CIS-332 -- Principles of Operating Systems
Professor: Franz J. Kurfess
Home page:http://www.cis.njit.edu/franz E-mail:franz@cis.njit.edu
Project CIS 332
One of your assignments for the course is a project,
contributing 20% to your overall grade. For your project,
you can choose between three options:
- construction of a World Wide Web page (team project)
- a research paper
- a community service project
These options are described in more detail below.
Those of you interested in community service should
contact the Office of Community and Public Service (Ext. 3642;
please follow the deadlines and format for the research paper.
You have to submit the project in two stages:
a first version, which I will look at and then the final
version, which will be the basis for your final grade in the
term project part. Please note that I already want to
see the full paper, complete program, or
complete set of Web pages in the first version.
If you do the community service, you may describe what
your tasks are in the first version, and then report
on the completion of the tasks in the second version.
The deadlines are
- Monday, Nov. 2, 1998 for the first version
- Monday, Nov. 23, 1998 for the final version
The project counts for 20% of your total grade; 10% will come
from the first and 10% from the final version.
In addition to the project documentation, you need to hand
in a signed copy of the
Honor Code for Projects Statement. Violations of the
honor code, in particular copying or use of somebody else's
material without proper acknowledgements, will result in a lower grade
or other sanctions as specified in the NJIT Student Handbook.
World Wide Web Page
In this case, you have to put together material about one particular
operating system topic and arrange it into a collection of WWW pages.
You can have a look at the work of the students from
Spring 98.
Fall 97 and
Spring 97.
The material you collect should be especially useful for
future generations of CIS 332 students.
For each topic, it should have the structure as provided by the
Web page design team.
This option may be a team effort in groups of approximately 5 students.
For the format of your Web pages, please follow the
layout guidelines
put together by the Web page design team.
This page also will also contain instructions for submitting the electronic
version of your paper, either via ftp or on floppy disk.
Research Paper:
For the research paper, you have to
demonstrate the ability to read one or more article from a professional research
journal (like IEEE Computer or Communications of the ACM),
describe its main ideas in your own words, use the knowledge
you acquired in class, and apply it to the concepts discussed in
the papers you read. Your task is to use the following paper
as a starting point, and discuss the problems that have
to be solved with respect to operating systems:
"The Gini Operating System" which has been developed by
some of the same people at Sun that worked on the
Java programming language.
There was an article in a recent issue of Wired magazine:
"One Huge Computer", by Kevin Kelly and Spencer Reis,
Wired, vol. 6, num. 8, pp 128-170, 1998.
There are also some background papers on the World Wide Web:
General Remarks:
Your paper has to be 7-10 pages long in a font no larger
than 12 points; however, it is not the number
of pages that makes a good paper but the contents.
My evaluation will be based on the following criteria;
the number indicates the points you can get (10 for each version,
20 in total):
- coverage of relevant topics (6)
- presentation and readability (2)
- originality (1)
- bibliography (1)
Some hints:
- Describe the topics you discuss in your own words. Parts of your paper which
are practically identical to your source will not count for coverage
and originality, you risk a bad grade for copying, and you might
violate copyright law.
This is a serious issue, and some students
from previous semesters were not very happy aobut
their grade as a consequence of their copying.
- Have discussions with your fellow students about the paper.
You will have to write your own paper, however.
If you do the Web page team project, the grade will
be for the whole team unless you specify in the "Credits"
section who did which part.
- Use a spellchecker or ask somebody to go over your paper to
eliminate mistakes. Frequent grammar and spelling errors may
lower your grade, and it might leave a bad impression or
make your paper difficult to understand.
- You have to find additional sources of information, e.g textbooks,
Web pages, computer magazines like Byte, or
other journal articles. Don't forget to list them in the bibliography
section!
Here is an example for the structure of such a paper:
Title Page
(Author, Title, Affiliation)
Introduction
(background, history, problem description, overview of the systems)
Main Part
relevant issues for operating systems
relation to operating systems
Conclusion
(advantages, problems, future developments)
Bibliography
(cite all articles and books you have used, including the textbook)
Community Servide
In general, the requirements are similar to the ones described above
for the research paper. An example of a an outline is
here.
World Wide Web Hints
Where to find
further information, e.g. how to install your own
home page on the hertz system (might be a little outdated by now).
CIS 332 Principles of Operating Systems Spring 1998 Franz Kurfess.