This talk is run by the School of Computer Science
How should virtual property created in games, such as weapons used in games like Mir 3 and real estate or clothing created or acquired in games like Second Life, be treated in law. Although the videogaming industry continues to multiply in value, virtual property created in virtual worlds has not been formally recognized by any North American court or legislature. A bridge has been taking shape from gaming's virtual economies to real world economies, for example, through unauthorized copying of designer clothes sold on Second Life for in-game cash, or real court damages awarded against deletion of player-earned swords in Mir 3. The trading of virtual property is important to a large number of people and property rights in virtual property are currently being recognized by some foreign legal bodies.
Susan Abramovitch will explain the legal considerations in determining how virtual property can or should be governed, and ways it can be legally similar to tangible property. Virtual property can carry both physical and intellectual property rights. Typically video game developers retain these rights via online agreements, but Ms. Abramovitch questions whether these rights are ultimately enforceable and will describe policy issues that may impact law makers in deciding how to treat virtual property under such agreements.
A lecture on why functional languages are important, practical applications, and some neat examples. Starting with an introduction to basic functional programming with ML syntax, continuing with the strengths of OCaml and F#, followed by some exciting examples. Examples include GUI programming with F#, Web Crawlers with F#, and OpenGL/GTK programming with OCaml. This lecture aims to display how powerful functional languages can be.
A lecture on the fundamentals of Pi-Calculus followed by an introduction to Join-Calculus in JoCaml with some great examples. Various concurrent control structures are explored, as well as the current limitations of JoCaml. The examples section will mostly be concurrent programming, however some basic distributed examples will be explored. This lecture focuses on how easy concurrent programming can be.
Instant messaging (IM) is an increasingly popular mode of communication on the Internet. Although it is used for personal and private conversations, it is not at all a private medium. Not only are all of the messages unencrypted and unauthenticated, but they are all routedthrough a central server, forming a convenient interception point for an attacker. Users would benefit from being able to have truly private conversations over IM, combining the features of encryption, authentication, deniability, and forward secrecy, while working within their existing IM infrastructure.
In this talk, I will discuss "Off-the-Record Messaging" (OTR), a widely used software tool for secure and private instant messaging. I will outline the properties of Useful Security and Privacy Technologies that motivated OTR's design, compare it to other IM security mechanisms, and talk about its ongoing development directions.
Ian Goldberg is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, where he is a founding member of the Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) research group. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he discovered serious weaknesses in a number of widely deployed security systems, including those used by cellular phones and wireless networks. He also studied systems for protecting the personal privacy of Internet users, which led to his role as Chief Scientist at Zero-Knowledge Systems (now known as Radialpoint), where he commercialized his research as the Freedom Network.
A quick introduction on the current state of distributed programming and various grid computing projects. Followed by some history and features of the Erlang language and finishing with distributed examples including operating on a cluster.
A brief overview of the CSC Computing Enviroment, including how to survive slashdot and dealing with IST.
A good programming language is far more than a simple collection of features. My ideal is to provide a set of facilities that smoothly work together to support design and programming styles of a generality beyond my imagination. Here, I briefly outline rules of thumb (guidelines, principles) that are being applied in the design of C++0x. Then, I present the state of the standards process (we are aiming for C++09) and give examples of a few of the proposals such as concepts, generalized initialization, being considered in the ISO C++ standards committee. Since there are far more proposals than could be presented in an hour, I'll take questions.
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 draconian punishments, and to increase their copyright powers, while suppressing public access to technology. But if we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright--to promote progress, for the benefit of the public--then we must make changes in the other direction.
The CSC would like to thank MEF and Mathsoc for funding this talk.
The Freedom Software Foundation's description
FSF's anti-DRM campaign
Why you shouldn't use Microsoft Vista
The GNU's Not Unix Project
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, I will present ingimp, a version of GIMP that has been instrumented to automatically collect usage data from real-world users. I 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.
E-mail transactions and confirmations have become commonplace and the information therein can often be sensitive. We use email for purposes as mundane as inbound marketing, to as sensitive as account passwords and financial transactions. And nearly all our email is sent in clear text; we trust only that others will not eavesdrop or modify our messages. But why rely on the goodness or apathy of your fellow man when you can ensure your message's confidentiality with encryption so strong not even the NSA can break? Speaker (Kenneth Ho) will discuss email encryption, and GNU Privacy Guard to ensure that your messages are sent, knowing that only your intended recipient can receive it.
An optional code-signing party will be held immediately afterwards; if you already have a PGP or GPG key and wish to participate, please submit the public key to gpg-keys@csclub.uwaterloo.ca.
Laptop users are invited also to participate in key-pair sharing on-site, though it is preferable to send keys ahead of time.
The purpose of the talk is to address how students interact with the internet, and possibilities for how they could do so more efficiently. Information on events and happenings on UW campus is currently hosted on a desperate, series of internet applications. Interactions with WatSFIC is done over a Yahoo! mailing list, GLOW is organized through a Facebook group, campus information at large comes from imprint.uwaterloo.ca. There has been historical pressures from various bodies, including some thinkers in feds and the administration, to centralize these issues. To create a one stop shop for students on campus.
It is not through confining data in cages that we will finally link all student activities together, instead it is by truly freeing it. When data can be anywhere, then it will be everywhere students need it. This is the underlying concept behind metadata, data that is freed from the confines of it's technical imprisonment. Metadata is the extension of people, organizations, and activities onto the internet in a way that is above the traditional understanding of how people interact with their networks. The talk will explore how Metadata can exist freely on the internet, how this affects concepts like Web 3.0, and how the university and the federation are poised to take advantage of this burgeoning new technology through adoptions of portals which will allow students to interact with a metaverse of data.
Richard Stallman has cancelled his trip to Canada.
Abstract coming soon!
While reading Slashdot, Bill came across the recently digitized audio recording of his 1989 talk at the Computer Science Club. As Bill has always had a soft-spot for the Computer Science Club, he has decided to pay us a surprise visit.
Bill promises to give away free copies of Windows Vista Ultimate, because frankly, nobody here (except j2simpso) wants to pay for a frisbee. Be sure to bring your resumes kids, because Bill will be recruiting for some exciting new positions at Microsoft, including Mindless Drone, Junior Code Monkey, and Assistant Human Cannonball.
Coming Soon!
Source code search engines are a relatively new phenomenon . The general idea of most source code search engines is helping programmers find pre-existing code. So if you were writing some code and you wanted to find a csv library, for example, you could search for csv. All The Code is a next generation source code search engine. Unlike earlier generations of source code search engines, it considers how code is used to help determine relevance of code.
The talk will primarily be a demo of All The Code, along with a brief discussion of some of the technology behind it.
I am going to take an intuitive, CS-style approach to a discussion about the use of kernels in modern data analysis. This approach often lends us efficient ways to consider a dataset under various choices of inner product, which is roughly comparable to a measure of "similarity". Many new tools in AI arise from kernel methods, such as the infamous Support Vector Machines for classification, and kernel-PCA for nonlinear dimensionality reduction. I will attempt to highlight, and provide visualization for some of the math involved in these methods while keeping the material at an accessible, undergraduate level.
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 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 related information.
Speaker Bio
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.
This talk will introduce the Haskell programming language and and walk through building a recognizer for regular languages. The talk will include a quick overview of regular expressions, an introduction to Haskell and finally a line by line analysis of a regular language recognizer.
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 common misconception amongst software developers is that top quality software encompasses certain platforms, is driven by a particular new piece of technology, or relies solely on a particular programming language. However as developers we tend to miss the less hyped issues and techniques involved in writing world class software. These techniques are universal to all programming languages, platforms and deployed technologies but are often times viewed as being so obvious that they are ignored by the typical developer. The topics covered in this lecture will include:
- Writing bug-free to extremely low bug count software in real-time
- The concept of single-source, universal platform software
- Programming language interoperability
... and other less hyped yet vitally important concepts to writing
World Class Software
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 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, following what Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) vendors have been doing for years. The Multi- core revolution promises to provide unparalleled 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.
Refreshments (and possible pizza!) will be provided.
