On-line Resources
World Wide Web
The WWW is the primary distribution medium for course materials. The
course pages have the following URLs; the last URL is a general index
to all CS 161 offerings at Stanford:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/~tolis/courses/cs161-97-summer/
AFS (leland) directory
The AFS (leland) directory is the repository of course
software. It is no longer available.
Anonymous FTP
The course AFS directory is no longer available.
Newsgroup
The course newsgroup is su.class.cs161. It is unmoderated,
and infrequently read by the course staff. Hence, it
is mainly a platform for communication between students; questions to
the course staff should not be posted to the
newsgroup if a timely reply if desired.
Also, all email sent to the class by the staff (using the class
mailing list) is posted to the newsgroup as well, which thus acts as a
repository of class-wide announcements.
The newsgroup is only active for the duration of the course.
Class mailing list
The class mailing list is cs161@aegean.stanford.edu (no
longer active). Email addressed to this list reaches
- all students on the student roster,
- the course staff, and
- the newsgroup.
Use of the class mailing list by the students is discouraged (although
not prohibited); students should normally use the newsgroup to
communicate with each other. If you are a student of CS161 and your
name does not appear on the student roster, then please submit the
on-line registration form.
EMail
Partly due to the nature of the course material - which relies heavily
on visual aids and complex mathematical expressions -, and partly due
to the medical condition of your instructor (RSI), email to the course
staff is limited to questions
- with short answers, e.g.
- How many free late days do I have left?
- There seems to be a typo on problem 34b. Am I right?
- and directly relevant to the course material.
Hence, please do not use email for questions that
require long answers, such as
- I did not understand the example in class today. Can you describe
it in a different way? Can you give another, similar example?
- Do you have any hints for problem 2? I have been stuck for hours
on it.
Let me emphasize that the above policy does not aim at discouraging
you from approaching the course staff with your questions. On the
contrary, we are very excited to see you or hear from you during our
office hours (or any other time) and help you out. It's the
medium of electronic mail that we discourage, not
your questions per se.
Who to ask
Please use the TA as primary contact for
- questions directly related to the assignments (problem sets,
midterm, project), including regrades,
- questions on problem session material, or
- review questions.
Please use the instructor as primary contact for
- questions on material indirectly related to the assignments,
- questions on lecture material or handouts,
- any other general questions, or
- extensions.
If you are uncertain who to contact, please approach the TA first, and
he may refer you to the instructor if necessary.
For questions regarding
- software at Sweet Hall, e.g.
- What debuggers/programs are available?
- Why do I get this weird compiler error?
- Do you have gcc?
- Where is the documentation for emacs?
- your Sweet Hall accounts, e.g.
- What are my print/disk quota?
- How do I recover accidentally deleted files?
- Why can't I access this file?
- basic Sweet Hall account configuration, e.g.
- Why can't I bring up this window?
- Why can't I print to the printer?
- Why does xv crash?
- UNIX in general, e.g.
- What are makefiles?
- How do I keep multiple versions of my source code?
please do not contact the course staff. DCC answers
such questions, and its WWW
pages cover many topics related to the Sweet Hall systems. DCC
also provides an email hotline (with very short response times), and a
desk assistant who is on site during the day (Sweet Hall, second
floor).
In addition, you may find helpful the following on-line guides:
© 1998 Apostolos Lerios