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 10 weekly sessions
• A "Session", unless announced otherwise, starts on Thursday starting with a lecture followed by a lab on Tuesday for this course

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 research 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

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
Open Source%40Seneca Planet List
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
CNN on Software Patents: http://www.cnn.com
Wikipedia article on Software Patents
List of software patents

• Some interesting and funny links...

The free software song:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-665877370978037604&vt=lf&hl=en

Some interviews, conferences, etc... about free software...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6390784544771380326
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-963972271550370203&vt=lf&hl=en
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmKy_LP6JPQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSZZraHN0Yg&feature=related

(About Richard Stallman...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

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

Lecture

• Package Management
• Software Integrity
• Electronic Communication
• Electronic Communication Security
• Public Key Encryption
• Communication Protocols
• Electronic Mail
• Secure E-Mail
• IRC
• Instant Messaging
• VOIP
• Software Covered
  • rpm
  • yum
  • PackageKit/pkcon
  • md5sum
  • Evolution
  • Mozilla Thunderbird
  • Alpine
  • gpg2
  • Chatzilla
  • XChat
  • Irssi
  • Pidgin
  • Ekiga
  • Twinkle

Class slides: http://cs.senecac.on.ca/~mheidenr/lpt730/notes/LPT730_Session_02.odp

Lab #2

Complete the following using Thunderbird with the Enigmail add-on.

1. Using gpg2 create an OpenPGP key pair for yourself. Make sure to create a proper and secure backup of your keys.
2. Configure your email client for OpenPGP support.
3. Post your public key in ASCII format on your blog. Also, upload your key to a keyserver (pool.sks-keyservers.net).
4. Send a PGP-signed message to your LPT730 professor.
5. Assuming that you completed all above steps correctly, you will receive a digitally signed and encrypted reply.
6. Reply with an encrypted and signed message, making sure to quote the conversation in-line.

Optional work: Obtain public keys from your classmates, install them in your email client and start communicating using secure email.

Links

Thawte Inc. Personal Email Certificates: http://www.thawte.com/secure-email/personal-email-certificates/index.html
Enigmail Project: http://enigmail.mozdev.org/home/index.php
IRC Tutorial
IRSSI Tutorial
Leet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet
Ekiga Behind a NAT Router: http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Ekiga_behind_a_NAT_router

Session 03 (Sept 18 - Sept 24) - Browsers, WWW Downloaders

Lecture

• Browser Overview
• File System Browsers
• The HTTP Protocol
• Web Browsers
• Plug-ins and Add-ons
• Privacy and Security
• XML Feeds
• Text-Only Browsers
• WWW Downloaders

Software Covered

• Mozilla Firefox
• Konqueror
• Epiphany
• Opera
• Lynx/Elinks
• wget
• httrack
• Downloader

Class slides: http://cs.senecac.on.ca/~mheidenr/lpt730/notes/LPT730_Session_03.odp

Lab #3

Research and blog about the following topics:

• Phishing - what is it and what tools do we have to defend ourselves?
• Robot Exclusion Standard - what is it, weaknesses, example robot.txt configurations.

Try to make your posts at least 350 words each, properly referencing your sources. Provide examples whenever possible. There is no need to title the post with the course code or lab number - simply title them according to the topic.

Links

TBA

Session 04 (Sept 25 - Oct 1) - Office Productivity

Lecture

• Word Processing
• Spreadsheets
• Presentation Software
• Specialized Documents
• Project Management Software

Software Covered:

• OpenOffice
• KOffice
• AbiWord
• gLabels
• Planner

Lab #4

1. Using freely accessible sources obtain historical prices for a major stock index (for example TSX - http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^GSPTSE). Download the last 30 days as a csv file to your local computer.

2. Using OpenOffice Calc, use the downloaded data to generate two charts - one showing a daily open/high/low/close breakdown using a candlestick (or similar) approach and one showing daily volume using bars.

Please make sure that your charts are scaled properly, so they are easy to understand with labelled axis. Once completed, submit your spreadsheet via email to your professor.

Links

TBA

Session 05 (Oct 2 - Oct 15) - Document Creation: XHTML and CSS

Lecture

• XHTML Fundamentals
• XHTML Editors
• CSS Fundamentals

Software Covered:

• vi
• Bluefish

Session 07 (Nov 6 - Nov 12) - Finding and Moving Files

Lecture

• Linux Path
• File System Searching
• Copying Files Over Network
• FTP
• Internet Search Engines
• Peer-to-peer Protocols
• Peer-to-peer Applications

Software Covered

• find
• locate
• scp
• sftp
• gFTP
• transmission
• ktorrent
• azureus
• amule

Class slides: TBA

Lab #7:

TBA:

Links:

TBA