Great! We'd love for you to attend. For information about admissions requirements and such, please talk to the Admissions Office, addressed in the next question.

The Computer Science department has no admissions requirement that is separate from admission to Spelman College. If you are a Spelman student and would like to major or minor in Computer Science, you should start by taking CIS 121, "Computer Science I."

All the information that the Computer Science department has in on these web pages; we don't have anything else we can send you. Please browse around, because we've got information on the courses you need to take, possible schedules, and other information. If the particular question you have isn't addressed, feel free to email us.

Spelman College doesn't have any grad programs that we know of, and certainly none in Computer Science, so if you're looking for a Masters or other advanced degree, you'll have to find a different school. We focus all our energies on undergraduates.

As with ADW and English Composition, Spelman College's General Education Requirement requires that students take a course in Computer Literacy. (Check your Bulletin.) For most students, that means taking CIS 100; however, science majors may substitute CIS 121. You may get exemption from the requirement by taking the CIS 100 exemption test.

The college encourages students to take their computer literacy course by the end of their sophomore year. This is actually a good idea, too, since some of the skills taught in CIS 100, such as advanced word processing features, will be useful in other courses.

Each semester during pre-registration, and during Freshman Week in August. You can sing up in the Computer Science department office. Science Center room 326.

The Computer Science department, also known as the CIS department (Computer and Information Science), is an academic department. We teach and do research in Computer Science.

CIT, the Computing and Information Technology Office, is a staff office. It creates and supports all the computing infrastructure at Spelman, including networks, email, PCs and so forth. They have a web page, but you can reach them by phone at extension 5395. If you're off-campus, the direct Spelman phone number is 404-270-5395.

First of all, you think about why you're having trouble. Obviously, if you're not studying enough, or studying the wrong things, make those changes. Second, talk to your professor about the trouble. Maybe he or she can put you on the right track. We really do want all our students to succeed, and we're interested in your progress, even in large classes where we can't give lots of individual attention in class. Come to us during our office hours. Third, talk to the people in Learning Resources; they're highly trained in study skills, memory tricks, organizational techniques, and other things that may help you out. Call them at extension 2155 to set up an appointment.

You telnet to the proxy server, and then connect, via the proxy, to the particular machine you want to login to. An example:

telnet spelman.edu
...
prompt>connect aardvark
login: username
password:  passwd
...

Obviously, you substitute the machine you really want in place of "aardvark" and substitute your username and password.

The problem is with a "lock" file, right? When Netscape starts up, it pops up a window that says:

Netscape has detected a /home/username/.netscape/lock file
	

It's bad to have two Netscapes running at once, because they step all over each other. They're both fighting to control your bookmarks file, history file, disk cache and so forth. So, Netscape tries to avoid this situation.

Here's how it works:

1. When Netscape starts up, it checks to see if a "lock" file exists. Normally, the file doesn't exist. If the file exists, Netscape gives you the error message.
2. Assuming the "lock" file doesn't exist, Netscape creates it, putting in it information about the host the process is running on and the process ID number (PID). This is so that the previous step will work if any other netscape starts up.
3. When Netscape exits, it deletes the lock file.

So, as the instructions say, first check to see if you have another netscape running. If you don't, it's safe to remove the file and run netscape normally.

rm ~/.netscape/lock
	

Suppose you have an email account with hotmail.com or juno.com or deja.com or yahoo.com or .... Can you read your Spelman email via those providers, instead of logging in to Spelman? The answer is yes, and there are two ways of going about it:

Forward your email

If your email is forwarded, it never spends any time at Spelman and you can no longer read it at Spelman, you can only read it at the address you forward to. Here's how you do it, assuming your email address is me@mail.com, substitute your own address for that in the directions:

1. Telnet/Login to Spelman, as usual.
2. Type the following command.

   cat > .forward
   me@mail.com
   ^d
   

   That last line is a control-d, not a caret and a "d." A control-d is typed by holding down the control key (it's a special kind of shift key), typing the letter "d" and releasing the control key.
3. logout as usual

Downloading your email

Some mail providers (Yahoo, Gateway and others) allow you to read email from other addresses. Click on the "read other mail," "check POP mail" or whatever the interface is, and when it asks for the name of the "POP" mail host, say

king.spelman.edu
	    

We can't give more information than this, because the mail providers differ from one to another. If you try this and you have information to add to this FAQ, let us know.

Note that in this technique, your email stays at Spelman until you download it. Some mail providers allow you to keep the email at Spelman, while others delete it from Spelman, but many give you a choice.

The way Unix systems work, there is no record or your password anywhere; not even the system administrator (sysadmin) knows your password. (What happens when you login is that your password is encrypted by a one-way function, and then compared to a record of your encrypted password.)

The sysadmin does have the power to change your password. So contact the sysadmin and ask to have it changed. It will typically be changed to some default password and you'll be told what it is. You should then change it, so that once again you're the only one who knows your password.