Introduction

The projects will be organized in similar ways in both courses, though the details of the assignments will differ. In both courses, the following will be required:

• Every student in charge of a group's material and code in either class must have a CCIS account. This is because we have to be able to access and run your code on our CCIS Unix system (Sun Solaris). If you need an account and don't have one, get a form, read the directions, set up your account on a Sun machine (or by remote login) and turn in the signed form, in that order. Check to see when your account is activated. You won't get a notification.


• Each student will work in a team of three or four students. The team makeup and assignments will be put together as follows:
  
  
  1. The project groups have been chosen, by you, as of Thursday, June 19th. Be sure you know who all your group members are and be sure you have their email addresses. Having their phone numbers or IM IDs couldn't hurt either.
  
  
  2. On Sunday, June 22nd, I am posting the Project Topics; get them via the course homepages.
  
  
  3. We'll discuss the topics on Monday the 23rd. Each group will come up with a list of five preferred projects, in rank order, from #1 to #5, to be handed in at the beginning of class on Wednesday, June 25th. I will immediately run a lottery to decide which group gets which project.
  
  


• All programming projects must be written in Java and will be required to compile and execute correctly on the CCIS Sun Solaris systems, currently running Java 1.4.1. This is the only arrangement that will allow us to grade your work in a uniform and efficient manner. (There are 60 students in each course.) Do not develop your code elsewhere and assume it will work without problems on the Sun systems. It is your responsibility to ensure that it does.


• Every group will have a project website that we will use to access your reports, java source, compiled code and javadoc documentation. We would strongly prefer that the website be on the CCIS systems.


• We will pay attention to your English, and if you write sloppily, you will lose some credit. Writing will be important in whatever career you pursue in the future, so pay careful attention to practicing and improving your writing.


• If you would like to keep your website and code private, then here are some guidelines that will enable that, at least on the CCIS Unix systems: All Java code must be on the Sun systems so we can execute it.
  
  1. Create a .www directory in your unix home directory; you should already have such a directory. ls -l on the directory should give permissions: drwxr-xr-x, readable and executable by others is the primary point, the rightmost r-x. Use mkdir to create directories.
  
  
  2. In your .www directory create a directory which is either com1204sm2003 or com1370sm2003 (or both, if you're taking both courses ;-( This directory should have the same drwxr-xr-x permissions.
  
  
  3. In this directory, create a pub/ and/or a priv/ directory. The pub directory should have the same drwxr-xr-x permissions as before. For priv directory, restrict the readability using the command:
     chmod go-rw priv
     If you then execute
     ls -ld priv
     you will see the permissions:
     drwx--x--x
     so the directory is executable but not readable.
  
  
  4. cd to the priv directory and do the following relatively secure thing. Create a directory whose name is of the form priv123456 but with a "random" choice for the six digits. (I often use the last six digits of some randomly chosen number from the phonebook to choose such numbers.) If, for example, you choose priv943562 then this is the directory name that you must mail the grader, Ms. Shao, mailto:myshao@ccs.neu.edu. And you must do this early in Week 2 of the course, the week ending June 27th. The "priv123456" directory can have the usual drwxr-xr-x permissions.
  
  
  5. In your "priv123456" directory (using your digits), create an index.html page that tells us where any of your private pages are and where any subdirectories are that hold any code that you're handing in. Anything that you want only Professor Futrelle and the grader to have access to. This index.html page should be readable by all, e.g., permissions -rw-rw-r--. All code should have indications in it of which students designed, coded, tested and documented which parts of it. You should realize that no one can access your index.html page or any subdirectories, because your "priv123456" directory name is unguessable. This is an adequate enough security system for our purposes. I use it for many private web directories for various research groups on campus that I'm involved with.
  
  
  6. In your pub directory you should place a public index.html page that looks like this. Whichever design you use, with pub/ and/or priv/ directories, you must be sure that your group's reports are available by midnight on the three due dates for your project. See the course schedules for these dates, COM1204 schedule, COM1370 schedule.


• One final point: You should have compiled versions of your projects for us to run. But if you generate or write to any files as part of your system, then it would be best to put your code in a private location, since you need to make the directory writable by others. Another possibility is to set up a subdirectory for these files that is writable. Once there's any writable directory that anyone can find, those people can write to it and delete anythign there or fill it up to your quota limit. But if any writable directories are "hidden" from the world, there should be no problems.


• The point of all this organization is that there will be a location for your three reports that we can monitor (and grade!). The grader will make up two private web pages for her and my use that will have links to the public and private index pages for every project in each class.

The directions above will be discussed and refined in the first weeks of class.

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