New blog server version

So, one of the projects I've been working on is the blog server upgrade to version 4. (4.0.1, to be precise.) It's been a real struggle, but it'll soon be ready to test.

You can go to https://www5.wou.edu/cgi-bin/blog401_test/mt.cgi and log in with your normal blog password.

That test server is a clone of the existing one as of a month or two ago, so your more recent entries will not show up. (And if you've changed your password recently, you might need to log in with your old password.) You can create entries, and they'll show up at your real blog address... but your more recent entries on the real server will disappear until you go back to the real server and rebuild your blog there.

Once problem with the test server I've not yet been able to fix: sometimes when creating a new entry, you can't enter any text in the main text box. If that happens, hit the Preview button, and then it should work.

That's it for now.

Oops...

Erm, yeah, I was going to start posting here more often, wasn't I. No excuses, really, just busy... but it only takes a couple of minutes to post something if I'm not perfectionistic about it. So let's see if I can keep up with this a bit better.

This isn't an official outlet for WOU or UCS news or policy or anything like that; I'll probably be talking about that stuff, but using my own voice and not worrying too hard about making it sound just right.

So anyway in the next while I'll be posting about the projects that have been keeping me busy recently. But I have to get back to one of them right now, so it may be a day or two...

PL/SQL developer notes

OK, so it's been a while. Seeing as I'm supposed to be the blog server admin and all, I suppose I should actually post a blog entry once in a while.

From now on, I'm not going to be aiming all my blog posts at the general WOU community; some will, but there will probably be more stuff for the UCS folks in particular, especially the other admins and programmers.

So, for the PL/SQL programmers, a couple things about PL/SQL developer.

In case you've been wondering how to get the HTML documentation installed, I finally figured it out. I had to download it from Oracle, but it's now on the T: drive in the PL/SQL Developer folder, under the name ora9i_htmldocs.zip. Here's how to install it:

1. Unzip the file to some appropriate place like C:/orant/htmldocs. This took a while on my machine.


2. In PL/SQL Developer, go to the Help menu and select HTML Manuals.


3. You should see a dialog box, with a textbox near the top. It will probably have your local oracle home in it; change it to the folder where you unzipped the HTML docs.


4. Click Build. On my machine, it showed progress, then appeared to hang for a couple of minutes, but then completed successfully.


5. On completion you should see a long list of book titles with checkboxes. Scroll down to verify that the following are checked:
   
   
   
   • Oracle 9i Database Error Messages
   
   
   • Oracle 9i SQL Reference Release 2 (9.2)
   
   
   • PL/SQL User's Guide and Reference
   
   


6. Click the Apply button


7. That should be it! If all went well, you should now be able to use the Search tab in the HTML Manuals dialog box, and the Help buttons on error messages should now take you to actual help. (Since this is Oracle we're talking about, though, the help isn't always especially helpful.)

Another thing related to PL/SQL Developer 7.11: Has anyone else noticed weird characters in the code help dropdown menus? Dale and Michael Ellis clued me into this. I can't reliably reproduce it and am wondering if anybody else can.

Test entry

This is a test of raw database posting

Next MT upgrade - problems

Ever since the Movable Type upgrade, we've had problems with the StyleCatcher and WidgetManager plugins. I haven't had any luck fixing them; nobody else has reported the type of problem we're getting, or at least they haven't reported it in anyplace that Google can get to it.

Tonight I tried upgrading Movable Type to the next version, hoping it would solve the problem. This was supposed to be a much easier upgrade than the last one since it doesn't involve any database changes. But it didn't work. Apologies to any of you who got errors; the server was only down for a minute when I tried the upgrade, and less than a minute when I tried the second time.

The existing version is running normally. I'll need to do some more research before trying this upgrade again.

Also, there probably won't be much of an FAQ this week as I'm feeling under the weather.

FAQ: Group Blogs

What is a group blog?

A group blog is just like a regular blog except more than one person can make entries. Group blogs can be used by professors for classes, by student organizations for publicity, by a group of friends for fun, or any other non-commercial purpose.

Who can start a group blog?

Anyone at WOU can start a group blog. You just need to contact blogadmin@wou.edu and request it; be sure to include a title for the blog and a list of members, along with any other requests such as privacy options. The blog will be created in your public_html folder, but separate from your personal blog. When you log in to the blog admin system at http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin you will see the group blog along with your personal blog.

Who can be a member?

Only people with valid WOU email accounts can be part of a group blog. The blog creator needs to provide a list of WOU email address or ID numbers (V numbers) for each person they want to be a member. Unless you are a faculty member creating the blog for a class, each member will be contacted and asked for their permission to be included in the blog.

