Apply for a CUHK Digital Certificate
Staff and students send e-mail, browse web pages, and transfer secure information such as files and credit details through the Internet everyday. While it seems the Internet is a convenient communication channel, there are security worries such as:

- Confidentiality: how can we ensure that no one reads our data during transmission
- Authentication: how can we be sure that the identity of a sender or receiver (a person or a computer) is who is claimed. For example, one day you receive an e-mail that is sent by "Bill Gates". How can you confirm the e-mail was actually sent by Mr. Gates?

A Digital Certificate helps you to prevent problems with security. By using a Digital Certificate, you can send encrypted messages to a specific person and be sure that only that specific person can read your messages.

If you want to know more about Digital Certificates or apply for a Digital Certificate, please visit the CUHK Certification Authority web page (http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ca) to get more information.

Policy of Publishing Audio / Video Clips on Personal Web Pages
Following the popularity of the personal web page server, "ihome", many staff and students would like to put audio and video clips on the Internet for other users to access. However, you should first ensure that you have the appropriate copyright for these audio and video clips.

According to copyright law, unauthorized electronic transmission of audio, video and audio/visual recordings of musical works (e.g. MP3 format) by way of distribution and/or making these recordings available for downloading via the Internet is restricted. Making someone else's copyright materials available in this way will make you liable for both criminal prosecution and civil action.

It is also a violation of CSC/ITSU copyright policy stated in Section 7 of Acceptable Use Policy and Guidelines. Users who provide access to such unauthorised materials will be subject to penalties as stated in Section 9.2.3 of Acceptable Use Policy and Guidelines. Details can be read at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/csc/about/copyright-sound.html.

Mailserv Warning Message about Exceeding Disk Quotas
This September, we implemented a new facility on "Mailserv" to inform you if you have exceeded your disk quota usage. When your "Mailserv" mailbox is full, you will receive a warning e-mail with the subject "Your disk/file usage is over your quota limit". You will be asked to clean up your mail box in order to retrieve further incoming mail. Please visit http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/csc/network/app/email/overquota.html for the details. If you like to know your current disk quota balance, please check it online at "http://accounts.csc.cuhk.edu.hk"> http://accounts.csc.cuhk.edu.hk.

Several Changes in User Area at Wong Foo Yuan Building
Starting from Sep 22, users will have access to colour laser and black/white transparency printing services in the User Area at Wong Foo Yuan Building. The access procedures and the charging method are the same as in User Area at Pi Chiu Building. That is, the printers are also administered by the Auto-charging System for Printing Service and the same print account is charged as in Pi Chiu Building.

In addition, with the availability of staff, the opening hours of Wong Foo Yuan Building have been extended as follows from October 4 1999 to December 4 1999
Monday - Friday 9:15am-10pm Saturday 9:15am-12:15pm Sunday and Public Holidays Close

New Web Site for Getting Quotations and Tender Prices of Computer Equipment
For most common computer equipment, we have already obtained quotations or tender prices for the University at a substantial discount. This information was previously available on gopher for our users to acquire it online. With the decommission of the gopher system, this information has been migrated to the web. The new URL is http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/price. Please bookmark it to get the latest price information.

Decommission of Maple
The CSC/ITSU regularly monitors the utilization of centrally managed computer systems, including hardware and software, to determine the number of licenses required. Over the past two years, the usage of "Maple V", an engineering numeric computation software program, has been negligible. After consulting with potential users, we have decided to decommission Maple from 1st November 1999. Although Maple will soon be decommissioned, users can use other software programs such as Matlab and Mathematica for performing similar analyses. For any enquiries, please contact our consultant at maple-help@cuhk.edu.hk.

Computer Systems and Services Operating Hours during National Day (October 1)
During the coming National Day, all computer systems and services will operate as usual. Specifically, the User Area at Pi-Chiu Building will remain open 24-hour and the Consultation Room will be open from 9:30am to 11:00pm.

Details of these times can be read on-line at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/csc/announce/holiday.html.