computer to computer. Unfortunately,
like many new diseases, botnets are spreading
so fast that experts cannot control or prevent them.
Recently, a new trend has taken over the “bot industry”. Bot-herding
is becoming more common and allows one person to control many bots on
many computers. This practice
is now being used for financial gain by some unscrupulous geeks. Read more on the issue at Network
World
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Experts
warn of Lightning-Strike Injuries with iPods (www.cnn.com)
The
next time you are taking a walk in the neighborhood while listening to
your iPod, you might want to keep a close eye on the sky. There have
been numerous report of lightning-strike injuries from iPod users who were
using their iPods as intended when mother nature came to call. Read more at CNN
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Technology Term of the Week
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(from Webopedia
)
Botnet A botnet refers to a type
of bot running on an IRC
network that has been created with a trojan. When an infected computer
is on the Internet the bot can then
start up an IRC client and connect to an IRC server.
The Trojan will also have been coded to make the bot
join a certain chat room once it has connected. Multiple bots can
then join in one channels and the person who has made them can now spam
IRC chat rooms, launch huge numbers of Denial
of Service attacks against the IRC servers causing them to go down.
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