+ Alex Tsay from AeroFS will talk about the high availability distributed + file systems they develop. The CAP Theorem outlined the fundamental + limitations of a distributed system. When designing a distributed system, + one has to constantly be aware of the trade-off between consistency + and availability. Most distributed systems are designed with consistency + in mind. However, AeroFS has decided to build a high-availability file + system instead. In this tech talk, I'll be presenting an overview of + AeroFS file system, advantages and challenges of a high-availability + file system, and examine the inner workings of AeroFS's core syncing + algorithm. +
++ Our speaker, Avery Pennarun, will share some not-very-secret secrets from + the team creating GFiber's open source router firmware, including some + discussion of wifi, marketing truthiness, the laws of physics, something + about coaxial cables, embedded ARM processors, queuing theory, signal + processing, hardware design, and kernel driver optimization. If you're + lucky, he may also rant about poor garbage collector implementations. + Also, there will be at least one slide containing one of those swooshy + circle-and-arrow lifecycle diagrams, we promise. +
+
@@ -571,9 +609,9 @@
- Raymond Laflamme is the director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the
- University of Waterloo and holds the Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information.
- He will give a brief introduction to quantum computing and why it matters, followed
+ Raymond Laflamme is the director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the
+ University of Waterloo and holds the Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information.
+ He will give a brief introduction to quantum computing and why it matters, followed
by a talk on programming quantum computers. This is followed by tours of IQC Labs.
@@ -788,10 +826,10 @@ Freedom Network.
-Globally, issues about information privacy in the marketplace have emerged in tandem with the dramatic and escalating increase in information stored
-in electronic formats. Data mining, for example, can be extremely valuable for businesses, but in the absence of adequate safeguards, it can
-jeopradize informational privacy. Dr. Ann Cavoukian talks about how to use technology to enhance privacy. Some of the technologies discussed
-included instant messaging, RFID tags and Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC). Then Dr. Cavoukian explained the “7 Privacy – Embedded Laws” followed
+Globally, issues about information privacy in the marketplace have emerged in tandem with the dramatic and escalating increase in information stored
+in electronic formats. Data mining, for example, can be extremely valuable for businesses, but in the absence of adequate safeguards, it can
+jeopradize informational privacy. Dr. Ann Cavoukian talks about how to use technology to enhance privacy. Some of the technologies discussed
+included instant messaging, RFID tags and Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC). Then Dr. Cavoukian explained the “7 Privacy – Embedded Laws” followed
by a discussion on a biometrics solution to encryption.
-Dr. Ann Cavoukian, as the Information and Privacy Commissioner, oversees the operations of Ontario's freedom of information and protection of
-privacy laws, which apply to both provincial and municipal government organizations. She serves as an officer of the legislature, independent of the
-government of the day. Ann joined the Information and Privacy Commission in 1987 as its first Director of Compliance and was appointed Assistant
-Commissioner in 1990, responsible for the protection of privacy and compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Acts. Prior
-to her work at the Commission, Ann headed the Research Services Branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General. Ann received her M.A. and Ph.D. in
-Psychology from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in criminology and lectured on psychology and the criminal justice system. Ann
-speaks extensively on the importance of privacy around the world. Her published works include a recent book on privacy called "Who Knows:
+Dr. Ann Cavoukian, as the Information and Privacy Commissioner, oversees the operations of Ontario's freedom of information and protection of
+privacy laws, which apply to both provincial and municipal government organizations. She serves as an officer of the legislature, independent of the
+government of the day. Ann joined the Information and Privacy Commission in 1987 as its first Director of Compliance and was appointed Assistant
+Commissioner in 1990, responsible for the protection of privacy and compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Acts. Prior
+to her work at the Commission, Ann headed the Research Services Branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General. Ann received her M.A. and Ph.D. in
+Psychology from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in criminology and lectured on psychology and the criminal justice system. Ann
+speaks extensively on the importance of privacy around the world. Her published works include a recent book on privacy called "Who Knows:
Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World."
- Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed
- to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by the printing
- press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks,
+ Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed
+ to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by the printing
+ press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks,
and only draconian punishments can enforce it.
The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for
@@ -902,14 +940,14 @@ Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World."
- What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user? How many monitors
- do they have? What size images do they work on? How many layers are in
- their images? The answers to these questions are generally unknown: no
- means currently exist for open source applications to collect usage data.
