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Letter from Boston

Computer Mishaps

By MASAKO YAMADA


コンピュータの惨事が続く

雅子さんの所属する研究グループでは最近、最新型の高性能コンピューターを導入しました。これで、今まで頻繁に起きていたコンピューターのトラブルが解消されるだろうと期待されましたが、早くもシステムがクラッシュしてしまいました。雅子さんもさんも雅子さんの仲間もコンピューターには悩みっぱなしです。

Recently, I wrote about how our research group has decided to buy several new computers. Our group does research in computational physics and computers are of crucial importance . It is necessary for us to have a large number of computers, since there are many people in the group, and it is important that the computers be in relatively good shape, since we are in afield in which better computers often produce better (or, at least, faster) results.

Even the people in the group who are working on creating educational materials for high school students are writing the curriculum so that students and teachers can access the text and graphics through the Internet. Our old computers were simply not sufficient to do the heavy-duty work that is necessary.

Well, the computers have arrived and I must say that they have not solved our problems! This weekend, our group's computers were inaccessible because the brand-new computer that hosts all of our accounts crashed. Apparently, the computer was not equipped to handle the dozens of accounts in our group.

We haven't even been able to take our files from our accounts and transfer them elsewhere (such as to the university-wide server, or the physics department server), so we don't know what will become of all of the things we've left in our accounts. About a month ago, one of the hard disks in our group became damaged, and many of the group members lost precious files that they had been saving over many months or even years.

The problems, however, are not limited to within the group. A week or two ago, many of the computers across campus were inaccessible for almost a day because of a power shortage due to a manhole fire. A couple of years ago, the physics department computers picked up some annoying bugs, such as sending me the same e-mail dozens of times. I've also gotten a forged and harassing e-mail through the physics department system.

It's not surprising that the users of these computers get extremely upset when such mishaps occur. However, there often is no outlet for complaint, because the victims can't find a person to blame, or rather, they can't find a person who will take responsibility.

I recently read a newspaper article about how customer service departments tend to be terrible in the computer industry. This is undoubtedly related to the fact that there are not enough employees to fill the high demand for customer service representatives and system administrators. Indeed, I've noticed that Boston University always seems to have dozens of openings for system administrators.

Although many people are trained to work in the computer industry, system administration is not a popular job choice, given that there are so many other computer jobs that are more creative and better paying. It's often necessary to pay an exorbitant amount of money to lure people into being a system administrator.

This means that computer users are often forced to make do with what is available. In our group, this means that some of the research associates have taken on the job of tinkering with the computers when something goes wrong. Although they are quite knowledgeable and work hard for little reward, they are not professionally trained to maintain large systems.

They are also not professionally trained to deal with client complaints (that is, complaints from the group members) and they shouldn't have to. They are our peers who are doing research with us. Computer users are also forced to take as much personal-responsibility as they can for their files, namely, by making frequent backups.

It's probably not an exaggeration to say that the easier our lives become because of computers, the harder it becomes to maintain the machines so that they do their jobs correctly. There is always new software to install, more people to add to the network and more wires to connect.

I'm now writing this article on my old Mac, which has been my faithful companion since 1993. Although it is so old that I can't even surf the Web, I can't let go of it. You see, it has hardly let me down.


Shukan ST: Aug. 4, 2000

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