IST monitors the campus network for vulnerabilities and scans systems for security problems. This informal presentation will look behind the scenes to show the strategies and technologies used and to show the problem magnitude. We will review the IST Security web site with an emphasis on these pages
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/security/vulnerable/
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/security/security-wg/reports/20061101.html
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/security/position/20050524/
Summer: the sparrows whistle through the teapot-steam breeze. The ubiquitous construction team tears the same pavement up for the third time, hammering passers-by with dust and noise: our shirts, worn for the third time, noisome from competing heat and shame. As Nature continues her Keynesian rotation of policy, and as society decrees yet another parting of ways, it is proper for the common victims to have an evening to themselves, looking both back and ahead, imagining new opportunities, and recognising those long since missed. God fucking damn it.
This term's CTRL-D end-of-term dinner is taking place tomorrow (Saturday) at 7:00 P.M. at East Side Mario's, in the plaza. Meet in the C.S.C. fifteen minutes beforehand, so they don't take away our seats or anything nasty like that.
A lot of people wanted to go to the Mongolian Grill, but I'm pretty sure this place has a similar price-to-tasty ratio; what's more, they'll actually grant us a reservation more than four nights a week. I've confirmed that the crazy allergenic peanuts no longer exist (sad), and they have a good vegetarian selection, which is likely coincides with their kosher and halal menus.
Come out for the tasty and the awesome! If you pretend it's your birthday, everyone's a loser! Tell your friends, because I told the telephone I wanted to reserve for 10 to 12 people, and I don't wish to sully Calum T. Dalek's good name!
Does being in CS make you feel like a lemming? Is linear algebra driving you into walls? Do you pace back and forth, constantly, regardless of whatever's in your path? Then you should come out to CSC Lemmings Day. This time, we're playing the pseudo-sequel: Oh No! More Lemmings!
The Computer Science Club is once again stepping forward to fulfill its ancient duty to the people-this time by installing one of the many fine distributions of Linux for you.
Ubuntu? Debian? Gentoo? Fedora? We might not have them all, but we seem to have an awful lot! Bring your boxen down to the D.C. Fishbowl for the awesome!
Install Linux on your machine-install fear in your opponents!
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 they sling code.
Co-Sponsored with CS-Commons Committee
March of the Penguins , an epic nature documentary, as dictated by some guy with a funny voice is being shown by the Computer Science club because penguins are cute and were bored [that and the whole Linux awareness week that forgot to tell people about].
Albert O'Connor, a UW grad, will be giving a ~30 minute talk on introducing the joys of programming python. Python is an open source object-oriented programming language which is most awesome.
In an embedded environment resources are fairly limited, especially. Typically an embedded system has strict time constraints in which it must respond to hardware driven interrupts and do some processing of its own. A full fledged OS would consume most of the available resources, hence crazy hacks must be used to get the benefits without paying the high costs. This talk will look at the common hack used to simulate multi-processing in a real time embedded environment.
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.
The Computer Science Club (CSClub) has "new" DEC Alphas which are most awesome. Come out, help take them part, put them back together, solder, and eat free food (probably pizza).
The venue will include:
Computer usage agreement discussion (Holden has some changes he'd like to propose)
Web site - Juti is redesigning the web site (you can see a beta here - ideas are welcome.
Frosh Linux cd's that could be put in frosh math faculty kits.
VoIP "not phone services" ideas.
Ideas for talks (people, topics, etc...). We requested Steve Jobs and Steve Balmer, so no idea is too crazy.
Ideas for books.
General improvements/comments for the club.
If you have ideas, but can't attend, please email them to president@csclub.uwaterloo.ca and they will be read them at the meeting.
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!
A video of the talk is available for download in our media section.
Have you heard of our famous Unix 101 and Unix 102 tutorials. We've decided to try and put them on the web. This Sunday we will be doing a first take. At the same time, we're going to be looking at adding new material that we haven't covered in the past.
Why should you come out? Not only will you get to hang out with a wonderful group of people, you can help impart your knowledge to the world. Don't know anything about Unix? That's cool too, we need people to make sure its easy to follow along and hopefully keep us from leaving something out by mistake.
We don't know Video 4 Linux, but increasingly people are wanting to do interesting stuff with our webcam which could benefit from a better understanding of Video 4 Linux. So, this Saturday a number of us will be trying to learn as much as possible about Video 4 Linux and doing weird things with webcam(s).
The Computer Science Club will be holding its elections for the Spring 2006 term on Monday, May 8th. The elections will be held at 4:30 PM in the Comfy Lounge, on the 3rd floor of the MC. Please remember to come out and vote!
We are accepting nominations for the following positions: President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary. The nomination period continues until 4:30 PM on Sunday, May 7th. If you are interested in running for a position, or would like to nominate someone else, please email cro@csclub.uwaterloo.ca before the deadline.
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.
Come out and meet your professors! This is a great opportunity to mingle with your professors before midterms or find out who you might have for future courses. All are welcome!
Best of all, there will be free food!
You can pick up invitations for your professors at the Computer Science Club office in MC 3036.
Pints with Profs will be held this term on Thursday, 9 February 2006 from 5:30 to 8:00 PM in the Bombshelter.
The Computer Science club is holding a programming contest open to all students on Tuesday the 29th of November at 5:30PM. C++,C,Perl,Scheme* are allowed. Prizes totalling in value of $75 will be distributed.
And best of all... free food!!!
Come out and meet your professors!! This is a great opportunity to meet professors for Undergraduate Research jobs or to find out who you might have for future courses. One and all are welcome!
And best of all... free food!!!
This is the third in a series of seminars that cover the use of the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's UNIX environment in this tutorial.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
This is the second in a series of seminars that cover the use of the Unix Operating System. Unix is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's Unix environment in this tutorial.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
The CSC UNIX tutorials are intended to help first year CS and other interested learn UNIX and the CS UNIX environment.
This is the first in a series of two or three tutorials. It will cover basic shell use, and simple text editors.
Server-side Web applications have grown increasingly common, sometimes even replacing brick and mortar as the principal interface of corporations. Correspondingly, Web browsers grow ever more powerful, empowering users to attach bookmarks, switch between pages, clone windows, and so forth. As a result, Web interactions are not straight-line dialogs but complex nets of interaction steps.
In practice, programmers are unaware of or are unable to handle these nets of interaction, making the Web interfaces of even major organizations buggy and thus unreliable. Even when programmers do address these constraints, the resulting programs have a seemingly mangled structure, making them difficult to develop and hard to maintain.
In this talk, I will describe these interactions and then show how programming language ideas can shed light on the resulting problems and present solutions at various levels. I will also describe some challenges these programs pose to computer-aided verification, and present solutions to these problems.
I'll survey the evolution of our computer science curriculum over the past thirty-five years to try to convey the reasons (not always entirely rational) behind our current mix of courses and their division into core and optional. After some remarks about constraints and opportunities in the near future, I'll open the floor to discussion, and hope to hear some candid comments about the state of CS at UW and how it might be improved.
About the speaker:
Prabhakar Ragde is a Professor in the School of Computer Science at UW. He was Associate Chair for Curricula during the period that saw the creation of the Bioinformatics and Software Engineering programs, the creation of the BCS degree, and the strengthening of the BMath/CS degree.
Does being in CS make you feel like a lemming? Is linear algebra driving you into walls? Do you pace back and forth, constantly, regardless of whatever's in your path? Then you should come out to CSC Lemmings Day. This time, we're playing the pseudo-sequel: Oh No! More Lemmings!
This is the second in a series of seminars that cover the use of the Unix Operating System. Unix is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's Unix environment in this tutorial.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
The CSC UNIX tutorials are intended to help first year CS and other interested learn UNIX and the CS UNIX environment.
This is the first in a series of two or three tutorials. It will cover basic shell use, and simple text editors.
The Computer Science Club will be holding its elections for the Winter 2005 term on Thursday, January 13. The elections will be held at 4:30 PM in the Comfy Lounge, on the 3rd floor of the MC. Please remember to come out and vote!
We are accepting nominations for the following positions: President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary. The nomination period continues until 4:30 PM on Wednesday, January 12. If you are interested in running for a position, or would like to nominate someone else, please email cro@csclub.uwaterloo.ca before the deadline.
Come to the end of term CTRL-D (club that really likes dinner) meeting. Remember : food is good
In this talk, I'll study linkages (objects built from sticks that are connected with flexible joints), and explain some interesting examples that can or cannot be straightened out
How I stopped worrying and Learned to Love the IDE
Audience: anyone who as ever used the Java programming language to do anything. Especially if you don't like the IDEs you've seen so far or still use (g)Vi(m) or (X)Emacs.
I'll go through some of the coolest features of the best IDE (which stands for "IDEs Don't Eat" or "Integrated Development Environment") I've seen. For the first year and seasoned almost-grad alike!
GracefulTavi is an open source wiki programmed by Net Integration Technologies Inc. It is used internally by more than 25 people, and is the primary internal wiki for NITI's R&D and QA.
I'll start with a very brief introduction to wikis in general, then show off our special features: super-condensed formatting syntax, hierarchy management, version control, highlighted diffs, SchedUlator, the Table of Contents generator. As part of this, we'll explain the simple plugin architecture and show people how to write a basic wiki plugin.
As well, I will show some of the "waterloo specific" macros that have been coded, and explain future plans for GracefulTavi.
If time permits, I will explain how gracefulTavi can be easily used for a personal calendar and notepad system on your laptop.
Does being in CS make you feel like a lemming? Is linear algebra driving you into walls? Do you pace back and forth , constantly , regardless of whatever's in your path? Then you should come out to CSC Lemmings Day!
Everyone else is doing it!
The Computer Science Club will be hosting a programming competition. You have the entire afternoon to design and implement an AI for a simple game. The competition will run until 5pm.
This is the third in a series of seminars that cover the use of the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's UNIX environment in this tutorial.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
This is the second in a series of seminars that cover the use of the Unix Operating System. Unix is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's Unix environment in this tutorial.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
The CSC UNIX tutorials are intended to help first year CS and other interested learn UNIX and the CS UNIX environment.
This is the first in a series of three tutorials. It will cover basic shell use, and simple text editors.
The Computer Science Club will be holding its elections for the Fall 2004 term on Friday, September 17. The elections will be held at 4:00 PM in the Comfy Lounge, on the 3rd floor of the MC. Please remember to come out and vote!
We are accepting nominations for the following positions: President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary. The nomination period continues until 4:30 PM on Thursday, September 16. If you are interested in running for a position, or would like to nominate someone else, please email cro@csclub.uwaterloo.ca before the deadline.
Why are some games hard to play well? The study of computational complexity gives one answer: the games encode long computations.
Any computation can be interpreted as an abstract game. Playing the game perfectly requires performing the computation. Remarkably, some natural games can encode these abstract games and thus simulate general computations. The more complex the game, the more complex the computations it can encode; games that can encode intractable problems are themselves intractable.
I will describe how games can encode computations, and discuss some examples of both provably hard games (checkers, chess, go, etc.) and games that are believed to be hard (hex, jigsaw puzzles, etc.).
Are you bored of beige?
Tired of an overheating computer?
Is your computer's noise level on par with a jet engine?
Got a nifty modded case?
Want one?
The Computer Science Club will be holding a Case Modding Workshop to help answer these questions.
There will be demonstrations on how to make a case window, how to paint your case, managing cables and keeping your computer quiet and cool.
The event is FREE and there will be FREE PIZZA. All are welcome!
To help you on your way to getting a wicked computer case, we have a limited number of "Case Modding Starters Kits" available. They come with an LED fan, a fan grill, a sheet of Plexan, thumbscrews, wire ties, and more! They're only $10 and will be on sale at the event. Here's a picture.
If you already have a modded case, we encourage you to bring it out and show it off! There will be a prize for the best case!!
We hope to see you there!
This event is sponsored by Bigfoot Computers.
When an observer moves through a 3D scene, nearby surfaces move faster in the image than do distant surfaces. This effect, called motion parallax, provides an observer with information both about their own motion relative the scene, and about the spatial layout and depth of surfaces in the scene.
Classical methods for measuring image motion by computer have concentrated on the cases of optical flow in which the motion field is continuous, or layered motion in which the motion field is piecewise continuous. Here we introduce a third natural category which we call ``optical snow''. Optical snow arises in many natural situations such as camera motion in a highly cluttered 3-D scene, or a passive observer watching a snowfall. Optical snow yields dense motion parallax with depth discontinuities occurring near all image points. As such, constraints on smoothness or even smoothness in layers do not apply.
We present a Fourier analysis of optical snow. In particular we show that, while such scenes appear complex in the time domain, there is a simple structure in the frequency domain, and this may be used to determine the direction of motion and the range of depths of objects in the scenes. Finally we show how Fourier analysis of two or more image regions may be combined to estimate heading direction.
This talk will present current research at the undergraduate level. All are welcome to attend.
Larry will challenge conventional assumptions about the directions of computing and software. The role of AI, expert systems, communications software and business applications will be presented both from a functional and commercial point of view. The great gaps in the marketplace will be highlighted, together with an indication of how these vacant fields will become home to new empires.
The Computer Science Club will be holding its elections for the Spring 2004 term on Wednesday, May 12. The elections will be held at 4:30 PM in the Comfy Lounge, on the 3rd floor of the MC. Please remember to come out and vote!
We are accepting nominations for the following positions: President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary. The nomination period continues until 4:30 PM on Tuesday, May 11. If you are interested in running for a position, or would like to nominate someone else, please email cro@csclub.uwaterloo.ca before the deadline.
The work report is a familiar chore for any co-op student. Not only is there a report to write, but to add insult to injury, your report is returned if you do not follow your departmental guidelines.
Fear no more! In this talk, you will learn how to use LaTeX and a specially developed class to automatically format your work reports. This talk is especially useful to Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Software Engineeering co-op students about to go on work term.
Come out and meet your professors!! This is a great opportunity to meet professors for Undergraduate Research jobs or to find out who you might have for future courses. One and all are welcome!
And best of all... free food!!!
LaTeX is a document processing system. What this means is you describe the structure of your document, and LaTeX typesets it appealingly. However, LaTeX was developed in the late-80s and is now showing its age.
How does it compete against modern systems? By being easily extensible, of course. This talk will describe the fundamentals of typesetting in LaTeX, and will then show you how to extend it with freely available packages. You will learn how to teach yourself LaTeX and how to find extensions that do what you want.
As well, there will be a short introduction on creating your own packages, for your own personal use.
If you've ever worked with other group members, you know how difficult it is to code simultaneously. You might be working on one part of your assignment, and you need to send your source code to everyone else. Or you might be fixing a bug in someone else's part, and need to merge in the change. What a mess!
This talk will explain some Best Practices for developing code in a distributed fashion. Whether you're working side-by-side in the lab, or developing from home, these methods can apply to your team. You will learn how to apply these techniques in the Unix environment using GNU Make, CVS, GNU diff and patch.
Making a compiler? Bored? Think CISC sucks and RISC rules?
This talk will run through the SPARC v8, IEEE-P1754, architecture. Including all the fun that can be had with register windows and the SPARC instruction set including the basic instructions, floating point instructions, and vector instructions.
If you have used Unix for a while, you know that you've created configuration files, or dotfiles. Each program seems to want its own particular settings, and you want to customize your environment. In a power-user's directory, you could have hundreds of these files.
Isn't it annoying to migrate your configuration if you login to another machine? What if you build a new computer? Or perhaps you made a mistake to one of your configuration files, and want to undo it?
In this talk, I will show you how to manage your home directory using CVS, the Concurrent Versions System. You can manage your files, revert to old versions in the past, and even send them over the network to another machine. I'll also discuss how to keep your configuration files portable, so they'll work even on different Unices, with different software installed.
In today's world, people have hundreds of connexions. And you can express these connexions with a graph. For instance, you may wish to represent the network of your friends.
Originally, webs-of-trust were directed acyclic graphs of people who had identified each other. This way, if there was a path between you and the person who want to identify, then you could assume that each person along that path had verified the next person's identity.
I will show you how to generate your own web-of-trust graph using Free Software. Of course, you can also use this knowledge to graph anything you like.
In Perl, a module is the basic unit of code-reuse. The talk will be mostly a look into GD::Text::Arc, a module written to draw TrueType text around the edge of a circle. The talk will consider:
During the General Meeting on 19 January 2004, a proposed constitution change was passed around. This change is in response to a change in the MathSoc Clubs Policy (Policy 4, Section 3, Sub-section f).
