Assignment handed out on Friday, March 2, 2001

Due in Recitation on 3/4/2001:

• Read Lampson's Hints for Computer System Design, and Leveson and Turner's An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents. Your writing/discussion assignment:

  The Therac-25 software team made errors that resulted in tragedy. If the Therac-25 team had followed Lampson's hints, would they have precluded the tragedies you read about? Pick a side, write a 1 page summary defending your viewpoint, and be prepared to present, discuss, and defend your viewpoint to the members of your recitation section.

• Read The X Window System. For recitation, come prepared with a 5 minute summary of the paper (i.e., what problem is being solved, what approach is being used, ...)