Scheduling
Session Chair: Sheila Harnett, IBM Linux Technology Center

Pragmatic Nonblocking Synchronization for Real-Time Systems
Michael Hohmuth and Hermann Härtig, Dresden University of Technology

Scalability of Linux Event-Dispatch Mechanisms
Abhishek Chandra, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and David Mosberger, HP Labs

Virtual-Time Round-Robin: An O(1) Proportional Share Scheduler
Jason Nieh, Chris Vaill, and Hua Zhong, Columbia University

Myths, Missteps, and Folklore in Protocol Design
Radia Perlman, Sun Microsystems Laboratories

Network protocol design is not a nice, clean science, where what gets deployed is the best possible design. Instead, designs are influenced by issues such as politics, general confusion, and backward compatibility. Statements get repeated until it never occurs to anyone to question whether they're true. This talk discusses how some of the odder things we live with (e.g., bridges, SNAP encoding) came about, some common mistakes that have been made, and what really should matter when evaluating two competing designs. It's intended to make you question your assumptions.

Graphics
Session Chair: Garry Paxinos, Metro Link/XFree86

Design and Implementation of the X Rendering Extension
Keith Packard, XFree86 Core Team, SuSE Inc.

Scwm: An Extensible Constraint-Enabled Window Manager
Greg J. Badros, InfoSpace.com; Jeffrey Nichols, Carnegie Mellon University; and Alan Borning, University of Washington

The X Resize and Rotate Extension–RandR
Jim Gettys, Compaq, and Keith Packard, XFree86 Core Team, SuSE Inc.

Storage II
Session Chair: Carla Ellis, Duke University

A Toolkit for User-Level File Systems
David Mazières, NYU

Charm: An I/O-Driven Execution Strategy for High-Performance Transaction Processing
Lan Huang and Tzi-cker Chiueh, State University of New York at Stony Brook

Fast Indexing: Support for Size-Changing Algorithms in Stackable File Systems
Erez Zadok, SUNY Stony Brook; Johan M. Andersen, Ion Badulescu, and Jason Nieh, Columbia University

Strangely Enough, It All Turns Out Well (Adventures in Venture-Backed Startups and Microsoft Acquisitions)

Stephen R. Walli, Microsoft Corp.

Building and running a software startup is an exciting and wild ride. Six founders started Softway Systems in September 1995. Before Microsoft acquired it, Softway had taken four rounds of venture capital, built itself to almost forty people, had some brilliant successes and painful failures, and come close to being acquired several times by some surprising players. This talk on the start-up experience describes what it took, what worked, and what failed, from bootstrap excitement to acquisition angst (and assimiliation).

Securing Networks
Session Chair: Ted Faber, ISI/USC

MEF, Malicious Email Filter–A UNIX Mail Filter That Detects Malicious Windows Executables
Matthew G. Schultz and Eleazar Eskin, Columbia University; Erez Zadok, SUNY Stony Brook; and Manasi Bhattacharyya and Salvatore J. Stolfo, Columbia University

Cost Effective Security for Small Businesses
Sean R. Brown, Applied Geographics, Inc.

Heimdal and Windows 2000 Kerberos–How to Get Them to Play Together
Assar Westerlund, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, and Johan Danielsson, Center for Parallel Computers, KTH

Networking
Session Chair: Robert Miller, Carnegie Mellon University

Payload Caching: High-Speed Data Forwarding for Network Intermediaries
Kenneth Yocum and Jeffrey Chase, Duke University

A Waypoint Service Approach to Connect Heterogeneous Internet Address Spaces
T. S. Eugene Ng, Ion Stoica, and Hui Zhang, Carnegie Mellon University

Flexible Control of Parallelism in a Multiprocessor PC Router
Benjie Chen and Robert Morris, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Future of Virtual Machines: A VMware Perspective
Ed Bugnion, VMware, Inc.

The virtual-machine concept goes back to 1960s mainframes. It has since been applied to executing legacy environments and to Java. Today, VMware products allow multiple complete operating systems, from Linux to Windows, to run concurrently on Intel computers. This talk shows how virtual machines, which offer compatibility, isolation, encapsulation, and mobility, can solve current problems from desktops to data centers, and how this return to virtual machines may affect hardware and operating system trends.

Resource Management
Session Chair: Theodore Ts'o, VA Linux Systems

Predictable Management of System Resources
for Linux
Mansoor Alicherry, Bell Labs, and K. Gopinath, Indian Institute of Science

Scalable Linux Scheduling
Stephen Molloy and Peter Honeyman, CITI–University of Michigan

A Universal Dynamic Trace for Linux and Other Operating Systems
Richard J. Moore, IBM, Linux Technology Centre

Special Closing Session

Cynthia Breazeal , MIT Media Lab, and her robot, Kismet
Kismet, created through Breazeal's research at MIT Media Labs, is a robot that can duplicate human facial expressions.

Back by popular demand, Rob Kolstad hosts this challenging test of wits for USENIX attendees. Watch contestants wither under the dual spotlights of difficult questions and special attention of the moderator.