4 <eventitem date="2004-03-23" time="6:00 PM"
5 room="MC4058" title="Extending LaTeX with packages">
6 <short>A talk by Simon Law</short>
9 LaTeX is a document processing system. What this means is you describe
10 the structure of your document, and LaTeX typesets it appealingly.
11 However, LaTeX was developed in the late-80s and is now showing its age.
15 How does it compete against modern systems? By being easily extensible,
16 of course. This talk will describe the fundamentals of typesetting in
17 LaTeX, and will then show you how to extend it with freely available
18 packages. You will learn how to teach yourself LaTeX and how to find
19 extensions that do what you want.
23 As well, there will be a short introduction on creating your own
24 packages, for your own personal use.
29 <eventitem date="2004-03-16" time="6:00 PM"
30 room="MC4058" title="Distributed programming for CS and Engineering
32 <short>A talk by Simon Law</short>
35 If you've ever worked with other group members, you know how difficult
36 it is to code simultaneously. You might be working on one part of your
37 assignment, and you need to send your source code to everyone else. Or
38 you might be fixing a bug in someone else's part, and need to merge in
39 the change. What a mess!
43 This talk will explain some Best Practices for developing code in a
44 distributed fashion. Whether you're working side-by-side in the lab, or
45 developing from home, these methods can apply to your team. You will
46 learn how to apply these techniques in the Unix environment using GNU
47 Make, CVS, GNU diff and patch.
52 <eventitem date="2004-03-15" time="5:30 PM"
53 room="MC4040" title="SPARC Architecture">
54 <short>A talk by James Morrison</short>
57 Making a compiler? Bored? Think CISC sucks and RISC rules?
61 This talk will run through the SPARC v8, IEEE-P1754, architecture.
62 Including all the fun that can be had with register windows and the
63 SPARC instruction set including the basic instructions, floating
64 point instructions, and vector instructions.
69 <eventitem date="2004-03-09" time="6:00 PM"
70 room="MC4062" title="Managing your home directory using CVS">
71 <short>A talk by Simon Law</short>
74 If you have used Unix for a while, you know that you've created
75 configuration files, or dotfiles. Each program seems to want its own
76 particular settings, and you want to customize your environment. In a
77 power-user's directory, you could have hundreds of these files.
81 Isn't it annoying to migrate your configuration if you login to another
82 machine? What if you build a new computer? Or perhaps you made a
83 mistake to one of your configuration files, and want to undo it?
87 In this talk, I will show you how to manage your home directory using
88 CVS, the Concurrent Versions System. You can manage your files, revert
89 to old versions in the past, and even send them over the network to
90 another machine. I'll also discuss how to keep your configuration files
91 portable, so they'll work even on different Unices, with different
97 <eventitem date="2004-03-02" time="6:00 PM"
98 room="MC4042" title="Graphing webs-of-trust">
99 <short>A talk by Simon Law</short>
102 In today's world, people have hundreds of connexions. And you can
103 express these connexions with a graph. For instance, you may wish to
104 represent the network of your friends.
108 Originally, webs-of-trust were directed acyclic graphs of people who had
109 identified each other. This way, if there was a path between you and
110 the person who want to identify, then you could assume that each person
111 along that path had verified the next person's identity.
115 I will show you how to generate your own web-of-trust graph using Free
116 Software. Of course, you can also use this knowledge to graph anything
122 <eventitem date="2004-02-18" time="7:00 PM"
123 room="DC2305" title="KW Perl Mongers">
124 <short>Perl Modules: A look under the hood</short>
127 <p>In Perl, a module is the basic unit of code-reuse. The talk will be
128 mostly a look into GD::Text::Arc, a module written to draw TrueType text
129 around the edge of a circle. The talk will consider:</p>
132 <li>using and writing object-oriented perl code</li>
133 <li>the Virtue of Laziness: or, reusing other peoples' code.</li>
134 <li>writing tests while coding</li>
135 <li>beer coasters</li>
141 <eventitem date="2004-02-05" time="3:30 PM"
142 room="MC4041" title="Constitutional Change">
143 <short>Vote to change the CSC Constitution</short>
146 <p>During the General Meeting on 19 January 2004, a proposed constitution
147 change was passed around. This change is in response to a change in the
148 MathSoc Clubs Policy (Policy 4, Section 3, Sub-section f).</p>
150 <p>This general meeting is called to vote on this proposed change. We must
151 have quorum of 15 Full Members vote on this change. The following text was
152 presented at the CSC Winter 2004 Elections.</p>
154 <pre>We propose to make a Constitutional change on this day, 19 January 2004.
155 The proposed change is to section 3.1 of the constitution which
158 In compliance with MathSoc regulations and in recognition of the
159 club being primarily targeted at undergraduate students, full
160 membership is open to all undergraduate students in the Faculty of
161 Mathematics and restricted to the same.
163 Since MathSoc has changed its requirements for club membership, we
164 propose that it be changed to:
166 In compliance with MathSoc regulations and in recognition of the
167 club being primarily targeted at undergraduate students, full
168 membership is open to all Social Members of the Mathematics Society
169 and restricted to the same.</pre>
173 <eventitem date="2004-01-12" time="3:00 PM"
174 room="DC1301" title="InstallFest">
175 <short>See <a href="http://uw-dig.uwaterloo.ca/installfest/">http://uw-dig.uwaterloo.ca/installfest/</a></short>
178 <p>An Installfest is an opportunity to install software on your computer.
179 People come with computers. Other people come with experience. The people
180 get together and (when all goes well) everybody leaves satisfied.</p>
182 <p>You are invited to our first installfest of the year. Come to get some
183 software or to learn more about Open Source Software and why it is relevant
184 to your life. The event is free, but you may want to bring blank CDs and/or
185 money to purchase some open source action for your computer at home.</p>
187 <p>See the <a href="http://uw-dig.uwaterloo.ca/installfest/">UW-DIG
188 website</a> for more details.</p>
195 <eventitem date="2003-12-01" time="7:00 PM"
196 room="RCH 101" title="Jon 'maddog' Hall: Free and Open Source: Its uses in Business and Education">
197 <short> Free and Open Source software has been around for a long
198 time, even longer then shrink-wrapped code.</short>
200 <p>Free and Open Source software has been around for a long time, even
201 longer then shrink-wrapped code. It has a long and noble history in the annals
202 of education. Even more than ever, due to the drop of hardware prices and the
203 increase of worldwide communications, Free and Open Source can open new
204 avenues of teaching and doing research, not only in computer science, but in
205 other university fields as well.</p>
206 <p>Learn how Linux as an operating system can
207 run on anything from a PDA to a supercomputer, and how Linux is reducing the
208 cost of computing dramatically as the fastest growing operating system in the
209 world. Learn how other Free and Open Source projects, such as office suites,
210 audio and video editing and playing software, relational databases, etc. are
211 created and are freely available.</p>
213 <p><a href="http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~cpbell/">Map and directions</a></p>
214 <h3>Speaker's Biography</h3>
215 <p>Jon "maddog" Hall is the Executive Director of <a href="http://www.li.org/">Linux International</a>,
216 a non-profit association of computer vendors who wish to support and promote
217 the Linux Operating System. During his career which spans over thirty years,
218 Mr. Hall has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator,
219 product manager, technical marketing manager and educator. He has
220 worked for such companies as Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and
221 Casualty, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, VA Linux Systems,
222 and is currently funded by SGI.</p>
224 <p>He has taught at Hartford State Technical College, Merrimack College and
225 Daniel Webster College. He still likes talking to students over pizza and beer
226 (the pizza can be optional).</p>
228 <p>Mr. Hall is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles, many
229 presentations and one book, "Linux for Dummies".</p>
231 <p>Mr. Hall serves on the boards of several companies, and several non-profit
232 organizations, including the USENIX Association.</p>
234 <p>Mr. Hall has traveled the world speaking on the benefits of Open Source
235 Software, and received his BS in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel
236 University, and his MSCS from RPI in Troy, New York.</p>
238 <p>In his spare time maddog is working on his retirement project:</p>
240 <center>maddog's monastery for microcomputing and microbrewing</center>
245 <eventitem date="2003-11-05" time="4:30 PM - 8:30 PM"
246 room="Grad House Pub (Green Room)" title="CS Pints With Profs">
247 <short>Come have a pint with your favourite CS profs!</short>
249 <p>Come meet CS profs in a relaxed atmosphere this Wednesday at
250 the Grad House (by South Campus Hall). This is your chance to meet those CS profs
251 you enjoyed in lectures in person, have a chat with them
252 and find out what they're doing outside the lecture halls.</p>
254 <p>We'll be providing free food, including hamburgers and nachos,
255 and the Grad House offers a great selection of drinks.</p>
257 <p>If you'd like to invite a particular prof, stop by on the third
258 floor of the MC (outside of the Comfy) to pick up an invitation.</p>
260 <p>Persons of all ages are welcome!</p>
265 <eventitem date="2003-10-21" time="4:30 PM - 5:30 PM" room="MC2065"
266 title=".NET & Linux: When Worlds Collide">
267 <short>A talk by James Perry</short>
270 <p>.NET is Microsoft's new development platform, including amongst
271 other things a language called C# and a class library for various
272 operating system services. .NET aims to be portable, although it is
273 currently mostly only used on Windows systems.</p>
275 <p>With the full backing of Microsoft, it seems unlikely that .NET
276 will disappear any time soon. There are several efforts underway to
277 bring .NET to the GNU/Linux platform. Hosted by the Computer Science
278 Club, this talk will discuss a number of the issues surrounding .NET
284 <eventitem date="2003-10-22" time="4:30 PM - 5:30 PM" room="MC4061"
285 title="Real-Time Graphics Compilers">
286 <short>Sh is a GPU metaprogramming language developed at the UW
287 Computer Graphics Lab</short>
290 <p>Sh is a GPU metaprogramming language developed at the University of
291 Waterloo Computer Graphics Lab. It allows graphics programmers to
292 write programs which run directly on the GPU (Graphics Processing
293 Unit) using familiar C++ syntax. Furthermore, it allows
294 metaprogramming of such programs, that is, writing programs which
295 generate other programs, in an easy and natural manner.</p>
297 <p>This talk will give a brief overview of how Sh works, the design of
298 its intermediate representation and the (still somewhat simplistic)
299 optimizer that the current reference implementation has and problems
300 with applying traditional compiler optimizations.</p>
302 <p>Stefanus Du Toit is an undergraduate student at the University of
303 Waterloo. He is also a Research Assistant for Michael McCool from the
304 University of Waterloo Graphics Lab. Over the Summer of 2003 Stefanus
305 reimplemented the Sh reference implementation and designed and
306 implemented the current Sh optimizer.</p>
310 <eventitem date="2003-10-17" time="3:00 PM" room="MC3001 (Comfy)"
311 title="Poster Team Meeting">
312 <short>More free pizza from the Poster Team</short>
314 <p>Are you interested in getting involved in the Computer Science
317 <p>Come on out to the second meeting of our Poster Team, a bunch of
318 students helping out with promotion for our events. The agenda for
319 this meeting will include painting posters, designing event
320 invitations, and organizing poster runs. Once again, we will be
321 serving free pizza!</p>
323 <p>See you there!</p>
327 <eventitem date="2003-10-16" time="4:00 PM - 5:30 PM" room="MC2037"
328 title="UNIX 103: Development Tools">
329 <short>GCC, GDB, Make</short>
331 <p>This tutorial will provide you with a practical introduction to GNU
332 development tools on Unix such as the gcc compiler, the gdb debugger
333 and the GNU make build tool.</p>
335 <p>This talk is geared primarily at those mostly unfamiliar with these
336 tools. Amongst other things we will introduce:</p>
339 <li>gcc options, version differences, and peculiarities</li>
340 <li>using gdb to debug segfaults, set breakpoints and find out what's
342 <li>tiny Makefiles that will compile all of your 2nd and 3rd year CS
346 <p>If you're in second year CS and unfamiliar with UNIX development it
347 is highly recommended you go to this talk. All are welcome, including
348 non-math students.</p>
354 <eventitem date="2003-10-02" time="4:00 PM - 5:30 PM" room="MC2037"
355 title="UNIX 101: Text Editors">
356 <short>vi vs. emacs: The Ultimate Showdown</short>
359 Have you ever wondered how those cryptic UNIX text editors work? Have you
360 ever woken up at night with a cold sweat wondering "Is it CTRL-A, or CTRL-X
361 CTRL-A?" Do you just hate pico with a passion?</p>
363 <p>Then come to this tutorial and learn how to use vi and emacs!</p>
365 <p>Basic UNIX commands will also be covered. This tutorial will be especially
366 useful for first and second year students.</p>
371 <eventitem date="2003-10-06" time="4:00 PM" room="MC3001 (Comfy)"
372 title="Poster Team Meeting">
373 <short>Join the Poster Team and get Free Pizza!</short>
376 <li>Do you like computer science?</li>
377 <li>Do you like posters?</li>
378 <li>Do you like free pizza?</li>
380 <p>If the answer to one of these questions is yes, then come
381 out to the first meeting of the Computer Science Club Poster Team! The
382 CSC is looking for interested students to help out with promotion and
383 publicity for this term's events. We promise good times and free
388 <eventitem date="2003-09-17" time="4:30 PM" room="MC3001 (Comfy)"
389 title="CSC Elections">
390 <short>CSC Fall 2003 Elections</short>
392 <p>Elections will be held on Wednesday, September 17, 2003 at 4:30 PM in the
394 Comfy Lounge, MC3001.</p>
396 <p>I invite you to nominate yourself or others for executive positions,
397 starting immediately. Simply e-mail me at cro@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
398 with the name of the person who is to be nominated and the position
399 they're nominated for.</p>
401 <p>Nominees must be full-time undergraduate students in Math. Sorry!</p>
403 <p>Positions open for elections are:</p>
405 <ul><li>President: Organises the club, appoints committees, keeps everyone busy.
