University College London

Computer Science Department

Agenda for the SSCC meeting March 2nd 2000.

Robin Hirsch

The meeting will be held at 1:00 pm in room 214.

  1. Apologies for absence.
  2. Approval of minutes of the meeting of November 24th 1999.
  3. Matters arising.
  4. Undergraduate Issues
    1. Presentation of petition for better assess for CS students.  Request for an open meeting of SSCC to which the following are invited:  The Head of the Faculty; The Head of College Security;The Dean of Students;The Union Education Officer.(from A Hardy.   See alsodraft policy document below from S Berke.)
    2. Alternative OS lab.

      3. The "Sparc Classic" machines in the first year lab are far too slow to do anything useful with (even email). The second floor of the Pearson building is empty. Why not use these machines to set up an alternative OS lab on the second floor.  Also requests for vaious operatings systems, including a distributed operating system (Bell labs, Plan9) and a multimedia OS (BeOS). (A Hardy)
    3. Programming for tuition fees  A number of the staff in the finance corridor inform me that they feel their computer systems are badly utilised.  They recall tales of having to do time consuming computing tasks that could be easily automated.  For example, every time UCL swallows another educational institute the various computer systems and data formats have to be manually reconciled. The CS department is full of highly skilled software engineers.  Why doesn't the CS department volunteer its services to fix the finance department's software problems?  In return they pay the tuition fees of all participating students. (A Hardy)
    4. 2B12 coursework 3 could easily be cheated on by people spreaing(?) out the  right answers, and will be unfair on those who did it without any help (A Mahdavi).
    5. 2b10 coursework & 2b11 mini project 2: The use of decompilers for these two are possible, which again puts those who put a real effort into it at a big disadvantage (A Mahdavi)
    6. 2B12. Hirsch's first coursework (set and marked on-line)  could easily be cheated on by people spreaing out the right answers, and will bew unfair on those who did it without any help (A Mahdavi)
    7. 2B10 coursework and 2B11 minproject 2: The use of decompilers for these

      8. two are possible, which again put those who put a real effort into it in a big
      disadvantage (A Mahdavi).
    8. Request that sshd be installed on those machines which permit

      9. remote access, so that we can work securely from home or from ISD machines (Michael Rogers)
  5. MSc Issues (Judy Cheung)
    1. Late return of coursework.  The following courseworks were handed in before Christmas and have not yet been returned: D0a java;  Software Engineering; D0b VSCC.  When will the coursework be returned to students?
  6. DCNDS Issues (N Mahadeo)
    1. There seem to be a slow response in repairing some computers in the DCNDS lab- "Geebung" was down for at least two weeks.
    2. Students were not informed that there would not be any remote access to the system during the Christmas break. If the Y2K bug was the reason, then students should at least be notified as to what dates they would have access.
    3. Basement Printer "pscb" does not have sufficient memory to print a 2 page pdf file!!! I was told that a new one has been ordered, but the question is when can we expect it. Also, students were not informed about this problem and several of us have lost some of our quota by attempting to print such files. If the students are aware of the problem at least they would know that the chance exists that their file will not be printed.
    4. Several students have laptops and it would be nice to have a couple access

      5. points in the DCNDs lab. There are quite a few in the 2nd year undergrad lab
      but it is usually quite noisy in there.
  7. Services committee.  Invitation for one of the student representatives (preferably a second year student) to join the services committee.  This committee meets once a month (usually the first Weds. afternoon of the month) to discuss  the needs of service provision for teaching and research in the dept (Wolfgang Emmerich).
  8. British Computer Society accreditation visit (J Saunders)
  9. Announcements.
  10. Any other business.

    11.  

     

    END OF AGENDA

    Procedure for requesting extended access hours within the Department of
    Computer Science

    1.  Any request for extended access hours should be done by the
    appropriate programme/year representative contacting the course module leader
    by email and copying the request to the Departmental Administrators email
    deptadmin

    2.  If the course module leader agrees that a request for extended hours is
    warranted then the Departmental Administrator should be emailed with full
    details of time and date. Please note that a full weeks notice should be
    given.

    3.  The Departmental Administrator will then email all designated
    persons to see if they are available on the dates requested.

    4.  The Departmental Administrator will email the programme/year rep and
    inform them if there is a designated person available. Extended access
    cannot be given unless a designated person is available.

    5.  The Departmental Administrator will then liase with security to inform
    them of the dates that extended access has been granted

    6.  The Departmental Administrator will ensure that the designated person
    has instructions on their responsibilities.

    We now have an additional two members of research staff who have been
    trained as designated persons which increases our chances of fullfilling
    approved requests for extended access.