Announcements

Posted here are announcements of importance to the entire class. The most recent announcements will be at the top of the page. Old announcements will be removed.

December 3 (12:20PM)

The schedule for project demos is now posted. Please check the schedule to make sure that you know the time of your demo. If for some reason you need to reschedule your demo, please contact Patrick. Please remember to bring your final report to your demo.

November 29 (5:30PM)

Demos for CS 5204 programming projects will be conducted on Wednesday December 8th -- that's one week from tomorrow. Please sign up for a time slot on the sheet posted inside the door of the main graduate lab (659 McBryde). Time slots are 20 minutes, and run from 9:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the evening, with a 1 hour lunch break. The signup sheet looks bad because the printer is low on toner :-( . About the only thing that's difficult to read is the paragraph of information at the top; I'll try to print another one out by tomorrow. Here is that paragraph:

The demos are spaced 20 minutes apart, but should take only 15 minutes. Please arrive well before your demo time to set up; demos start at the listed time, and will end after 15 minutes. Demos will be conducted on Wednesday December 8 in the main graduate lab in 659 McBryde. Windows NT and FreeBSD machines will be set aside for the demos; please note which platform you will use when you sign up. If you need to conduct your demo under another environment, or if you cannot conduct your demo on Wednesday December 8, please send email to Patrick (vanmetre@csgrad.cs.vt.edu) to make special arrangements.

Please bring the following things to the demo:

Source code listing (please try to conserve paper)
An annotated diagram of your system's architecture
A one-page overview of the operation of your system

Please sign up for a demo time by 5:00 pm Friday December 3rd!

Written reports are due on Wednesday December 8th as well; please turn them in to me by noon that day. I'll be in the grad lab conducting demos. Between demos, you are welcome to deliver your written report to me. Please don't interrupt a demo just to turn in a written report.

November 10 (5:30PM)

Our class for November 11 (Thursday) will only be used for the purposes of turning in the problem set that is due that day. Patrick and/or Wei will there at the beginning of the class time to pick these up.

The 10th (and last!) problem set will be given out on Tuesday (November 16) and due after the Thanksgiving break.

November 5 (11:00 AM)

The project reviewer assignments have been made. Please check the list of project reviewers to see whose project you are supposed to review. A link has also been posted on the Projects page, which is accessible from the menu at the left.

October 29 (5:10 PM)

I believe that the questions from the text used in Problem Set 8 has an incorrect bound (a commit algorithm using only O(sqrt(N)) messages). I am in contact with the author and will post a correction as soon as possible. You can still proceed with looking at Maekawa's algorithm and thinking about the design of a commit protocol based on Maekawa's technique; the only issue in question is the number of messages).

October 21 (12:15PM)

The reviews for the term projects will be conducted beginning on November 11, 1999. The intermediate reports resulting from these reviews will be due on November 18, 1999 (Thursday). More details will be posted soon.

October 14 (10:00AM)

Here is a list of approved term projects.

October 5 (11:45 AM):

The midterm examination will be held in class as scheduled on October 7, 1999. The outline of the exam is as follows:

Question	Points	Topic
1	10	Concept Illustration
2	15	Tuple Space
3	10	Monitors
4	15	Communicating Sequential Processes
5	15	Vector Timestamps
6	15	Causal Ordering of Messages
7	20	Global State Recording Algorithm

September 17 (11:00 AM):

There will be a meeting in McBryde 655 at 5:00 PM on Monday, September 20 for those students who are in need of finding a partner for a programming project. Patrick, Wei, and I will be there to facilitate. If you have questions about a project idea you can also talk with me then as well.

Proposals for both programming projects and writing projects will be due by class on Thursday, September 23. You can send the proposals to me electronically (in text, PDF, or Postscript form) or on paper.

August 26 (3:10 PM):

An example of a solution to the readers/writers problem using monitors is now posted. This example is found in the textbook as Example 2.3, found on pages 22-24.

August 25 (2:30PM):

Some additional material was added to the descriptions of the programming project option for class term project. The additions are shown in red.