This general meeting is called to vote on this proposed change. We must have quorum of 15 Full Members vote on this change. The following text was presented at the CSC Winter 2004 Elections.
We propose to make a Constitutional change on this day, 19 January 2004.
The proposed change is to section 3.1 of the constitution which
currently reads:
In compliance with MathSoc regulations and in recognition of the
club being primarily targeted at undergraduate students, full
membership is open to all undergraduate students in the Faculty of
Mathematics and restricted to the same.
Since MathSoc has changed its requirements for club membership, we
propose that it be changed to:
In compliance with MathSoc regulations and in recognition of the
club being primarily targeted at undergraduate students, full
membership is open to all Social Members of the Mathematics Society
and restricted to the same.
An Installfest is an opportunity to install software on your computer. People come with computers. Other people come with experience. The people get together and (when all goes well) everybody leaves satisfied.
You are invited to our first installfest of the year. Come to get some software or to learn more about Open Source Software and why it is relevant to your life. The event is free, but you may want to bring blank CDs and/or money to purchase some open source action for your computer at home.
See the UW-DIG website for more details.
Free and Open Source software has been around for a long time, even longer then shrink-wrapped code. It has a long and noble history in the annals of education. Even more than ever, due to the drop of hardware prices and the increase of worldwide communications, Free and Open Source can open new avenues of teaching and doing research, not only in computer science, but in other university fields as well.
Learn how Linux as an operating system can run on anything from a PDA to a supercomputer, and how Linux is reducing the cost of computing dramatically as the fastest growing operating system in the world. Learn how other Free and Open Source projects, such as office suites, audio and video editing and playing software, relational databases, etc. are created and are freely available.
Jon "maddog" Hall is the Executive Director of Linux International, a non-profit association of computer vendors who wish to support and promote the Linux Operating System. During his career which spans over thirty years, Mr. Hall has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager and educator. He has worked for such companies as Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, VA Linux Systems, and is currently funded by SGI.
He has taught at Hartford State Technical College, Merrimack College and Daniel Webster College. He still likes talking to students over pizza and beer (the pizza can be optional).
Mr. Hall is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles, many presentations and one book, "Linux for Dummies".
Mr. Hall serves on the boards of several companies, and several non-profit organizations, including the USENIX Association.
Mr. Hall has traveled the world speaking on the benefits of Open Source Software, and received his BS in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University, and his MSCS from RPI in Troy, New York.
In his spare time maddog is working on his retirement project:
Come meet CS profs in a relaxed atmosphere this Wednesday at the Grad House (by South Campus Hall). This is your chance to meet those CS profs you enjoyed in lectures in person, have a chat with them and find out what they're doing outside the lecture halls.
We'll be providing free food, including hamburgers and nachos, and the Grad House offers a great selection of drinks.
If you'd like to invite a particular prof, stop by on the third floor of the MC (outside of the Comfy) to pick up an invitation.
Persons of all ages are welcome!
.NET is Microsoft's new development platform, including amongst other things a language called C# and a class library for various operating system services. .NET aims to be portable, although it is currently mostly only used on Windows systems.
With the full backing of Microsoft, it seems unlikely that .NET will disappear any time soon. There are several efforts underway to bring .NET to the GNU/Linux platform. Hosted by the Computer Science Club, this talk will discuss a number of the issues surrounding .NET and Linux.
Sh is a GPU metaprogramming language developed at the University of Waterloo Computer Graphics Lab. It allows graphics programmers to write programs which run directly on the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) using familiar C++ syntax. Furthermore, it allows metaprogramming of such programs, that is, writing programs which generate other programs, in an easy and natural manner.
This talk will give a brief overview of how Sh works, the design of its intermediate representation and the (still somewhat simplistic) optimizer that the current reference implementation has and problems with applying traditional compiler optimizations.
Stefanus Du Toit is an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo. He is also a Research Assistant for Michael McCool from the University of Waterloo Graphics Lab. Over the Summer of 2003 Stefanus reimplemented the Sh reference implementation and designed and implemented the current Sh optimizer.
Are you interested in getting involved in the Computer Science Club?
Come on out to the second meeting of our Poster Team, a bunch of students helping out with promotion for our events. The agenda for this meeting will include painting posters, designing event invitations, and organizing poster runs. Once again, we will be serving free pizza!
See you there!
This tutorial will provide you with a practical introduction to GNU development tools on Unix such as the gcc compiler, the gdb debugger and the GNU make build tool.
This talk is geared primarily at those mostly unfamiliar with these tools. Amongst other things we will introduce:
If you're in second year CS and unfamiliar with UNIX development it is highly recommended you go to this talk. All are welcome, including non-math students.
Arrive early!
Have you ever wondered how those cryptic UNIX text editors work? Have you ever woken up at night with a cold sweat wondering "Is it CTRL-A, or CTRL-X CTRL-A?" Do you just hate pico with a passion?
Then come to this tutorial and learn how to use vi and emacs!
Basic UNIX commands will also be covered. This tutorial will be especially useful for first and second year students.
If the answer to one of these questions is yes, then come out to the first meeting of the Computer Science Club Poster Team! The CSC is looking for interested students to help out with promotion and publicity for this term's events. We promise good times and free pizza!
Elections will be held on Wednesday, September 17, 2003 at 4:30 PM in the Comfy Lounge, MC3001.
I invite you to nominate yourself or others for executive positions, starting immediately. Simply e-mail me at cro@csclub.uwaterloo.ca with the name of the person who is to be nominated and the position they're nominated for.
Nominees must be full-time undergraduate students in Math. Sorry!
Positions open for elections are:
Nominations will be accepted until Tuesday, September 16 at 4:30 PM.
Additionally, a Sysadmin will be appointed after the elections. If you like working with Unix systems and have experience setting up and maintaining them, go for it!
I hope that lots of people will show up; hopefully we'll have a great term with plenty of events. We always need other volunteers, so if you want to get involved just talk to the new exec after the meeting. Librarians, webmasters, poster runners, etc. are always sought after!
There will also be free pop.
Memberships can be purchased at the elections or at least half an hour prior to at the CSC. Only undergrad math members can vote, but anyone can become a member.
The work report is a familiar chore for any co-op student. Not only is there a report to write, but to add insult to injury, your report is returned if you do not follow your departmental guidelines.
Fear no more! In this talk, you will learn how to use LaTeX and a specially developed class to automatically format your work reports. This talk is especially useful to Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Software Engineeering co-op students about to go on work term.
In 1976, a University of California Berkeley student by the name of Bill Joy got sick of his text editor, ex. So he hacked it such that he could read his document as he wrote it. The result was "vi", which stands for VIsual editor. Today, it is shipped with every modern Unix system, due to its global influence.
In this talk, you will learn how to use vi to edit documents quickly and efficiently. At the end, you should be able to:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
--paying Simon for Sugar -Unanimous yea. -ACTION ITEM: Mark Expense this to MathSoc in lieu of foreign speaker. --We currently have (including CD-R and pop-income not currently in safe) $972.85 -We have $359.02 on budget that we can expense to MathSoc. --We got MEF money for books and video card. Funding for wireless microphone is dependent on whether MFCF is willing to host it. -Funding for casters was denied. -Shopping for the Video card. -Expecting it after August (Stefanus shopping for it.) -Will have to hear back regarding the microphone, best to delay that now, discuss it with MEF. -Better to do it this term, so it doesn't get lost. -Let MFCF know about this concern. -Regarding books, can be done anytime before September. --Events feedback -Generally, Jim Eliot talk when really well. -Apparently he was generally offensive. -When was the LaTeX talk? End of the month. -Kegger at Jim's place on the 16th. --Getting people in on the 6th, 7th, 8th for csc commercials filmed by Jason -Hang out in here, and he'll make a CSC commercial. -Co-ordinate when everyone should be in here, so we can email Jason. --CEO progress -CEO needs it's database changed to use ISBN as a primary key. -Needs functionality to take out/return books. --Mark just entered financial stuff into GNUcash --Choose CRO for next term. -Stefanus has expressed desire not to be CRO. -Gary Simmons was suggested (and he accepted) -Unanimous yea --Mike Biggs has to get here naked. -Four unanimous votes. -Nakedness only applies to getting here, not being here. From last meeting: ACTION ITEM: Biggs and Cass -get labelmaker tape, masking tape whiteboard makers, coloured paper, CD sleeves -keep receipts for CSC office expenses. How is the progress on allowing executives and voters to be non-math members? -The vote is coming up Monday. -Proposal: Anyone who is a paying member can be a member -So you can either do two things: Pay MathSoc fees, or Get your faculty society to recognize CSC as a club. Stefanus wanted to mention that we should talk to Yolanda, Craig or Louie about a EYT event for frosh week. -Organized by Meg. -Sugar Mountain trying to hook all the Frosh ACTION ITEM: Jim -Email Meg Reminder for Next Year's executive. -September 16th @ 5:00pm, get a table for Clubs day, and 17th and 18th, maintain the booth (full day events). -Update pamphlets. ACTION ITEM: Gary -There should be executive before then Note: There needs to be a private section in the CSC Procedures Manual. (Only accessible by shell) ACTION ITEM: Simon -Do it. ACTION ITEM: Mike -Talk to Plantops about: -Locks on doors -Mounting corkboard. -Talk about CSC Sign
SIGGRAPH is the ACM's Special Interest Group for Graphics and simultaneously the world's largest graphics conference and exhibition, where the cutting edge of graphics research is presented every year.