What can members do?

Most members will just be able to post entries, and edit or delete entries they have made. The creator of the group blog can request that certain members be given administrative rights, which means that they can do anything the creator can do: edit or delete any entry, accept of delete comments, change any setting, etc. Either way, members need to log into the blog admin system, just as they would to post entries or make changes to their own personal blogs.

Can I keep the blog private to the group?

Yes. Any blog (not just a group blog) can be made private. Normally you wouldn't want to do this, because most blogs are meant to be public, but if your blog is intended for a particular audience, you can require a password to view it.

What privacy options do I have?

You can provide a list of WOU email addresses or ID numbers of people who should be allowed to see your blog; in that case they will log in with their email username and password. You can also set up a single username and password that will allow people to view your blog; you can then give that password to anybody you want, even off campus. And if you want, you can set your blog to be viewable by anybody who has a valid WOU email account.

Can I change blog members or privacy settings?

Yes; just contact blogadmin@wou.edu with your requested changes. You can add or remove members (again, unless it is a class blog, they will be asked for their permission) or change privacy options. Please do not ask us to change normal blog settings for you; you can do that yourself in the blog admin system.

Deleting blogs

I've had my head buried in blog server code for the past couple of weeks. One thing has become clear. We have too many blogs on our system and some of them will need to be deleted.

We need to do this because the server cannot display or set people's permissions on various blogs. When I ask it for even a single author's permissions, the server churns and churns for five minutes (I timed it twice) and then gives up. The server is working great for everything else, but not for this, and I think it's no coincidence that out of all the tables in the blog database, the permissions table is the biggest.

We have over 13000 blogs on the system, only a few of which are in use. I plan to delete blogs belonging to students who have not been enrolled since Fall term. I will preserve any blogs that actually have entries, though. After that, we'll see.

FAQ: Blog Server Upgrade

Hello, everybody--

This week's I'll talk about the new features available since the upgrade of our blog server earlier in the week.

What's the blog server?

Um, right, I guess not everybody knows that. The blog server is a system where anybody at WOU can keep a blog; if you aren't familiar with the idea of blogging, please take a look at the FAQ at http://www.wou.edu/ucs/faq/blogging.php. If you've never used the blog server before, you probably want to take a look at the original blog server FAQs; part one is at http://www.wou.edu/ucs/faq/blogserver1.php, and contains a link to part 2. Both have been updated for the new blog server version.

So will I have to relearn a bunch of stuff?

Not really. The new version added a bunch of features, but didn't change or remove much that was already there. The most notable new features are the spam filters, improved list handling, and improved searching.

Spam filters, you say? Why would I need a spam filter on a blog?

A few of you of you are probably laughing bitterly at this question, but bear with me. Some blogs, especially those with a lot of activity, attract spammers who post comments that have nothing to do with what you're blogging about. This is generally different than email spam; the main goal of blog spam is to get many links posted, to affect search engine rankings for spam websites. I'm not going to try to explain how this works, but trust me, once it starts happening to your blog, you will be glad to have a spam filter! Also note that everything I say about comments applies to trackbacks too, if you have them turned on.

I already get a ton of spam on my blog, so how do I turn on the spam filter?

It's already on. The upgrade process was supposed to sort through all existing comments and junk any that looked like spam, but this didn't work for any of the blogs I checked. However, it works great for new comments coming in since the upgrade; it has cut the spam level in my blog from several hundred a week down to just fifteen in the three days since the upgrade. If you have turned off commenting in your blog because you were drowning in spam, you might want to turn it back on again now.

How do I change the settings of the spam filter?

The default settings are pretty good, so most people won't need to mess with them. but if you know what you are doing, or just want to look at the current settings, here's how to find them. Go to the blog administration toolbar and click settings. Below the page setting you will see two tabs: Settings and Plugins. (You'll also see a link named "Switch to Detailed Settings", which gives you more tabs, but you don't need to click it if you don't want to.) Click the Plugins tab, and scroll down. There are actually three spam filters; one that uses a blacklisting service, one that checks links in comments, and another that checks keywords. I won't describe them in detail here, but feel free to take a look at them.

What happens to spam comments caught by the filter?

In your comments list, you'll see a new tab: Junk comments. Clicking on it shows a list of all comments judged as junk by the spam filter, and gives you a handy button to empty the junk folder without having to select them all and hit delete. It also seems like many spam comments simply aren't showing up at all, even in the junk folder; I have no idea why this is, but as long as it means I'm getting less junk, I don't care very much.

I still have a bunch of old spam comments in my blog. How do I get rid of them?

