OS Survey W01

Conference Program

The conference will be held in Center 207 11:30am-2:30pm. None of the AV-capable rooms in AP&M are available.

Time	Title
11:30-11:35	Introductory Remarks
11:35-12:05	Adaptive Fault Tolerance in Distributed Systems
12:05-12:35	Scheduling and Synchronization in Embedded Real-Time Operating Systems
12:35-1:05	Mobile Data Access
1:05-1:35	Real-Time Operating Systems That Support Java
1:35-2:05	Protection Mechanisms

Submission Criteria

For our OSSurveyW01 conference, you, as researchers, must submit your paper electronically to the program chair (me). You must make use of MIME to send me a PDF or PostScript version of your file. If you use PostScript, it must be portable PostScript -- Unix programs that generate PostScript (e.g., dvips with LaTeX, or FrameMaker's output) are okay. With Windows, the best approach is to use a PDF output driver. If you don't have PDF output, you should verify your printer driver properties have the "maximize portablility" selection, and make sure that it will print on any printer. Typically, if I'm using Windows, I install the Apple laserwriter driver and check the "maximize portability" box, and that seems to work okay.

The intended submission criteria were:

The page limit is 10 pages. This is firm. The paper must be in 12 point font, with at least 1 inch of margin on all edges.

Since I forgot to link to this page, the submission requirements are relaxed -- just aim for 10 pages, and if you cannot fit within 10, it's okay as long as it's not too far off. The deadline is 23:59:59 of Mar 5, 2001 (PST). N.B. most of the time the difficulty in submitting a paper is keeping under the page limit. Usually there is more than enough material, and the hard part is to convey the ideas well and yet concisely enough to not exceed the limit. What you submit should be single spaced and either single or double column -- I'm being flexible here, since often conferences have strict appearance standards -- and basically as close to a ``camer-ready'' version as you can make it (this means ready to have the printer reproduce it for the proceedings).

Program Committee

After you've submitted your papers, you will play the part of program committee members. This means reviewing the papers for the correctness / soundness of the claims or observations, possibly tracking down their references to verify statements, etc.

Review Format

For our OSSurveyW01 conference, you, as members of the program committee, should get the on-line submissions from this web page. The papers should be evaluated using the following method (this is taken from a real conference's program committee review instructions and revised slightly, since survey papers will not necessarily contain new research -- though if there are new research ideas, that's even better):

Papers will be evaluated in two parts: a set of numeric scores and a written commentary. Scores will be on a 1 to 7 scale (with 4 as an "average" in all cases 1 is bad, 7 is best). Do not assign a zero score. Also, please use integer values.
Scoring will be in four categories:
Import -- is the work (both its area and results) important to the OS community? Low scores might be given for evaluations of marketing literature and papers on inappropriate or dead topics. High scores are for papers that nearly all attendees will want to read and understand carefully. (This score is sometimes more a measure of how ``hot'' the area is and not a measure of the paper's quality; it will not affect the grade.)
Novelty -- are the observations novel / germane? Low scores should be given for papers that re-hash obvious results or known observations about works in the topic area. High scores are for papers that point out new research areas (portions of design space not explored that ought to be), new fields, or demonstrate new ways to view / attack a problem.
Quality -- are the observations / criticisms sound? A low score might go to a paper whose observations are incorrect or whose critiques are biased or not well supported in your opinion. High scores are for papers with enough justification to convince you that the opinions are correct and viable.
Overall -- should we accept this paper or not? This is by far the most important number. It need not be an average of the other numbers, but it should reflect them. This number can also reflect issues in addition to those described above (e.g., poor presentation or lack of knowledge of related work).

Note that the conference evaluation contains criteria for novelty and importance to the OS community; when I grade these, these will be less important -- I will pay more attention to the quality of the reasoning and the soundness of the observations / criticisms, so having selected what's currently ``hot'' (or what's not) wouldn't be so important.

The review should be in the following (best if you cut-and-paste or used the review template). The reviews will be machine parsed to generate statistics.

Paper NUM
-------- 8< --------  scores  -------- 8< --------  scores  --------
Import		Novelty		Quality		Overall
NUM		NUM		NUM		NUM
-------- 8< -------- comments -------- 8< -------- comments --------
Your comments on the paper.  This is public comments that the authors
of the papers will see.  Provide feedback to improve their paper, etc.

Submissions

Ref	Title	Download
BDK	Adaptive Fault Tolerance in Distributed Systems	PS PDF
KS	Scheduling and Synchronization in Embedded Real-Time Operating Systems	PS PDF
KLN	Mobile Data Access	PS PDF
ABCP	Real-Time Operating Systems That Support Java	PS PDF
TCGB	Protection Mechanisms	PS PDF

Review Assignments / Results

Note that normally authors don't know who on the program committee reviewed their paper. Of course, if one of the authors are on the program committee, then they'd probably know. You should view these comments (and hopefully made your comments) in a constructive light -- i.e., take the comments into account when writing up your slide presentation.

Sorted by Paper
Paper	Anonymized comments
[BDK]	comments
[KS]	comments
[KLN]	comments
[ABCP]	comments
[TCGB]	comments

You should write up your reviews and send it in to the program chair by Mar 13/15 prior to the program committee meeting at which the papers that you reviewed will be discussed. The authors will get the comments. I will sum up / average the numeric scores, and provide those for the authors.

Check out the current rating results.

Conference Presentation

All groups will present their papers during the conference. All of the groups (including those that makes the actual presentation) should print out their slides (on paper) or generate portable postscript/PDF and send that to me for grading/review. This should be done by the day of the presentation.

It is up to the group members to decide how to present their work. You may have only one member speak, or you may take turns. Note that you should practice your talk with people who are not in your group as audiences. It is too easy for people who are familiar with the topic to not notice the use of undefined terminology, etc. Practicing is especially important if you want to take turns; you don't want to waste too much time during transitions between speakers.

On Mar 19, you will give an oral presentation in front of the entire class. Each group will have about 1/2 hour total, so you should plan on 25 minutes for the presentation and 5-10 minutes for questions and answers from the audience.

What To Expect At The Conference

For our OSSurveyW01 conference, you, as attendees, will also help evaluate the presentation of the papers. An overhead projector will be available for the oral presentation. The presentations should give an overview of the topic and results; its main purpose is to motivate the audience to read the full paper published in the proceedings. As attendees, this is your main evaluation criteria: do the presenters convey the key ideas clearly? does it make you want to look at the details in the paper? (Making you look because the presentation was confusing wouldn't count!)

The registration fee of $0 should be paid in unmarked small bills. If you need a hotel, a block of rooms has been reserved at a discounted rate in the AP&M sub-basement. You should mention OSSurveyW01 to Central Services when reserving a room.

bsy+cse221.w01@cs.ucsd.edu, last updated Fri Mar 23 01:15:50 PST 2001. Copyright 2001 Bennet Yee.
email bsy.