Course Overview

Reading: SPSS (Base 9.0 User's Guide, Chapter 1, Overview, and
Chapter 2, Getting Help)

3. Find a dataset to use in this course.

One of the goals for this course is to become an expert user of the tools available within SPSS to answer interesting questions about data. You will be using your own dataset for part of this course. Bring a dataset that you are interested in, perhaps your thesis data or some other research project that you are involved in. If you do not have a dataset ask your favorite faculty person if he or she has a dataset you can use.

4. Sign-up for an email account.

Some of the communication in this course will be made via email. If you do not have an email address please sign up for a UCCS UNIX email account by completing the request form found at the following web page-> Create a UNIX account for CU Colorado Springs

Once your email account is established please send me an email. I will be able to retrieve your address from your email header.

5. How to use your Windows NT account.

A Windows NT account is automatically created for every student at UCCS. You must use your Windows NT username and password each time you log onto the system.

If you have forgotten you username or password go to the Computing Services Help Desk in Dwire 250. You will be required to show your ID in order to change you account name or to get a new password.

You can use your NT account to save datafiles and homework. I recommend backing up your work on a floppy disk. See note below on Virus Protection.

Logging off. Always log off the system before you leave. If you do not log off then the next person on your machine will have access to all the work you have done. Log off the computer by pressing START then Shut Down then click Close all programs and log on as a diffferent user?" then OK. This will log you off and set up the new user screen for the next person. NOTE: Please do not select Shut down the computer? If you select Shut down the computer? the next person will have to turn power to the computer off and then on again, and then wait for the entire reboot sequence to run.

Access from home. It is possible to access your NT account and your UCCS email from your home computer. You will have do some set-up on your computer. The information you need to set-up your home computer can be found at the Computer Services Helpdesk pages. Go to the Instructional Documents section and select the Connect from home notes for your operating system (Windows, Mac, or Mac OS8). Note that you will not have online access to the SPSS program from home. You can only access the SPSS program from the on-campus network (from a lab or a classroom).

6. Virus Protection

Lab Viruses

There has been a dramatic increase in the number and seriousness of computer viruses in general circulation. More of my students have complained about computer virus infection during the past year than during the previous three years combined. The computers in the labs and classrooms on campus are likely points of infection. Computing Services has installed McAfee Virus Protection on the network. I recommend using McAfee to check your floppy when you first insert it in any computer, and again just before you remove it from the computer.

If you do not have a virus protection program on your home computer you should purchase one, install it, and use it. Virus protection programs are available at the UCCS bookstore and at your favorite computer store. They are not expensive. Buy one and install it.

I run Norton Anti-Virus both at home and at my office. Whenever a student brings in floppy I always run a virus scan program on the disk prior to reading any of the files on the disk. I have caught several infected files that way.

Email Viruses

The other major source of virus infection is through email. Be very careful about opening any attachment to an email. Attached Word files, files with the extension .doc, can have macro viruses attached. A macro is a set of commands that run in the background, unbeknownst to the user. For example, a virus called W97M/ethan.a virus is a macro that works when an infected work document is closed. It modifies the document properties of infected files.

Be particularly careful about an email attachment that has .exe as an extension. It is an executable program that has a high likelihood of being a virus. For example, here is the warning posted by McAfee about the W32/ExploreZip.worm in current circulation (July, 1999) --

W32/ExploreZip.worm is a worm that infects Windows systems. It is
very dangerous, potentially more destructive than Melissa. It
reproduces itself by sending replies to incoming email messages, with
itself as an attachment called "zipped_files.exe". It includes a
payload: it will search the user's mapped drives and overwrite all
files of types .c, .cpp, .asm, .doc, .xls, .ppt. to zero Kb.

IMPORTANT — If you receive an email with the message --

"I received your email and I shall send you a reply ASAP. Till then, take a look at the attached zipped docs.",

DELETE IT IMMEDIATELY! It will have an
attachment called "zipped_files.exe"; DO NOT DOUBLE-CLICK OR
RUN THIS ATTACHMENT! If you do, it will infect your system!

New viruses are constantly being created. You will need to update your virus data file on a regular basis (weekly?) by contacting creator of your virus program. Your particular program will have instructions about how to update the virus database.

Virus hoaxes

At the same time that serious viruses are widespread, virus hoaxes are being widely circulated. The hoaxes typically warn of impending doom to your computer if infected by the virus, give you some information about what to look for, and recommend or imply that you post the warning of the virus to everyone you know to save them from a fate worse than death.

Sample of hoax message (How to Give a Cat a Colonic):

If you receive an e-mail entitled, "How to Give a Cat a Colonic,"
DO NOT open it. It will erase everything on your hard drive.
Forward this letter out to as many people as you can. This is a
new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it.
This information was announced by IBM.

Please share it with everyone that might access the Internet.
Once again, pass this along to EVERYONE in your address
book so that this may be stopped. AOL has said that this is a
very dangerous virus and that there is NO remedy for it at this
time.

Sample of hoax message (Wobbler virus):

Dear All,

For your reference, take necessary precautions. If you receive
an email with a file called California, do not open the file. The file
contains WOBBLER virus.

WARNING

This information was announced yesterday morning from IBM;
AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than
"Melissa", and that there is NO remedy for it at this time. Some
very sick individual has succeeded in using the reformat function
from Norton Utilities causing it to completely erase all documents
on the hard drive. It has been designed to work with Netscape
Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It destroys
Macintosh and IBM compatible computers. This is a new, very
malicious virus and not many people know about it.

Notice that the hoaxes have a similar structure to actual virus warnings by McAfee and Norton.

Some of the hoxes are quite clever. The Pluperfect Virus hoax claims to be a virus that checks the grammer of an email message and returns it, unmailed, to the sender if the grammar is not perfect. The Pluperfect virus warning is quite long and humorous, here is a sample of it

The (Pluperfect) virus is causing something akin to panic throughout
corporate America, which has become used to the typos,
misspellings, missing words and mangled syntax so acceptable in
cyberspace. The CEO of LoseItAll.com, an Internet startup,
said the virus has rendered him helpless. "Each time I tried to
send one particular e-mail this morning, I got back this error
message: 'Your dependent clause preceding your independent
clause must be set off by commas, but one must not precede the
conjunction.' I threw my laptop across the room."

There are several websites that post listings of known hoaxes. Two respected sights are posted by Symantec (makers of Norton Anti-Virus) and McAfee. If you get a warning about a virus I recommend you check out these sites rather than automatically sending the warning to everyone you know.