LSP 150: Computers and Society
Lehman College, City University of New York
Fall 2004

Announcements:

• Photo gallery of robots (most from 2 December office hours).
• All work must be submitted by noon on Monday, 20 December.

Handouts:

• Syllabus
  
• Outline
• Lecture Notes for 2 September
• Quiz 1
  
• Lab 1 for 9 September
• Quiz 2
• Grading Rubric for Writing Assignments
  
• Lab 2 for 23 September
• Lab 3 for 30 September
• Quiz 3
  
• Lab 4 for 7 October
• Lab 5 for 14 October
• Quiz 4
  
• Lab 6 for 21 October
• task.nqc -- discussed in lecture on 21 October
• Programs discussed in lecture on 28 October:
• song_sub.nqc
• wiggle.nqc (from The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Robots by Jonathan Knudsen)
• RoboTag.nqc (from The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Robots by Jonathan Knudsen)
• Lab 7 for 4 November
• Quiz 5
• Links for computers and society discussion on 11 November:
  
  • NSF statistics on who earns bachelors degrees in  science and  mathematics: http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf04318/sectb.htm
    
  • NSF statistics on who earns doctoral degrees in  science and  mathematics: http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf04303/secta.htm
    
  • CUNY statistics on who earns degrees: http://hawk.cuny.edu:7778/portal/page?_pageid=40,31544&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
• Lab 8 for 11 November
• Quiz 6
  
• Links for computers and society discussion on 16 November:
  
  • Approaching Ethics:  5 standard approaches: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/approach.html  
    
  • Intellectual Property Case Study:  http://www.scu.edu/ethics/dialogue/candc/cases/jumpstart.html
• Project ideas
  
• Lab 9 for 16 November
• Quiz 7
• Lab 10 for 18 November
  
• Quiz 8
• Quiz 9

Useful Links:

• The official Lego Mindstorm robot page is http://www.legomindstorms.com.
• The programming language for the course is Not Quite C (NQC), written by Dave Baum, and maintained by John Hansen. Some useful NQC documents include:
  
  • NQC Programmer's Reference Sheet by Matthew Bates:
    2 pages with every NQC command and construct, very briefly described.
  • NQC Programmer's Guide by Dave Baum:
    62 page guide to programming in NQC.
  • Some BricxCC tutorials by the original authors (towards the bottom of the page).
    
  • The Bricx Command Center software for Windows.
  • The MacNQC software for MacIntosh OS.