406 If you have lots of ideas about the club in general and like bossing
407 people around, go for it!</li>
409 <li>Vice President: Organises events, acts as the president if he's not
410 available. If you have lots of ideas for events, and spare time, go
413 <li>Treasurer: Keeps track of the club's finances. Gets to sign cheques
414 and stuff. If you enjoy dealing with money and have ideas on how to
415 spend it, go for it!</li>
417 <li>Secretary: Takes care of minutes and outside correspondence. If you
418 enjoy writing things down and want to use our nifty new letterhead
419 style, go for it!</li></ul>
421 <p>Nominations will be accepted until Tuesday, September 16 at 4:30 PM.</p>
423 <p>Additionally, a Sysadmin will be appointed after the elections. If you
424 like working with unix systems and have experience setting up and
425 maintaining them, go for it!</p>
427 <p>I hope that lots of people will show up; hopefully we'll have a great
428 term with plenty of events. We always need other volunteers, so if you
429 want to get involved just talk to the new exec after the
430 meeting. Librarians, webmasters, poster runners, etc. are always
433 <p>There will also be free pop.</p>
435 <p>Memberships can be purchased at the elections or at least half an hour
436 prior to at the CSC. Only undergrad math members can vote, but anyone can
443 <eventitem date="2003-07-31" time="4:30 PM" room="MC4064"
444 title="LaTeX and Work Reports">
445 <short>Writing beautiful work reports</short>
448 <p>The work report is a familiar chore for any co-op student. Not only is
449 there a report to write, but to add insult to injury, your report is
450 returned if you do not follow your departmental guidelines.</p>
452 <p>Fear no more! In this talk, you will learn how to use LaTeX and a
453 specially developed class to automatically format your work reports.
454 This talk is especially useful to Mathematics, Computer Science,
455 Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Software Engineeering co-op
456 students about to go on work term.</p>
459 href="http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~sfllaw/programs/uw-wkrpt/">http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~sfllaw/programs/uw-wkrpt/</a></p>
464 <eventitem date="2003-07-24" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2037"
465 title="vi: the visual editor">
466 <short>It's not 6.</short>
469 <p>In 1976, a University of California Berkeley student by the name of
470 Bill Joy got sick of his text editor, ex. So he hacked it such that
471 he could read his document as he wrote it. The result was "vi", which
472 stands for VIsual editor. Today, it is shipped with every modern
473 Unix system, due to its global influence.</p>
475 <p>In this talk, you will learn how to use vi to edit documents
476 quickly and efficiently. At the end, you should be able to:</p>
479 <li>Navigate and search through documents</li>
480 <li>Cut, copy, and paste across documents</li>
481 <li>Search and replace regular expressions</li>
484 <p>If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent
485 to you for the duration of this class.</p>
490 <eventitem date="2003-07-24" time="3:00 PM" room="CSC Office" title="July
492 <short> See Abstract for minutes </short>
495 --paying Simon for Sugar
498 Expense this to MathSoc in lieu of foreign speaker.
500 --We currently have (including CD-R and pop-income not
501 currently in safe) $972.85
502 -We have $359.02 on budget that we can expense to MathSoc.
504 --We got MEF money for books and video card. Funding for
505 wireless microphone is dependent on whether MFCF is
507 -Funding for casters was denied.
508 -Shopping for the Video card.
509 -Expecting it after auguest (Stefanus shopping for it.)
510 -Will have to hear back regarding the microphone, best to
511 delay that now, discuss it with MEF.
512 -Better to do it this term, so it doesn't get lost.
513 -Let MFCF know about this concern.
514 -Regarding books, can be done anytime before September.
517 -Generally, Jim Eliot talk when really well.
518 -Apparently he was generally offensive.
519 -When was the LaTeX talk? End of the month.
520 -Kegger at Jim's place on the 16th.
522 --Getting people in on the 6th, 7th, 8th for csc commercials
524 -Hang out in here, and he'll make a CSC commercial.
525 -Co-ordinate when everyone should be in here, so we can email Jason.
528 -CEO needs it's database changed to use ISBN as a primary key.
529 -Needs functionality to take out/return books.
531 --Mark just entered financial stuff into GNUcash
533 --Choose CRO for next term.
534 -Stefanus has expressed desire not to be CRO.
535 -Gary Simmons was suggested (and he accepted)
538 --Mike Biggs has to get here naked.
539 -Four unanimous votes.
540 -Nakedness only applies to getting here, not being here.
544 ACTION ITEM: Biggs and Cass
545 -get labelmaker tape, masking tape
546 whiteboard makers, coloured paper, CD sleeves
547 -keep reciepts for CSC office expenses.
549 How is the progess on allowing executives and voters to be non-math
551 -The vote is coming up Monday.
552 -Proposal: Anyone who is a paying member can be a member
553 -So you can either do two things:
555 Get your faculty society to recognize CSC as a club.
557 Stefanus wanted to mention that we shoudl talk to Yolanda,
558 Craig or Louie about a EYT event for frosh week.
560 -Sugar Mountain trying to hook all the Frosh
564 Reminder for Next Year's executive.
565 -September 16th @ 5:00pm, get a table for Clubs day, and 17th
566 and 18th, maintain the booth (full day events).
569 -There should be executive before then
571 Note: There needs to be a private section in the CSC Procedures Manual.
572 (Only accessible by shell)
577 -Talk to Plantops about:
585 <eventitem date="2003-06-27" time="2:30 PM" room="DC1302"
586 title="Friday Flicks">
587 <short> SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre Showing </short>
590 SIGGRAPH is the ACM's Special Interest Group for Graphics and
591 simultaneously the world's largest graphics conference and
592 exhibition, where the cutting edge of graphics research is presented
595 With support from UW's Computer Graphics Lab, the CSC invites you to
596 capture a glimpse of SIGGRAPH 2002. We will be presenting the
597 Electronic Theatre showings from 2002, demonstrating the best of the
598 animated, CG-produced movies presented at SIGGRAPH.
599 </p><p> Don't miss this free showing!</p>
602 <eventitem date="2003-07-08" time="4:00 PM" room="MC2065"
603 title="Mainframes and Linux">
604 <short>A talk by Jim Elliott. Jim is responsible for IBM's in Open Source
605 activities and IBM's mainframe operating systems for Canada and the
609 Linux and Open Source have become a significant reality in the
610 working world of Information Technology. An indirect result has been a
611 "rebirth" of the mainframe as a strategic platform for enterprise
612 computing. In this session Jim Elliott, IBM's Linux Advocate, will provide
613 an overview of these technologies and an inside look at IBM's participation
614 in the community. Jim will examine Linux usage on the desktop, embedded
615 systems and servers, a reality check on the common misconceptions that
616 surround Linux and Open Source, and an overview of the history and current
617 design of IBM's mainframe servers.</p>
619 Jim Elliott is the Linux Advocate for IBM Canada. He is responsible
620 for IBM's participation in Linux and Open Source activities and IBM's
621 mainframe operating systems in Canada and the Caribbean. Jim is a popular
622 speaker on Linux and Open Source at conferences and user groups across the
623 Americas and Europe and has spoken to over 300 organizations over the past
624 three years. Over his 30 years with IBM he has been the co-author of over
625 15 IBM publications and he also coordinated the launch of Linux on IBM
626 mainframes in the Americas. In his spare time, Jim is addicted to reading
627 historical mystery novels and travel to their locales.
629 <p><a href="http://www.vm.ibm.com/devpages/jelliott/events.html">Slides</a>
633 <eventitem date="2003-07-04" time="3:30 PM" room="University of Guelph"
635 <short>Come Visit the University of Guelph's Computer Science Club</short>
637 The University of Waterloo Computer Science Club is going to visit the
638 University of Guelph Computer Science Club. There will be a talk given
639 as well as dinner with a fun social atmosphere.</p><p>Drivers Wanted</p>
640 <p>Cancelled -- sorry Guelph cancelled on us.</p>
643 <eventitem date="2003-07-17" time="4:30 PM" room="MC4064"
645 <short>Metaprogramming your way to stunning effects.</short>
648 Modern graphics processors allow developers to upload small "shader
649 programs" to the GPU, which can be executed per-vertex or even
650 per-pixel during the rendering. Such shaders allow stunning effects to
651 be performed in real-time, but unfortunately aren't very easy to
652 program since one generally has to write them at the assembly level.
654 Recently a few high-level languages for shader programming have become
655 available. Sh, a result of research at UW, is one such language. It
656 allows programming powerful shaders in simple and intuitive ways. Sh
657 is particularily interesting because of the way it is
658 implemented. Instead of coming up with a language grammar and writing
659 a full-fledged compiler, Sh is implemented as a C++ library, and
660 shader programs are effectively written in C++. The actual compilation
661 then takes place in a manner similar to JIT (Just-in-time)
662 compilers. This has many advantages over the traditional approach,
663 including C++'s familiar syntax for users, and much less work for the
666 In this talk I will give an overview of GPUs and the Sh language as
667 well as some interesting details on how Sh was implemented.
668 </p><p> <!-- Is there a bio tag -->
669 Stefanus Du Toit is a research assistant at the University of
670 Waterloo. He has implemented the current version of Sh from scratch
671 and is actively developing it under supervision of Michael McCool, the
672 original designer of the language.
676 <eventitem date="2003-06-19" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2037"
677 title="vi: the visual editor">
678 <short>It's not 6.</short>
681 <p>In 1976, a University of California Berkeley student by the name of
682 Bill Joy got sick of his text editor, ex. So he hacked it such that
683 he could read his document as he wrote it. The result was "vi", which
684 stands for VIsual editor. Today, it is shipped with every modern
685 Unix system, due to its global influence.</p>
687 <p>In this talk, you will learn how to use vi to edit documents
688 quickly and efficiently. At the end, you should be able to:</p>
691 <li>Navigate and search through documents</li>
692 <li>Cut, copy, and paste across documents</li>
693 <li>Search and replace regular expressions</li>
696 <p>If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent
697 to you for the duration of this class.</p>
702 <eventitem date="2003-06-12" time="3:30 PM" room="MC3036 CSC Office" title="June 12 Exec Meeting">
703 <short>Have an issue that should be brought up? We'd love to hear it!</short>
707 Budget: All the money we requested
708 --No money from Pints from Profs
709 --MathSoc has promised us $1250
711 Feedback from Completed Events
712 UNIX Talks: 17 people for first
713 --12 people for second
719 --People Jim didn't know talked to him for 1/2 hour
721 History of CSC talk went well
722 --Good variety of people
726 --Only 1 E& CE prof
728 --Jim will harrass the profs at the School of CS Council meeting.
730 We're starting to fall behind in planning
734 --Might have to move RSB back
735 --International site has a few test samples
736 --Stefanus had some ideas
737 --Coding will probably take an afternoon/evening
738 --We need volunteers to run the competition
739 --We have volunteers to code: Phil and Stefanus
741 ACTION ITEM: Phil and Stefanus
742 --code whatever you volunteered to code for.
744 --Mike intends to visit classes and directly advertise
745 --Email Christina Hotz
747 --GH guy: Mike has an abstract, will have posters by tomorrow
750 --Mathnet, Hackers, Wargames, Tron
751 --Mike will get a room
752 --Will be closed member
754 Mike McCool is offering rooms for showing SIGGRAPH
756 -check with Mike McCool.
759 -Make posters for Movie Nights
761 When is other movie night? (Will plan some time in July)
763 Who is our foreign speaker?
764 Action Item: jelliot@ca.ibm.com (Check name first) about
765 getting a foreign speaker -- Note: Has already been contacted.
767 Simon got money from Engsoc
769 Cass meeds coloured paper (CSC is out)
771 ACTION ITEM: Cass and Mark
772 --get labelmaker tape, masking tape,
773 whiteboard makers, coloured paper
774 --keep reciepts for CSC office expenses
776 NOTICE: Mike is now Imapd
778 Simon distibuted budget list
779 Mark got the money from Mathsoc for last budget, deposited it.
782 --Get MEF funding by July 4th (equipment)
784 --Get WEEF funding by June 27th (book)
786 Jim still working on allowing executives and voters to be
789 We get free photocopying from MathSoc
791 --write down code for free photocopying from MathSoc
793 Simon has been able to get into the cscdisk account, still
794 looking into getting into the cscceo account.
796 Damien got an e-mail stating that the files for cscdisk are
800 --provide SSH key to Phil for getting into cscdisk, cscceo, etc...
801 --Renumber bootup scripts for sugar and powerpc so that they
804 ACTION ITEM: Mike needs to do all the plantops stuff again.
806 ACTION ITEM: Mike -- "Stapler if you say please" sign.
808 CVS Tree for CEO has been exported.
809 Damien has volunteered to finish CEO (found by Cass)
811 All books with barcodes have been scanned
812 All books without barcodes need to be bar-coded.
815 --Find a Credit-card with a $500 or less limit.
817 Note: There needs to be a private section in the
818 CSC Procedures Manual. (Only accessible by shell)
820 Stefanus Wanted to mention that we should talk to
821 Yolanda, Craig or Louie about a EYT event for Frosh Week.
826 <eventitem date="2003-06-10" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2066"
827 title="A Brief History of Computer Science">
830 <p>War, insanity, espionage, beauty, domination, sacrifice, and tragic
831 death... not what one might associate with the history of computer
832 science. In this talk I will focus on the origin of our discipline in
833 the fields of engineering, mathematics, and science, and on the
834 complicated personalities that shaped its evolution. No advanced
835 technical knowledge is required.</p>
840 <eventitem date="2003-06-09" time="5:00 - 9:00 PM" room="The Grad House"
841 title="Pints with Profs!">
842 <short>Get to know your profs and be the envy of your friends!</short>
845 <p>Come out and meet your professors!! This is a great opportunity to
846 meet professors for Undergraduate Research jobs or to find out who you might
847 have for future courses. One and all are welcome!</p>
849 <p>Best of all... free food!!!</p>
854 <eventitem date="2003-05-29" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2037"
855 title="Unix 101: First Steps With Unix">
856 <short>Learn Unix and be the envy of your friends!</short>
859 <p>This is the first in a series of seminars that cover the use of the
860 Unix Operating System. Unix is used in a variety of applications, both
861 in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience
862 with the Math Faculty's Unix environment in this seminar.</p>
864 <p>Topics that will be discussed include:</p>
867 <li>Navigating the Unix environment</li>
868 <li>Using common Unix commands</li>
869 <li>Using the PICO text editor</li>
870 <li>Reading electronic mail and news with PINE</li>
873 <p>If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent
874 to you for the duration of this class.</p>
879 <eventitem date="2003-06-05" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2037"
880 title="Unix 102: Fun With Unix">
881 <short>Talking to your Unix can be fun and profitable</short>
884 <p>This is the second in a series of seminars that cover the use of the
885 Unix Operating System. Unix is used in a variety of applications, both in
886 academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with
887 the Math Faculty's Unix environment in this tutorial.</p>
889 <p>Topics that will be discussed include:</p>
892 <li>Interacting with Bourne and C shells</li>
893 <li>Editing text with the vi text editor</li>
894 <li>Editing text with the Emacs display editor</li>
895 <li>Multi-tasking and the screen multiplexer</li>
898 <p>If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be
899 lent to you for the duration of this class</p>
904 <eventitem date="2003-06-12" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2037"
905 title="Unix 103: Scripting Unix">
906 <short>You too can be a Unix taskmaster</short>
909 <p>This is the third in a series of seminars that cover the use of the
910 Unix Operating System. Unix is used in a variety of applications, both in
911 academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with
912 the Math Faculty's Unix environment in this tutorial.</p>
914 <p>Topics that will be discussed include:</p>
917 <li>Shell scripting</li>
918 <li>Searching through text files</li>
919 <li>Batch editing text files</li>
922 <p>If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be
923 lent to you for the duration of this class</p>
928 <eventitem date="2003-05-22" time="4:30 PM" room="MC3036 CSC Office" title="May 22 Exec Meeting">
929 <short>The execs discuss what needs discussion</short>
933 Minutes for CSC Exec Meeting
937 * Add staff to burners group.
938 -- Only office staff (people who do stuff) on burners list
939 -- No objections from executives
941 * We still need a webmaster, imapd
943 --Check for pop delivery services (Like Grocery Gateway)
944 so that we can replace imapd with an automated cronjob
945 -- If this gets implemented, we must make sure that
946 someone is around to receive the pop whenever it is
951 -- Make sure execs receive a copy of the proposed budget
953 -- Look into claiming money from Mathsoc for the last
955 --Will be looked over the week after next Monday at the Mathsoc
957 --June 27th is the WEF (Engineering Endowment Fund) deadline
958 --EngSoc proposal for donations by the end of the month
959 -- Around 15 events planned
961 --CS Departmant will pay for flight
962 -- We can pay local expenses
966 *Changes in the MathSoc Clubs Policy
967 Action Item: Jim and Stefanus
968 --Bring thus up with MathSoc
969 --Might be good to talk to Bioinformatics about this, as
970 they have science faculty members to take care of as well.
971 --Major issue: People who revoke their Mathsoc fees can still be
973 --We want it so that only people who have paid dues to Mathsoc
975 --Execs should not take back fees, as that is bad form.
976 --All execs unanimously agreed with this proposal
978 *Confirming that we have free printing and photocopying
980 --Does Faculty of Math billing code apply to CSC
981 (as Faculty of Math department?)
982 -- Procedures manual has a billing code, but it should
984 -- Ask MUO, then Shirley after that.
986 --Apparently there is a special Watcard that provides
987 free printing from MFCF
988 --We do not know what account it is mapped to,
991 * Getting csc_disk, csc, csc_ceo accounts on undergrad to work again.
993 -- Get csc-disk back up for student use.
994 -- What group permissions do we need?
995 -- CSC-Disk should be used as a repository for custom
996 window managers, Mozilla, etc... (selling factor for
998 -- We should also have an announcement (MOTD, perhaps?)
999 that we are providing and supporting this software.
1000 --Consider: Having university-wide accessible
1001 binaries might be a pain, as different machines
1002 might require different compilations.
1003 -- CSC-Disk is full of user data. Should that be blown away?
1005 *Getting locker #7 from MathSoc (Don't we already have lockers 788 and
1007 --Why were the locks snipped? (Bring up at council meeting)
1008 --We would prefer one combo-lock and one key-lock.
1010 * Review of the CSC office organization
1012 --Give Mike sudo access for shutdown
1013 --Will be rewiring stuff on Saturday
1014 --involves re-plugging machines
1016 --Get rubber wheels for chairs
1019 -- Ask PlantOps about:
1021 --Installing Electronic Lock (asap)
1022 --According to Faculty of Math,
1023 we shouldn't need keys.
1024 --Currently, we still need keys
1025 --It is kosher to install Electronic lock
1026 --This provides access right control as
1027 compared to key-control.
1028 --Might be long term project.
1029 --Will green men do it?
1030 --Steam-clean chairs (at least once a term)
1032 --Making ugly wall prettier
1033 --PlantOps knows about office
1034 organization, making environment better.
1035 --Whiteboards need to be put up
1036 --Proposal: Cork-board on pillar (no objections)
1037 --Metal frames on Whiteboard will be in least annoying place
1039 *Do we provide public stapler access?
1040 --People are often unappreciative and rude
1041 --Sign - "Stapler if you say please" -- Unanimously voted
1046 --Find out where to get CSC sign before Monday so we
1047 can claim it in old budget.
1049 * Librarian's Report
1051 --Find perl volunteer to finish CEO
1052 --Force Stefanus to export CVS tree and put onto Peri
1054 --Books were scanned into system with help of Mark
1055 --All books with valid barcodes entered into system on
1057 --Books without valid barcodes are not in system
1058 --Someone needs to do it
1059 --Plan is to implement Dewey decimal system
1060 --May be inefficient as all books are about CS
1061 --We will figure out a system later
1062 --No plans to purchase new books
1063 --Librarian's Request: Office Staff should not lend out books
1064 that do not have barcodes (No objects to request)
1065 --We are still using /media/iso/request to track books
1066 --Should be charge late fees for books?
1067 --We should have money in budget for repairing,maintaining books
1068 --Before spending money on maintaining books, check if DC will
1070 --will it be cheaper/easier/better?
1072 *Setting up extra quota for fun and profit.
1073 -- We don't implement quota properly right now
1074 -- Low demand for extra quota
1075 -- Counterpoint: Old CSC made tons of money
1076 -- Counter-counter-point: It's not that necessary for extra
1078 -- Executives voted against proposal.
1080 *Jim will spam with an update about the term
1081 --Consider making it opt-in
1082 --One email from a service you are using should be considered
1083 reasonable mass mailing
1085 *Should Jim bring anything up at the MathSoc meeting?**
1088 * Student branches for ACM and IEEE
1090 --Contact IEEE Computing Society in UW and ask if they want
1091 to merge or transfer society to us
1092 --Simon volunteers to be put down as exec for ACM
1093 --ACM rules state requirement that exec is a ACM member
1094 --Do we renew Calum's ACM membership?
1095 --Yes (3 Yes; 1 No; 1 Abstention)
1096 --ACM membership money in budget
1097 --ACM Student chapter form has not come in
1099 * What to do with the donated Procedures Manual?
1100 --Term Task for webpage:
1101 --Put procedures manual on web-page.
1102 --Merge with current manual
1103 --We don't have a hard copy
1104 --Would be a good thing to read.
1105 --Many parts need updating
1111 <eventitem date="2003-05-14" time="4:30 PM" room="MC3001 Comfy Lounge"
1112 title="Spring 2003 Elections">
1113 <short>Come on out and vote for your exec!</short>
1115 <p>Elections will be held on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 at 4:30 PM in the
1116 Comfy Lounge, MC3001.</p>
1118 <p>I invite you to nominate yourself or others for executive positions,
1119 starting immediately. Simply e-mail me at sjdutoit@uwaterloo.ca or
1120 cro@csclub.uwaterloo.ca with the name of the person who is to be
1121 nominated and the position they're nominated for.</p>
1123 <p>Nominees must be full-time undergraduate students in Math. Sorry!</p>
1125 <p>Positions open for elections are:</p>
1129 President: Organises the club, appoints committees, keeps everyone busy.
1130 If you have lots of ideas about the club in general and like bossing
1131 people around, go for it!
