575 Communications

Electronic mail had always been used as the mechanism for students to ask questions outside of office hours. Electronic mail was used to distribute handouts from the instructor. It was the preferred mechanism for students to submit their computational experiments along with accompanying reports. In Fall 1994, SDSU's computer center established two general labs of Xterminals (capable of Xwindow display). For the first time on the SDSU campus, this gives undergraduates access to the graphic interface to the Internet.

The course covers the resources available through the Internet, including:

• Communicating with peers and instructor (via e-mail)
• Using FTP to transfer programs between machines (a crude look at heterogeneous computing)
• Using NCSA Mosaic or Netscape as Graphical Interfaces to the Wide World Web. Using lynx as a text based interface to WWW (over slow phone lines or when without high performance graphics display devise).