Easy Access Account Policies
30 July 1994, oac@uci.edu
All currently registered and regularly enrolled students at UCI may
obtain a free Easy Access account on the Academic Computing Sun
computer system, "EA," which runs a version of the Unix operating
system. Accounts are valid for one academic year and are renewable
for as long as you are enrolled at UCI. Accounts may be renewed each
fall quarter after being assigned.
You do not need to be enrolled in a computer class to have an Easy
Access account. Your account may not be used by anyone other than
yourself.
The current allocation for Easy Access accounts is $200.00 per year
for each account. Each account holder is allowed 750 kilobytes of
disk storage. You are responsible for monitoring your own usage via
the "miser" and "cost" programs. If you over-spend, your account will
be locked and you will be unable to use it for the rest of the school
year. If your account is locked for using too much money, you will
NOT be able to access any of the files in your account until it is
unlocked when your account is renewed in July. Anyone who misuses a
computer account will lose access to the account and any accompanying
rights and privileges, and may also be subject to punitive action
through University channels.
A Few Words of Wisdom
-
There is a finite amount of money available to Easy Access accounts
that is less than ($200.00 / year) * (number of students at UCI). In
fact, the actual amount is only about 2.5% of that number. Because of
this, it may be necessary to restrict or even eliminate Easy Access
computing at some time during the school year if the funds are spent
too quickly.
-
You should change your password the first time you log on, and at
regular intervals later on, to help keep your accounts secure from
unauthorized use.
-
Do Not let anyone else use your account. All UCI full time students
may get an Easy Access account, so there is no reason for anyone to
use another person's account.
-
The use of Easy Access accounts for personal monetary profit is
strictly forbidden. The State of California has no desire to fund
your private endeavors.
-
Do Not use your Easy Access account to harass others via electronic
mail, or by any other means.
- Read and understand the section, "Using your EA Account" at the end
of this document.
EA System
EA is a Sun SPARCserver 10 that runs SunOS, which is very similar to
4.3BSD Unix. For text editing we have emacs, edit, and vi. For text
formatting, nroff, TeX and LaTeX are available. The following
computer languages are supported: C, Fortran, Lisp, Pascal, and
Prolog. "UNIX|STAT," a collection of data analysis routines is also
available, along with Mathematica and SPSS. More software is being
added continually. Users are advised to read the "system" bulletin
board for details.
Ea has a sophisticated electronic mail system for communicating with
other users locally and with users of UCInet machines, Bitnet, Usenet,
NSFnet, and other off-campus networks and machines throughout the
world via the Internet. For beginners who wish to send mail, we offer
"pine," which is a menu-assisted program that handles electronic mail.
Ways to Get More Computing
- Ask a faculty member to sponsor you on some project. The academic
departments have funds that may be used for computing.
- Buy your own account. If you wish to pay for an account, that
option is available. Call (714) 856-5953 for more information.
Using Your Account
UCI Policy on Student use of Computing Resources 5/4/94
As a member of the UCI community a wide range of computing resources,
both on and off campus, is available for your use. When you use
computing at UCI you become part of our community of computer users,
and like any community we can all make the best use of our resources
if we all use them responsibly. If you make unethical use of UCI
computers, you can be subjected to penalties ranging from a reprimand
to expulsion from the University and criminal prosecution. You, of
course, have the right to appeal any such charge or accusation - the
University Ombudsman's office can help you prepare an appeal.
This document outlines the UCI policies for network and computer
users. The fundamental principles behind our policies are these:
- UCI computer resources are provided for your use in support of your
academic activities as a student at the University.
- You are responsible for security on the accounts and machines which
are provided for your use. This includes the responsibility to set
passwords appropriately and to protect their confidentiality.
- The computer resources provided to you are for your use and are not
to be used by any other person.
- While using the computers, you should never do anything that harms
another user or prevents him or her from getting work done.
Every UCI owned computer is under the control of some system or lab
manager. When you are given access, you will be told who that manager
is. If you have any questions about these rules, or if you suspect
that an account (yours or someone else's) has been broken into, please
contact the manager and explain the problem. If you don't know who is
the lab manager, call the consultant at 856-5551.
Any account created for you remains the property of the Regents of the
University of California. You are responsible for this account, and
you may not allow any other person to use it. The primary purpose of
your account is to allow you to carry out your instructional
activities. You may also make modest use of these resources for other
purposes, such as sending electronic mail, reading the electronic
bulletin boards, and playing games, provided that this usage does not
significantly interfere with the primary use of the machines. An
example of how one might "significantly interfere" would be to tie up
a machine for game-playing when no others are free and someone else is
waiting to use them. If you have a game or other program you would
like to make available to other users, please email "consult" or call
the consultant at 856-5551. You may not use the machines for
commercial purposes, such as preparing bills for your company or
advertising products, or for work related to non-UCI organizations,
such as an off-campus political or religious group. If you are in
doubt about whether some use of the machines is allowed, call the
consultant.
Some unethical and illegal activities are listed below, but it is
impractical-perhaps impossible-to produce a complete list. A careful
reading of this policy plus the use of common sense should enable you
to avoid problems. Be aware that much of the activities listed below
are a crime under the California penal code section 502.
- You may not introduce viruses, worms, Trojan horses, password
cracking or login spoofing programs onto any University computer or
network. You may not store such a program on a UCI computer even if
you only wish to study it.
- You may not interfere with others' ability to make use of the
resources. For example, it might be reasonable to lock a terminal if
you need to leave the room for two or three minutes, but it is not
reasonable to lock it while you leave to buy lunch. Another example
would be doing something that ties up all or a significant fraction of
the machine, thus preventing others from receiving their fair share.
- You may not destroy other people's work.
- You may not "spy" on people, that is, you may not attempt to gain
information from their accounts, their screens, their diskettes, or
from their discarded listings when there is good reason to believe
that they do not wish you to obtain that information. This includes
both attempting to violate the protection facilities provided by the
system and also taking deliberate advantage of someone else's failure
to protect sensitive information on their account. This works both
ways. For example, it would be unethical for a faculty member or
staff member to browse through your personal messages just out of
curiosity, even if they have a security level that allows them to do
so; we agree to respect your privacy. We do, however, retain the
right to inspect material on your account when this is necessary to
investigate a suspected violation of university rules, such as a
cheating incident or a violation of the rules in this document.
- You may not send mail or other communications that appear to come
from someone else.
- You may not advertise any commercial products or use your
instructional or research account to earn money. Non-commercial things
like posting your used car advertisement on Usenet are permitted,
though. If for some reason you need an account that will be used for
commercial purposes, see the Office of Academic Computing.
- You may not display offensive material in any publicly accessible
area. There are materials available on the Internet and elsewhere
that some members of the UCI community will find offensive. (One
example is sexually explicit graphics.) The University is committed
to maintaining the free and open exchange of ideas as well as a
non-offensive working environment. Thus, UCI does not restrict the
availability of potentially offensive material, but UCI does regard as
unethical conduct the display of such material in any publicly
accessible area, including on terminal screens in public terminal
rooms and in computer labs.
- You may not use the computers' printers as copying machines. For
example, you may not print out one hundred copies of a report;
instead, print out one copy of the report and use a copying machine to
obtain the other 99.
Acknowledgments
These policies are adapted from those issued by the UCI ICS department
which were partially adapted from those used by the UCLA CS
Department. They, in turn, borrowed some of their policies from
Columbia University and the California Institute of Technology.