1135 Vice President: Organises events, acts as the president if he's not
1136 available. If you have lots of ideas for events, and spare time, go
1141 Treasurer: Keeps track of the club's finances. Gets to sign cheques
1142 and stuff. If you enjoy dealing with money and have ideas on how to
1143 spend it, go for it!
1147 Secretary: Takes care of minutes and outside correspondence. If you
1148 enjoy writing things down and want to use our nifty new letterhead
1153 <p>Nominations will be accepted until Tuesday, May 13 at 4:30 PM.</p>
1155 <p>Additionally, a Sysadmin will be appointed after the elections. If you
1156 like working with unix systems and have experience setting up and
1157 maintaining them, go for it!</p>
1159 <p>I hope that lots of people will show up; hopefully we'll have a great
1160 term with plenty of events. We always need other volunteers, so if you
1161 want to get involved just talk to the new exec after the
1162 meeting. Librarians, webmasters, poster runners, etc. are always
1165 <p>There will also be free pop, and if I remember, timbits :).</p>
1167 <p>Memberships can be purchased at the elections. Only undergrad math
1168 members can vote, but anyone can become a member.</p>
1170 <p>Don't forget! Mark it on your calendar/wrist watch/PDA/brain implant!</p>
1175 <!-- Winter 2003 -->
1177 <eventitem date="2003-02-04" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2037"
1178 title="Unix 101 Tutorial">
1179 <short>Learn Unix and be the envy of your friends!</short>
1182 <p>This is the first in a series of seminars that cover the use of the
1183 UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of applications, both
1184 in academia and industy. We will provide you with hands-on experience
1185 with the Math Faculty's UNIX environment in this seminar.</p>
1187 <p>Topics that will be discussed include:</p>
1190 <li> Navigating the UNIX environment</li>
1191 <li> Using common UNIX commands</li>
1192 <li>Using the PICO text editor</li>
1193 <li>Reading electronic mail and news with PINE</li>
1196 <p>If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent
1197 to you for the duration of this class.</p>
1202 <eventitem date="2003-02-11" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2037"
1203 title="Unix 102 Tutorial">
1204 <short>Learn more Unix and be the envy of your friends!</short>
1207 <p>Abstract to come soon.</p>
1212 <eventitem date="2003-02-18" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2037"
1213 title="Unix 103 Tutorial">
1214 <short>Learn more Unix and be the envy of your friends!</short>
1217 <p>Abstract to come soon. </p>
1222 <eventitem date="2003-01-13" time="6:00 PM" room="MC3001"
1223 title="W03 Elections">
1224 <short>Come out and vote for the new exec!</short>
1227 <p>This term's elections will take place on Monday, January 13 at 6:00 PM in the
1228 MC "comfy lounge" (MC3001). Nominations are open from now on (Thursday,
1229 January 2) until 4:30 PM of the day before elections (Sunday, January 12).
1230 In order to nominate someone you can either e-mail me directly, by depositing
1231 a form with the required information in the CSC mailbox in the Mathsoc office
1232 or by writing the nomination and clearly marking it as such on the large
1233 whiteboard in the CSC office. E-mail is probably the best choice.
1234 Please include the name of the person to be nominated as well as the position
1235 you wish to nominate them for.</p>
1237 <p>Candidates must be full members of the club. This means they must have paid
1238 their membership for the given term and (due to recent changes in the
1239 constitution) must be full-time undergraduate math students.
1240 The same requirements hold for those voting. Please bring your Watcard to
1241 the elections so that I can verify this. I will have a list of members with
1244 <p>The positions open are:</p>
1246 <p><b>President</b> -- appoints all commitees of the club, calls and presides at all
1247 meetings of the club and audits the club's financial records. Really, this
1248 is the person in charge.</p>
1250 <p><b>Vice President</b> -- assumes President's duties in case he/she is absent,
1251 plans and coordinates events with the programmes committee and assumes any
1252 other duties delegated by the President.
1253 This is a really fun job if you enjoy coordinating events!</p>
1255 <p><b>Secretary</b> -- keeps minutes of the meetings and cares for any correspondence.
1256 A fairly light job, good choice if you just want to see what being an exec
1259 <p><b>Treasurer</b> -- maintains all the finances of the club.
1260 If you like money and keeping records, this is the job for you!</p>
1262 <p>Additionally a Systems Administrator will be picked by the new executive.</p>
1264 <p>Last term was a great term for the CSC -- many events, some office renovations
1265 and a much improved image were all part of it. I hope to see the next term's
1266 exec continue this. If you're interested in seeing this happen, do consider
1267 going for a position, or helping out as office staff or on one of the
1270 <p>Anyways, hopefully I'll see many of you at the elections.
1271 Remember: Monday, January 13, 6:00 PM, MC3001/Comfy Lounge.</p>
1273 <p>If you have any further questions don't hesitate to contact the CRO,
1274 Stefanus Du Toit <a href="mailto:sjdutoit@uwaterloo.ca">by e-mail</a>.</p>
1278 <eventitem date="2003-01-23" time="6:30 PM" room="MC1085"
1279 title="Regular Expressions">
1280 <short>Find your perfect match</short>
1283 <p>Stephen Kleene developed regular expressions to describe what he
1284 called <q>the algebra of regular sets.</q> Since he was a pioneering
1285 theorist in computer science, Kleene's regular expressions soon made
1286 it into searching algorithms and from there to everyday tools.</p>
1288 <p>Regular expressions can be powerful tools to manipulate text.
1289 You will be introduced to them in this talk. As well, we will go
1290 further than the rigid mathematical definition of regular
1291 expressions, and delve into POSIX regular expressions which are
1292 typically available in most Unix tools.</p>
1297 <eventitem date="2003-01-30" time="6:30 PM" room="MC1085"
1298 title="sed & awk">
1299 <short>Unix text editing</short>
1302 <p><i>sed</i> is the Unix stream editor. A powerful way to
1303 automatically edit a large batch of text. <i>awk</i> is a
1304 programming language that allows you to manipulate structured data
1305 into formatted reports.</p>
1307 <p>Both of these tools come from early Unix, and both are still
1308 useful today. Although modern programming languages such as Perl,
1309 Python, and Ruby have largely replaced the humble <i>sed</i> and
1310 <i>awk</i>, they still have their place in every Unix user's
1316 <eventitem date="2003-02-06" time="6:30 PM" room="MC1085"
1317 title="LaTeX: A Document Processor">
1318 <short>Typesetting beautiful text</short>
1321 <p>Unix was one of the first electronic typesetting platforms. The
1322 innovative AT&T <i>troff</i> system allowed researches at Bell
1323 Labs to generate high quality camera-ready proofs for their papers.
1324 Later, Donald Knuth invented a typesetting system called
1325 T<small>E</small>X, which was far superior to other typesetting
1326 systems in the 1980s. However, it was still a typesetting language,
1327 where one had to specify exactly how text was to be set.</p>
1329 <p>L<sup><small>A</small></sup>T<small>E</small>X is a macro package
1330 for the T<small>E</small>X system that allows an author to describe
1331 his document's function, thereby typesetting the text in an
1332 attractive and correct way. In addition, one can define semantic
1333 tags to a document, in order to describe the meaning of the
1334 document; rather than the layout.</p>
1339 <eventitem date="2003-02-13" time="6:30 PM" room="MC1085"
1340 title="LaTeX: Reports">
1341 <short>Writing reports that look good.</short>
1344 <p>Work term reports, papers, and other technical documents can be
1345 typeset in L<sup><small>A</small></sup>T<small>E</small>X to great
1346 effect. In this session, I will provide examples on how to typeset
1347 tables, figures, and references. You will also learn how to make
1348 tables of contents, bibliographics, and how to create footnotes.</p>
1350 <p> I will also examine various packages of
1351 L<sup><small>A</small></sup>T<small>E</small>X that can help you
1352 meet requirements set by users of inferior typesetting systems.
1353 These include double-spacing, hyphenation and specific margin
1359 <eventitem date="2003-02-20" time="6:30 PM" room="MC1085"
1360 title="LaTeX: Beautiful Mathematics">
1361 <short>LaTeX => fun</short>
1364 <p>It is widely acknowledged that the best system by which to
1365 typeset beautiful mathematics is through the T<small>E</small>
1366 typesetting system, written by Donald Knuth in the early 1980s.</p>
1368 <p>In this talk, I will demonstrate
1369 L<sup><small>A</small></sup>T<small>E</small>X and how to typeset
1370 elegant mathematical expressions.</p>
1375 <eventitem date="2003-02-27" time="6:00 PM" room="MC1085"
1376 title="The BSD License Family">
1377 <short>Free for all</short>
1380 <p>Before the GNU project ever existed, before the phrase
1381 "Free Software" was ever coined, students and researchers
1382 at the University of California, Berkeley were already
1383 practising it. They had acquired the source cdoe to a
1384 little-known operating system developed at AT&T
1385 Bell Laboratories, and were creating improvments at a
1388 <p>These improvements were sent back to Bell Labs, and
1389 shared to other Universities. Each of them were licensed
1390 under what is now known as the "Original BSD license". Find
1391 out what this license means, its implications, and what are
1392 its decendents by attending this short talk.</p>
1397 <eventitem date="2003-02-27" time="6:30 PM" room="MC1085"
1398 title="The GNU General Public License">
1399 <short>The teeth of Free Software</short>
1402 <div style="font-style: italic"><blockquote>
1403 The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
1404 freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General
1405 Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and
1406 change free software---to make sure the software is free for all
1409 <div style="text-align:right">--- Excerpt from the GNU GPL</div>
1412 <p> The GNU General Public License is one of the most influencial
1413 software licenses in this day. Written by Richard Stallman for the
1414 GNU Project, it is used by software developers around the world to
1415 protect their work.</p>
1417 <p>Unfortunately, software developers do not read licenses
1418 thoroughly, nor well. In this talk, we will read the entire GNU GPL
1419 and explain the implications of its passages. Along the way, we
1420 will debunk some myths and clarify common misunderstandings.</p>
1422 <p>After this session, you ought to understand what the GNU GPL
1423 means, how to use it, and when you cannot use it. This session
1424 should also give you some insight into the social implications of
1430 <eventitem date="2003-03-13" time="6:30 PM" room="MC1085"
1432 <short>Give your documents more markup</short>
1435 <p>XML is the <q>eXtensible Markup Language,</q> a standard
1436 maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium. A descendant of IBM's
1437 SGML. It is a metalanguage which can be used to define markup
1438 languages for semantically describing a document.</p>
1440 <p>This talk will describe how to generate correct XML documents,
1441 and auxillary technologies that work with XML.</p>
1446 <eventitem date="2003-03-20" time="6:30 PM" room="MC1085"
1448 <short>Transforming your documents</short>
1451 <p>XSLT is the <q>eXtended Stylesheet Language Transformations,</q>
1452 a language for transforming XML documents into other XML
1455 <p>XSLT is used to manipulate XML documents into other forms: a sort
1456 of glue between data formats. It can turn an XML document into an
1457 XHTML document, or even an HTML document. With a little bit of
1458 hackery, it can even be convinced to spit out non-XML conforming
1464 <eventitem date="2003-03-24" time="8:00 PM"
1465 room="Humanities Theatre, Hagey Hall"
1466 title="Judy, or What Is It Like To Be A Robot?">
1467 <short>Held in co-operation with the UW Cognitive Science Club</short>
1470 <p>A lot of claims have been made lately about the intelligence of
1471 computers. Some researchers say that computers will eventually attain
1472 super-human intelligence. Others call thse claims... um, poppycock.
