Grading

The course grade will be based on the following:

• 60% — quizzes
• 20% — general assignments
• 15% — the final project, including the quality of the project itself, the final presentation, and the PowerPoint document
• 5% — in-class participation

Quizzes

There will be a number of quizzes, each announced ahead of time.  These quizzes will be over recently-covered material and will generally take about 20-30 minutes.

General Assignments

Assignments will be posted on the assignments link on the homepage.  You are required to read this page every day.

Project

(Binhai) We will do a project at the end of this term, during the last weeks in late November and early December. This project has been very very successful during the previous eight occasions when I taught this course! The rough idea is that students taking this course will be divided into about 10 groups, each with about 2 people. Each group will be given (or choose) a specific OS (or part of it) for detailed survey and analysis. Finally each group will write a 6-10 pages report and give a (~25)-minute presentation in class. (The rough idea is that each student is expected to present for about 12 minutes; e.g., a 2-people group should present for about 25 minutes, including question answering time.) The evaluation is based on the report as well as the presentation. Each member of the same group should participate in the presentation and will receive the same mark. For more details check the following possible topics. FINAL PROJECT REPORT DUE: Dec XX 2008!

As examples, the following is a list of projects for 2007. They can be chosen based on the first come first serve policy. But you can also propose your own projects. Two groups cannot share exactly the same topic, but situations like different parts of Unix are allowed.

• Palm OS
  
• Boehm's Garbage Collector vs Reference Counting
  
• Linux File System
  
• Windows Vista Audio Stack
  
• Google File System
  
• Google's Map Reduce System
  
• File Compression
  
• Windows and Linux administration and security
  
• Windows File Management Systems: FAT, FAT32 and NFTS
  
• Database-based file systems
  
• DX10 in Windows XP
  
• Mac OS X
  
• Real-time OS

In-Class Participation

This part of your grade is a reflection of your professionalism.  The grade will not be determined by correct responses given during in-class discussions, but rather that you are readily participating in class discussions in a professional manner.