With support from UW's Computer Graphics Lab, the CSC invites you to capture a glimpse of SIGGRAPH 2002. We will be presenting the Electronic Theatre showings from 2002, demonstrating the best of the animated, CG-produced movies presented at SIGGRAPH.
Don't miss this free showing!
Linux and Open Source have become a significant reality in the working world of Information Technology. An indirect result has been a "rebirth" of the mainframe as a strategic platform for enterprise computing. In this session Jim Elliott, IBM's Linux Advocate, will provide an overview of these technologies and an inside look at IBM's participation in the community. Jim will examine Linux usage on the desktop, embedded systems and servers, a reality check on the common misconceptions that surround Linux and Open Source, and an overview of the history and current design of IBM's mainframe servers.
Jim Elliott is the Linux Advocate for IBM Canada. He is responsible for IBM's participation in Linux and Open Source activities and IBM's mainframe operating systems in Canada and the Caribbean. Jim is a popular speaker on Linux and Open Source at conferences and user groups across the Americas and Europe and has spoken to over 300 organizations over the past three years. Over his 30 years with IBM he has been the co-author of over 15 IBM publications and he also coordinated the launch of Linux on IBM mainframes in the Americas. In his spare time, Jim is addicted to reading historical mystery novels and travel to their locales.
The University of Waterloo Computer Science Club is going to visit the University of Guelph Computer Science Club. There will be a talk given as well as dinner with a fun social atmosphere.
Drivers Wanted
Cancelled -- sorry Guelph cancelled on us.
Modern graphics processors allow developers to upload small "shader programs" to the GPU, which can be executed per-vertex or even per-pixel during the rendering. Such shaders allow stunning effects to be performed in real-time, but unfortunately aren't very easy to program since one generally has to write them at the assembly level.
Recently a few high-level languages for shader programming have become available. Sh, a result of research at UW, is one such language. It allows programming powerful shaders in simple and intuitive ways. Sh is particularly interesting because of the way it is implemented. Instead of coming up with a language grammar and writing a full-fledged compiler, Sh is implemented as a C++ library, and shader programs are effectively written in C++. The actual compilation then takes place in a manner similar to JIT (Just-in-time) compilers. This has many advantages over the traditional approach, including C++'s familiar syntax for users, and much less work for the Sh implementers.
In this talk I will give an overview of GPUs and the Sh language as well as some interesting details on how Sh was implemented.
Stefanus Du Toit is a research assistant at the University of Waterloo. He has implemented the current version of Sh from scratch and is actively developing it under supervision of Michael McCool, the original designer of the language.
In 1976, a University of California Berkeley student by the name of Bill Joy got sick of his text editor, ex. So he hacked it such that he could read his document as he wrote it. The result was "vi", which stands for VIsual editor. Today, it is shipped with every modern Unix system, due to its global influence.
In this talk, you will learn how to use vi to edit documents quickly and efficiently. At the end, you should be able to:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
Budget: All the money we requested --No money from Pints from Profs --MathSoc has promised us $1250 Feedback from Completed Events UNIX Talks: 17 people for first --12 people for second --Things going well --Last talk today --VI next week IPsec --Sparse crowd --People Jim didn't know talked to him for 1/2 hour History of CSC talk went well --Good variety of people Pints with Profs --NO CS Profs --Only 1 E& CE prof --Only 2 Math profs --Jim will harass the profs at the School of CS Council meeting. We're starting to fall behind in planning RoShamBo rules --Got a web site up --Might have to move RSB back --International site has a few test samples --Stefanus had some ideas --Coding will probably take an afternoon/evening --We need volunteers to run the competition --We have volunteers to code: Phil and Stefanus ACTION ITEM: Phil and Stefanus --code whatever you volunteered to code for. --Mike intends to visit classes and directly advertise --Email Christina Hotz --GH guy: Mike has an abstract, will have posters by tomorrow CSC Movie Night --Mathnet, Hackers, Wargames, Tron --Mike will get a room --Will be closed member Mike McCool is offering rooms for showing SIGGRAPH ACTION ITEM: Jim -check with Mike McCool. ACTION ITEM: Mike -Make posters for Movie Nights When is other movie night? (Will plan some time in July) Who is our foreign speaker? Action Item: jelliot@ca.ibm.com (Check name first) about getting a foreign speaker -- Note: Has already been contacted. Simon got money from Engsoc Cass needs coloured paper (CSC is out) ACTION ITEM: Cass and Mark --get labelmaker tape, masking tape, whiteboard makers, coloured paper --keep receipts for CSC office expenses NOTICE: Mike is now Imapd Simon distributed budget list Mark got the money from Mathsoc for last budget, deposited it. ACTION ITEM:Mark --Get MEF funding by July 4th (equipment) ACTION ITEM: Simon --Get WEEF funding by June 27th (book) Jim still working on allowing executives and voters to be non-math members We get free photocopying from MathSoc ACTION ITEM: Mike --write down code for free photocopying from MathSoc Simon has been able to get into the cscdisk account, still looking into getting into the cscceo account. Damien got an e-mail stating that the files for cscdisk are out of date. ACTION ITEM: Simon --provide SSH key to Phil for getting into cscdisk, cscceo, etc... --Renumber bootup scripts for sugar and powerpc so that they boot up happily. ACTION ITEM: Mike needs to do all the plantops stuff again. ACTION ITEM: Mike -- "Stapler if you say please" sign. CVS Tree for CEO has been exported. Damien has volunteered to finish CEO (found by Cass) All books with barcodes have been scanned All books without barcodes need to be bar-coded. ACTION ITEM: Mark --Find a Credit-card with a $500 or less limit. Note: There needs to be a private section in the CSC Procedures Manual. (Only accessible by shell) Stefanus Wanted to mention that we should talk to Yolanda, Craig or Louie about a EYT event for Frosh Week.
War, insanity, espionage, beauty, domination, sacrifice, and tragic death... not what one might associate with the history of computer science. In this talk I will focus on the origin of our discipline in the fields of engineering, mathematics, and science, and on the complicated personalities that shaped its evolution. No advanced technical knowledge is required.
Come out and meet your professors!! This is a great opportunity to meet professors for Undergraduate Research jobs or to find out who you might have for future courses. One and all are welcome!
Best of all... free food!!!
This is the first in a series of seminars that cover the use of the Unix Operating System. Unix is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's Unix environment in this seminar.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
This is the second in a series of seminars that cover the use of the Unix Operating System. Unix is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's Unix environment in this tutorial.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class
This is the third in a series of seminars that cover the use of the Unix Operating System. Unix is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's Unix environment in this tutorial.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class
Minutes for CSC Exec Meeting
May 22, 2003
* Add staff to burners group.
-- Only office staff (people who do stuff) on burners list
-- No objections from executives
* We still need a webmaster, imapd
-- Action Item: Mike
--Check for pop delivery services (Like Grocery Gateway)
so that we can replace imapd with an automated cronjob
-- If this gets implemented, we must make sure that
someone is around to receive the pop whenever it is
delivered.