1473 Oddly enough, in the search for the truth of the matter, both camps
1474 have overlooked an obvious strategy: interviewing a computer and asking
1477 <p>"Judy is as much fun as a barrel of wind-up cymbal-monkeys, and
1478 lots more entertaining." --- Bill Rodriguez, <i>Providence Phoenix</i></p>
1480 <p>"Tom Sgouros's witty play, co-starring the charming robot Judy, is an
1481 imagination stretcher that delights while it exercises your mind. If you
1482 think you can't imagine a conscious robot, you're wrong---you can,
1483 especially once you've met Judy." --- Daniel C. Dennett,
1484 author of <i>Consciousness Explained</i>, <i>Brainchildren</i>,
1487 <p>"...an engrossing evening... Real questions about
1488 consciousness, freedom to act, the relationship between the creator
1489 and the created are woven into a bravura performance." --- Will
1490 Stackman, <i>Aislesay.com</i></p>
1492 <p>Sponsored by the Mathematics Society, the Federation of Students, the
1493 Arts Student Union, the Graduate Student Association, and the Department of
1494 Philosophy. Tickets available at the Humanities box office (888-4908) and
1495 the offices of the Psychology Society and the Computer Science Club for
1497 more information: <a
1498 href="http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/cogsci/">http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/cogsci</a>.</p>
1503 <eventitem date="2003-03-25" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2065"
1504 title="Stream Processing">
1505 <short>A talk by Assistant Professor Michael McCool</short>
1508 <p>Stream processing is an enhanced version of SIMD processing that
1509 permits efficient execution of conditionals and iteration. Stream
1510 processors have many similarities to GPUs, and a hardware prototype,
1511 the Imagine processor, has been used to implement both OpenGL and
1514 <p>It is possible that GPUs will acquire certain properties
1515 of stream processors in the future, which should make them easier
1516 to use and more efficient for general-purpose computation that includes
1517 data-dependent iteration and conditionals.</p>
1522 <eventitem date="2003-03-26" time="6:00 PM" room="MC2065"
1523 title="Abusing the C++ Compiler">
1524 <short>Abusing template metaprogramming in C++</short>
1527 <p>Templates are a useful feature in C++ when it comes to writing
1528 type-independent data structures and algorithms. But that's not all
1529 they can be used for. Essentially, it is possible to write certain
1530 programs in C++ that execute completely at compile-time rather
1531 than run-time. Combined with some optimisations this is an interesting
1532 twist on regular C++ programming.</p>
1534 <p>This talk will give a short overview of the features of templates
1535 and then go on to describe how to "abuse" templates to perform complex
1536 computations at compile time. The speaker will present three programs of
1537 increasing complexity which execute at compile time. First a factorial
1538 listing program, then a prime listing program will be presented. Finally
1539 the talk will conclude with the presentation of a <i>Mandelbrot
1540 generator running at compile time.</i></p>
1542 <p>Some basic knowledge of C++ will be assumed.</p>
1547 <eventitem date="2003-03-27" time="6:30 PM" room="MC1085"
1548 title="SSH and Networks">
1549 <short>Once more into the breach</short>
1552 <p>The Secure Shell (SSH) has now replaced traditional remote login
1553 tools such as <i>rsh</i>, <i>rlogin</i>, <i>rexec</i> and
1554 <i>telnet</i>. It is used to provide secure, authenticated,
1555 encrypted communications between remote systems. However, the SSH
1556 protocol provides for much more than this.</p>
1558 <p>In this talk, we will discuss using SSH to its full extent. Topics
1559 to be covered include:</p>
1561 <li>Remote logins</li>
1562 <li>Remote execution</li>
1563 <li>Password-free authentication</li>
1564 <li>X11 forwarding</li>
1565 <li>TCP forwarding</li>
1566 <li>SOCKS tunnelling</li>
1574 date="1994-09-13" time="9:00 PM"
1575 room="Princess Cinema"
1576 title="Movie Outing: Brainstorm">
1578 No description available.
1582 The first of this term's CSC social events, we will be going to see
1583 the movie ``Brainstorm'' at the Princess Cinema. This outing is
1584 intended primarily for the new first-year students.
1587 The Princess Cinema is Waterloo's repertoire theatre. This month
1588 and next, they are featuring a ``Cyber Film Festival''. Upcoming
1593 <li>Bladerunner (director's cut)</li>
1594 <li>2001: A Space Odyssey</li>
1595 <li>Naked Lunch</li>
1598 Admission is $4.25 for a Princess member, $7.50 for a non-member.
1599 Membership to the Princess is $7.00 per year.
1604 date="1994-09-16" time="4:30 PM"
1606 title="CSC Elections">
1607 <short>No description available</short>
1608 <abstract>No abstract available</abstract>
1611 date="1994-09-19" time="4:30 PM"
1613 title="UNIX I Tutorial">
1614 <short>No description available</short>
1615 <abstract>No abstract available</abstract>
1618 date="1994-09-21" time="6:30 PM"
1620 title="SIGGRAPH Video Night">
1621 <short>No description available</short>
1622 <abstract>No abstract available</abstract>
1625 date="1994-09-22" time="4:30 PM"
1627 title="UNIX I Tutorial">
1628 <short>No description available</short>
1629 <abstract>No abstract available</abstract>
1632 date="1994-09-26" time="4:30 PM"
1634 title="UNIX II Tutorial">
1635 <short>No description available</short>
1636 <abstract>No abstract available</abstract>
1639 date="1994-10-13" time="5:00 PM"
1641 title="Prograph: Picture the Future">
1642 <short>No description available</short>
1645 What is the next step in the evolution of computer languages?
1646 Intelligent agents? Distributed objects? or visual languages?
1649 Visual languages overcome many of the drawbacks and limitations
1650 of the textual languages that software development is based on
1651 today. Do you think about programming in a linear fashion? Or do
1652 you draw a mental picture of your algorithm and then linearize it
1653 for the benefit of your compiler? Wouldn't it be nice if you could
1654 code the same way you think?
1657 Visual C++ and Visual BASIC aren't visual languages, but Prograph
1658 is. Prograph is a commercially available, visual, object-oriented,
1659 data-flow language. It is well suited to graphical user interface
1660 development, but is as powerful for general-purpose programming as
1661 any textual language.
1664 The talk will comprise a discussion of the problems of textual
1665 languages that visual languages solve, a live demonstration of
1666 Prograph, and some of my observations of the applications of
1667 Prograph to software development.
1672 date="1994-10-15" time="10:00 AM"
1674 title="ACM-Style Programming Contest">
1675 <short>No description available</short>
1677 <h3>Big Money and Prizes!</h3>
1679 So you think you're a pretty good programmer? Pit your skills
1680 against others on campus in this triannual event! Contestants will
1681 have three hours to solve five programming problems in either C or
1685 Last fall's winners went on to the International Finals and came
1686 first overall! You could be there, too!
1691 date="1994-10-20" time="4:30 PM"
1693 title="Exploring the Internet">
1694 <short>No description available</short>
1696 <h3>Need something to do between assignments/beers?</h3>
1698 Did you know that your undergrad account at Waterloo gives you
1699 access tothe world's largest computer network? With thousands
1700 of discussion groups, gigabytes of files to download, multimedia
1701 information browsers, even on-line entertainment?
1704 The resources available on the Internet are vast and wondrous, but
1705 the tools for navigating it are sometimes confusing and arcane. In
1706 this hands-on tutorial you will get the chance to get your feet wet
1707 with the world's most mind-bogglingly big computer network, the
1708 protocols and programs used, and how to use them responsibly and
1714 date="1994-11-02" time="4:30 PM"
1716 title="Game Theory">
1717 <short>No description available</short>
1719 <h3>From the Minimax Theorem, through Alpha-Beta, and beyond...</h3>
1721 This will be a descussion of the pitfalls of using mathematics and
1722 algorithms to play classical board games. Thorough descriptions
1723 shall be presented of the simple techniques used as the building
1724 blocks that make all modern computer game players. I will use
1725 tic-tac-toe as a control for my arguements. Other games such as
1726 Chess, Othello and Go shall be the be a greater measure of progress;
1727 and more importantly the targets of our dreams.
1730 To enhance the discussion of the future, Barney Pell's Metagamer
1731 shall be introduced. His work in define classes of games is
1732 important in identifying the features necessary for analysis.
1739 <eventitem date="1999-10-18" time="2:30 PM" room="DC1304"
1740 title="Living Laboratories: The Future Computing Environments at
1742 <short>By Blair MacIntyre and Elizabeth Mynatt</short>
1744 <p>by Blair MacIntyre and Elizabeth Mynatt</p>
1745 <p>The Future Computing Environments (FCE) Group at Georgia Tech
1746 is a collection of faculty and students that share a desire to
1747 understand the partnership between humans and technology that
1748 arises as computation and sensing become ubiquitous. With
1749 expertise covering the breadth of Computer Science, but
1750 focusing on HCI, Computational Perception, and Machine
1751 Learning, the individual research agendas of the FCE faculty
1752 are grounded in a number of shared "living laboratories" where
1753 their research is applied to everyday life in the classroom
1754 (Classroom 2000), the home (the Aware Home), the office
1755 (Augmented Offices), and on one's person. Professors
1756 MacIntyre and Mynatt will discuss a variety of these projects,
1757 with an emphasis on the HCI and Computer Science aspects of
1761 In addition to their affiliation with the FCE group,
1762 Professors Mynatt and MacIntyre are both members of the
1763 Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center (GVU) at Georgia
1764 Tech. This interdisciplinary center brings together research
1765 in computer science, psychology, industrial engineering,
1766 architecture and media design by examining the role of
1767 computation in our everyday lives. During the talk, they will
1768 touch on some of the research and educational opportunities
1769 available at both GVU and the College of Computing.
1774 <eventitem date="1999-10-19" time="4:30 PM" room="DC1304"
1775 title="GDB, Purify Tutorial">
1776 <short>No description available.</short>
1779 Debugging can be the most difficult and time consuming part of
1780 any program's life-cycle. Far from an exact science, it's more
1781 of an art ... and close to some kind of dark magic. Cryptic
1782 error messages, lousy error checking, and icky things like
1783 implicit casts can make it nearly impossible toknow what's
1784 going on inside your program.
1787 Several tools are available to help automate your
1788 debuggin. GDB and Purify are among the most powerful
1789 debugging tools available in a UNIX environment. GDB is an
1790 interactive debugger, allowing you to `step' through
1791 aprogram, examine function calls, variable contents, stack
1792 traces and let you look at the state of a program after it
1793 crashes. Purify is a commercial program designed to help find
1794 and remove memory leaks from programs written inlanguages
1795 without automatic garbage collection.
1798 This talk will cover how to compile your C and C++ programs
1799 for use with GDB and Purify, as well as how to use the
1800 available X interfaces. If a purify license is available on
1801 undergrad at the time of the talk, we will cover how to use it
1807 <eventitem date="1999-12-01" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2066"
1808 title="Homebrew Processors and Integrated Systems in FPGAs">
1809 <short>By Jan Gray</short>
1813 <p> With the advent of large inexpensive field-programmable gate
1814 arrays and tools it is now practical for anyone to design and
1815 build custom processors and systems-on-a-chip. Jan will discuss
1816 designing with FPGAs, and present the design and implementation
1817 of xr16, yet another FPGA-based RISC computer system with
1818 integrated peripherals.</p>
1820 <p> Jan is a past CSC pres., B.Math. CS/EEE '87, and wrote
1821 compilers, tools, and middleware at Microsoft from 1987-1998. He
1822 built the first 32-bit FPGA CPU and system-on-a-chip in
1827 <eventitem date="1999-12-01" time="7:00 PM" room="Golf's Steakhouse"