This is where the second feature comes in: improved list handling. You can go to the Comments page (via the link on the blog list page, or in the blog admin toolbar) and see the list. Before, this would automatically list all comments, which could take a while if there were a few hundred (or thousand as happened sometimes.) Now, it lists a more manageable number. By clicking the "Show Display Options" link at the bottom of the list, you can pick from several different numbers of items to show per page, or even pick your own by choosing "Another Amount..." There are other miscellaneous options in the display options box as well, and you can close it by clicking the "Show Display Options" link again when done. These options are available for all lists; whether lists of entries, lists of comments, lists of blogs, etc.

But that doesn't help me get rid of my old spam comments?

It does help you manage the list better. But here's something that really will help you get rid of that ton of old spam comments. You've probably already noticed that at the top of the column of checkboxes at the left side of the list, there's a checkbox that, when you click on it, selects every item shown in the list; this makes it easy to delete the whole list.

That would be useful except that I've got some comments I want to save, so being able to delete the whole list doesn't help.

If you've used the Display options to break your list down to a manageable size, you can delete a screenful at a time. Or if you're like me and you have your display options set to show the whole list on one screen, you can use another method of list handling: a filter. Filter options are at the top of every list. Often there will be a "quickfilter" link you can click on to apply a commonly used filter, such as showing unpublished comments only in a comments list; this makes it easy to find and delete spam without accidentally deleting comments you've already approved. Each list has several filter options; feel free to play around with them. When a filter is active, there will always be a "reset" link to the right of the filter options, which will remove the filters.

OK, enough about this geeky list management stuff! Didn't you say something about searching too?

Right, that's the last topic I'll cover this week. Any page with a list also has a search bar that lets you look for specific text within the list. But the really powerful new search stuff is available when you click "Search" in the blog admin toolbar. That takes you to a screen with all the search options in one convenient place. Use the tabs to control the type of object you are searching for, and the checkboxes below the search box to apply various options. The "Limited Fields" checkbox is especially useful because it lets you restrict your search to only the title of an entry, for instance, or only the name of a commenter.

Really, why should I care about all this stuff?

Because blogging can be an effective and fun way of expressing yourself. Plus, more professors are beginning to use blogging in their classes, so if you know your way around the blog server, you'll be a step ahead. Don't forget, everybody at WOU has a blog you can start using whenever you want; just read the FAQs listed above to see how to get started.

To help get the word out, I'm going to be creating some pages that show the most recent blog entries made, and keep track of the most active blogs. If you have a blog but do not want it listed in anything like that, be sure to let me know! The WOUPortal will also soon be able to view blogs, to save you the effort of checking multiple blogs to see if anything is new there.

And I just realized this is the fiftieth FAQ I've done here. So, a really big thank you for all your time and attention in the last two years!

----Ron

Geeky stuff about the blog server's database

Who knows how many of you will find this interesting, but I'll talk about it anyway. I've been delving into the database that holds all the blog server's data - all the blogs, their settings, entries, comments, all the users, security permissions, and all that.



The designers of Movable Type did a good job with their database; everything is efficiently linked together and easy to understand. If I want a count of all unapproved comments on the system? One simple SQL query, bam, it's done. Listing of all blogs ranked by the number of entries? slightly more complicated query, bam, done. Add myself to the permissions list for an old blog with an insane number of comments? Simple SQL insert, bam, I'm in. Hmmm, those comments are all spam except for ones from WOU IP addresses? Simple SQL delete statement, double-check it to make totally sure it's only going to wipe the ones that need it, bam, done. Say good bye to lots of spam that was cluttering the system; when I started this, there were over 25,000 comments in the database, but after checking them out, I found I could delete all but 3000 or so.
Oddly enough, all the spam was concentrated in about 15 blogs. I cleaned out all of them that didn't seem to currently be in use, but there are a couple that I didn't touch because people had been updating them recently.
I'm thinking about setting up some webpages to report blog use; now that I have the database figured, I can easily make a page to display links to the ten most recent blog entries, or list the most active blogs, or whatever. Now I need to write up this week's FAQ, which will talk about some of the new features on the blog server; since hardly anybody has asked me any actual questions, it'll probably be a short one. I'll intro the features I think are most interesting and/or useful and leave it at that.

Ahhh, junk filter!

Wow, in just the few days the new version has been up, I've already seen a major reduction in the amount of spam comments I get. It used to be a few hundred a week, but in the last couple of days I've gotten a grand total of thirteen, eleven of which were automatically sent to my junk list. Looks like I may need to tinker with my junk filter a little bit in order to catch ones like those last two, though.

