Daily Bulletin

Home Internet service available

Colleges are off-line The Internet doesn't reach UW's church colleges -- hasn't since Wednesday morning, when the fibre-optic cable connecting them with UW's main campus was cut during pipelaying and road work outside Needles Hall. "The fiber is being replaced," says Greg Cummings of the information systems and technology department. "We expect things will again be operational sometime on Sunday." Meanwhile, if your e-mail to St. Jerome's, Renison, Conrad Grebel or St. Paul's is going unanswered, that's why. And that's why there's no hyperlink, lower down in this Bulletin, to the St. Jerome's Centre for Catholic Experience; it wouldn't work if it were there.

Letters with an offer that we maybe can't refuse started arriving yesterday. "We are pleased to have identified Bell as our preferred supplier of high speed internet access, through the Bell Sympatico High Speed Edition service," writes Jay Black, associate provost (information systems and technology).

"Our objective was to make it possible for our community to reach the UW network from home at speeds significantly higher than those provided by conventional modems. . . . Bell Sympatico High Speed Edition Service provides that and more.

"By subscribing as a member of the UW community, you will also be supporting the network infrastructure on campus."

Users of Sympatico HSE are "supporting" UW because, after an initial threshold, the company pays a fee to the university based on the number of staff, faculty and students who sign up.

Sympatico HSE is "always on" -- it has a direct connection to the Internet said to be up to 30 times as fast as traditional dial-up access. No inside wiring changes are required, and subscribers can use any phone jack in the house. They also won't have to worry about missing phone calls because they will be able to use the Internet and simultaneously use their telephone line for calls or faxes.

Sympatico service doesn't include any special connection to UW. Both the Sympatico subscriber and the UW campus network have connections to Bell's national Internet Transit Service. Says Roger Watt of the information systems and technology department: "Speed, latency, and reliability in the connection between UW at-home HSE subscribers and the UW campus network are therefore expected to be excellent without requiring any special HSE/UW direct local interconnect." In other words, UW people who subscribe to the High Speed Edition service will be able to reach the whole Internet -- through web browsers, Telnet and other software -- as well as just UW.

The price for Sympatico HSE service will be $39.95 a month (including modem rental) for subscribers who use Bell Canada as their long distance provider, and $49.95 for others. The installation fee ranges from $49.95 to $199.95 depending on the kind of computer and whether the customer or Bell is doing the work. (There's a 50 per cent discount on installation fees until October 31.)

Sympatico HSE includes some personal webspace, a sympatico.ca e-mail address, and "full access to over 20,000 newsgroups". Service is available within a radius of about 4 kilometres from one of Bell's switching stations -- the nearest one is just north of the UW campus on Phillip Street.

Union sets date for strike vote

Union members were notified this week that the vote would take place in Engineering Lecture Hall room 101, following a special meeting at 4:10 p.m. next Friday to "provide information about the status of negotiations".

"We've come to an impasse," said CUPE president Neil Stewart. "The strike vote is part of the process to make sure the direction taken by the negotiating committee is the direction the membership wants."

Talks between the union and the university broke down in July, and although a conciliator has been appointed by the provincial labour ministry, no meeting dates have yet been set. "We're always available if the university wants to sit down with us," added Stewart, who noted that questions from anyone at the university could be directed to him at the union office, ext. 6793.

If members vote in favor of a strike, Stewart said, the union will "continue to conciliation knowing we have the support of the membership. No strike date will be set until after conciliation," he said.

Neil Murray of the human resources department, head of the university's negotiating team, noted that talks between the two sides "have been cordial. There are still a few outstanding issues, but we hope that with the help of a conciliator, we can reach a resolution in one or two meetings."

The two previous contracts were reached with the help of a conciliator. While strike votes have been held in the past, there has never been a strike at UW.

Purchase requisitions on line

Cook says the on-line requisition form should "make acquisitions easier and faster" for staff and faculty who are buying things with university funds. It can be used for items costing no more than $2,500.

He notes that systems contract requisitioning remains unchanged, "and the traditional paper purchase requisition form is still available."

'Information age' lecture tonight

Kingwell will speak on "Storage/Retrieval: Human Possibilities and Limits in the Information Age". His talk begins at 7:30 p.m. in Siegfried Hall, St. Jerome's. Admission is free.

