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The class mailing list is cs161@aegean.stanford.edu (no longer active).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.

Distributed Computer Consulting (DCC)

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: