Fall 2008 LPT730 Weekly Schedule

Weekly schedule remarks

• This schedule is tentative and is subject to change
• This schedule is not intended to be edited by students directly, but student input via email is encouraged
• The instructional portion of the course will consist of 11 weekly sessions
• A "Session" for this course starts on Thursday starting with a lecture followed by a lab on Tuesday

General rules about LPT730 labs

• All labs are due on Wednesdays 11:59 p.m. at the end of their respective sessions
• Labs are subject to a penalty of 20% of their mark for each 24 hours if completed late
• Make sure to reference your work - anything that you did not know and had to find out, even if not quoted directly must be referenced
• An article without references will not be accepted
• A single source will not be accepted
• Each article/topic entry must be at least 350 words in length
• Email your professor with the blog URL (if applicable) so your work can be aggregated for others to see
• These rules apply to all labs unless noted otherwise

Meet and Greet (Sept 2)

• If possible, come and introduce yourself in person

Lab #0

• Open a blog account if you do not have one
• Create a blog section devoted to the LPT730 course
• In the first blog entry tell about yourself
  • Education and/or professional background
  • Your interests in computers (other than playing games)
  • Hobbies away from computers
  • Anything else you wish to share with the world
• In another entry write an article about two desktop software applications that you use often.
  • Your choices do not have to be Linux-based or open source, but please make an effort to show us something unusual - MS Office, Firefox etc. are not the best choices
  • What do you use it for and why
  • Highlight strengths and weaknesses of the software
  • For each of your choices provide at least one screenshot

Note: this lab is not graded, however mandatory. This lab is exempted from the length and referencing requirements unless something is copied or quoted directly.

Session 01 (Sept 4 - Sept 10) - Course Introduction, Software Licensing

Lecture

• Course Introduction
  • Course Outline
  • Communication
  • Attendance
  • Expectations
  • Weekly Schedule
  • Resources
• Software Licensing
  • Major Software Licensing Modes
  • GPL in Detail
  • Open-Source Philosophy
• Fedora Linux
  • GNOME Desktop
  • Package Management
  • Repositories
• Software authenticity
• Software covered
  • GNOME
  • rpm
  • yum
  • pkcon
  • md5sum

Lab #1

• Research and blog about the following topics:
  • Topic 1: Software Patents - good or bad?
  • Topic 2: Proposed Federal Bill C-61 and its potential impact on open source software

Session 02 (Sept 11 - Sept 17) - Electronic Communication

Lecture

• Electronic Mail
• IRC
• Instant Messaging
• VOIP
• Video Conferencing
• Communication Protocols
• The role of encryption
• Software Covered
  • Evolution
  • Mozilla Thunderbird
  • Alpine
  • Chatzilla
  • XChat
  • Irssi
  • Pidgin

Lab #2

• TBA