- In this talk, Professor Michael Terry will present ingimp, a version of
- GIMP that has been instrumented to automatically collect usage data from
- real-world users. Prof. Terry will discuss ingimp's design, the type of
- data we collect, how we make the data available on the web, and initial
+ What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user? How many monitors
+ do they have? What size images do they work on? How many layers are in
+ their images? The answers to these questions are generally unknown: no
+ means currently exist for open source applications to collect usage data.
+ In this talk, Professor Michael Terry will present ingimp, a version of
+ GIMP that has been instrumented to automatically collect usage data from
+ real-world users. Prof. Terry will discuss ingimp's design, the type of
+ data we collect, how we make the data available on the web, and initial
results that begin to answer the motivating questions. ingimp can be found
at http://www.ingimp.org.
@@ -926,7 +964,7 @@ Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World."
- Ralph Stanton reflects on the founding of the University of
+ Ralph Stanton reflects on the founding of the University of
Waterloo Math Faculty.
- Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free
- Software Movement, and the status and history the GNU Operating System,
- which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions
+ Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free
+ Software Movement, and the status and history the GNU Operating System,
+ which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions
of users world-wide.
- Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system in
- 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and
- redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The
- GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is
+ Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system in
+ 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and
+ redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The
+ GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is
used on tens of millions of computers today.
- "The reason I care especially, is that there is a philosophy associated
- with the GNU project, and this philosophy is actually the reason why there
- is a system -- and that is that free software is not just convenient and
- not just reliable.... More important than convenience and reliability is
- freedom -- the freedom to cooperate. What I'm concerned about is not
- individual people or companies so much as the kind of way of life that we
- have. That's why I think it's a distraction to think about fighting
+ "The reason I care especially, is that there is a philosophy associated
+ with the GNU project, and this philosophy is actually the reason why there
+ is a system -- and that is that free software is not just convenient and
+ not just reliable.... More important than convenience and reliability is
+ freedom -- the freedom to cooperate. What I'm concerned about is not
+ individual people or companies so much as the kind of way of life that we
+ have. That's why I think it's a distraction to think about fighting
Microsoft."
Biography:
- Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation
- fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award, and the
- Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary
+ Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation
+ fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award, and the
+ Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary
doctorates.
- The Question and Answer session (starting shortly after the hour and half
- mark) posed a number of interesting questions including, "Do you support
- the Creative Commons license?" and "Can I use ATI and NVIDIA drivers
+ The Question and Answer session (starting shortly after the hour and half
+ mark) posed a number of interesting questions including, "Do you support
+ the Creative Commons license?" and "Can I use ATI and NVIDIA drivers
because Mesa isn't nearly as complete?".
- A talk for those interested in 3-dimensional graphics but unsure of where
- to start. Covers the basic math and theory behind projecting 3-dimensional
- polygons on screen, as well as simple cropping techniques to improve
+ A talk for those interested in 3-dimensional graphics but unsure of where
+ to start. Covers the basic math and theory behind projecting 3-dimensional
+ polygons on screen, as well as simple cropping techniques to improve
efficiency. Translation and rotation of polygons will also be discussed.
- A discussion of software start-ups founded by UW students and what they
- did that helped them grow and what failed to help. In order to share the
- most insights and guard the confidences of the individuals involved, none
+ A discussion of software start-ups founded by UW students and what they
+ did that helped them grow and what failed to help. In order to share the
+ most insights and guard the confidences of the individuals involved, none
of the companies will be identified.
- For decades, mainstream parallel processing has been thought of as
- inevitable. Up until recent years, however, improvements in manufacturing
- processes and increases in clock speed have provided software with free
+ For decades, mainstream parallel processing has been thought of as
+ inevitable. Up until recent years, however, improvements in manufacturing
+ processes and increases in clock speed have provided software with free
Moore's Law-scale performance improvements on traditional single-core
- CPUs. As per-core CPU speed increases have slowed to a halt, processor
- vendors are embracing parallelism by multiplying the number of cores on
+ CPUs. As per-core CPU speed increases have slowed to a halt, processor
+ vendors are embracing parallelism by multiplying the number of cores on
CPUs, following what Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) vendors have been
doing for years. The Multi-core revolution promises to provide
- unparallelled increases in performance, but it comes with a catch:
- traditional serial programming methods are not at all suited to
- programming these processors and methods such as multi-threading are
- cumbersome and rarely scale beyond a few cores. Learn how, with hundreds
- of cores in desktop computers on the horizon, a local software company is
- looking to revolutionize the way software is written to deliver on the
+ unparallelled increases in performance, but it comes with a catch:
+ traditional serial programming methods are not at all suited to
+ programming these processors and methods such as multi-threading are
+ cumbersome and rarely scale beyond a few cores. Learn how, with hundreds
+ of cores in desktop computers on the horizon, a local software company is
+ looking to revolutionize the way software is written to deliver on the
promise multi-core holds.
