Links

Resources for this Course

Lectures for this course (HTML files)
Solutions to selected homework problems
Some notes on passwords
Lifehacker: How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords
Lifehacker: Five best text editors
Lifehacker: Choose and Remember Great Passwords
Passwords - from Red Hat
Ubuntu on a Flash Drive - Running a PC, and don't have access to Python / Ubuntu? Here's how you can actually go about making your own.
Installing Cygwin (for access to Python, ssh, sftp, etc.) on your Windows Box? Here's how:
How Algorithms Shape Our World
SQLite.org - Open-source, self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine.
SQLite Manager - a Firefox extension, handy for manipulating your SQLite databases/tables
Using SQLite from Python

Python.org - The official Python website
Python Tutorial - A nice online reference
Google's Python Class - Come on. It's Google!
How to Think Like a Computer Scientist - Elkner J., Downey, A.B., and Meyers, C. 2009. Online textbook.
Learn Python the Hard Way - Shaw, Zed A. Really nice introduction to the language, with lots of good, line-by-line examples.
Dive Into Python - Pilgrim, M. Excellent introduction to Python, especially for experienced programmers
Software Carpentry - An intensive introduction to basic software development practices for scientists and engineers, using Python
Computer Programming for Everybody, by Guido van Rossum
Audio/Video Instructional Materials for Python
A Byte of Python, by Swaroop C H. Online text/tutorial.
Wikibooks: Python, an open-content textbook, online and available for PDF download.
Pygame.org - Not a bad little module if you want to experiment with programming games
Switch On the Code: Pygame, a nice set of links with some good tutorials (found by Buike--thanks!)
Six Free E-books on Python - Good stuff here, in a great price range

http://www.ubuntu.com/ - Free operating systems don't get any user-friendlier than this.
http://www.linuxmint.com - A really nice Debian Linux distro.
Contributing to Open Source - There are lots of ways to do this!
Contributing to OpenOffice.org - Ways to contribute to this specific project.

There's nothing like putting together a little project to get you knee deep into programming. The following programs might serve as inspiration:

http://www.nethack.org/ - A classic, terminal-based, adventure game.
48 Hour Game Contest - These people are insane. A riveting story from Ars Technica.

Ars Technica Guide: March 2011 Edition - They've started updating this guide a little more frequently, which is nice
Ars Technica System Guide: September 2010 Edition - Build your own box; all the cool kids are doing it.
The First-Timer's Guide to Building a Computer from Scratch, by Gina Trapani. This is a really nice introduction to the whole process, including linked subsections: Install the motherboard and CPU, Install your RAM, Install the video card, Install the hard drive and DVD drive

Odds and ends. Explore.

Proton Radio - Music to code by...!
How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords - This is not a tutorial! It's an explanation of why strong passwords are important.
TuringMachine.com - Wow. Serious.
The Anatomy of the Twitter Attack - Get your passwords in order.
Stuxnet - a whitepaper from Symantec with fascinating details. Cyberwarfare has arrived.
vi for Smarties, by Jerry Wang. vim it the coder's text editor, unless you prefer emacs. They're both awesome, and totally different. This is a good introduction to vi, which comes pre-installed on Linux and OS X machines. (Windows, you can get it via Cygwin).
Beginner's Guide to the Vi editor, from UCSD. Very nice, with good practical examples.
Rybka disqualified and banned from World Computer Chess Championships. Cheating in computer programming. Interesting story, with documentation and some information on how to go about coding chess position analyses.
Best Linux Downloads, via Lifehacker
Women & Computer Science, courtesy Google