Fall 2008 LPT730 Weekly Schedule
Weekly schedule remarks
- This schedule is tentative and is subject to change
- 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
- Software Licensing Modes
- Open Source Licensing
- Fedora Linux
- General Overview
- GNOME Desktop
- Package Management and Repositories
- Software Integrity
- Software covered
- GNOME
- rpm
- yum
- md5sum
Class slides: http://cs.senecac.on.ca/~mheidenr/lpt730/notes/LPT730_Session_01.odp
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
Links
Blog_Guidelines
Fedora Project: http://fedoraproject.org/
Open Source Initiative: http://opensource.org/
GNU OS: http://www.gnu.org/
Happy Birthday GNU by Stephen Fry: http://www.gnu.org/fry/happy-birthday-to-gnu.html
Open Source As Alternative: http://www.osalt.com
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
- Ekiga
Lab #2
Note: it is suggested to complete this lab using Thunderbird with the Enigmail add-on.
- Using gpg2 create an OpenGPG key pair for yourself. Make sure to create a proper and secure backup of your keys.
- Configure your email client for OpenPGP support.
- Post your public key in ASCII format on your blog. Also, upload your key to a keyserver (pool.sks-keyservers.net).
- Send a PGP-signed message to your LPT730 professor.
- Assuming that you completed all above steps correctly, you will receive a digitally signed and encrypted reply. (In case of problems, you may receive a plain-text email with suggestions to correct the problem)
- Reply with an encrypted and signed message, making sure to quote the conversation in-line.