- The ReactOS operating system has been in development for over eight years
- and aims to provide users with a fully functional and Windows-compatible
- distribution under the GPL license. ReactOS comes with its own Windows
- 2003-based kernel and system utilities and applications, resulting in an
+ The ReactOS operating system has been in development for over eight years
+ and aims to provide users with a fully functional and Windows-compatible
+ distribution under the GPL license. ReactOS comes with its own Windows
+ 2003-based kernel and system utilities and applications, resulting in an
environment identical to Windows, both visually and internally.
- More than just an alternative to Windows, ReactOS is a powerful platform
- for academia, allowing students to learn a variety of skills useful to
- software testing, development and management, as well as providing a rich
- and clean implementation of Windows NT, with a kernel compatible to
+ More than just an alternative to Windows, ReactOS is a powerful platform
+ for academia, allowing students to learn a variety of skills useful to
+ software testing, development and management, as well as providing a rich
+ and clean implementation of Windows NT, with a kernel compatible to
published internals book on the subject.
- This talk will introduce the ReactOS project, as well as the various
- software engineering challenges behind it. The building platform and
- development philosophies and utilities will be shown, and attendees will
- grasp the vast amount of effort and organization that needs to go into
- building an operating system or any other similarly large project. The
- speaker will gladly answer questions related to his background, experience
- and interests and information on joining the project, as well as any other
+ This talk will introduce the ReactOS project, as well as the various
+ software engineering challenges behind it. The building platform and
+ development philosophies and utilities will be shown, and attendees will
+ grasp the vast amount of effort and organization that needs to go into
+ building an operating system or any other similarly large project. The
+ speaker will gladly answer questions related to his background, experience
+ and interests and information on joining the project, as well as any other
related information.
- Slides from the talk are available
+ Slides from the talk are available
here.
Biography
- Alex Ionescu is currently studying in Software Engineering at Concordia
- University in Montreal, Quebec and is a Microsoft Technical Student
- Ambassador. He is the lead kernel developer of the ReactOS Project and
- project leader of TinyKRNL. He regularly speaks at Linux and Open Source
- conferences around the world and will be a lecturer at the 8th
- International Free Software Forum in Brazil this April, as well as
- providing hands-on workshops and lectures on Windows NT internals and
+ Alex Ionescu is currently studying in Software Engineering at Concordia
+ University in Montreal, Quebec and is a Microsoft Technical Student
+ Ambassador. He is the lead kernel developer of the ReactOS Project and
+ project leader of TinyKRNL. He regularly speaks at Linux and Open Source
+ conferences around the world and will be a lecturer at the 8th
+ International Free Software Forum in Brazil this April, as well as
+ providing hands-on workshops and lectures on Windows NT internals and
security to various companies.
- Bill Gates discusses the software and computer industry, and how Microsoft
- has contributed. Gates also discusses his views on the future of the
+ Bill Gates discusses the software and computer industry, and how Microsoft
+ has contributed. Gates also discusses his views on the future of the
computing industry. The talk was recorded in 1989 but was only recently
digitized.
@@ -1134,8 +1172,8 @@ Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World."
Do spam filters work? Which is the best one? How might filters be
improved? Without standards, one must depend on unreliable evidence,
- such as subjective impressions, testimonials, incomparable and
- unrepeatable measurements, and vendor claims for the answers to these
+ such as subjective impressions, testimonials, incomparable and
+ unrepeatable measurements, and vendor claims for the answers to these
questions.
You might think that your spam filter works well and couldn't be
@@ -1146,7 +1184,7 @@ Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World."
what I meant? Would you be able to translate that 99-percent into
the risk of losing an important message?
