COMP 96 Home Page

Announcements and Information

• 5 August: The final grades have been posted. Thank you for a wonderful (and exhausting and enlightening) five weeks!
• 31 July: I've posted the lecture slides from Greg Welch's talk today. I apologize for the screwed-up handouts.
• 31 July: Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, has written a most excellent editorial about current events regarding the DMCA. (It's at the New York Times' web site. They'll ask you to register for an account -- it's free and, as far as I can tell, harmless.)
• 30 July: The last extra credit assignment is as follows. Visit the DeCSS Gallery and pick one of the examples. Argue, in about a page, whether or not that particular example should be considered an illegal circumvention device under the DMCA.
• 25 July: Remember that Assignment 4 is due on Monday.
• 20 July: The dates for your term project presentations are as follows:
  • Wednesday, July 25: Hate Speech on the Internet, Digital Manipulation, Virtual Reality
  • Thursday, July 26: Workplace Automation, Privacy and Monitoring in the Office, Fair Use and the Internet
  • Friday, July 27: Hacking vs. Cracking, Electronic Voting, Artificial Intelligence
• 16 July: The lecture slides are now available here.
• 16 July: Assignment 4 (the second paper) was given today. It's due in two weeks.
• 16 July: The grades page has been updated to include Paper 1.
• 13 July: The handouts given in class today are for Wednesday, not Monday. We are exactly one lecture behind the handouts at the moment. Also, "The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover" is downstairs in the cubbyholes on the far right.
• 12 July: The assignments have been moved to a different page.
• 11 July: The MIDTERM EXAM will be on Tuesday, July 17. Sample exam questions are in the Misc cubbyhole in Sitterson.
• 10 July: The grades are now linked in. If you don't see your Hacker ID, if you have a question, or if you think I've made a mistake, please come visit and we'll talk about it.
• 5 July: From now on I'm going to start posting assignments online in PDF form as well as giving them out in class. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view and print PDF files.
• 2 July: Our final exam is in fact on August 2. My mistake. Today's assignments have been posted.
• 29 June: Today's assignments posted.
• 28 June: A link to the Writing Center web site has been added to the Resources section. Today's readings and Assignment 0 have been added below.
• 27 June: Minor updates to the syllabus.
• 27 June: There are 15 copies of the textbook in Student Stores as of this afternoon. More are on the way. They expect them to arrive by the end of the week.
• 19 June: The syllabus is online.

Current Assignments

The list was getting unwieldy, so I've moved it to a separate page.

Resources

• In class today I mentioned Peacefire, an organization opposing the mandatory use of censorware.
• If the language in RH-16 bothers you, you may download the alternate version.
• Jeannie Walsh has an excellent list of links if you're new to the Internet.
• Here is a list of links to sites concerning things we will discuss in class.
• If you're looking for help with writing, the Writing Center is a great resource.
• Sections of the Guide for Writing Research Papers are required reading before you begin on Paper 1.