I'm not sure what happened to the other eighty-some spam comments I was expecting, though. My junk filter isn't set to actually delete anything, so where did they go? It would be too much of a coincidence that a bunch of spammers just happened to cut down their blog spam right exactly when we upgraded, so it must have something to do with the upgrade itself.

I wonder if they can detect the version of a Movable Type server before spamming it, and don't send as many to recent versions that have the anti-spam features? Though that's probably doubtful, considering that all along we had the nofollow plugin that makes spam links useless for improving google rankings, yet the spammers kept on firehosing us. It's probably more effort for them to target their spam in any way than simply to spew it out it blindly.

But whatever the reason, the amount of spam on my blog is way, way down. Now if only I could do that to my email...

Blog server upgrade!

OK, our blog server is now up to the latest version of Movable Type. You'll notice a lot of new features, though luckily the basic operations of the admin system are still located where they've always been. There's just a lot of new stuff added: a better search function, improved handling of large lists, defaults for new posts, and my personal favorite: junk filters for comments and trackbacks!

I'll cover all this stuff in more detail as part of this Friday's FAQ. Now I have to go in and test some more stuff to make sure everything is working.

Contribute is fixed

OK, I take back everything I said about Adobe's tech support after the first time the Contribute server failed on us. What? You say you didn't hear what I said about them? That's probably a good thing, considering some of it was unprintable.

Anyway, this time I actually got a competent support engineer, and I didn't even have to battle my way up the hierarchy for more than a few hours (let alone three days like last time, grumble grumble.)

What impressed me the most about her was not just that she knew what she was talking about, but that she kept after the problem. We had one possible solution that would have taken a couple of days to implement, and instead of just sitting back and waiting, she kept working on our issue. That floored me; maybe I've just had bad luck with corporate tech support, but I've never yet dealt with someone who would do that.

Anyway, she came up with a simple solution that I hadn't tried because it didn't seem to make any sense... but it worked like a charm. You may have noticed that the login delay is now much shorter, too.

So, tech support saved the day!

FAQ: new WOUPortal!

Hello, everybody--

This week we're announcing the beta version of the WOUPortal! It's available for use by anyone in the WOU community.

What's the WOUPortal?

It is a web portal, which is a customizable page designed to make many web resources available in one place. The home pages of yahoo.com and msn.com are good examples of portals; they include lots of information, links and resources, and if you log in, you can customize them to show what you want, and hide what you don't want. The WOU Portal is available to anyone with a WOU email address, and just like other portals is customizable so you can see the links and information you find most useful. The goal is to make so many useful features available here that you'll want to use it as your browser's start page.

How do I get there?

The address is http://www.wou.edu/portal. It will take you to the login screen; use your email username and password to get in. If you can't log in, or you don't remember your password, a link to the account lookup system is provided. The first time you log in, you will see a short explanation of the different parts of the portal; on later logins, you won't see the page automatically but you can get back to it by clicking "WOUPortal Help" in the Programs for Everyone section. Click OK at the bottom of the help screen to go to the main portal page.

What are the different sections for?

On the main page there are three main sections: My Programs, My Connections, and Programs for Everyone. There is also a My Preferences tab, but I'll talk about that separately.

The My Programs section is for programs that you have special access to. If you're part of a group that uses a portal-enabled program that isn't available for everyone, you'll see a link to that program here. For now, most of you won't have anything in this section.

The My Connections section is for links; through the My Preferences tab (see below) you can add any link you want here. It also includes space for portal-enabled tools; right now we have a dictionary lookup, a weather report, a language translator, and a map search. There won't be anything here when you first log in, but you can add links and tools by customizing the WOUPortal.

The Programs for Everyone section shows options that are available to everyone, which currently is the WOUPortal help and the communication log. If you have enabled the advanced features (see below) you'll also see links to your email, calendar and other services.

What is the communication log?

The communications log is designed to make it easy to get information out to a group of people. Anybody can set up a group and give them messages, which they will see when they check the communication log. You will be able to see how many of the recipients have read each message. Currently, this is used by several sports groups, plus student workers and their supervisors, but anyone can start a group and use it for any purpose.

How do I customize the WOUPortal?

Click the My Preferences tab at the top of the page. In the top section, you can change your nickname and enable advanced features. There is a brief explanation of the advanced features here, but I'll cover them in more detail below.

In the next part of the preferences page, you can add and delete the links that show up in the My Connections section of the main WOUPortal page.

In the third part, you can hide or show items in the My programs section, and enable or disable any of the four tools currently available. Note that it says that "My Feeds" is coming soon; this feature will let you subscribe to RSS feeds, which let you view things like news and blogs directly in the portal without having to go to other pages.