- Gord Cormack talks about the science, logistics, and politics of Spam
+ Gord Cormack talks about the science, logistics, and politics of Spam
Filter Evaluation.
- Simon Law leads the Quality teams for Ubuntu, a free-software operating
- system built on Debian GNU/Linux. As such, he leads one of the largest
- community-based testing efforts for a software product. This does get a
+ Simon Law leads the Quality teams for Ubuntu, a free-software operating
+ system built on Debian GNU/Linux. As such, he leads one of the largest
+ community-based testing efforts for a software product. This does get a
bit busy sometimes.
- In this talk, we'll be exploring how the Internet is changing how software
- is developed. Concepts like open source and technologies like message
- forums are blurring the lines between producer and consumer. And this
- melting pot of people is causing people to take note, and changing the way
+ In this talk, we'll be exploring how the Internet is changing how software
+ is developed. Concepts like open source and technologies like message
+ forums are blurring the lines between producer and consumer. And this
+ melting pot of people is causing people to take note, and changing the way
they sling code.
- The Computer Science Club would like to thank the CS-Commons Committee for
+ The Computer Science Club would like to thank the CS-Commons Committee for
co-sponsoring this talk.
- Could you write a good image recognizer for a 100 MHz mobile phone
- processor with 1 MB heap, 320x240 image, on a poorly-optimized Java stack?
- It needs to locate and read two-dimensional barcodes made up of square
- modules which might be no more than a few pixels in size. We had to do
- that in order to establish Semacode, a local start up company that makes a
- software barcode reader for cell phones. The applications vary from
- ubiquitous computing to advertising. Simon Woodside (founder) will discuss
+ Could you write a good image recognizer for a 100 MHz mobile phone
+ processor with 1 MB heap, 320x240 image, on a poorly-optimized Java stack?
+ It needs to locate and read two-dimensional barcodes made up of square
+ modules which might be no more than a few pixels in size. We had to do
+ that in order to establish Semacode, a local start up company that makes a
+ software barcode reader for cell phones. The applications vary from
+ ubiquitous computing to advertising. Simon Woodside (founder) will discuss
what it's like to start a business and how the imaging code works.
- Eric LaForest delivers a crash-course on modern stack computing, the Forth
- programming language, and some projects of his own. Stack systems have
- faster procedure calls and reduced complexity (shorter pipeline, simpler
- compilation) relative to their conventional counterparts, as well as more
- consistent performance, which is very important for real-time systems.
- Many consider stack-based architecture's crowning feature, however, to be
+ Eric LaForest delivers a crash-course on modern stack computing, the Forth
+ programming language, and some projects of his own. Stack systems have
+ faster procedure calls and reduced complexity (shorter pipeline, simpler
+ compilation) relative to their conventional counterparts, as well as more
+ consistent performance, which is very important for real-time systems.
+ Many consider stack-based architecture's crowning feature, however, to be
the unrivalled price-to-performance ratio.
- Note: the slides are hard to make out in the video, so make sure to
+ Note: the slides are hard to make out in the video, so make sure to
download the slides as well.
- A discussion of how software creators can identify application
- opportunities that offer the promise of great social and commercial
- significance. Particular attention will be paid to the challenge of
+ A discussion of how software creators can identify application
+ opportunities that offer the promise of great social and commercial
+ significance. Particular attention will be paid to the challenge of
acquiring cross domain knowledge and setting up effective collaboration.
- Rico Mariani, (BMath CS/EEE 1988) now an (almost) 18 year Microsoft
- veteran but then a CSC president comes to talk to us about the evolution
- of software tools for microcomputers. This talk promises to be a little
- bit about history and perspective (at least from the Microsoft side
- of things) as well as the evolution of software engineers, different types
- of programmers and their needs, and what it's like to try to make the
+ Rico Mariani, (BMath CS/EEE 1988) now an (almost) 18 year Microsoft
+ veteran but then a CSC president comes to talk to us about the evolution
+ of software tools for microcomputers. This talk promises to be a little
+ bit about history and perspective (at least from the Microsoft side
+ of things) as well as the evolution of software engineers, different types
+ of programmers and their needs, and what it's like to try to make the
software industry more effective at what it does, and sometimes succeed!
- Particularly illuminating are his responses to advocates of
+ Particularly illuminating are his responses to advocates of
free/open-source software.
Bio