1829 <short>End-of-term dinner</short>
1831 No abstract available.
1835 <eventitem date="1999-12-02" time="1:30 PM" room="DC1302"
1836 title="Calculational Mathematics">
1837 <short>By Edgar Dijkstra</short>
1839 <p> By Edgar Dijkstra</p>
1841 <p> This talk will use partial orders, lattice theory, and, if
1842 time permits, the Galois connection as carriers to illustrate
1843 the use of calculi in mathematics. We hope to show the brevity
1844 of many calculations (in order tofight the superstition that
1845 formal proofs are necessarily unpractically long), and the
1846 strong heuristic guidance that is available for their
1849 <p> Dijkstra is known for early graph-theoretical algorithms,
1850 the first implementation of ALGOL 60, the first operating system
1851 composed of explicitly synchronized processes, the invention of
1852 guarded commands and of predicate transformers as a means for
1853 defining semantics, and programming methodology in the broadest
1854 sense of the word. </p>
1856 <p> His current research interests focus on the formal
1857 derivation of proofs and programs, and the streamlining of the
1858 mathematical argument in general.</p>
1860 <p> Dijkstra held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer
1861 Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin until retiring in
1867 <eventitem date="1999-12-03" time="10:00 AM" room="Siegfried Hall,
1868 St Jerome's" title="Proofs and Programs">
1869 <short>By Edsger Dijkstra</short>
1871 <p> This talk will show the use of programs for the proving of
1872 theorems. Its purpose is to show how our experience gained in
1873 the derivations of programs might be transferred to the
1874 derivation of proofs in general. The examples will go beyond the
1875 (traditional) existence theorems. </p>
1877 <p> Dijkstra is known for early graph-theoretical algorithms,
1878 the first implementation of ALGOL 60, the first operating system
1879 composed of explicitly synchronized processes, the invention of
1880 guarded commands and of predicate transformers as a means for
1881 defining semantics, and programming methodology in the broadest
1882 sense of the word. </p>
1884 <p> His current research interests focus on the formal
1885 derivation of proofs and programs, and the streamlining of the
1886 mathematical argument in general.</p>
1888 <p> Dijkstra held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer
1889 Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin until retiring in
1895 <eventitem date="1999-12-03" time="3:00 PM" room="DC1351"
1896 title="Open Q&A session">
1897 <short>By Edsger Dijkstra</short>
1898 <abstract>No description available.</abstract>
1901 <!-- Winter 2000 -->
1903 <eventitem date="2000-03-24" time="4:30 PM" room="DC1304"
1904 title="Enterprise Java APIs and Implementing a Web Portal">
1905 <short>No description available.</short>
1907 <h3>by Floyd Marinescu
1911 The first talk will be an introduction to the Enterprise Java
1912 API's: Servlets, JSP, EJB, and how to use them to build
1917 The second talk will be about how these technologies were used
1918 to implement a real world portal. The talk will include an
1919 overview of the design patterns used and will feature
1920 architectural information about the yet to be release portal
1921 (which I am one of the developers) called theserverside.com.
1926 <eventitem date="2000-03-30" time="4:30 PM" room="DC1304"
1927 title="Enterprise Java APIs and Implementing a Web Portal (1)">
1928 <short>No description available.</short>
1930 <p>Real World J2EE - Design Patterns and architecture behind the
1931 yet to be released J2EE portal: theserverside.com</p>
1933 <p>This talk will feature an exclusive look at the architecture
1934 behind the new J2EE portal: theserverside.com. Join Floyd
1935 Marinescu in a walk-through ofthe back-end of the portal,
1936 while learning about J2EE and its real world patterns,
1937 applications, problems and benefits.</p>
1941 <!-- Spring 2000 -->
1943 <eventitem date="2000-07-20" time="7:00 PM" room="Ali Babas Steak
1944 House, 130 King Street S, Waterloo" title="Ctrl-D">
1945 <short>End-of-term dinner</short>
1946 <abstract>No abstract available.</abstract>
1951 <eventitem date="2000-09-14" time="6:00 PM" room="DC1302"
1952 title="CSC Elections">
1953 <short>Fall 2000 Elections for the CSC.</short>
1956 Would you like to get involved in the CSC? Would you like to have a
1957 say in what the CSC does this term? Come out to the CSC Elections!
1958 In addition to electing the executive for the Fall term, we will be
1959 appointing office staff and other positions. Look for details in
1963 <p>Nominations for all positions are being taken in the CSC office, MC
1968 <eventitem date="2000-09-14" time="7:00 PM" room="DC1302"
1969 title="SIGGraph Video Night">
1970 <short> SIGGraph Video Night Featuring some truly awesome computer
1971 animations from Siggraph '99. </short>
1973 <p> Interested in Computer Graphics?
1976 <p> Enjoy watching state-of-the-art Animation?
1979 <p> Looking for a cheap place to take a date?
1982 <p> SIGGraph Video Night -
1983 Featuring some truly awesome computer animations from Siggraph '99.
1986 <p>Come out for the Computer Science Club general elections at 6:00
1987 pm, right before SIGGraph!</p>
1991 <eventitem date="2000-09-25" time="2:30 PM" room="DC1302"
1992 title="Realising the Next Generation Internet">
1993 <short>By Frank Clegg of Microsoft Canada</short>
1998 <dd>Frank Clegg</dd>
1999 <dd>President, Microsoft Canada</dd>
2002 <dd>Monday, September 25, 2000</dd>
2004 <dd>14:30 - 16:00</dd>
2007 <dd>(Davis Centre, Room 1302, University of Waterloo)</dd>
2011 <dt>Pre-registration</dt>
2012 <dd>Recommended</dd>
2013 <dd><a HREF="http://infranet.uwaterloo.ca:81/infranet/semform.htm">http://infranet.uwaterloo.ca:81/infranet/semform.htm</a></dd>
2014 <dd>(519) 888-4004</dd>
2019 <p>The Internet and the Web have revolutionized our communications, our access
2020 to information and our business methods. However, there is still much room
2021 for improvement. Frank Clegg will discuss Microsoft's vision for what is
2022 beyond browsing and the dotcom. Microsoft .NET (pronounced "dot-net") is a
2023 new platform, user experience and set of advanced software services planned
2024 to make all devices work together and connect seamlessly. With this next
2025 generation of software, Microsoft's goal is to make Internet-based
2026 computing and communications easier to use, more personalized, and more
2027 productive for businesses and consumers. In his new position of president
2028 of Microsoft Canada Co., Frank Clegg will be responsible for leading the
2029 organization toward the delivery of Microsoft .NET. He will speak about
2030 this new platform and the next generation Internet, how software developers
2031 and businesses will be able to take advantage of it, and what the .NET
2032 experience will look like for consumers and business users.</p>
2034 <h3>The Speaker</h3>
2035 <p>Frank Clegg was appointed president of Microsoft Canada Co. this month.
2036 Prior to his new position, Mr. Clegg was vice-president, Central Region,
2037 Microsoft Corp. from 1996 to 2000. In this capacity, he was responsible for
2038 sales, support and marketing activities in 15 U.S. states. Mr. Clegg joined
2039 Microsoft Corp. in 1991 and headed the Canadian subsidiary until 1996.
2040 During that time, Mr. Clegg was instrumental in introducing several key
2041 initiatives to improve company efficiency, growth and market share. Mr.
2042 Clegg graduated from the University of Waterloo in 1977 with a B. Math.</p>
2044 <h3>For More Information</h3>
2046 Shirley Fenton<br />
2047 The infraNET Project<br />
2048 University of Waterloo<br />
2049 519-888-4567 ext. 5611<br />
2050 <a HREF="http://infranet.uwaterloo.ca/">http://infranet.uwaterloo.ca/</a>
2056 <!-- Winter 2001 -->
2058 <eventitem date="2001-01-15" time="4:30 PM" room="MC3036"
2059 title="Executive elections">
2060 <short>Winter 2001 CSC Elections.</short>
2062 <p>Would you like to get involved in the CSC? Would you like to
2063 have a say in what the CSC does this term? Come out to the CSC
2064 Elections! In addition to electing the executive for the
2065 Winter term, we will be appointing office staff and other
2066 positions. Look for details in uw.csc.
2069 Nominations for all positions are being taken in the CSC
2074 <eventitem date="2001-01-22" time="3:30 PM" room="MC3036"
2076 <short>Second CSC meeting for Winter 2001.</short>
2078 <h3>Proposed agenda</h3>
2080 <dt>Book purchases</dt>
2082 <p>They haven't been done in 2 terms.
2083 We have an old list of books to buy.
2084 Any suggestions from uw.csc are welcome.</p>
2089 <p>For doing linux burns. It was allocated money on the budget
2090 request - about $300. We should be able to get a decent 12x
2091 burner with that (8x rewrite).</p>
2092 <p>The obvious things to sell are Linux Distros and BSD variants.
2093 Are there any other software that we can legally burn and sell
2098 <p>Just a talk of the topics to be covered, when, where, whatnot.
2099 Mike was right on this one, this should have been done earlier
2100 in the term. Oh well, maybe we can fix this for next fall term.</p>
2103 <dt>Game Contest</dt>
2105 <p>We already put a bit of work into planning the Othello contest
2106 before I read Mike's post. I still think it's viable. I've got
2107 at least 2 people interested in writing entries for it. This
2108 will be talked about more on monday. Hopefully, Rory and I will
2109 be able to present a basic outline of how the contest is going
2110 to be run at that time.</p>
2112 <dt>Peri's closet cleaning</dt>
2115 <p>Current sysadmin (jmbeverl) and I (kvijayan) and
2116 President (geduggan) had a nice conversation about this 2
2117 days ago, having to do with completely erasing all of
2118 peri, installing a clean stable potato debian on it, and
2119 priming it for being a gradual replacement to calum. We'll
2120 probably discuss how much we want to get done on this
2121 front on Monday.</p>
2125 <p>Any <a HREF="nntp://news.math.uwaterloo.ca/uw.csc/8305">comments</a> from <a HREF="news:uw.csc">the newsgroup</a> are welcome.</p>
2129 <eventitem date="2001-01-27" time="10:30 AM" room="MC3006"
2130 title="ACM-Style programming contest">
2131 <short>Practice for the ACM international programming
2134 <p>Our ACM-Style practice contests involve answering five questions in three
2135 hours. Solutions are written in Pascal, C or C++. Seven years in a row,
2136 Waterloo's teams have been in the top ten at the world finals.
2137 For more information, see
2138 <a HREF="http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~acm00/">the contest web page</a>.</p>
2140 <h3>Easy Question:</h3>
2141 <p>A palindrome is a sequence of letters that reads the same backwards and
2142 forwards, such as ``Madam, I'm Adam'' (note that case doesn't matter and
2143 only letters are important). Your task is to find the longest palindrome in
2144 a line of text (if there is a tie, print the leftmost one).</p>
2148 asfgjh12dsfgg kj0ab12321BA wdDwkj abBA
2149 abcbabCdcbaqwerewq abCdcba
2152 <h3>Hard Question:</h3>
2153 <p>An anagram is a word formed by reordering the letters of another word.
2154 Find all sets of anagrams that exist within a large dictionary. The
2155 input will be a sorted list of words (up to 4000 words), one per line.
2156 Output each set of anagrams on a separate line. Each set should be
2157 in alphabetical order, and all lines of sets should be in alphabetical
2158 order. A word with no anagrams is a set of anagrams itself, and should
2159 be displayed with no modifications.</p>
2172 <eventitem date="2001-01-29" time="02:39 PM" room="MC3036"
2174 <short>No description available.</short>
2175 <abstract>No abstract available.</abstract>
2178 <eventitem date="2001-02-05" time="03:30 PM" room="MC3036"
2180 <short>No description available.</short>
2181 <abstract>No abstract available.</abstract>
2184 <eventitem date="2001-02-12" time="03:30 PM" room="MC3036"
2186 <short>No description available.</short>
2187 <abstract>No abstract available.</abstract>
2190 <!-- Spring 2001 -->
2192 <eventitem date="2001-06-02" time="10:30 AM" room="MC3006"
2193 title="ACM-Style programming contest">
2194 <short>Practice for the ACM international programming
2197 <p>Our ACM-Style practice contests involve answering five questions in three
2198 hours. Solutions are written in Pascal, C or C++. Seven years in a row,
2199 Waterloo's teams have been in the top ten at the world finals.
2200 For more information, see
2201 <a HREF="http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~acm00/">the contest web page</a>.</p>
2203 <h3>Easy Question:</h3>
2204 <p>A palindrome is a sequence of letters that reads the same backwards and
2205 forwards, such as ``Madam, I'm Adam'' (note that case doesn't matter and
2206 only letters are important). Your task is to find the longest palindrome in
2207 a line of text (if there is a tie, print the leftmost one).</p>
2211 asfgjh12dsfgg kj0ab12321BA wdDwkj abBA
2212 abcbabCdcbaqwerewq abCdcba
2215 <h3>Hard Question:</h3>
2216 <p>An anagram is a word formed by reordering the letters of another word.
