In this assignment, you will write a position paper. You must choose from from the possible position topics, or clear your topic idea with the professor. Note that you can also take the opposite position from those described below.
You will also evaluate 2 of your classmate's position papers, and then revise your paper. Your evaluations should be about 1 page each.
Above all, try to have some fun with your position --- invoke some reaction in your classmates (from awe at your genius to anger at your toeing the party-line).
Position paper: Midnight, Friday, March 24th,
2006
Reviews: Midnight, Monday, April 3rd,
2006
Revised paper: Midnight, Monday April 17th, 2006
Email your papers and reviews in PDF or postscript to the
instructor.
Reliability is proportional to service complexity. Very reliable systems do a few things well. This position argues that it is reliability is proportional to complexity, and thus complex services will always have low availabilities (e.g. 3 nines or less).
Automation will solve most of our problems. Both software bugs an operator errors account for the majority of downtime. This position argues that by providing automated tools, a high degree of availability can be obtained (99.99% or higher).
Measuring “ilities” is a hopeless task. This position argues that trying to quantity manageability, diagnoseability, serviceability, and maintainability in a general purpose way is hopeless. At best, any such quantification can be measured and applied only to a specific system with human factor studies.
Obtaining "5 nines" availability class for Internet Services is unnecessary. People's own desktops are running at 3 nines. Most people wouldn't notice the difference if their service was at 5 nines. So, obviously, 5 nines is not required.
Peer to Peer technologies equals pirating. (Suggested by Thu Nguyen) This position states that P2P networks are not a legitimate application domain because they will only be used to share pirated content.
Over-provisioning vs. QoS. (Suggested by Badri Nath). Most users do not care how their data managed, only that the system performs “well enough”. Many Quality of Service (QoS) schemes have been proposed, but none is widely deployed. This position states that following a path of over-provisioning the service is a superior strategy to trying to build in QoS.
Mobile IP will rise again. Mobile IP has been discussed but never widely used. This position declares mobile IP should rise again, because other approaches will not satisfy user's mobility issues (another approach is to make users hit reload on their web-browsers).
Information will be free. This position argues that the concept of “copyright” is flawed. In an age where technology allows one to make infinitely perfect copies, the government attempting to enforce restrictions on the uses of digital information is a quixotic quest at best, and a perverse distortion at worst. Instead, a free market between content producers and consumers should exist, much as it did in the era before copyright law.
This
paper has some good guidelines in for position papers in general.
Two sample “good” position papers from past courses can be
found here
and here.
First, make sure to articulate your position clearly. Second, for a good computer science paper, you should have some quantitative arguments. A list of anecdotes is not a persuasive way to support of a position. Sometimes, you can't directly measure something, but an indirect observation might support your argument. For example, some people have made the argument that performance isn't as important as it used to be because the difference between the average selling price of a PC and the most expensive PC have diverged over time. While not proving the argument, the thesis fits the facts better than many alternative explanations.
Third, be careful of using counter-examples to argue against a position. For example, a position of the form "X implies Y" and then coming up with an example of "not Y" doesn't say anything about statement X. Counter examples can be quite useful, but make sure the position is clear enough that the counter-example is meaningful.
Here are my evaluation categories and their meanings; you can use this as is or come up with your own:
Excellent: The paper could be submitted as a "letter" --- a short position paper-- to a journal as is.
Very Good: The paper has some problems, but nothing that couldn't be fixed without a quick clean-up.
Good: The paper has some problems, there are some gaps in the overall positions, counter-positions, or supporting evidence.
Fair: The paper has more serious problems. These may include (1) ill-defined position, (2) elements of the evidence are missing, (3) counter positions are not addressed, (4) really bad grammar, or (5) poor organization.
Poor: The position in not well explained or defined. The paper is confusing or internally inconsistent.
Atrocious: What a piece of junk! I'm surprised it was turned in at all.