[IGPP Everyone] [EPSS Everyone] Computing Update and Notes - 4 May 2017

[SALYARDS, STEPHEN]

Greetings,
   A couple of items to discuss and alert you to in this update:

Latest Hacking Threat
There is a good chance you may have heard about this one already since it has made the mainstream news, but there is another phishing-related scheme going around that once again does pretty well with the social engineering. Here is a bit more on this from the UCLA Information Security Office
A phishing attack is currently occurring that is taking advantage of an exploit in the Google Docs invitation mechanism.  This attack has been received by users at many organizations that use Google Mail (including UCLA). You may receive an e-mail message purporting to share a Google Doc with you that comes from someone you know, someone in your contact list, or even someone that you do not know.  Do not open these messages. Please delete them immediately.

As always, don't click on unknown links. For more on this and instructions on how to undo the damage if you have clicked on the link you can see their full information page
https://www.it.ucla.edu/security/advisories/google-doc-gmail-phish

Department Software
One of the most frequent questions I get is about what software packages are available. So here is a quick rundown. Let me know if you need more information or want to make use of one of the packages that is tied to a license server.

General Distribution: The department licenses two software licenses on a department-wide basis available to employees, including graduate students. There is the Microsoft suite which has Office and Windows OS upgrades as well Adobe Acrobat. Before you ask, that is the only Adobe product licensed like this. These are available for Mac and PC and for department as well as personal computers. Since it is an annual renewal the expectation is that Acrobat and Office would be removed from your computer upon departure from UCLA. That is enforced for Office by no longer having access to the UCLA license server.

Classroom Software: Some of our most asked about software is only available from the department when using our classroom computers. These packages include Matlab, Adobe Illustrator, and a few seats of Photoshop and Mathematica. Anyone in the department is welcome to use the software on those machines but the licensing is computer specific so we have no additional seats to share.

Seat-limited mixed-use software: These are industry standard software packages that have no classroom versus research licensing restrictions and we make available with floating licenses. At certain times during the year classes may need most or all of the licenses for short periods of time, but otherwise they are available on a contribution basis for use by research groups. The two big packages available in this way are IDL with the ENVI package and the ArcGIS suite from ESRI. If you have questions on those please let me know.

Beyond this UCLA and the UC System have numerous purchasing agreements for individuals and research groups to purchase packages through department recharge. You can read more about it from Software Central. https://softwarecentral.ucla.edu/product-list

For students, check out the student versions available from the bookstore. Many of those are available at exceptional prices compared to what we have to pay for the classroom licenses.

In my next update in a couple weeks I will share a few of my recommendations for Open Source programs, many of which do just about the same thing as the commercial products, particularly if you don't use all the bells and whistles.


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