The CompSci 1 Project, Spring 2008

The project is worth 18% of your grade.

Schedule:

• Topic selection due (submission page): Sunday, March 24 at 4pm (one per student)
  • Topic assignment announced: Monday, March 25
• Project material quiz: Wednesday, March 26 (student)
• Debates: Wednesday, April 2 & Friday April 4 (debate team)
• Project outline due: Monday, April 7  (project team)
• Final projects due (project): Friday, April 18 (project team)

Groups

You will complete most of this project in groups. For the final project, you may and should work with one partner. The students in a group do not need to be in the same lab section, and both partners will receive the same grade.

On occasion, we have a few delinquent students who do nothing and rely on their hard-working partners to do the project for them. We have three bits of advice on that matter. First, plan on doing your share of the work and make sure you are available in the time before the project is due. Second, if you find a group member is delinquent see Brittany Fasy or Prof. Forbes as soon as possible. We will usually give a warning and then if problems persist, we can grant divorce requests. The delinquent partner typically receives a zero for the project.

Often, groups claim that the computer somehow ate their files. You are responsible for making sure your project is in working order, so save early and do not leave anything to the last minute.

Turning in unacknowledged writing not written by members of your group or supplied by the course staff constitutes cheating and will be dealt with as an Duke Community Standard Violation.

Project Topics

You will be creating a critical project. Your project will state some opinion and provide supporting and dissenting arguments. Your essay must have some sort of discernible thesis statement where you take a stand on some issue.

Example of a thesis statement: "Computer science is a pointless enterprise that has no place in university."

Bad example of a thesis statement: "Computer science involves the study of computation."

The first example takes a position that can then be backed up by more writing, while the latter one just states what is more or less a fact.

1. Digital IP

   Software should not be patentable.

2. Digital Rights Management

   Users can and should circumvent digital rights management systems if the use is one typically granted under fair use.

3. Network Neutrality

   The Internet should be end-to-end neutral.

4. E-voting

   Direct recording electronic (DRE) voting terminals as currently used in the U.S. are better than current hand ballot alternatives.

5. Privacy

   The benefits of biometric technology outweigh the risks to civil liberties.

6. Data Mining

   The national security establishment should be allowed to mine personal data to detect potential threats.

7. Encryption

   In the context of a court case, individuals can be required to divulge necessary passwords to decrypt relevant files to the case. See the Boucher case (news article and full description) for an example.

8. ISP Policy

   A university should monitor university networks and connected computers for improper activity such as copyright infringement.

9. Software Development

   Publically funded organizatons (e.g. state and federal government) should use open source and open standard software when available.

Your overall project will be graded on:

• Content: Just like any other essay, you are expected to make your points in a well thought out and clear manner. In the sciences, being concise is generally desired, so you need to make a complete and convincing argument not necessarily long one.

• References: Links to web pages, papers, and books that either support or dissent from your position. There should be at least four for each side You should summarize and discuss the contributions of these pages. You will probably need to use research tools like LexisNexis™ Academic for news and laws or CiteSeer for Computer Science papers, search engines such as Google or Google Scholar, and web directories such as Yahoo.

• Presentation: While I do not expect you to make professional quality web pages, your site should be readable, well-designed, and utilize standard web technology such as images and links in illustrating your points. You should use other web pages for style ideas. Pictures and a reasonably well-thought out interface are required. See for http://www.useit.com/ for good ideas and http://www.gui-bloopers.com/ and http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com for bad ones. You can use a web design program like Dreamweaver or Frontpage or use any program that can output web pages (such as Microsoft Word).

Tips

A way of improving your essay is to actually correspond with experts in the field that you are studying. You can easily find the email address for most professors, for example, online. If you plan to do this, keep your inquiries short and expect a short reply, don't harass anyone, and start early because you probably will not hear back from people early if at all.

Google will be your friend, but it should not be your only friend in researching your topic. Whenever you need to find a page or a person related to particular topic, searching with Google will probably give you a good start. You still need to do your own research and analysis

Do not lose points on simple things. For example, if you are required to have names of all team members on a document, make sure that the names are there. Turn each part of the project in on time. Each part of the project from topic selection to the final project contributes to your project grade. Late submissions will not be accepted for all of the parts of the project other than the final submission. For the final project, you can turn in up to 2 days late for a 10% penalty.