- either. .

“In the absence of an establish.

Ministry of Education that-has
been met with a mixed reaction

by: the’ college board. There’

-haven’t been any major projects
for the past eight years and this
new plan doesn’t include any

wa “long-term plan, Northwest
Community - College bursar -
~ Geoff Harris has submitted a_
“five-year capital plan to the

The reality is, however, ‘the -
board is still working on. a-long-
range plan and the'five-year plan —
was due over.a month ago. And

if it hadn’t been submitted, even
‘minor renovations projects

wouldn’t be Funded.
Five-year capital - proposals
are submitted annually and only
form a framework for long-
range government ‘planning.
This means the board will have

Computalk

by Rainer Glannella
Certified Data Processor

Memory resident programs — a boon or a bane for PC users?

One of the shortcomings of the basic IBM compatible com-
puter is that it has been designed to be in essence a single-tasking
machine. What this means is that a user can normally only run
one program at a time. Typically,.one would start up (let’s say)
one’s accounting program, perform one’s accounting tasks, then

_ one would have to exit from the accounting program back to

DOS (the operating system program) before one could begin
working with a word processing program.

' Although this one-task-at-a-time approach keeps operations
fairly simple for the beginning user, it tends to be restrictive and
inconvenient for the more experienced user who may want to
work on a number of programs simultaneously. To meet this
need, quite a number of software developers have come up with a
variety of useful programs which, once activiated, stay resident in
memory for the duration of a session even after other programs
have started. These are programs that typically provide
capabilities such as ‘‘notepad editors’’ (a minimal word pro-

_cessor), calculator functions, address managers, communications,

print utilities, disk management utilities, and so on. They go. by...
names as ‘‘Sidekick’’, ‘‘Toolbox’’, etc. and basically allow the
user to re-activate them at any time in a session by a special se-

’ quence of keystrokes. When done with these functions the user

can instantly resume work on his or her main program.

‘Many communications programs function on a memory resi-
dent basis.as often users want these to perform periodic or even
continuous ‘‘background’’ communications tasks while the user is
performing other work. An example would be a program that: .
was instructed to periodically dial a data service to check for cer-
tain information and to only interrupt the user if certain informa-

- tion was found (stocks had gone up!!!).

When used effectively such memory resident programs can
greatly increase a user’s productivity as they allow one to get

much more utility from the computer during a session. However, _

they also have their shortcomings.

First, they require additional memory, thereby reducing’ the
memory available for other programs. This means a user may
have problems trying to run them along with programs that re-
quire a large amount of memory. Second, since some of them are

always “running in background’’ they can cause apparent slow

down in the response of the foreground programs, Third, when
one begins to use more than one of these memory-resident pro-
grams, one can experience unexpected side-effects caused by two -
or more of these interacting in unforeseen ways. Incompatible
memory resident programs can often be the cause of very annoy-
ing ‘‘bugs’’ in computer operations.
To minimize problems, the user who has need to use some of
these programs should always first find out if they are compatible
with the main software on his or her system. If you intend to
use more than one of these at a given time, first test them one at
a time and then make sure you start them in the right order. And
at the first sign of system problems, disable these programs one
at a time until you determine which one is the source of the dif-
ficulty.
Update on the October 13th computer virus

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the October 13th com-
puter virus scare. To date I have not heard of anyone locally who
was affected. However, in the October 26 issue of Computing

Canada it was reported that 19 organizations in the United States

had been hit by the virus, most commonly called the ‘Columbus
Day virus’’ or the.“‘Datacrime”’ virus. The report indicated that
although no incidents in Canada had been reported at their press
time, the virus still had potential to cause camage. American
Computer Security Industries, an American company specializing
in data protection was quoted as saying:

«.. Gone undetected, it (the virus) will.on-or after Oct. 12,

_ 1989, destroy portions of track 0 of the.hard disk of infected
MS-DOS machines. That renders the data on the hard disk vir-

tually unrecoverable...’"
If nothing else, this story underscores the importance of. main
taining: appropriate data backups. EE a gk ted

Terrace Review — ~ Wednesday, November 5

iC whips together five- year capital plan
No new Projects proposed yet

158

another chance next year. The

problem in getting this year’s

_ Submission together, according

to .board chairman Hans

-Wagner, was caused by delays in

planning at the local level due to

--fecent board and administrative

changes. He explains' that. work
on a three-year plan began last

fall but while working through -

these changes, “We were just

trying to hold the place together-

and (as a result our plan is lagg-

ing.’

_as a truly regional -

‘

This means next year’s capital
plan could show a much more
ambitious direction in NWCC
planning. One indication of this
came from newly appointed
board member Larry Krause,
who suggested a gymnasium
complex could go a long way in
establishing :the Terrace campus
center.
Discussion on this topic in-

dicated that a gymnasium was —

first proposed about nine years
ago but the government said stu-
dent population didn’t warrant
such a project and funding was

vik

ia inte! " GeorgeF. Walker's

refused.

At the present time about 250
to 300 students, approximately
45 percent of NCWCC enroll-
ment, are registered at the Ter-
race campus at any given time
and the board feeling is that a $3
million complex could now be
justified, particularly given the
fact there have been no major
capital expenditures at NWCC
in the past eight years. The pro-

ject could also be further -

justified by its potential com-
munity benefit. It was suggested
that besides just a gymnasium
and meeting place for the college
community, it could also serve
as an activity center, meeting
place and display area for com-
munity events as well. ‘‘It’s
something we should be looking
at if we want ‘to build as a
regional college,’’ suggested
Wagner. \

At the present time, however,
the college will be limited to
minor projects. Those proposed
for the coming year total
$310,000 plus the cost of the new

NWCC Student Association

and |
Terrace Little Theatre
present

| DINNERTHEATRE

featuring

Directed by Daniel Barnswell
Friday, November 17 and Saturday, November 18
Northwest Communlty College Dining Room
Cocktails 7 pm / Dinner 7:30 / Show at 9 pm
Coffee, etc. served after the performance

_ Admission $20 per person awedee
’ Tickets available from the Student Body Racquet
And Fitness Centre and Sight & Sound (MATURE)

Production of this community theatre poster has been made

' . possible by a grant from Northern Healthcare (formerly Terrace
Drugs), 3207 Katum Stet. Prescriptions. Home health care

| supplies. Sports medicine, First aid suppiles.

hy colin tt Toten Presa Ferra Lid. Poser dei arid Musi coursay Bri Bt

Kitimat lease. Suggested pro- ae
jects. for Terrace include altera- . .
tions to the: main reception area, -

renovations in dorm “A”, re-

roofing of the cafeteria -and
main campus buildings, a boiler
overhaul, new fencing and the
preparation of a plan to
overhaul the fire alarm system.

In 1991/92, proposals include

‘a renewed and expanded lease in

Hazelton, an expanded lease in

-Prince Rupert, and in Terrace

renovations to the shops
building, renovations to dorm
‘*B’’, upgrading the fire alarm
system and upgrading the
storage building. Plans for the
following year include an ex-
panded lease in Houston and
renovations to dorm ‘‘C” and
the cafeteria building in Terrace.
Renovations suggested. for
1993/94 include an expanded
lease in Smithers and. renova-
tions to dorm ‘‘D’’ in Terrace
and the final year of the plan
Proposes an upgrade to dorm
‘“*E”’ in Terrace. a