Computing and Communications Services News: March 2004

March, 2004

Student Interns Join ITSD
While the technology bust has left thousands of highly skilled people looking for work and even considering a career change, the lure of a career in IT hasn’t completely evaporated. For a fortunate few IT interns each year, the Berkeley Lab offers an opportunity to work in a computing environment that offers a little bit of everything in the way of technology innovation.

LBNL Goes Google
The Berkeley Lab internal search page, http://search.lbl.gov/, will soon be based exclusively on the Google search appliance.

After an evaluation of both search engines, ITSD determined that Google is considerably more powerful and precise than the current UltraSeek Lab search engine, which will be phased out over the next several months.

The End of an Era: ITSD Pulls the Plug on Last IBM Mainframe Application
At midnight on February 29, ITSD marked the end of the Lab's mainframe era when members of the Information Systems and Services Department pulled the plug on an outsourced IBM mainframe computer system in southern California.

TEID’s CD Production Service
CDs are fast becoming the medium of choice in document preparation. These days, the report you receive is as likely to be read on screen as in your lap. TEID is ready to produce these CDs with its new CD burner.

Tip of the Month: Managing Local Mail Folders Using Mozilla
Problem: "I've changed the name of one of my local mail folders and now I don't see any of the emails that were in it. Also, if I create a folder and put email in it, the emails disappear. What's wrong?"

Use care when creating or renaming local mail folders. To avoid problems, don't use special characters such as !". * + , / : ; < = > ? [ \ ] | # when creating folder names. If a local mail folder becomes unreadable, contact the Help desk at Ext. 4357 immediately for assistance.

Protecting Your Computer

Windows XP Security: Hands-on Course Enrollment
Enrollment for the Windows XP Security Hands-on Course is still open. The course will be taught from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 7 in Bldg. 90-0026. Click here for a course description. Enroll at https://hris.lbl.gov/.

Computer Protection Brown Bag: Hacker Tools
Jay Krous of the Lab's Computer Protection Program will be talking about and demonstrating hacker tools commonly used against Windows systems at the Computer Protection Brown Bag Event at noon, March 30 in Bldg. 54 (Pers Hall). Bring your lunch and your questions.

Monthly Virus Update
The LBNL virus wall once again proved its value to the Lab by detecting and eradicating a total of 39408 worms and viruses (up sharply from the previous month) before they could reach Lab systems. Windows-based worms and viruses once again were the most numerous by a wide margin.

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