When you're in the Preferences tab, you have an additional tab available; you can use it to give feedback about the portal. Praise, criticism, feature requests... whatever you want to say.

So what about these advanced features you keep mentioning?

If you have enabled the advanced features, the Programs for Everyone section will include links to your email and calendar pages in Communications Express, and to your Banner Web page (either Web for Students or Web for Employees, depending on which you are) and your blog. The WOU forums server will soon be connected as well. The really cool thing here is that once you have logged in to the WOUPortal, you can use these links without needing to log in to each service separately. Just don't forget to log out of the portal when you are done.

When I enabled advanced features I got a warning about not holding WOU responsible for data loss? What's up with that?

Because of the way the WOUPortal logs you into external services like Communications Express and the blog server, you need to specifically log out when you are done. Even if you quit the browser completely, someone else could still open it up again, go to Communications Express, and read your email.

This can be completely prevented by logging out of the portal, so it is crucial that you do that every time; that warning message is there to remind you that the advanced features really are optional, and that you agree not to hold WOU responsible if you forget to log out and somebody does something bad with your account. Personally, I do use the advanced features; I believe the extra convenience of not having to log in multiple times outweighs the (very small) risk involved.

Wasn't there another FAQ about a portal last year or something?

There was. But that portal was never widely used, and was not as flexible as we wanted, so we made our own. Michael Ellis did most of the heavy lifting; if you like the portal. he's the one to thank, and if you want changes, use the Give Feedback tab in the Preferences, and he'll get the message.

You said this is a beta version of the WOUPortal?

That's right; it's a work in progress. However, it is a very stable beta version. Some people, notably Housing and Dining staff and student workers as well as students in the residence halls, have been using it for months already. We expect to add new features and programs every few weeks. The visual design is also open to change.

That's all for this week; remember to use the "Give Feedback" tab in the WOUPortal preferences to send any kudos, comments, questions, or concerns about the portal. Feel free to contact me at faq@wou.edu as well.

Thanks as ever for your time and attention,

----Ron

Contribute woes

The Contribute Publishing Server is down again. This is really frustrating; it was running great for months and then bam, two major failures since the beginning of February. Nobody can log in to the system at all.

Last time I had to reinstall the whole system and recreate all the site settings by hand (a tedious process for thirty sites) because when I tried restoring the backed-up settings the problem came right back. This time, even that doesn't work; the problem occurs even on a totally fresh install with no sites defined.

I was able to demonstrate this to one of Adobe's senior tech support engineers, and she confirmed this was a previously unknown program bug and submitted it to the CPS developers. They are supposed to get back to me within one business day, but it's now been longer than that, so tomorrow morning it's time to start pestering them again.

It's frustrating because I still think this is a good product... at least it makes my job as an administrator much easier when it it working correctly. We'll see how things go, I guess.

FAQ: P2P and the RIAA

Hello, everyone--

Since last week's FAQ on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, we've gotten some new information. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is beginning a crackdown on illegal file sharing at universities, and we'd like to pass that warning along to you, as well as tell you about an alternative source of free and legal music for students.

Who is the RIAA, anyway?

The Recording Industry Association of America is a group that includes all of the major music recording companies, representing well over a thousand recording labels. In recent years they have strongly focused on preventing illegal distribution of music, and one result of this is lawsuits against people found to be illegally sharing copyrighted music through peer-to-peer software. You can see their website at http://www.riaa.com/. Note that a similar organization, the Motion Picture Association of America, fills the same role for the movie industry, and has been suing people who illegally share movies.

So what exactly does this "crackdown" involve?

We have been warned by the state Attorney General's office that the RIAA is beginning an extensive new program of lawsuits targeting students. They intend to pursue hundreds of cases per month nationwide. You can read more about this program on the RIAA website, and we are also making available a copy of an explanatory letter sent to all university presidents; find it at http://www.wou.edu/ucs/faq/documents/RIAA_University_ltr.pdf. As part of this program, students found illegally sharing music will be offered a chance to pay a settlement fee to avoid the lawsuit.

How does that settlement work?

As mentioned in the previous P2P FAQ, the RIAA will not know exactly who has been sharing their copyrighted files, but they will be able to track the illegal activity to WOU's network and get the IP address of the computer from which the files are shared. Under their old policies, they would then send us a takedown notice, and we would act on it because WOU as a whole could be sued if we did not.

But now these warnings will also come with a pre-lawsuit letter; you can see an example at http://www.wou.edu/ucs/faq/documents/RIAA_pre_lawsuit_ltr.pdf. (Note that the example letter was received at another institution; WOU has not yet received any of these letters, but believe it is only a matter of time until we do.) We will forward this letter to the individual who owns the computer whose address is given in the takedown notice. If that person chooses to accept the settlement offer, they must contact the RIAA as stated in the letter, and will be given further instructions. We will not give any student's identity to the RIAA unless legally compelled, but this may well happen if a lawsuit is filed.

If someone gets one of these letters, should they accept the settlement offer?

We cannot make a recommendation on this matter, other than that the recipient of the letter should consult an attorney, or at least educate themselves as much as possible, before deciding. Please be aware that there is a lot of contradictory information about RIAA file sharing lawsuits, and many sources are biased one way or another, so it is difficult to find reliable advice online. Wikipedia's entry on the RIAA at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA is a good starting point. Whether or not a student accepts the settlement offer, WOU will continue to follow our current judicial policy, including temporarily disconnecting that student's residence hall network access.

You said something about a new source of free and legal music?

We are looking into a program called Ruckus, which offers a catalog of over two million songs free to any current student with a valid .edu email address. They make money though advertisements, and by charging fees for additional services and to non-student users. You can take a look at them yourself at http://www.ruckus.com. We are investigating the possibility of getting a local server for their catalog, which will make download times faster and grant access to some additional material such as movies, but any student can use their service even if WOU does not make such a deal with the company.

That's all for this week. Please feel free to send me any questions about this topic, or anything else you'd like to see addressed in an FAQ, at faq@wou.edu.

Thanks once again for your time and attention,

----Ron

FAQ: Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing

Hello, everyone--

This week's topic is peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. It's been in the media a lot recently, and unfortunately there's a lot of misunderstanding about it, and about WOU's policies towards it.

What is peer-to-peer file sharing?

Every computer running a P2P file sharing program (such as LimeWire, BitTorrent, or iMesh) acts as a server so others using the same program can download files from it. It also lets the user search for and download files being shared by other computers running the same software. This is a benefit when legal files are being shared, since there doesn't have to be an expensive central server that everybody downloads from. But if the shared files are illegal, this is a drawback, because there is no single source to shut down.

Is P2P file sharing bad?

There has been a lot of hype in the media about P2P file sharing being bad. It's not so simple, though; it's only wrong when you share stuff that you don't have the rights to. We do not ban P2P software on campus, because there are legitimate uses for it; think of it like owning a gun. Guns are not banned simply because people might use them to commit crimes; only the crimes themselves are banned. The entertainment industry is very much against P2P file sharing, because as copyright holders, they are the main victims of illegally sharing files. However, musicians and actors are also hurt by illegal sharing; every album or movie that is illegally downloaded instead of bought means fewer royalties for them. On the other hand, many amateur musicians embrace P2P file sharing; by releasing their songs to be legally shared, they hope to gain popularity. Some software companies also make use of P2P to share free or trial versions of their products, so they don't have to maintain expensive centralized servers.

How do I know if I'm allowed to download or share something?

If you created the file yourself and have not sold the rights to it, it belongs to you and you can share it as much as you want. If a file is in the public domain, or the owner has given clear permission to share it, it is also OK. But if you cannot find any legitimate notice that a file is OK to share, then you should not download it or share it with others, because that would be stealing.

Why is UCS concerned about P2P file sharing?

We care about file sharing for two main reasons: bandwidth and legality. Since p2p programs are mostly used for music and video, which have large file sizes, they tend to take up more than their share of our Internet bandwidth. If people all over the world are downloading the latest blockbuster movie from a computer in our residence halls, that adds up to a lot of traffic, and other people on campus may have trouble doing legitimate academic work. This is true whether or not the files being shared are legal or illegal.

Why does UCS care about the legality of file sharing? Isn't that solely the responsibility of the person sharing the files?

When copyrighted files are shared from a computer on campus, the owner of the copyright usually can't identify who owns that computer. But they can easily discover that it is coming from someplace on our campus, so they often come to us with their complaints. According to the law, if we have been warned of illegal file sharing on our network, we are liable for criminal charges if we don't take action. These complaints average about once a month, but sometimes they come in groups; in one single day last year, we received complaints about ten different people illegally sharing files. The rate is increasing each year.

What does UCS do when you get a complaint?

Using our internal records, we are usually able to trace the owner of the computer where the files were being shared. If that person is in the Residence Halls, they will lose their Internet access for ninety days, and will be removed from the halls entirely on the second proven offense. If you have any questions or complaints about this policy, please contact Residential computing at (503)838-9201.

I was running LimeWire and Residential Computing uninstalled it when I took my computer in for help! Why is that?

