CSC 170
Introduction to Computers and their Applications

Spring, 2003

Syllabus

Calendar

Homework Assignments

Click Along with the textbook

Getting Help

Textbook

The main textbook for this class is Using Information Technology, by Sawyer & Williams; later in the semester we'll switch to Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst. Both books are in the bookstore as of Jan. 22.

Who should take this course?

This course is for people who want to learn how to use computers for word processing, number processing (spreadsheets), databases, e-mail, Web browsing, etc. If you are (or are considering being) a math or computer science major, you'll need to take one or more programming courses like CSC 160 or CSC 171 (ask me for advice on which). If you are a Computer and Management Information Systems major, you need both this course and some programming courses. For General Education requirements, this course counts as a Second Competency but not as a Math/Science Distribution course.

Some Suggested Reading

• My web page on privacy, computers, and telecommunications (includes summaries of a lot of different issues, with links to other organizations)
• The ImpactCS project's links on the social and ethical impact of computing
• "Triumph of the Nerds", a 3-hour public-TV documentary (on videotape in Swirbul Library) about the development of the microcomputer industry from 1975-1995.
• An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on college students being overwhelmed with information from Web searches.
• The Personal Computer Show, Wednesday evenings on WBAI 99.5 FM, discusses a lot of "how-to" issues, including backup, firewalls, virus and spyware protection, etc (mostly for Windows users). In particular, their page of links and downloads points to a lot of useful stuff.
• the Gator Advertising and Information Network FAQ. GAIN is an example of "adware" or "spyware": you visit a Web site that offers useful software or Web services for free, you download and install the software, and you have (perhaps unknowingly) also installed a program named Gator that tracks what web sites you visit and displays pop-up ads on your screen until you figure out how to delete it.
• Steven Levy's book Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government (Saving Privacy in the Digital Age), which discusses the history of computer cryptography and its implications for privacy and policy. Makes the claim that strong cryptography is here to stay, and nothing governments or corporations can do will stop it, so we'd better get used to a world in which anything can be secret. (If you like Levy's writing style, you might enjoy his earlier book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.)
• David Brin's book The Transparent Society, which also discusses privacy and and policy issues. Makes the claim that surveillance and spying technology are here to stay, and nothing cryptographers can do will stop it, so we'd better get used to a world in which nothing can be secret, and the best we can hope for is to give ordinary citizens the same ability to spy on corporations and governments that corporations and governments already have to spy on ordinary citizens.
• Brad Templeton's Copyright Myths
• A Guide to Home Computer Security written by CERT/CC, a part of Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute
• The HTML 4.01 standard (not always easy reading, but definitive on what is legal and illegal HTML).
• Tutorials and Style Recommendations for writing Web pages
• WebMonkey, a widely-used source of information for Web developers, including handy HTML references