====== Paper Report ======

===== Due Friday, June 9 at 11:59pm =====

Operating systems are still evolving! This paper report is designed to guide towards recent operating systems developments, and to demonstrate how concepts from the course can help you understand modern operating systems technology.

Read one of the following four semi-technical documents on recent operating systems developments.  In response, write a short report of several paragraphs -- no more than one page -- summarizing the development.  In particular, you must address **how the functionality was divided between the operating system kernel and user-level applications**.  What functionality was placed where, and why?  What performance and/or robustness consequences follow from that division of functionality, if any?  Feel free to refer to other articles, as long as you cite them; it isn't necessary to explicitly cite the articles below.

    * [[http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c18621675.mspx|Windows's Encrypting File System]] (Read particularly the Overview and Components sections.)
    * [[http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/11/07/linux_threads.html|Linux Multithreading Advances]] (Refer to the "NPTL" implementation, which is used in current Linux systems.)
    * [[http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/9|Mac OS X 10.4's Spotlight desktop search tool]] (This is part of a longer article on Mac OS X 10.4, but the important Spotlight information is on this page -- along with less important stuff, such as long digressions on "complex queries".)
    * [[http://kerneltrap.org/node/5584|OpenBSD's malloc() with improved security/buffer overrun protection]]

Your response must be typed or word-processed, not handwritten. It should fit on one side of one sheet of paper, using 11- or 12-point fonts and generous margins. **Single spacing is OK.**  Put your name and student ID at the top of the page. I value quality, clarity and conciseness (brevity: saying exactly what you need to say, and no more), not exhaustive completeness. Responses longer than one page will get no credit.

Most students find that good writing is surprisingly important to their careers, no matter what field.  So take the writing seriously, as we will.  Paul Eggert has collected a useful set of links to resources on writing reports; take a look.

    * Angela Laflen's [[http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/reportW/index.html|Writing a Report]] (2001) describes how to write and organize a research report.
    * David A. McMurrey's [[http://www.io.com/~hcexres/textbook/|Online Technical Writing: Online Textbook]] (2006) contains many examples and much discussion of technical writing. For example, it has [[http://www.io.com/~hcexres/textbook/feas.html|a chapter on recommendation and feasibility reports]] that contains several sample reports.
    * Simon Peyton Jones's [[http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm|How to write a good research paper]] (2004) is a brief and pleasant talk about how to write papers.
    * Barbara Gross Davis's [[http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/writebetter.html|Helping Students Write Better in All Courses]] (1993) gives succinct advice about how to teach writing. Invert the advice, and you can learn a lot about how to write.
    * Proper citations are a hallmark of any solidly written report. [[http://library.concordia.ca/help/howto/citations.html|Citation and Style Guides]] (2006) refers to several style guides; pick a style suitable for your report and use it consistently. Especially see its section "How to cite sources."
    * The Cabrillo Tidepool Study's [[http://edweb.sdsu.edu/triton/tidepoolunit/Rubrics/reportrubric.html|Scientific Report Rubric]] (1997) is the sort of thing we use when evaluating your report.
    * No list of resources would be complete without the classics:
        * //[[http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/style.html|The Elements of Style]]//, by William Strunk, Jr.  The linked version is to the original text, which was published in 1918.  The [[http://www.strunkandwhite.com/|version in bookstores]] has been updated several times by E.B. White (author of //Charlotte's Web//).  There is also a new, really fun [[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1594200696?v=glance|illustrated version]] ([[http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/wordsandlanguage/fr/elementsOfStyle.htm|review]]).
        * //[[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226899152?v=glance|Style: Toward Clarity and Grace]]//, by Joseph M. Williams.
        * For academic writing in particular: //[[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195069544?v=glance|A Handbook for Scholars]]//, by Mary-Claire van Leunen.  [[http://www.cs.uu.nl/docs/tandt/html/Scholars/|Link]]

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