LimeWire is one of the most popular P2P programs currently out there. Unfortunately, we have frequently seen it install spyware and adware. We have also seen it continue to run even after supposedly being uninstalled. When we see LimeWire on a computer, it will be deleted. Not all P2P file sharing programs include spyware, though; we won't automatically install them unless we get confirmation that they are infecting your computer with bad stuff.

That's all for this week! Thanks once again for your time and attention.

----Ron

FAQ: Safe data storage

Hello, everyone--

This week, we're going back to basics. We've had more than the usual number of questions lately about saving files, and where to put them, so that's this week's topic.

Help! The computer crashed and I lost what I was working on! Can I get it back?

You can only get back the part that was saved. For the sake of speed, unsaved data is only stored in the computer's memory, which is completely reset when the system crashes or is rebooted. When you save a document, this writes it to some form of more permanent storage, such as a network drive or flash drive. Needless to say, you should save often when working on a document. In fact, the very first thing you should do when you start a document is save it.

Why should I save a document before there is anything in it?

Because that makes it much easier to save often. Many programs (including Microsoft Word and Star Office Writer) automatically save documents every few minutes... but only if the document had already been saved once, so it has a name. Even if you're working with a program that doesn't save automatically, you can usually hit Control-S (or Command-S on a Mac) to save a document. If you've already saved it once and given it a name, hitting Control-S won't pop up any boxes, or do anything else that will break your train of thought; you can just get into the habit of hitting that key combination every couple of paragraphs. (Like I just did, since I'm composing this in a text editor.)

Where should I save my documents?

First of all, you should not save it on the desktop or C: drive of any machine in the labs. If you have your own machine this is OK, but the lab machines are wiped and rebuilt regularly so any data saved on them will be lost. Instead, we recommend a flash drive and/or your private network drive (AKA the H: drive if you are on a Windows machine.) You can get flash drives for reasonable prices at the WOU bookstore or most any office supply store; they are much better than the old floppy disks because they hold much more, aren't vulnerable to magnets, and don't lose their data. You do need to be careful not to lose them, since they are so small, and you should never, ever, pull them out of a computer when their light is blinking. It's best to click the little green-and-gray "safely remove Hardware" icon on the windows taskbar near the clock; that is safer than just yanking the drive out, because it will warn you if anything in the drive is still in use.

Why should I save stuff on my private network drive if flash drives are so good?

One word: Backup. We back up the storage system to tape every night, so if you ever delete a file by mistake, you can call the Service Request Desk and get it back. Well, at least you can get the previous night's version back; this is usually far better than nothing. It takes some time to restore a file, so you still should be careful, but it's nice to know that safety net is there if you really need it. If you normally store things elsewhere, it's still nice to keep a second copy on the network, so if you accidentally put that flash drive through the laundry, for instance, you'll be able to get your stuff back.

How do I get to my private drive?

First you have to log in to the domain. For faculty and staff, this happens automatically when you start up your machine and type in your username and password. For students it is only automatic if you're in one of the labs; otherwise it is a bit more complicated, and I'll cover that in the next question. On a Windows machine, after logging in, go into "My Computer" and double-click on the H: drive icon. On a Macintosh, there are no drive letters, but you can get to it by double-clicking the "Personal" icon on the desktop.

OK, you said it was more complicated if I'm a student and not in a lab. Just how complicated are we talking, here?

If you are off-campus, see the FTP and Remote Desktop FAQ at http://www.wou.edu/ucs/faq/remotedesktop.php. In the residence halls, follow these steps if you have Windows:

1. Right-click on "My Computer" (this may be an icon on the desktop or an item in the Start Menu) and choose "Map network drive..." which will pop up an options box.


2. Choose a drive letter from the Drive menu. For your personal folder, this should be H:.


3. In the Folder text box, type in "\\cougar\MyDocuments".


4. Make sure the "Reconnect at logon" box is checked; that way you won't have to do these steps every time you log in.


5. Click the OK or Finish button; you will then be asked for your username and password.


6. Instead of just your username, enter "mash\username". Example: "mash\jdoe". Remember, leave out the quotes and use a backslash (usually found above the Return or Enter key), not a normal slash (found on the same key as the question mark.) Enter your password as normal.


7. Click OK; a window should open, showing the contents of your personal folder.


8. If you need other drives such as P: (personal website) or K: (class folders), repeat steps 1-7; for the Class drive, use drive letter K: and folder "\\cougar\class"; for the Apps drive, use drive letter V: and folder name "\\cougar\public_html".

