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Course Overview
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The
vast majority of administrative information regarding this course
(reading assignments, homework assignments, project assignments,
helpful hints, etc.) will be communicated via the
class email list. Be sure to check your
CSE 451 email at least daily!
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There's a
class discussion board,
with separate threads for various topics. Please try to use the
appropriate thread! Check the discussion board daily!
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We reserve the
right to change this, but grades will be assigned roughly as follows:
- Projects: 40%
- Midterm: 20%
- Final: 30%
- Participation: 10%
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There will be
one midterm exam and a final exam for this course -- both are closed book, closed notes:
- Midterm: Friday November 5th, in class
- Final: Wednesday December 15th, 2:30-4:20
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- Reading: You will be given reading assignments -- from
Silberschatz, or from a new draft textbook (hereafter called TOM),
or from
The Linux Kernel (hereafter called
TLK), associated with each lecture. You should finish the reading before
coming to class - we'll assume you've done this reading, and the
lectures will enhance the material, rather than regurgitating it.
- Textbook-style questions: In
past quarters, we have assigned dippy textbook exercises to encourage
students to keep up with the reading. Students hated doing these almost
as much as TA's hated grading them. So, in response to popular
demand, they have been nuked.
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As you've probably guessed from
the allocation of grades, programming projects will be a major portion
of this class. This quarter, we will be hacking the Linux kernel in various
ways; our goal is for you to "get your hands dirty" with the guts of a
real operating system.
Correspondingly, you need to be quite
comfortable programming in C. (If you know C++, then you basically already
know C.) If you're not already well-versed in C programming, you will
need to teach yourself, and do so in a hurry.
The standard reference is
The
C Programming Language, Brian W.
Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.
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- Late Policy: Unless otherwise indicated,
assignments and projects are due at the start of class or section on their due
date. If you hand in an assignment late, we will take off 20% for each
day (or portion thereof) it is late. We will not consider granting Incompletes
as grades.
- "Reasonable Person Principle": Let's
all be "reasonable people" working on the same team to make
this a great learning experience. The "Reasonable
Person Principle" simply
states that a reasonable request made in a reasonable fashion shall
be reasonably handled by reasonable persons.
- Cheating vs. Collaboration:
Please read
CSE's
Academic Misconduct Policy, taken from our
Undergraduate
Handbook.
Collaboration is a good thing. On the other hand, cheating is
a serious offense. Please don't do it! Concern about cheating creates
an unpleasant environment for everyone. If you cheat, you risk losing
your position as a student in the department and the college. The department's
policy on cheating is to report any cases to the college cheating committee.
What follows afterwards is not fun - for anyone!
So, how do you draw the line between
collaboration and cheating? A great one-sentence guideline
is highlighted in our Academic Misconduct Policy:
"In general, any activity you engage in for the purpose of earning
credit while avoiding learning, or to help others do so, is likely to
be an act of Academic Misconduct."
Note that this encompasses not just excessive reliance on students who are in
the course this quarter, but excessive reliance on work done in previous quarters,
at other universities, by the textbook authors (e.g., homework solutions that may
be available on the web), etc. (Hopefully it will astonish you
to learn than in past quarters a few students have copied
answers to the textbook exercises from the web, betting that
the TAs were too lazy to type the occasional high-falutin' phrase
into Google. This is a perfect example of "earning credit while
avoiding learning.")
Here are some additional groundrules that may be helpful:
The Gilligan's Island
Rule: This rule says that you are free to meet with fellow student(s)
and discuss assignments with them. Writing on a board or shared piece
of paper is acceptable during the meeting; however, you should not
take any written (electronic or otherwise) record away from the meeting.
This applies when the assignment is supposed to be an individual effort
or whenever two teams discuss common problems they are each encountering
(inter-group collaboration). After the meeting, engage in a half hour
of mind-numbing activity (like watching an episode of Gilligan's Island)
before starting to work on the assignment. This will assure that you
are able to reconstruct what you learned from the meeting, by yourself,
using your own brain.
The Credit Your Sources Rule:
To assure that all collaboration is on the level, you must always
write the name(s) of your collaborators or other sources on your assignment. This and other rules are listed in
CSE's
Academic Misconduct Policy.
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