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The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Computation Authority
News bulletin #128
27-November-1998
Today's topics:
- Mailing list for information about communication problems.
- Future usage of identified call at our modems.
- The Computation Authority and the Millenium Bug
o Mailing list for information about communication problems: Once in a
while there are outages in communication (either internal or at the
connection to the world-wide internet). Due to their relatively short
nature we do not post information about these outages to all users.
If you wish to get announcements about such outages please drop me
Email.
o Future usage of identified call at our modems: Within a month or two
we'll block access to our modems to any caller who blocks the
identified call (by dialing *43 or has a permanent blockage thru
Bezeq). If you have blocked sending caller identification and cannot
remove it, please drop me a message with a justified reason why you
can't remove it.
Note: By "identified call" we mean that you block the option of the
other side to see your number when you call. There is no connection
to whether you have an identified call on your side (i.e. you see who
calls you).
o The Computation Authority and the Millenium Bug (written by Diego
Kramer, head of the Ein-Kerem branch of Computation Authority):
There are many areas in which Year 2000 issues exist within the
university environment. As time passes new areas of concern are
identified. Initially concern was focused on centralized
administrative information systems. However, it was realized with
time that the problem is related to many more areas. The problem is
with applications, operating systems, computers where the internal
clock is hardware dependent, embedded systems, data networking
infrastructure and more. The scope of the problem goes through all
the platforms: mainframes, workstations, and micro - computers. All
this within Academic, administrative and maintenance University
activities.
The Hebrew University Authority for Computing has a "Year 2000 Team"
working since December 1997 which deals with the Year 2000 problem.
The objectives of the team are to help to the academic, research and
computer aided teaching environment to characterize the potential
problems in order to be ready for year 2000.
In order to centralize the Information we open a page on the
University Network. The page contains accumulated information
regarding the current subject, useful suggestions and links to most of
the Hebrew University Hardware and software vendors y2k pages. This
page is medium thorough everyone can send a question or a request
regarding the y2k problem to the computer authority advisors. The
Page location is http://helpdesk.md.huji.ac.il/y2k/.
To finish I want to remark that it is difficult to say with certainty
what sort of exposures will accompany the Millenium Bug. The more
unforeseeable risks may arise in what are known as "embedded systems"-
the hardwire microprocessing units that help to run everything from
elevators to security card entry systems to sophisticated medical
equipment.
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