You should only need to do this process once for each drive you need, as long as you remember to check the "Reconnect at logon" box for each one. However, every time you start up your machine, you will have to enter your username and password again the first time you click on the H: drive, or any other network drives you may have. It may already have your username filled in for you, but if you have to enter it again, remember to put "mash\" in front of it.

If you have a Mac, the process is actually easier. Here are the steps:

1. In your Go menu, click "Connect to Server".


2. In the box that comes up, find the address field.


3. Enter "smb://cougar/MyDocuments". If you have done this before, you can find the address in the favorites box; just click on it instead of retyping.


4. Enter your username and password if requested.


5. Click OK and you are good to go!

If you live in the residence halls, you can call Residential Computing at extension 89201 if you want help connecting to the network.

What can I do with my private drive on the storage system?

You can store pretty much any kind of file you want to save. We have a lot of storage space, but please remember that there are about six thousand users of our network, so if you start storing many large graphics, music, or video files, you are probably taking more than your fair share. There should be enough space for all your legitimate needs, however.

What's that "public_html" folder inside my private folder?

That's your own personal piece of the WOU website. But you actually should not use that folder to upload anything, or else you will see "403 Forbidden" errors on your personal webpage. Instead, please use the P: drive. It leads to the same place, but because your computer sees it as a different drive, we can apply different security settings; anything copied to the P: drive is marked as public and will we available on the Web without those annoying "Forbidden" errors.

Anything you put in your P: drive will be accessible on the web at http://www.wou.edu/~username/filename. For instance, if your username is jdoe and you put a file named mypage.html into your public_html folder, anyone can access it at http://www.wou.edu/~jdoe/mypage.html.

What are all those other network drives for?

On a Windows machine, you'll see more drive letters such as I:, J:, K:, or V:; a Mac will have drive icons such as Groups, Shared, Class, and Apps. Not everybody will see all of them. Here's a list of some of them and what is in them:

- I: (Groups): files for individual faculty/staff departments, available only to those in that department

- J: (Shared): files shared among more than one faculty and/or staff department

- K: (Class): files for students in specific classes

- P: (Personal Web): your personal web folder

- V: (Apps): specialized programs used in the labs and by certain departments. Only available to licensed users.

That's it for this week; thanks once again for your time and attention, and have a great weekend!

----Ron

Freakin' spam!

I just deleted 3,952 spam comments from my blog. Boy, those things pile up if you don't keep on top of them. There were too many to delete all at once, but I discovered a trick: in your list of comments, you can click the magnifying glass icon next to a blog topic to list only those comments for that topic. That's generally a small enough number to delete at once (I think it can handle about a thousand in one gulp.) You can also select comments by commenter name or originating address, but considering the spam comes from thousands of different computers, and the username is different for each comment, that isn't very helpful.

I'm looking forward to the new blog server version, which will have more anti-spam tools.

Woo-hoo! Movable type bug fixed!

Just a quick note... in the process of working with Alex on the test install of the new blog server version, I thought of a solution to the bug that was dumping people back to the login screen when trying to post a blog entry. I just tried it, and it works!

General update

I've been busy again (who isn't, these days?) And likely to be more so until we can hire someone to replace Shaun Gatherum, who will be missed around here.

The web conversion is moving along, mostly in the hands of individual people in various departments. I'm working on a way to make the new template function on our database server; right now, a lot of our database applications like the faculty/staff directory and the account lookup system still use the old template. I can make the new template work for non-secure connections to the database, but not secure ones as yet. This may not be fixable until the database server upgrade, but we'll see.

My other big project at the moment is trying to automate Windows domain user creation. You may or may not know that your WOU network usernamer and password actually apply to two different accounts; there's the Windows Domain account, which you use to log into your computer and access network drives, and there's also your LDAP account, which provides access to your email, and your blog, and secure folders on the website, and the forums, and most anything else on any of our servers.

The LDAP account is created automatically, but until recently we have had to create the matching domain account by hand, which is a pain. However, I recently found a way to automate at least part of the process, and am looking to automate the whole thing soon. This probably won't make much difference to anyone outside UCS, except that it might free up more of our time to help you.

Site security

We're changing some of our web shortcuts (such as http://www.wou.edu/blogadmin and http://www.wou.edu/newmail) to use the https protocol.

This is the same protocol that is used for financial transactions on websites such as PayPal and Amazon; it means that all information you send is encrypted so that it cannot be intercepted en route.

However, this seems to have exposed a bug in our blog server; when you go to post an entry, the system returns you to the login page. If this happens, you can change the "http:" in the page address to "https:" and you should be good to go. (You may have to do this twice when posting a blog entry.)

I'm working on a fix for this, though it might wait until I get the blog server software updated.