* Budgets
Action Item: Simon
-- Make sure execs receive a copy of the proposed budget
Action Item: Mark
-- Look into claiming money from Mathsoc for the last
term.
--Will be looked over the week after next Monday at the Mathsoc
Budget meeting.
--June 27th is the WEF (Engineering Endowment Fund) deadline
--EngSoc proposal for donations by the end of the month
-- Around 15 events planned
--Foreign Speaker
--CS Departmant will pay for flight
-- We can pay local expenses
--Pints with Profs
--Ro-Sham-Bo
*Changes in the MathSoc Clubs Policy
Action Item: Jim and Stefanus
--Bring thus up with MathSoc
--Might be good to talk to Bioinformatics about this, as
they have science faculty members to take care of as well.
--Major issue: People who revoke their Mathsoc fees can still be
voting members
--We want it so that only people who have paid dues to Mathsoc
can vote.
--Execs should not take back fees, as that is bad form.
--All execs unanimously agreed with this proposal
*Confirming that we have free printing and photocopying
Action Item: Mark
--Does Faculty of Math billing code apply to CSC
(as Faculty of Math department?)
-- Procedures manual has a billing code, but it should
be confirmed.
-- Ask MUO, then Shirley after that.
Action Item: Simon
--Apparently there is a special Watcard that provides
free printing from MFCF
--We do not know what account it is mapped to,
or the password.
* Getting csc_disk, csc, csc_ceo accounts on undergrad to work again.
Action Item: Phil
-- Get csc-disk back up for student use.
-- What group permissions do we need?
-- CSC-Disk should be used as a repository for custom
window managers, Mozilla, etc... (selling factor for
CSC accounts)
-- We should also have an announcement (MOTD, perhaps?)
that we are providing and supporting this software.
--Consider: Having university-wide accessible
binaries might be a pain, as different machines
might require different compilations.
-- CSC-Disk is full of user data. Should that be blown away?
*Getting locker #7 from MathSoc (Don't we already have lockers 788 and
789?)
--Why were the locks snipped? (Bring up at council meeting)
--We would prefer one combo-lock and one key-lock.
* Review of the CSC office organization
Action Item: Damien
--Give Mike sudo access for shutdown
--Will be rewiring stuff on Saturday
--involves re-plugging machines
Action Item: Simon
--Get rubber wheels for chairs
Action Item: Mike
-- Ask PlantOps about:
--Waxing floors
--Installing Electronic Lock (asap)
--According to Faculty of Math,
we shouldn't need keys.
--Currently, we still need keys
--It is kosher to install Electronic lock
--This provides access right control as
compared to key-control.
--Might be long term project.
--Will green men do it?
--Steam-clean chairs (at least once a term)
--Cork-board
--Making ugly wall prettier
--PlantOps knows about office
organization, making environment better.
--Whiteboards need to be put up
--Proposal: Cork-board on pillar (no objections)
--Metal frames on Whiteboard will be in least annoying place
*Do we provide public stapler access?
--People are often unappreciative and rude
--Sign - "Stapler if you say please" -- Unanimously voted
stapler policy
*MathSoc Sign
--Action Item: Jim
--Find out where to get CSC sign before Monday so we
can claim it in old budget.
* Librarian's Report
--Action Item: Jim
--Find perl volunteer to finish CEO
--Force Stefanus to export CVS tree and put onto Peri
--Books were scanned into system with help of Mark
--All books with valid barcodes entered into system on
May 20th
--Books without valid barcodes are not in system
--Someone needs to do it
--Plan is to implement Dewey decimal system
--May be inefficient as all books are about CS
--We will figure out a system later
--No plans to purchase new books
--Librarian's Request: Office Staff should not lend out books
that do not have barcodes (No objects to request)
--We are still using /media/iso/request to track books
--Should be charge late fees for books?
--We should have money in budget for repairing,maintaining books
--Before spending money on maintaining books, check if DC will
do it
--will it be cheaper/easier/better?
*Setting up extra quota for fun and profit.
-- We don't implement quota properly right now
-- Low demand for extra quota
-- Counterpoint: Old CSC made tons of money
-- Counter-counter-point: It's not that necessary for extra
quota nowadays.
-- Executives voted against proposal.
*Jim will spam with an update about the term
--Consider making it opt-in
--One email from a service you are using should be considered
reasonable mass mailing
*Should Jim bring anything up at the MathSoc meeting?**
-- Has a list
* Student branches for ACM and IEEE
Action Item: Gaelan
--Contact IEEE Computing Society in UW and ask if they want
to merge or transfer society to us
--Simon volunteers to be put down as exec for ACM
--ACM rules state requirement that exec is a ACM member
--Do we renew Calum's ACM membership?
--Yes (3 Yes; 1 No; 1 Abstention)
--ACM membership money in budget
--ACM Student chapter form has not come in
* What to do with the donated Procedures Manual?
--Term Task for webpage:
--Put procedures manual on web-page.
--Merge with current manual
--We don't have a hard copy
--Would be a good thing to read.
--Many parts need updating
Elections will be held on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 at 4:30 PM in the Comfy Lounge, MC3001.
I invite you to nominate yourself or others for executive positions, starting immediately. Simply e-mail me at sjdutoit@uwaterloo.ca or cro@csclub.uwaterloo.ca with the name of the person who is to be nominated and the position they're nominated for.
Nominees must be full-time undergraduate students in Math. Sorry!
Positions open for elections are:
Nominations will be accepted until Tuesday, May 13 at 4:30 PM.
Additionally, a Sysadmin will be appointed after the elections. If you like working with Unix systems and have experience setting up and maintaining them, go for it!
I hope that lots of people will show up; hopefully we'll have a great term with plenty of events. We always need other volunteers, so if you want to get involved just talk to the new exec after the meeting. Librarians, webmasters, poster runners, etc. are always sought after!
There will also be free pop, and if I remember, timbits :).
Memberships can be purchased at the elections. Only undergrad math members can vote, but anyone can become a member.
Don't forget! Mark it on your calendar/wrist watch/PDA/brain implant!
This is the first in a series of seminars that cover the use of the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's UNIX environment in this seminar.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
Abstract to come soon.
Abstract to come soon.
This term's elections will take place on Monday, January 13 at 6:00 PM in the MC "comfy lounge" (MC3001). Nominations are open from now on (Thursday, January 2) until 4:30 PM of the day before elections (Sunday, January 12). In order to nominate someone you can either e-mail me directly, by depositing a form with the required information in the CSC mailbox in the Mathsoc office or by writing the nomination and clearly marking it as such on the large whiteboard in the CSC office. E-mail is probably the best choice. Please include the name of the person to be nominated as well as the position you wish to nominate them for.
Candidates must be full members of the club. This means they must have paid their membership for the given term and (due to recent changes in the constitution) must be full-time undergraduate math students. The same requirements hold for those voting. Please bring your Watcard to the elections so that I can verify this. I will have a list of members with me also.
The positions open are:
President -- appoints all committees of the club, calls and presides at all meetings of the club and audits the club's financial records. Really, this is the person in charge.
Vice President -- assumes President's duties in case he/she is absent, plans and coordinates events with the programmes committee and assumes any other duties delegated by the President. This is a really fun job if you enjoy coordinating events!
Secretary -- keeps minutes of the meetings and cares for any correspondence. A fairly light job, good choice if you just want to see what being an exec is all about.
Treasurer -- maintains all the finances of the club. If you like money and keeping records, this is the job for you!
Additionally a Systems Administrator will be picked by the new executive.
Last term was a great term for the CSC -- many events, some office renovations and a much improved image were all part of it. I hope to see the next term's exec continue this. If you're interested in seeing this happen, do consider going for a position, or helping out as office staff or on one of the committees.
Anyways, hopefully I'll see many of you at the elections. Remember: Monday, January 13, 6:00 PM, MC3001/Comfy Lounge.
If you have any further questions don't hesitate to contact the CRO, Stefanus Du Toit by e-mail.
Stephen Kleene developed regular expressions to describe what he
called the algebra of regular sets.
Since he was a pioneering
theorist in computer science, Kleene's regular expressions soon made
it into searching algorithms and from there to everyday tools.
