John, that syllabus was only intended for internal Berkeley use only -- I posted it on the class blog without any thought that it would be picked up by Ycombinator. (Although, once it appeared, I did link to the topic from the class blog and encouraged the class to chime in: http://cs161.blogspot.com/2013/08/trending-on-ycombinator.ht... )

In case it is not 100% obvious, I'm quite unhappy with the situation (having a TA shortage, and having to run the class this way).

Having said all of this, happy to see a healthy discussion in Ycombinator. I'm a big supporter of free speech, and I think there are a lot of interesting comments here. So more power to you.