CIS 12 / Phil 14.4 | Professor Dexter

CIS 12 / Phil 14.4
Fall 2006

Announcements

Nov 21	For next week, read the Manion&Goodrum and Denning pieces, plus this short piece on security and ethics written by real live security professionals.
Nov 18	Here's the requirements for your paper topic proposal, due on the 28th.
Oct 30	Here's the assignment for Paper 2.
Oct 25	Readings for the coming week: Start with the Free Software Definition (we'll look at some actual free software licenses later) Then read Eric Raymond, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," in the class reader. (It's also available online, with a few additions And an interesting article by another free/open-source heavyweight, Bruce Perens.
Oct 23	Let's push the due date for the second paper back one week, so that I can assign the topic once we've finished the IP section of the course.
Oct 18	(Here is a good brief article on the IBM-Amazon suit.) Readings for this week, on the subject of software patents: The transcript of a talk by Richard Stallman on software patents (he thinks they're not a very good idea). A broad analysis of software patents An essay by the founder of Viaweb, which became Yahoo!Stores Not necessary for reading, but an interesting review of historical software innovations and the (negative, in the author's view) effect of patents is this piece by David Wheeler
Oct 10	Readings for next week are both online, addressing software copyrights. You may write your reading journal in response to either paper. Swann & Turner Davis, Samuelson, et al (access on-campus or through the new, very simple, "EZ-Proxy;" see instructions from the library.
Sept 4	For the next class, in addition to the introductory material from the Spinello/Tavani reader, please also read the piece by McFarland, starting on p 294. This should be the focus of your reading journal; because the paper is due at the same time, your journal may consist of the summary plus just one of the other two sections.
Sept 14	A few notes from class: You might enjoy the movie Colosssus: The Forbin Project Some interesting testimony about software and voting machines... And here's a news article about a book that suggests that IBM and its technology were involved in the Holocaust.
Sept 12	Here is a description of the weekly reading journals you'll be doing...
Sept 5	Welcome to CIS 12. Mostly, this site will be for useful documents (paper assignments, interesting links, etc). You might be interested in the syllabus first...