2217 Find all sets of anagrams that exist within a large dictionary. The
2218 input will be a sorted list of words (up to 4000 words), one per line.
2219 Output each set of anagrams on a separate line. Each set should be
2220 in alphabetical order, and all lines of sets should be in alphabetical
2221 order. A word with no anagrams is a set of anagrams itself, and should
2222 be displayed with no modifications.</p>
2236 <!-- Winter 2002 -->
2238 <eventitem date="2002-01-26" time="2:00 PM"
2239 room="Comfy Lounge MC3001"
2240 title="An Introduction to GNU Hurd">
2241 <short>Bored of GNU/Linux? Try this experimental operating
2244 <p>GNU Hurd is an operating system kernel based on the microkernel
2245 architecture design. It was the original GNU kernel, predating Linux,
2246 and is still being actively developed by many volunteers.</p>
2247 <p>The Toronto-area Hurd Users Group, in co-operation with the Computer
2248 Science Club, is hosting an afternoon to show the Hurd to anyone
2249 interested. Jeff Bailey, a Hurd developer, will give a presentation on
2250 the Hurd, followed by a GnuPG/PGP keysigning party. To finish it off,
2251 James Morrison, also a Hurd developer, will be hosting a Debian
2252 GNU/Hurd installation session.</p>
2253 <p>All interested are invited to attend. Bring your GnuPG/PGP fingerprint
2254 and mail your key to sjdutoit@uwaterloo.ca with the subject
2255 ``keysigning'' (see separate announcement).</p>
2256 <p>Questions? Suggestions? Contact <a
2257 href="ja2morri@uwaterloo.ca">James Morrison</a>.</p>
2260 <eventitem date="2002-01-26" time="2:30 PM"
2261 room="Comfy Lounge MC3001"
2262 title="GnuPG/PGP Keysigning Party">
2263 <short>Get more signatures on your key!</short>
2266 GnuPG and PGP provide public-key based encryption for e-mail and
2267 other electronic communication. In addition to preventing others
2268 from reading your private e-mail, this allows you to verify that an
2269 e-mail or file was indeed written by its perceived author.
2272 In order to make sure a GnuPG/PGP key belongs to the respective
2273 person, the key must be signed by someone who has checked the
2274 user's key fingerprint and verified the user's identification.
2277 A keysigning party is an ideal occasion to have your key signed by
2278 many people, thus strengthening the authority of your key. Everyone
2279 showing up exchanges key signatures after verifying ID and
2280 fingerprints. The Computer Science Club will be hosting such a
2281 keysigning party together with the Hurd presentation by THUG (see
2282 separate announcement). See
2283 <a href="http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~sjdutoit/"> the
2284 keysigning party homepage</a> for more information.
2287 Before attending it is important that you mail your key to
2288 sjdutoit@uwaterloo.ca with the subject ``keysigning.'' Also make
2289 sure to bring photo ID and a copy of your GnuPG/PGP fingerprint on
2290 a sheet of paper to the event.
2294 <eventitem date="2002-01-31" time="6:00 PM" room="MC2037"
2295 title="UNIX 101: First Steps With UNIX">
2297 This is the first in a series of seminars that cover the use of
2298 the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of
2299 applications, both in academia and industy. We will be covering
2300 the basics of the UNIX environment, as well as the use of PINE, an
2301 electronic mail and news reader.
2304 <eventitem date="2002-02-13" time="4:00 PM" room="MC4060"
2305 title="DVD-Video Under Linux">
2306 <short>Billy Biggs will be holding a talk on DVD technology
2307 (in particular, CSS and playback issues) under Linux, giving some
2308 technical details as well as an overview of the current status of
2309 Free Software efforts. All are welcome.</short>
2311 <p>DVD copy protection: Content Scrambling System (CSS)</p>
2313 <li>A technical introduction to CSS and an overview of the ongoing
2314 legal battle to allow distribution of non-commercial DVD
2316 <li>The current Linux software efforts and open issues</li>
2317 <li>How applications and Linux distributions are handling the
2318 legal issues involved</li>
2320 <p>DVD-Video specifics: Menus and navigation</p>
2322 <li>An overview of the DVD-Video standard</li>
2323 <li>Reverse engineering efforts and their implementation status</li>
2324 <li>Progress of integration into Linux media players</li>
2328 <eventitem date="2002-02-07" time="6:00 PM" room="MC2037"
2329 title="Unix 102: Fun With UNIX">
2330 <short>This the second in a series of UNIX tutorials. Simon Law and
2331 James Perry will be presenting some more advanced UNIX
2332 techniques. All are welcome. Accounts will be provided for those
2333 needing them.</short>
2336 This is the second in a series of seminars that cover the use of
2337 the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of
2338 applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you
2339 with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's UNIX environment
2342 <p>Topics that will be discussed include:</p>
2344 <li>Interacting with Bourne and C shells</li>
2345 <li>Editing text using the vi text editor</li>
2346 <li>Editing text using the Emacs display editor</li>
2347 <li>Multi-tasking and the screen multiplexer</li>
2350 If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will
2351 be lent to you for the duration of this class.
2355 <eventitem date="2002-03-01" time="5:00 PM" room="MC4060"
2356 title="Computer Go, The Ultimate">
2357 <short>Thomas Wolf from Brock University will be holding a talk on
2358 the asian game of Go. All are welcome.</short>
2361 The asian game go is unique in a number of ways. It is the oldest
2362 board game known. It is a strategy game with very simple
2363 rules. Computer programs are very weak despite huge efforts and
2364 prizes of US$ > 1.5M for a program beating professional
2365 players. The talk will quickly explain the rules of go, compare go
2366 and chess, mention various attempts to program go and describe our
2367 own efforts in this field. Students will have an opportunity to
2368 solve computer generated go problems. Prizes will be available.
2373 <!-- Spring 2002 -->
2375 <eventitem date="2002-05-11" time="7:00 PM" room="MC3036" title="S02
2377 <short>Come and vote for this term's exec</short>
2380 Vote for the exec this term. Meet at the CSC office.
2388 <eventitem date="2002-09-16" time="5:30 PM" room="Comfy lounge"
2389 title="F02 elections">
2390 <short>Come and vote for this term's exec</short>
2393 Vote for the exec this term. Meet at the comfy
2394 lounge. There will be an opportunity to obtain or renew
2395 memberships. This term's CRO is Siyan Li
2396 (s8li@csclub.uwaterloo.ca).
2401 <eventitem date="2002-09-30" time="6:30 PM" room="Comfy lounge, MC3001"
2402 title="Business Meeting">
2403 <short>Vote on a constitutional change.</short>
2406 The executive has unanimously decided to try to change our
2407 constitution to comply with MathSoc policy. The clause we are trying
2408 to change is the membership clause. The following is the proposed new
2409 reading of the clause.
2412 In compliance with MathSoc regulations and in recognition of
2413 the club being primarily targeted at undergraduate students, full
2414 membership is open to all undergraduate students in the Faculty of
2415 Mathematics and restricted to the same.</i>
2419 The proposed change is illustrated <a
2420 href="http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/docs/constitution-change-20020920.html">on
2425 There will be a business meeting on 30 Sept 2002 at 18:30 in
2426 the comfy lounge, MC 3001. Please come and vote
2431 <eventitem date="2002-09-26" time="5:30 PM" room="MC3006"
2433 <short>First Steps with UNIX</short>
2436 Get to know UNIX and be the envy of your friends!
2439 This is the first in a series of seminars that cover the use
2440 of the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of
2441 applications, both in academia and industy. We will provide
2442 you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's UNIX
2443 environment in this seminar.
2446 Topics that will be discussed include:
2449 <li>Navigating the UNIX environment</li>
2450 <li>Using common UNIX commands</li>
2451 <li>Using the PICO text editor</li>
2452 <li>Reading electronic mail and news with PINE</li>
2455 If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be
2456 lent to you for the duration of this class.
2461 <eventitem date="2002-10-01" time="6:30 PM-9:30 PM" room="The Bomber"
2462 title="Pints with the Profs">
2463 <short>Get to know your profs and be the envy of your friends!</short>
2465 <p>Come out and meet your professors. This is a great opportunity to
2466 meet professors for Undergraduate Research jobs or to find out who you might
2467 have for future courses.</p>
2469 <p>Profs who have confirmed their attendance are:</p>
2471 <li>Troy Vasiga, School of Computer Science</li>
2472 <li>J.P. Pretti, St. Jerome's and School of Computer Science</li>
2473 <li>Michael McCool, School of Computer Science, CGL</li>
2474 <li>Martin Karsten, School of Computer Science, BBCR</li>
2475 <li>Gisli Hjaltason, School of Computer Science, DB</li>
2478 <p>There will also be...</p>
2487 <eventitem date="2002-10-03" time="5:30 PM" room="MC3006"
2489 <short>Talking to your UNIX can be fun and profitable.</short>
2491 <p>This is the second in a series of seminars that cover the use of
2492 the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of applications,
2493 both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on
2494 experience with the Math Faculty's UNIX environment in this
2497 <p>Topics that will be discussed include:</p>
2498 <ul><li>Interacting with Bourne and C shells</li>
2499 <li>Editing text using the vi text editor</li>
2500 <li>Editing text using the Emacs display editor</li>
2501 <li>Multi-tasking and the screen multiplexer</li>
2504 <p>If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be
2505 lent to you for the duration of this class.</p>
2510 <eventitem date="2002-10-08" time="4:30PM" room="MC4045"
2511 title="Video cards, Linux display drivers and the Kernel Graphics Interface (KGI)">
2512 <short>A talk by Filip Spacek, KGI developer</short>
2514 Linux has proven itself as a reliable operating system but arguably,
2515 it still lacks in support of high performance graphics
2516 acceleration. This talk will describe basic components of a PC video
2517 card and the design and limitations the current Linux display driver
2518 architecture. Finally a an overview of a new architecture, the Kernel
2519 Graphics Interface (KGI), will be given. KGI attempts to solve the
2520 shortcomings of the current design, and provide a lightweight and
2521 portable interface to the display subsystem.
2525 <eventitem date="2002-10-10" time="5:30pm" room="MC3006"
2528 <abstract>No abstract available yet.</abstract>
2531 <eventitem date="2002-11-05" time="4:30 PM" room="MC 2065"
2532 title="The Evil Side of C++">
2533 <short>Abusing template metaprogramming in C++; aka. writing a
2534 Mandelbrot generator that runs at compile time</short>
2536 <p>Templates are a useful feature in C++ when it comes to writing
2537 type-independent data structures and algorithms. Relatively soon
2538 after their appearance it was realised that they could be used to
2539 do much more than this. Essentially it is possible to write
2540 certain programs in C++ that execute <i>completely at compile
2541 time</i> rather than run time. Combined with constant-expression
2542 optimisation this is an interesting twist on regular C++
2544 <p>This talk will give a short overview of the features of
2545 templates and then go on to describe how to "abuse"
2546 templates to perform complex computations at compile time. The
2547 speaker will present three programs of increasing complexity which
2548 execute at compile time. First a factorial listing program, then a
2549 prime listing program will be presented. Finally the talk will
2550 conclude with the presentation of a <b>Mandelbrot generator running
2551 at compile time</b>.</p>
2553 <p>If you are interested in programming for the fun of it, the C++
2554 language or silly tricks to do with languages, this talk is for
2555 you. No C++ knowledge should be necessary to enjoy this talk, but
2556 programming experience will make it more worthwile for you.</p>
2558 </abstract> </eventitem>
2560 <eventitem date="2002-11-02" time="11:00AM-3:00PM"
2561 room="MC3002 (Math Coffee and Donut Store)"
2562 title="GNU/Linux InstallFest with KW-LUG and UW-DIG">
2563 <short>Bring over your computer and we'll help you install GNU/Linux</short>
2565 <p>The <a href="http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/">CSC</a>, the <a
2566 href="http://www.kwlug.org/">KW-Linux User Group</a>, and the <a
2567 href="http://uw-dig.uwaterloo.ca/">UW Debian Interest Group</a>
2568 are jointly hosting a GNU/Linux InstallFest. GNU/Linux is a
2569 powerful, free operating system for your computer. It is mostly
2570 written by talented volunteers who like to share their efforts
2571 and help each other.</p>
2573 <p>Perhaps you have are you interested in installing GNU/Linux.
