M254: TMA 04 - Results

The results for TMA04 are in, and I am rather chuffed with mine. :)

Object of Desire - Reviewed

As a follow-up here is a review of the Sony VAIO VGN-UX50.

Derek And Clive Monkeys

This is highly amusing - Derek and Clive Monkeys

OU: Next Courses

This morning I booked my next set of courses...

M263 - Building Block of Software (start date 30.Sept.06)
Details

M253 - Team Working in Distributed Environments (start date 07.Oct.06)
Details

M359 - Relational Database: Theory and Practice (start date 03.Feb.07)
Details

Google Notebook (beta)

Google Notebook is available. Like Gmail it is beta, and certainly looks interesting.

M301: Condition for Serializability

If anyone is struggling with the definition of "Condition for Serializability" in Bacon, then the following 2 links (in Wikipedia) might be of some use.

Schedule (computer science) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Serializability - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Object of Desire

ref: techEBlog

M254: TMA04

Finally submitted TMA 04 on Friday, with all questions well and truely completed, resulting in my largest TMA to date. 38 pages!

Swiss Army Gardening

Just what every gardener needs...



ref: techEBlog

Moving the Goal Posts Yet Again !!!

M301 TMA03 question 3 (iii) relates to the ‘dining philosophers problem’ and yet the course text says that practical activity 3.1 is optional and that Bacon section 17.5 should be omitted. Therefore my question for the M301 course teams is this…

Has the course team redefined the meaning of the word optional to now mean mandatory, thus meaning that we now have to do practical activity 3.1 and read Bacon section 17.5, or is question 3 (iii) optional as well and we will get full marks for the question irrespective of whether we answer the question or not?

Whiners!!!

A number of people are whining about TMA04 and how difficult it is, especially as the course is only worth 20 points. Perhaps they should take the following into consideration:

1. The overall workload for the course has been very easy.
2. This is a level 2 course not a level 1 course.
   
3. The cut-off date for the TMA is the 18.May.06, but we have had access to the TMA since 22.Dec.05. Surely that’s plenty of time to complete the TMA.
4. Everything that is needed for the TMA has been covered within the supplied course text.

For anyone still experiencing problems re-read Unit 9, especially section 8.

Moving the Goal Posts

I know that this is World Cup year but why does the OU have to keep moving the ‘goal posts’.

I received an eMail yesterday from the South East regional centre basically saying that unless I planned to study M254 – Java Everywhere (last presentation starts Oct 2006) I will not be able to count M206 towards the BSc (Hons) Computing that I am studying for.

Fortunately I am studying M254, as regular readers will be aware, yet if I wasn’t the OU would be potentially forcing me to take M254 otherwise I would have wasted 1 year, 60 points and the course fee.

I also predict that the October presentation of M254 will be heavily subscribed due to students who had not thought about taking this course but all of a sudden in a panic about loosing their M206 points.

M301: Tutorial

For our tutor group the next tutorial is not until Saturday 01 July, which presents a problem, because we have to submit TMA03 (cut-off date 04 Jun) before then. With this in mind I went to another tutor groups tutorial last night and this proved most beneficial, as the tutor went over the TMA pointing out which sections (and / or SAQ's) of Bacon and the course text related to which questions.