
New Stanford class on Cryptography - robdoherty2
http://www.crypto-class.org/
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innocentques
Wow, does anyone know what is the system here? Has stanford just said to their
faculty that this is something they can do in their spare time but stanford
will not actively support it? Or is there some other arrangement going on?

Also why are they not shifting away from CS classes (except for
entrepreneurship). Things like signal processing and basic controllers can be
taught with such a class. I would specially love the signal processing class
since there are 3 classes (don't exactly remember the name) which are
considered holy perfecta of signal processing.

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tptacek
Dan Boneh is _bad ass_. That's all I have to say about this.

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feralchimp
Do you happen to have links to his work that don't require ACM, JStor, or
other membership?

And...Google was my friend: <http://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/pubs.html>

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colgur
Not sure if it is retroactive but the ACM has changed their access policy a
little: [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/10/131401-acms-
copyright-...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/10/131401-acms-copyright-
policy/fulltext).

~~~
btn
The service [1] described in that article allows authors to let people
download an article from the ACM via. a link on their personal website, rather
than having to host the PDF themselves. There's been no change in the access
policy for non-members.

[1] <http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service>

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theshadow
Any chance that they might do a compilers class too? The compilers class at my
school got cancelled for the fall term and I don't think I'll have a chance to
take it in a future term.

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Periodic
The introductory compilers class, CS143, will be available to Stanford
students in the spring. I have no idea if they'll put it online, but it would
be consistent with their current initiatives. I think you'll have to inquire
more or wait until then to find out.

<http://cs.stanford.edu/courses>

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tristanstraub
doing these courses next to full time work is tough, but its just so tempting.

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thebrokencube
A few coworkers and I signed up for the DB class and ran into the same
problem. What we decided to do instead is just read through the material
whenever we get a chance and not worry too much about the assignments (unless
we get time). We don't necessarily get all the benefits, but at least we're
able to take something good out of it.

~~~
chrisguitarguy
That's what I've been doing as well. No "certificate of accomplishment" at the
end of the class, but still the benefits of learning the material. Seems like
a fair trade.

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candeira
In my opinion, the real learning comes from doing the exercises. So if you are
reading the material but not doing any quiz or exercise, you aren't learning
as much. And if you aren't doing the exam, which has a time limit and you
can't repeat until you get it perfect, you don't know how much you are or
aren't learning.

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geekytenny
Way to go Stanford. You guys just keep blowing our minds. After all the stuff
i learned for free in just 4 weeks of the current classes, i am filled with
gratitude! I highly recommend these classes..

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pbreit
Why do these classes all have unique URLs?

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kmfrk
They want to make it clear that there is no relation to Stanford with regards
to accreditation.

People unaware of these courses might conflate them with actual Stanford
courses.

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Omnipresent
This question might be tangent from the intended purpose of these awesome free
classes but can anyone share if some certification or acknowledgement of some
sort is received upon completion?

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huherto
I think the plan is to have a complete Master's degree, but there haven't been
any announcements regarding this.

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stordoff
One of the AI tutors tweeted about the possibility of offering a Master's
degree for $2000. AFAIK, there hasn't been any more public discussion of this.

From the courses building up, it seems quite possible. The $2000 could be to
cover limited personal support, and the sitting of a proper exam, with the
bulk of the teaching coming from the online videos.

~~~
pheaduch
I'm not fond of the idea of giving out a recognized form of achievement as
then the incentive changes from the sake of learning to earning a degree.

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_corbett
awesome, I'm reading Applied Cryptography and this will be a good supplement.
The MIT OCW course doesn't have a lot of resources
[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-
comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-
science/6-875-cryptography-and-cryptanalysis-spring-2005/index.htm)

Does anyone know from the AI course the quality of the lectures & videos?

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tptacek
Applied Cryptography, no matter what Matthew Green may have to say about it,
is a terrible book to learn cryptography from. I highly recommend you burn it
and instead pick up a copy of Practical Cryptography (or Cryptography
Engineering, which is the exact same book).

The mark of a good book on a security topic is, you can read it "upside down"
and learn how to break things instead of build them.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Why is Applied Cryptography a terrible book?

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tptacek
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=by%3Atptace...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=by%3Atptacek+applied+cryptography)

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JoshTriplett
More specifically, the one comment in that search that provides rationale:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377187>

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tptacek
I disagree that it's the only comment with a rationale, but it's a fine
example. Writing the same thing about the same subjects over and over again is
tiresome, isn't it?

(Thank you for taking the time to pick one out though).

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rmnoon
This class blew my mind. Don't take it if you're even a little bit paranoid
already. =)

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frio
Heh, I had the same reaction after reading Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
Working for an ISP and seeing how easy it is to sniff traffic only makes the
paranoia worse, unfortunately.

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Ecio78
That's really interesting and it seems, according to ml-class videos already
online, that there are also subtitles available (it surely helps people like
me that are not native english speaker)

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cop359
I prefer the MIT model of just having video lectures online. You can do things
at your own pace.

Whats the advantage of this sign-up and do assignment that get graded by a
computer model?

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riffraff
other already pointed out that having assignments helps, I'd add that for some
people (e.g. me) a _schedule_ is a great advantage.

If you are trying to learn something on your own timing it's easy to
procrastinate. Maybe you could keep a faster pace but you just won't push
yourself a bit.

It goes without saying that people with good self discipline can do without a
schedule, but for some of us it helps.

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callahad
I've had the opposite problem: Without a schedule, I'll binge on the material
for the first few days, and then utterly burn out or fail to properly learn
the information.

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patricklynch
Are the course videos online somewhere?

I know the database class was basically an organized walkthrough with extra
assignments for videos that were mostly already public.

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feralchimp
Forgive the stupid question, but: Is this free? And if so, are the assignments
graded?

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weaksauce
It's free and the assignments will be graded automatically by a computer. See
<http://www.ml-course.com> for a currently running Stanford course example.

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gabebw
It's actually <http://www.ml-class.org/>

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molecularbutter
There are 10 total, scroll to the bottom of that page.

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dataphyte
all the classes have their own domains? GoDaddy is happy.