Dreams of the Millennium was chosen by Maclean's as one of the ten best non-fiction books of 1996. A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism won the 1997 Spitz Prize for outstanding work in liberal-democratic theory, and Better Living: In Pursuit of Happiness from Plato to Prozac was one of the Globe and Mail's top ten books for 1998. Marginalia: A Cultural Reader and Canada: Our Century (with Christopher Moore) are due to be published this fall. An editor, essayist and reviewer, Kingwell is a faculty member in philosophy and director of the Centre for Advanced Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.

He describes storing and retrieving as basic human activities. But as the millennium approaches, has the appetite for collecting information grown beyond normal bounds? "Our apparently relentless desire to consume information is something we need now to re-think," he says. "Such a desire can never be fully satisfied, it can only be fed; and that has negative effects on our sense of self."

The St. Jerome's Centre for Catholic Experience lecture series will continue through the fall and winter. Kingwell's lecture is the second in a series on information, technology, and society jointly sponsored by the Centre and the St. Jerome's mathematics department. David Johnston, president of UW and nationally known expert on information technology, will give the third lecture on November 18. This is the Centre's seventeenth season of free public lectures.

Events of a busy weekend

Engineering alumni who graduated in 1969 (that's 30 years ago) and 1964 (35 years ago) are holding reunions tomorrow. Events include a lunch at the University Club, campus tours in the afternoon, a reception in the Student Life Centre hosted by UW president David Johnston, and a "gala dinner" at the Four Points Sheraton in downtown Kitchener.

East Indian groups in Kitchener-Waterloo will hold a walkathon to raise money for the Regional Cancer Centre Sunday morning starting and ending at the Student Life Centre. "The clubs have organized fundraising walks over many years, and last year's walk raised $10,000 for the cancer centre," says a news release provided by Chandrika Anjaria (who works in UW's department of information systems and technology) on behalf of the East Indian Walkathon Committee. "This is a way that we can collectively show that the East Indian community cares for the betterment and prosperity of this area that we all call home." Registration will start at 9 a.m. on Sunday and the walking -- 5 or 10 kilometres -- at 10. "Light Indian refreshments" follow.

Students' council -- the governing body of the Federation of Students -- will meet on Sunday, starting at 12 noon, in the multipurpose room of the Student Life Centre. A couple of tough issues are on the agenda, including possible reorganization of the executive board to eliminate the position of vice-president (student issues), and whether or not UW's Federation should join a legal dispute over the ownership of TravelCUTS, a student travel agency that's operated by the Canadian Federation of Students, to which UW doesn't belong.

A meeting will be held Sunday at 4:00 (Student Life Centre room 2134) to work on plans for the Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference that's going to be held at UW in the spring. "Anyone interested in helping out with the organization of the conference is more than welcome," writes CUTC chair Jon Kwan, "especially with marketing, logistics, web design. For more information they can e-mail me at jcckwan@uwaterloo.ca."

The football Warriors play their home opener tomorrow at 2 p.m., hosting the University of Toronto's Varsity Blues (at University Stadium on Seagram Drive). More sports tomorrow: women's tennis against Queen's and Western, 9 a.m.; baseball against Brock, 1 p.m.; men's rugby against Queen's, 1 p.m. Away from Waterloo, the Warrior golfers are in the Windsor Invitational today, the men's tennis team is at Queen's, the cross-country teams are competing at Guelph on Saturday, the field hockey team is in a tournament in Toronto on Sunday, the men's and women's soccer teams are both at Laurier on Sunday, and the women's rugby team plays at McMaster on Sunday afternoon.

Finally, on Monday the great hall of the Student Life Centre will be the site for "a Work/Study Abroad Fair" from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Says an announcement: "There are 27 educational agencies participating in this event representing institutions from the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. Several interesting possibilities exist for Canadians to become involved in international work and study abroad programs. In addition to study abroad opportunities, UW currently offers 70 international student exchange programs with universities throughout the world." The event is being sponsored by UW's international programs office and career resource centre.

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
| Yesterday's Bulletin
Copyright © 1999 University of Waterloo