Regular expressions can be powerful tools to manipulate text. You will be introduced to them in this talk. As well, we will go further than the rigid mathematical definition of regular expressions, and delve into POSIX regular expressions which are typically available in most Unix tools.
sed is the Unix stream editor. A powerful way to automatically edit a large batch of text. awk is a programming language that allows you to manipulate structured data into formatted reports.
Both of these tools come from early Unix, and both are still useful today. Although modern programming languages such as Perl, Python, and Ruby have largely replaced the humble sed and awk, they still have their place in every Unix user's toolkit.
Unix was one of the first electronic typesetting platforms. The innovative AT&T troff system allowed researches at Bell Labs to generate high quality camera-ready proofs for their papers. Later, Donald Knuth invented a typesetting system called TEX, which was far superior to other typesetting systems in the 1980s. However, it was still a typesetting language, where one had to specify exactly how text was to be set.
LATEX is a macro package for the TEX system that allows an author to describe his document's function, thereby typesetting the text in an attractive and correct way. In addition, one can define semantic tags to a document, in order to describe the meaning of the document; rather than the layout.
Work term reports, papers, and other technical documents can be typeset in LATEX to great effect. In this session, I will provide examples on how to typeset tables, figures, and references. You will also learn how to make tables of contents, bibliographies, and how to create footnotes.
I will also examine various packages of LATEX that can help you meet requirements set by users of inferior typesetting systems. These include double-spacing, hyphenation and specific margin sizes.
It is widely acknowledged that the best system by which to typeset beautiful mathematics is through the TE typesetting system, written by Donald Knuth in the early 1980s.
In this talk, I will demonstrate LATEX and how to typeset elegant mathematical expressions.
Before the GNU project ever existed, before the phrase "Free Software" was ever coined, students and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley were already practising it. They had acquired the source code to a little-known operating system developed at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and were creating improvements at a ferocious rate.
These improvements were sent back to Bell Labs, and shared to other Universities. Each of them were licensed under what is now known as the "Original BSD license". Find out what this license means, its implications, and what are its descendents by attending this short talk.
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software---to make sure the software is free for all its users.
--- Excerpt from the GNU GPL
The GNU General Public License is one of the most influential software licenses in this day. Written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project, it is used by software developers around the world to protect their work.
Unfortunately, software developers do not read licenses thoroughly, nor well. In this talk, we will read the entire GNU GPL and explain the implications of its passages. Along the way, we will debunk some myths and clarify common misunderstandings.
After this session, you ought to understand what the GNU GPL means, how to use it, and when you cannot use it. This session should also give you some insight into the social implications of this work.
XML is the eXtensible Markup Language,
a standard
maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium. A descendant of IBM's
SGML. It is a metalanguage which can be used to define markup
languages for semantically describing a document.
This talk will describe how to generate correct XML documents, and auxiliary technologies that work with XML.
XSLT is the eXtended Stylesheet Language Transformations,
a language for transforming XML documents into other XML
documents.
XSLT is used to manipulate XML documents into other forms: a sort of glue between data formats. It can turn an XML document into an XHTML document, or even an HTML document. With a little bit of hackery, it can even be convinced to spit out non-XML conforming documents.
A lot of claims have been made lately about the intelligence of computers. Some researchers say that computers will eventually attain super-human intelligence. Others call these claims... um, poppycock. Oddly enough, in the search for the truth of the matter, both camps have overlooked an obvious strategy: interviewing a computer and asking her opinion.
"Judy is as much fun as a barrel of wind-up cymbal-monkeys, and lots more entertaining." --- Bill Rodriguez, Providence Phoenix
"Tom Sgouros's witty play, co-starring the charming robot Judy, is an imagination stretcher that delights while it exercises your mind. If you think you can't imagine a conscious robot, you're wrong---you can, especially once you've met Judy." --- Daniel C. Dennett, author of Consciousness Explained, Brainchildren, &c.
"...an engrossing evening... Real questions about consciousness, freedom to act, the relationship between the creator and the created are woven into a bravura performance." --- Will Stackman, Aislesay.com
Sponsored by the Mathematics Society, the Federation of Students, the Arts Student Union, the Graduate Student Association, and the Department of Philosophy. Tickets available at the Humanities box office (888-4908) and the offices of the Psychology Society and the Computer Science Club for $5.50. For more information: http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/cogsci.
Stream processing is an enhanced version of SIMD processing that permits efficient execution of conditionals and iteration. Stream processors have many similarities to GPUs, and a hardware prototype, the Imagine processor, has been used to implement both OpenGL and Renderman.
It is possible that GPUs will acquire certain properties of stream processors in the future, which should make them easier to use and more efficient for general-purpose computation that includes data-dependent iteration and conditionals.
Templates are a useful feature in C++ when it comes to writing type-independent data structures and algorithms. But that's not all they can be used for. Essentially, it is possible to write certain programs in C++ that execute completely at compile-time rather than run-time. Combined with some optimisations this is an interesting twist on regular C++ programming.
This talk will give a short overview of the features of templates and then go on to describe how to "abuse" templates to perform complex computations at compile time. The speaker will present three programs of increasing complexity which execute at compile time. First a factorial listing program, then a prime listing program will be presented. Finally the talk will conclude with the presentation of a Mandelbrot generator running at compile time.
Some basic knowledge of C++ will be assumed.
The Secure Shell (SSH) has now replaced traditional remote login tools such as rsh, rlogin, rexec and telnet. It is used to provide secure, authenticated, encrypted communications between remote systems. However, the SSH protocol provides for much more than this.
In this talk, we will discuss using SSH to its full extent. Topics to be covered include:
The first of this term's CSC social events, we will be going to see the movie ``Brainstorm'' at the Princess Cinema. This outing is intended primarily for the new first-year students.
The Princess Cinema is Waterloo's repertoire theatre. This month and next, they are featuring a ``Cyber Film Festival''. Upcoming films include:
Admission is $4.25 for a Princess member, $7.50 for a non-member. Membership to the Princess is $7.00 per year.
What is the next step in the evolution of computer languages? Intelligent agents? Distributed objects? or visual languages?
Visual languages overcome many of the drawbacks and limitations of the textual languages that software development is based on today. Do you think about programming in a linear fashion? Or do you draw a mental picture of your algorithm and then linearize it for the benefit of your compiler? Wouldn't it be nice if you could code the same way you think?
Visual C++ and Visual BASIC aren't visual languages, but Prograph is. Prograph is a commercially available, visual, object-oriented, data-flow language. It is well suited to graphical user interface development, but is as powerful for general-purpose programming as any textual language.
The talk will comprise a discussion of the problems of textual languages that visual languages solve, a live demonstration of Prograph, and some of my observations of the applications of Prograph to software development.
So you think you're a pretty good programmer? Pit your skills against others on campus in this triannual event! Contestants will have three hours to solve five programming problems in either C or Pascal.
Last fall's winners went on to the International Finals and came first overall! You could be there, too!
Did you know that your undergrad account at Waterloo gives you access to the world's largest computer network? With thousands of discussion groups, gigabytes of files to download, multimedia information browsers, even on-line entertainment?
The resources available on the Internet are vast and wondrous, but the tools for navigating it are sometimes confusing and arcane. In this hands-on tutorial you will get the chance to get your feet wet with the world's most mind-bogglingly big computer network, the protocols and programs used, and how to use them responsibly and effectively.
This will be a discussion of the pitfalls of using mathematics and algorithms to play classical board games. Thorough descriptions shall be presented of the simple techniques used as the building blocks that make all modern computer game players. I will use tic-tac-toe as a control for my arguments. Other games such as Chess, Othello and Go shall be the be a greater measure of progress; and more importantly the targets of our dreams.
To enhance the discussion of the future, Barney Pell's Metagamer shall be introduced. His work in define classes of games is important in identifying the features necessary for analysis.
by Blair MacIntyre and Elizabeth Mynatt
The Future Computing Environments (FCE) Group at Georgia Tech is a collection of faculty and students that share a desire to understand the partnership between humans and technology that arises as computation and sensing become ubiquitous. With expertise covering the breadth of Computer Science, but focusing on HCI, Computational Perception, and Machine Learning, the individual research agendas of the FCE faculty are grounded in a number of shared "living laboratories" where their research is applied to everyday life in the classroom (Classroom 2000), the home (the Aware Home), the office (Augmented Offices), and on one's person. Professors MacIntyre and Mynatt will discuss a variety of these projects, with an emphasis on the HCI and Computer Science aspects of the FCE work.
