OpenBSD Journal

OpenBSD in the Classroom

Contributed by Dengue on from the blame-it-on-Canada dept.

grey writes : "I'm guessing that the author might have already submitted a story himself, but just in case, Daemonnews is running a story on a course taught at the University of Calgary that used OpenBSD in an Operating Systems class.
The story is here: http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200306/obsd-classroom.html

The page of the instructor (who has been getting considerably more media attention for the upcoming CPSC 599.48 course on Computer Viruses and Malware) is here:
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/
It's very encouraging to see more teachers using OpenBSD as an educational resource. I wish the CS courses I took focused on more useful & contemporary real world examples (courses using PDP-11's were just a little too arcane when I was an undergraduate IMHO).
I'd be interested to see student feedback on this experience and whether it inspired anyone to get more involved with OpenBSD."

Of course the code is better, you're preaching to the choir man. Calgary, what a coincidence.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Michael van der Westhuizen () on

    ... I was on the right side of the world to actually _take_ the course!

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward () on

      -You- wish? -I- wish!!! I mean, I'm only on the other side of the country, but our OS class' teacher had us implementing the "dining philosophers" and deadlock detection in ressource matrix (basically finding loops in a graph...). Urgh! Can an assignment be anymore meaningless? Besides, I'm sure 95% of students cut'n pasted their code from the net...

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward () on

        That's right, over here in Europe we had the "dining philosophers" assignment as well, most people of our class just "googled" for it.

        If there's any student of that class reading this, would you please post your notes as I'm very interested in reading them.

        Comments
        1. By An ex-UFRGS student () asdf@fdsa.br on mailto:asdf@fdsa.br

          Humm.. my classmates did the same... oh, well... My final work in Operating Systems was a bunch of slides. If wish my old teacher had used OpenBSD or any decent OS in his classes..

  2. By drm () on

    As a graduate student and part-time UN*X network monkey at the University of Calgary, I can't say that I relish the negative publicity this course has garnered for our school, but nonetheless, I steadfastly agree that the material is fascinating, and will help to prepare future graduates for life in an increasingly network-centric computing environment. To be honest, I don't fully understand the uproar that this has caused: Will the inclusion of this course mean that the University of Calgary suddenly start graduating hoards of evil black hats? I think that everyone will agree that malware and viruses are among the most significant (and annoying) problems facing modern computing... do they not merit our study and understanding?

    Let's take a parallel example: as a molecular biologist, like thousands of my collegues, I have the training and resources to produce hundreds of potentially-dangerous bacterial or viral pathogens. Does this mean that I run around dumping these things into waterways and salad bars? Of course not. My understanding of these organisms has made me a better scientist, though, just as giving serious study to computer viruses will almost certainly help to make tomorrow's computer science grads better at their jobs.

    Anyway. I just wanted to say kudos to Dr. Aycock; his courage in the face of adversity (and not to mention his support of OpenBSD) are admirable.

    Hrmm. This was slightly off topic, and I have a feeling that I just re-kindled a flame war. Have at 'er.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward () on

      Must be a thing about OpenBSD -- I thought I'd be the Molecular Biologist using it. Apparently not =)

    2. By Anonymous Coward () on

      And I bet you thought SARS, BSE, Monkey pox, West Nile, Hanta virus, and Lyme disease were just spreading on thier own ... Muu Waa Haa HAA!!!

  3. By j0rd () meh@meh.meh on mailto:meh@meh.meh

    i got 50% in my OS class because it was boring as hell. I've been programming with syncronization objects for years... i don't really care about some guys trying to find a seat in a retaurant.

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