Resources for COMP492

Class 1: Tuesday January 24

Discussion of syllabus. Course highlights. Remainder of time for team work on projects.

Class 2: Tuesday January 31

Instructor-led discussion on "Introduction to Ethics".

Required reading: Quinn Ch 2 ("Introduction to Ethics"). As with all readings this semester, make a few notes on the reading. As stated on the syllabus, there may be a brief reading quiz at the start of any class that has an assigned reading.

A summary of ethical theories and professional ethics is available.

We will split into two groups for this discussion. Group A will meet 3-4pm, and Group B will meet 4:15-5:15pm. If it is a hardship for you to stay until 5:15 PM (which is 15 minutes after the official end of class time), please let me know and I will work with you to resolve the issue. The groups (generated randomly using random.org) are as follows:

Group A (3-4pm): Angel, Khanh, Ira, Yunpeng, Lam, Marshall, Jiahao, James, Jiacheng
Group B (4:15-5:15pm): Peixin, Sai, Jonathan, Aleksandr, Abigail, Yue, Xiang, Timothy

Class 3: Tuesday February 7

Discussion on "A case study of professional ethics for software engineering: The Case of The Killer Robot".

Required reading: Richard G. Epstein, The Case of The Killer Robot, 1996. Available on Moodle -- file name is killerrobot.zip; extract it into a folder and open the file index.html.

Split discussion: Group A 3-4pm; Group B 4:15-5:15pm.

Class 4: Tuesday February 14

Project work day.

Class 5: Tuesday February 21

Discussion on Internet censorship. Required reading from Quinn:

6th edition: 3.5-3.7
4th and 5th edition: 3.4-3.6

Split discussion: Group A 3-4pm; Group B 4:15-5:15pm.

Class 6: Tuesday February 28

Code review -- see the assignments page.

Don't forget to submit your code as a PDF at least one hour before the start of class.

Order of presentation is: 1. Jon 2. Sasha 3. Tim 4. Marshall 5. K 6. James 7. Joanna 8. May 9. Ira 10. Lam 11. Jacky 12. Roc 13. Abby 14. Sai 15. Angel 16. Xiang 17. Peixin

Class 7: Tuesday March 7

The instructor is away at a conference. Feel free to use this as an optional project work day.

Class 8: Tuesday March 21

Discussion on privacy. Required reading from Quinn:

5th and 6th edition: 5.1-5.3, 6.1-6.6
4th edition: 5.1-5.8

This discussion will not be divided into groups.

Class 9: Tuesday March 28

Project work day.

Also, please vote on which classic papers you would like us to cover during our classic papers discussion using the classic papers survey.

Class 10: Tuesday April 4

Discussion on electronic and online voting. Required reading from Quinn:

5th and 6th edition: 7.5
4th edition: 6.5

Additional required reading (I encourage you to read the whole paper, but only sections 1-4 are required reading):

Feldman, A. J., Halderman, J. A., and Felten, E. W. (2006). Security analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine. Proc. 2007 USENIX Electronic Voting Technology Workshop.

We will divide the discussion into two groups as follows:

Group C (3-4pm): Abby, Joanna, K, Lam, Marshall, May, Peixin, Sasha, Tim
Group D (4:15-5:15pm): Angel, Ira, Jacky, James, Jon, Roc, Sai, Xiang

Class 11: Wednesday, April 12, 4:30-6:00pm

There is no class on Tuesday, April 11. Instead you are required to attend and present a poster at the Dickinson science symposium on Wednesday, April 12, 4:30-6:00pm. Note: you are encouraged, but not required, to use the 3-5pm timeslot on Tuesday 4/11 for making progress on your project. I will be available for meetings throughout that time slot.

Class 12: Tuesday April 18

Discussion on two classic CS papers, selected by popular vote.

This discussion will not be divided into groups.

The papers are:

Ken Thompson's classic 1984 paper, originally delivered as the acceptance lecture for his Turing award: Reflections on trusting trust, Communications of the ACM, Volume 27 Issue 8, Aug 1984, pages 761-763 (click on the "PDF" link). Notes:
- A full copy of the program presented by Thompson in Figure 1 of the paper is also available: thompson-program.c (actually, this is a simplified and adapted version of the program but uses the same ideas).
- If you are interested, you can do an ungraded minilab related to this discussion (we may also have time to do it in class). Ask the instructor if you're interested. In addition to the above thompson-program.c you may need to use the following tools for working with self-reproducing programs: self-rep-tools.zip.
Sutherland, I. E. (1963). Sketchpad: a man-machine graphical communication system. Proceedings of the Spring Joint Computer Conference, 1963, pages 329-346. This is a description of a system that was influential in the development of human computer interaction. The author received a Turing award in 1988. A copy of the paper is available on Moodle.

Class 13: Tuesday April 25

Discussion on professional ethics and whistleblowing.

This discussion will not be divided into groups.

Required reading: Quinn chapter 9 (5th and 6th ed) or 8 (4th ed), "Professional Ethics." The handout Summary of ethical theories and professional ethics may also be useful.

At 4 PM, we will have a video conference call with two Dickinson computer science alums, Mamadou Balde and Katherine Veil.

Class 14: Tuesday May 2

This class will take the form of an afternoon tea party, from 4PM to 5PM, at the instructor's house (details sent via email). The attendance policy will not be in effect, but I do hope everyone will be able to make it! Optional reading: the classic 1959 talk about the future of computing by Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom (this talk has its own Wikipedia page too). The reading is optional. There will not be a reading quiz!

Wednesday, May 10

Computer Science Senior Symposium, 9:30am.

All members of the senior seminar are expected to attend all talks in the Senior Symposium. Participation points will be awarded both for attendance and for asking questions.