The Statistics network is composed of the computers in the offices of faculty, staff and students, as well as the main stat servers (neyman, thor etc.) which are located in the basement. This is our home field. thor.stat.rice.edu is the preferred server for computation while two other servers neyman.stat.rice.edu, wiener.stat.rice.edu can also be used, the mail server is stat.rice.edu.
You can apply for a stat account AFTER you get an owlnet or RUF account. This is because Owlnet/RUF are bigger networks and a unique user name on stat network might not be unique on Owlnet/RUF ...... and you do not want to have two different user names at Rice. When you check in, Diane mailto:dbrown@rice.edu will give you an application form and your account will be created soon after you fill it out. (Both Ruf and Stat accounts, as well as stat windows account (engineering account) have been created before orientation this year, thanks should go to Diane, Leticia and our IT friends.)
After logging in for the first time, you should be faced with some sort of prompt/command line, at which you can type things like `pine' to check your mail, `ls' to list your files, or one of the other common ones. If you are not at all familiar with Unix system, Blair's UNIX Command List http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/ blairc/stat/tips/unix can help you get started and books like Kernighan's ``UNIX programming Environment'' are handy to keep on your desk. Helpdesk FAQ list http://www.stat.rice.edu/ helpdesk/ also provides answers to some basic configuration problems.
You will have a desktop in your office. Before you have your own desktop, you can use the PCs and Linux Workstations in room DH2093. Your desktop can be either a PC or a Unix workstation. If you have a strong preference, tell Diane and the department will try to accommodate your need, although your request is not guaranteed.
If your desktop is a Unix workstation, it will be directly connected to the stat network and your home directory on stat servers will be your local home directory. If you have a PC, as I have mentioned, you will have to sftp your files back and forth from the servers if you are interested in using the same files in Unix and windows. Anyway, you can also make use of your PC's local hard drive. It seems that your local hard drive is quicker and sometimes more spacious but please keep in mind that PC's are not backed up and you are under the risk of losing everything in your PC. Keeping your important files on Unix is a good practice.
Your desktop is maintained by Rice IT department. You will usually not be given administration or root privilege so your ability to reconfigure your machine, including install/uninstall certain software, add/remove services, is limited. If you need some specific software, you can either try to install them yourself or submit a problem to http://problem.rice.edu.
If you are working on a linux or Unix machine that is slow, or if you have a large program you want to run, it might be wise to use a much quicker computer, like thor.stat.rice.edu. You can also make use of servers on RUF or Owlnet such as jungle.owlnet.rice.edu, among which vet.ruf.rice.edu is a preferred statistics computing server.