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Undergraduates who didn't manage to register last week can do so today, still at the Physical Activities Complex, but will find themselves paying an extra $10 in "late fees".
According to the registrar's office, there were 3,818 first-year students preregistered as of early last week. After late arrivals, dropouts and other shifts, the target is 3,702 as of November 1, the date enrolment is officially counted.
The change would particularly affect the so-called "alt.binaries" newsgroups, which make up only 2 to 3 per cent of the newsgroups but are estimated to account for 65 to 80 per cent of the total volume of data in newsgroups. The content of alt.binaries newsgroups ranges from sexy pictures to free (and possibly untested) computer programs.
The recommendation to drop some of these heavy newsgroups comes from an ad-hoc working group of the University Committee on Information Systems and Technology (UCIST), chaired by Dr. Richard Wells of the kinesiology department. Its report on "newsgroup management", dated in July, was made public last week.
Says Wells: "Difficulties in coping with the steadily increasing flow of news onto the campus prompted the UCIST to strike a small working group to propose solutions. Based on a preliminary report and public meeting in the Winter term, it is the recommendation of the ad-hoc Working Group to cease importation of any newsgroup hierarchy whose volume constitutes a significant portion of the total and whose primary function appears to be the dissemination of non-text content (such as picture files, executable software, or sound files) on October 1st, 1996. The use of newsgroups to disseminate such objects is not a worthwhile use of the resources that are being consumed."
Requests for exceptions -- "to import individual newsgroups deemed essential for research, teaching and administration or to enrich the general intellectual life of the University" -- would go to the associate provost (information systems and technology), and be referred to an appeals committee.
Said Wells: "A public meeting will be held early in the fall term to publicize and explain the process which lead up to this recommendation."
Some excerpts from the working group report, which is available on UWinfo through "Documents":
While news allows communication on a wide range of topics related to both the academic programs and the general intellectual life of the University, it consumes University resources. These include bandwidth on our external and internal connections, computing and personnel resources to provide and maintain primary and secondary news servers, and computer hardware in labs to permit news reading and news posting on campus. . . .The recommended approach is easy to administer and does not materially hamper the value of "news" for the free availability and exchange of ideas. Reputable repositories exist, both on campus and externally, for access to software that has been contributed to the public by its developers. . . .
Selection is the process by which librarians deal with acquisition under the reality of a finite budget. Selection is not censorship. The goal of selection is to ensure that the intellectual resources selected represent a wide variety of disciplines and points of view, and support the intellectual life of the University community. . . .
In the past year, both DCS and MFCF have, on occasion, been forced to delete thousands of postings in order to be able process the news that is coming in. The backup in news processing in the Mathematics Faculty once became so bad that a professor in the Computer Science department reported that urgent messages posted to class newsgroups sometimes took as much as two or three days to appear. . . .
The volume of network news has also begun to have impact on the external link. . . . The impact is most severe on network services such as telnet and rlogin (which allow users to connect to remote computers and use them in real time), mildly severe on WWW and ftp traffic, and less severe on electronic mail. . . .
It takes approximately $68,000 annually to support network news. The current budget climate makes it likely that organizational units will be getting significant budget cuts over the next few years, not increases. Some feel that additional spending on network news, compared to other services, is not warranted by the content of the newsgroups. . . .
Newsgroups should not be deleted on the basis of partisan or doctrinaire disapproval. Furthermore, one of our recommendations is that if more resources become available, then previously unimported groups could be imported in the future. Upcoming budget cuts suggest that the University may be forced to cut back many of its services, and network news is just one area.
Many co-op students applying to jobs for the first time could be more successful in securing interviews if their resumes were of a higher quality.In order to help co-op students who will embark on their first work term in January 1997, Co-operative Education & Career Services is presenting a resume proofreading "blitz." New co-op students interested in participating should deposit a draft copy of their resume in alphabetically labelled bins in the hallway outside the Career Resources Centre (on the first floor of Needles Hall) on Monday September 16 by 3:00 p.m. The resumes will be divided amongst a team of about 30 CECS staff volunteer markers and will be available for pick-up on September 19 between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. at the Paging Desk (first floor Needles Hall). Return of the resumes will occur in time for the students to incorporate suggested changes for the first job posting.
Because there could be over 1,000 resumes to proofread in two days at an extremely busy time for Co-operative Education & Career Services, it will not be possible to offer personal resume critiquing meetings. However, if markers encounter resumes which require particular attention, the student authors of those resumes will be encouraged to make an appointment to see a Student Career Advisor.
CAR
| Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond -- credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004 Comments to the editor | About the Bulletin Friday's Bulletin |