2574 If so, bring your computer, monitor and keyboard; and we will
2575 help you install GNU/Linux on your machine. You can also find
2576 knowledgable people who can answer your questions about
2581 <h3>Frequently Asked Questions</h3>
2583 <p><b>Q: </b>What is GNU/Linux?<br />
2584 <b>A: </b>GNU/Linux is a free operating system for your computer. It is mostly
2585 written by talented volunteers who like to share their efforts.
2588 <p><b>Q: </b>Free?<br />
2589 <b>A: </b>GNU/Linux is available for zero-cost. As well, it allows you such
2590 freedom to share it with your friends, or to modify the software to
2591 your own needs and share that with your friends. It's very friendly.
2594 <p><b>Q: </b>What is an InstallFest?<br />
2595 <b>A: </b>An InstallFest is a meeting where volunteers help people install
2596 GNU/Linux on their computers. It's also a place to meet users, and
2597 talk to them about running GNU/Linux.
2600 <p><b>Q: </b>What kind of computer do I need to use GNU/Linux?<br />
2601 <b>A: </b>Almost any recent computer will do. If you have an old machine
2602 kicking around, you can install GNU/Linux on it as well. If it is
2603 at least 5 years old, it should be good enough.
2606 <p><b>Q: </b>Can I have Windows and GNU/Linux on the same computer?<br />
2607 <b>A: </b>If you can run Windows now, and you have an extra gigabyte (GB) of
2608 disk space to spare; then it should be possible.
2611 <p><b>Q: </b>What should I bring if I want to install GNU/Linux?<br />
2612 <b>A: </b>You will want to bring:</p>
2615 <li>Monitor and monitor cable</li>
2616 <li>Power cords</li>
2617 <li>Keyboard and mouse</li>
2623 <eventitem date="2002-11-07" time="5:30pm" room="MC4063"
2624 title="The GNU General Public License">
2625 <short>The teeth of Free Software</short>
2630 The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom
2631 to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License
2632 is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
2633 software---to make sure the software is free for all its users.
2634 </i><br/>--- Excerpt from the GNU GPL
2637 <p>The GNU General Public License is one of the most influencial
2638 software licenses in this day. Written by Richard Stallman for the
2639 GNU Project, it is used by software developers around the world to
2643 Unfortunately, software developers do not read licenses thoroughly, nor
2644 well. In this talk, we will read the entire GNU GPL and explain the
2645 implications of its passages. Along the way, we will debunk some myths
2646 and clarify common misunderstandings.
2649 After this session, you ought to understand what the GNU GPL means, how
2650 to use it, and when you cannot use it. This session should also give
2651 you some insight into the social implications of this work.
2656 <eventitem date="2002-11-19" time="4:30pm" room="MC4058"
2657 title="Metaprogramming GPUs">
2658 <short>A talk by Michael McCool of the Computer Graphics Lab.</short>
2661 Modern graphics accelerators, or "GPUs", have embedded high-performance
2662 programmable components in the form of vertex and fragment shading units.
2663 Recently, these units have evolved from 8-bit computations to floating-point,
2664 and other operations provide array gather, scatter, and summation.
2665 These capabilities make GPUs akin to array processors of the
2666 past, but with a difference: every PC now has one! I am interested
2667 in finding the best way to exploit this computational capacity for not
2668 only graphics but for general-purpose computation.
2670 Current APIs permit specification of the programs for GPUs
2671 using an assembly-language level interface. Compilers for high-level
2672 shading languages are available, such as NVIDIA's Cg, and OpenGL 2.0 and
2673 DirectX will also include standardized shading languages. This talk will
2674 review these. However, compilers for these languages read in an external
2675 string specification, which can be inconvenient.
2677 However, it is possible, using standard C++, to define a high-level
2678 shading language directly in the API. Such a language can be nearly
2679 indistinguishable from a special-purpose programming language, yet
2680 permits more direct interaction with the specification of textures
2681 (arrays) and parameters, simplifies implementation, and enables
2682 on-the-fly generation, manipulation, and specialization of shader programs.
2683 A shading language built into the API also permits the lifting of
2684 C++ host language type, modularity, and scoping constructs into the shading
2685 language without any additional implementation effort. Such an
2686 embedded language could be used to program other embedded processors
2687 (such as DSP chips in sound cards) or even to generate machine language
2688 on the fly for the host CPU.
2693 <eventitem date="2002-11-16" time="1:30pm" room="York University"
2694 title="Trip to York University">
2695 <short>Going to visit the York University Computer Club</short>
2696 <abstract><p>YUCC and the UW CSC have having a join meeting at York
2697 University. Dave Makalsky, the President of YUCC, will be giving a talk on
2698 Design-by-constract and Eiffel. Stefanus Du Toit, Vice-President of the UW
2699 CSC, will be giving a talk on the evil depths of the black art known as C++.
2701 <ul><li>1:30pm: Leave UW</li>
2702 <li>3:00pm: Arrive at York University.</li>
2703 <li>3:30pm: The Evil side of C++</li>
2704 <li>4:30pm: Design-by-Contract and Eiffel</li>
2705 <li>6:00pm: Dinner</li>
2706 <li>9:00pm: Arrive back at UW</li>
2711 <eventitem date="2002-11-21" time="6:00pm" room="MC2066"
2713 <short>A talk by Simon Law</short>
2716 Perl, the Practical Extraction and Reporting Language can only
2717 be described as an eclectic language, invented and refined by
2718 a deranged system administrator, who was trained as a
2719 linguist. This man, however, has declared:
2723 Perl 5 was my rewrite of Perl.
2724 I want Perl 6 to be the community's rewrite of Perl and of the
2726 </i><br/>--- Larry Wall
2729 Whenever a language is designed by a committee, it is common
2730 wisdom to avoid it. Not so with Perl, for it cannot get
2731 worse. However strange these Perl people seem, Perl 6 is a
2732 good thing coming. In this talk, I will demonstrate some Perl
2733 5 programs, and talk about their Perl 6 counterparts, to show
2734 you that Perl 6 will be cleaner, friendlier, and prettier.
2739 <eventitem date="2002-11-21" time="4:30pm" room="MC2066"
2740 title="Samba and You">
2741 <short>A talk by Dan Brovkovich, Mathsoc's Computing Director</short>
2743 Samba is a free implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB)
2744 protocol. It also implements the Common Internet File System (CIFS)
2745 protocol, used by Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP to share files and
2747 SMB was originally developed in the early to mid-80's by IBM and was
2748 further improved by Microsoft, Intel, SCO, Network Appliances, Digital
2749 and many others over a period of 15 years. It has now morphed into CIFS,
2750 a form strongly influenced by Microsoft. </p><p>
2751 Samba is considered to be one of the key projects for the acceptance of
2752 GNU/Linux and other Free operating systems (e.g. FreeBSD) in the
2753 corporate world: a traditional Windows NT/2000 stronghold. </p><p>
2754 We will talk about interfacing Samba servers and desktops with the
2755 Windows world. From a simple GNU/Linux desktop in your home to the
2756 corporate server that provides collaborative file/printer sharing,
2757 logons and home directories to hundreds of users a day. </p>
2761 <eventitem date="2002-10-26" time="1:30PM" room="MC2066"
2762 title="GNU/Linux on HPPA">
2763 <short>Carlos O'Donnell talks about "the last of the legacy processors to fall before the barbarian horde"</short>
2765 <p>This whirlwind talk is aimed at providing an overview of the
2766 GNU/Linux port for the HP PARISC processor. The talk will focus on
2767 the "intricacies" of the processor, and in particular the
2768 implementations of the Linux kernel and GNU Libc. After the talk
2769 you should be acutely aware of how little code needs to be written
2770 to support a new architecture! Carlos has been working on the port
2771 for two years, and enjoying the fruits of his labour on a 46-node
2776 Carlos is currently in his 5th year of study at the University
2777 of Western Ontario. This is his last year in a concurrent
2778 Computer Engineering and Computer Science degree. His research
2779 interest range from distributed and parallel systems to low
2780 level optimized hardware design. He likes playing guitar and
2781 just bought a Cort NTL-20, jumbo body, solid spurce top with
2782 a mahogany back. Carlos hacks on the PARISC Linux kernel, GNU libc,
2783 GNU Debugger, GNU Binutils and various Debian packages.
2790 <eventitem date="2002-10-26" time="3:00PM" room="MC2066"
2791 title="The Hurd Interfaces">
2792 <short>Marcus Brinkmann, a GNU Hurd developer, talks about the Hurd server interfaces, at the heart of a GNU/Hurd system</short>
2794 <p>The Hurd server interfaces are at the heart of the Hurd system. They
2795 define the remote procedure calls (RPCs) that are used by the servers, the
2796 GNU C library and the utility programs to communicate with the Hurd system
2797 and to implement the POSIX personality of the Hurd as well as other
2800 <p>This talk is a walk through the Hurd RPCs, and will give an overview of how
2801 they are used to implement the system. Individual RPCs will be used to
2802 illustrate important or exciting features of the Hurd system in general,
2803 and it will be shown how those features are accessible to the user at the
2804 command line, too.</p>
2808 <p>Marcus Brinkmann is a math student at the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum in
2809 Germany. He is one of maintainers of the GNU Hurd project and the
2810 initiator of the Debian GNU/Hurd binary distribution. He designed and
2811 implemented the console subsystem of the Hurd, wrote the FAT filesystem
2812 server, and fixed a lot of bugs, thus increasing the stability and
2813 usability of the system.</p>
2818 <eventitem date="2002-10-26" time="4:30PM" room="MC2066"
2819 title="A GNU Approach to Virtual Memory Management in a Multiserver Operating System">
2820 <short>Neal Walfield, a GNU Hurd developer, talks about a possible Virtual Memory Management subsystem for the GNU Hurd</short>
2822 <p>Virtual memory management is one of the cornerstones of multiuser
2823 operating systems. Most systems available today place all of the
2824 policy in a monolithic virtual memory manager, VMM, isolated from the
2825 rest of the system. Although secure and lightweight, users have no
2826 way to communicate their anticipated memory needs and usage to the
2827 system pager. As a result, the VMM can only implement a global paging
2828 policy (typically, an approximation of LRU) which may be good on
2829 average but is best for nobody.</p>
2831 <p>With the port of Hurd to the L4 microkernel, this situation is being
2832 readdressed. Due to its more distributed nature, a centralized
2833 resource manager is not only more difficult to implement efficiently
2834 but also contrary to the philosophy of the rest of the system. We are
2835 currently exploring a model whereby each program is fully self-paged
2836 and all compete for memory from a physical memory server. This talk
2837 will first discuss how paging currently works in Mach and other
2838 systems. An argument for an external paging policy will then be
2839 presented followed by the requirements of such a design and the design
2844 <p>Neal Walfield, a GNU Hurd developer, is from the University of Massachusetts
2845 Lowell. Neal spent the summer of 2002 at University of Karlsruhe working
2846 on porting the GNU Hurd to L4.</p>
2851 <eventitem date="2002-10-17" time="5:30PM" room="MC2065"
2852 title="Debian in the Enterprise">
2853 <short>A talk by Simon Law</short>
2855 <p>The Debian Project produces a "Universal Operating System" that is
2856 comprised entirely of Free Software. This talk focuses on using Debian
2857 GNU/Linux in an enterprise environment. This includes:</p>
2859 <li>Where Debian can be deployed</li>
2860 <li>Strategic advantages of Debian</li>
2861 <li>Ways for business to give back to Debian</li>
2866 <eventitem date="2002-11-12" time="4:30PM" room="MC4058"
2867 title="Automatic Memory Management and Garbage Collection">
2868 <short>A talk by James A. Morrison</short>
2871 Do you ever wonder what java is doing while you wait? Have you ever used
2872 Modula-3? Do you wonder how lazily you can Mark and Sweep? Would you like to
2873 know how to Stop-and-Copy?
2875 Come out to this talk and learn these things and more. No prior knowledge of
2876 Garbage Collection or memory management is needed.