Critical programming skills cannot be learned by attending lecture. You should budget enough time to work on the projects as well. Please consult the time table given on the syllabus and plan ahead. Projects are due by midnight (1 minute after 11:59pm) of the due date. Projects will be submitted using the submit system running on the GL machines.
For this course, programming projects must be developed using the NASM assembler for the Linux operating system running on an Intel Pentium CPU. This arrangement is not compatible with other flavors of UNIX, with Linux running on non-Intel CPUs or with assemblers for Windows 98/2k/NT. When in doubt the UMBC machine linux.gl.umbc.edu will be the final arbiter of what constitutes a working program. You may work on your own machines running Linux, but you will have to be your own systems administrator. None of the instructors, TA or support staff at OIT will be available to help you install or debug Linux.
If you turn in your project late, you will penalized according to the following table:
| 1 day late | -15% |
| 2 days late | -30% |
Projects more than 2 days late will not be accepted. For example, for a project due on Tuesday, you will receive a 15% penalty if you turn in your project on Wednesday and a 30% penalty on Thursday. On Friday, your project grade will be zero. You may turn in incomplete projects for grading. A project that runs incorrectly will receive no more than 75% of the grade. A project that does not compile will receive no more than 50% of the grade. These guidelines are for incomplete projects where a good effort was made. Garbage will receive 0%.
All projects must be completed by your own individual effort. You should never have a copy of someone else's project either on paper or electronically under any circumstance. Also, you should never give a copy of your project, either on paper or electronically, to another student. This also means that you cannot "work" on the project together. Cases of academic dishonesty will be dealt with severely. Egregious cases of cheating will be written up as a "more serious" infraction. In this case, you will not be allowed to drop the course. Also, a "more serious" infraction would appear as a permanent part of your student record and would be seen by potential employers when they ask for an official copy of your transcript.
We will be using special software to check for cheating. The software is quite sophisticated and has "surprised" some students in the past. We will, of course, not release the details of the internal workings of this cheat-checking software, but you are forewarned that there is no difficulty in comparing every pair of submitted projects --- even for projects submitted to other sections of this course.
Finally, you are also warned that if your project is turned in by someone else, then both you and the person copying your project will receive a 0 for that project. This includes "substantially similar" projects. Furthermore, all parties concerned will have their prior projects checked for cheating. So, if you cheat on Project 3, you can lose all the points from Projects 0 through 3 --- even if you did all the work and just "let" other people copy from you.
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