In addition to their affiliation with the FCE group, Professors Mynatt and MacIntyre are both members of the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center (GVU) at Georgia Tech. This interdisciplinary center brings together research in computer science, psychology, industrial engineering, architecture and media design by examining the role of computation in our everyday lives. During the talk, they will touch on some of the research and educational opportunities available at both GVU and the College of Computing.
Debugging can be the most difficult and time consuming part of any program's life-cycle. Far from an exact science, it's more of an art ... and close to some kind of dark magic. Cryptic error messages, lousy error checking, and icky things like implicit casts can make it nearly impossible to know what's going on inside your program.
Several tools are available to help automate your debugging. GDB and Purify are among the most powerful debugging tools available in a UNIX environment. GDB is an interactive debugger, allowing you to `step' through a program, examine function calls, variable contents, stack traces and let you look at the state of a program after it crashes. Purify is a commercial program designed to help find and remove memory leaks from programs written in languages without automatic garbage collection.
This talk will cover how to compile your C and C++ programs for use with GDB and Purify, as well as how to use the available X interfaces. If a purify license is available on undergrad at the time of the talk, we will cover how to use it during runtime.
by Jan Gray
With the advent of large inexpensive field-programmable gate arrays and tools it is now practical for anyone to design and build custom processors and systems-on-a-chip. Jan will discuss designing with FPGAs, and present the design and implementation of xr16, yet another FPGA-based RISC computer system with integrated peripherals.
Jan is a past CSC pres., B.Math. CS/EEE '87, and wrote compilers, tools, and middleware at Microsoft from 1987-1998. He built the first 32-bit FPGA CPU and system-on-a-chip in 1995.
By Edgar Dijkstra
This talk will use partial orders, lattice theory, and, if time permits, the Galois connection as carriers to illustrate the use of calculi in mathematics. We hope to show the brevity of many calculations (in order to fight the superstition that formal proofs are necessarily impractically long), and the strong heuristic guidance that is available for their design.
Dijkstra is known for early graph-theoretical algorithms, the first implementation of ALGOL 60, the first operating system composed of explicitly synchronized processes, the invention of guarded commands and of predicate transformers as a means for defining semantics, and programming methodology in the broadest sense of the word.
His current research interests focus on the formal derivation of proofs and programs, and the streamlining of the mathematical argument in general.
Dijkstra held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin until retiring in October.
This talk will show the use of programs for the proving of theorems. Its purpose is to show how our experience gained in the derivations of programs might be transferred to the derivation of proofs in general. The examples will go beyond the (traditional) existence theorems.
Dijkstra is known for early graph-theoretical algorithms, the first implementation of ALGOL 60, the first operating system composed of explicitly synchronized processes, the invention of guarded commands and of predicate transformers as a means for defining semantics, and programming methodology in the broadest sense of the word.
His current research interests focus on the formal derivation of proofs and programs, and the streamlining of the mathematical argument in general.
Dijkstra held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin until retiring in October.
The first talk will be an introduction to the Enterprise Java API's: Servlets, JSP, EJB, and how to use them to build eCommerce sites.
The second talk will be about how these technologies were used to implement a real world portal. The talk will include an overview of the design patterns used and will feature architectural information about the yet to be release portal (which I am one of the developers) called theserverside.com.
Real World J2EE - Design Patterns and architecture behind the yet to be released J2EE portal: theserverside.com
This talk will feature an exclusive look at the architecture behind the new J2EE portal: theserverside.com. Join Floyd Marinescu in a walk-through of the back-end of the portal, while learning about J2EE and its real world patterns, applications, problems and benefits.
Would you like to get involved in the CSC? Would you like to have a say in what the CSC does this term? Come out to the CSC Elections! In addition to electing the executive for the Fall term, we will be appointing office staff and other positions. Look for details in uw.csc.
Nominations for all positions are being taken in the CSC office, MC 3036.
Interested in Computer Graphics?
Enjoy watching state-of-the-art Animation?
Looking for a cheap place to take a date?
SIGGraph Video Night - Featuring some truly awesome computer animations from Siggraph '99.
Come out for the Computer Science Club general elections at 6:00 pm, right before SIGGraph!
The Internet and the Web have revolutionized our communications, our access to information and our business methods. However, there is still much room for improvement. Frank Clegg will discuss Microsoft's vision for what is beyond browsing and the dotcom. Microsoft .NET (pronounced "dot-net") is a new platform, user experience and set of advanced software services planned to make all devices work together and connect seamlessly. With this next generation of software, Microsoft's goal is to make Internet-based computing and communications easier to use, more personalized, and more productive for businesses and consumers. In his new position of president of Microsoft Canada Co., Frank Clegg will be responsible for leading the organization toward the delivery of Microsoft .NET. He will speak about this new platform and the next generation Internet, how software developers and businesses will be able to take advantage of it, and what the .NET experience will look like for consumers and business users.
Frank Clegg was appointed president of Microsoft Canada Co. this month. Prior to his new position, Mr. Clegg was vice-president, Central Region, Microsoft Corp. from 1996 to 2000. In this capacity, he was responsible for sales, support and marketing activities in 15 U.S. states. Mr. Clegg joined Microsoft Corp. in 1991 and headed the Canadian subsidiary until 1996. During that time, Mr. Clegg was instrumental in introducing several key initiatives to improve company efficiency, growth and market share. Mr. Clegg graduated from the University of Waterloo in 1977 with a B. Math.
Would you like to get involved in the CSC? Would you like to have a say in what the CSC does this term? Come out to the CSC Elections! In addition to electing the executive for the Winter term, we will be appointing office staff and other positions. Look for details in uw.csc.
Nominations for all positions are being taken in the CSC office, MC 3036.
They haven't been done in 2 terms. We have an old list of books to buy. Any suggestions from uw.csc are welcome.
For doing Linux burns. It was allocated money on the budget request - about $300. We should be able to get a decent 12x burner with that (8x rewrite).
The obvious things to sell are Linux Distros and BSD variants. Are there any other software that we can legally burn and sell to students?
Just a talk of the topics to be covered, when, where, whatnot. Mike was right on this one, this should have been done earlier in the term. Oh well, maybe we can fix this for next fall term.
We already put a bit of work into planning the Othello contest before I read Mike's post. I still think it's viable. I've got at least 2 people interested in writing entries for it. This will be talked about more on Monday. Hopefully, Rory and I will be able to present a basic outline of how the contest is going to be run at that time.
Current sysadmin (jmbeverl) and I (kvijayan) and President (geduggan) had a nice conversation about this 2 days ago, having to do with completely erasing all of peri, installing a clean stable potato debian on it, and priming it for being a gradual replacement to calum. We'll probably discuss how much we want to get done on this front on Monday.
Any comments from the newsgroup are welcome.
Our ACM-Style practice contests involve answering five questions in three hours. Solutions are written in Pascal, C or C++. Seven years in a row, Waterloo's teams have been in the top ten at the world finals. For more information, see the contest web page.
A palindrome is a sequence of letters that reads the same backwards and forwards, such as ``Madam, I'm Adam'' (note that case doesn't matter and only letters are important). Your task is to find the longest palindrome in a line of text (if there is a tie, print the leftmost one).
Input: Output: asfgjh12dsfgg kj0ab12321BA wdDwkj abBA abcbabCdcbaqwerewq abCdcba
An anagram is a word formed by reordering the letters of another word. Find all sets of anagrams that exist within a large dictionary. The input will be a sorted list of words (up to 4000 words), one per line. Output each set of anagrams on a separate line. Each set should be in alphabetical order, and all lines of sets should be in alphabetical order. A word with no anagrams is a set of anagrams itself, and should be displayed with no modifications.
Input: Output: post post pots stop pots start start stop
Our ACM-Style practice contests involve answering five questions in three hours. Solutions are written in Pascal, C or C++. Seven years in a row, Waterloo's teams have been in the top ten at the world finals. For more information, see the contest web page.
A palindrome is a sequence of letters that reads the same backwards and forwards, such as ``Madam, I'm Adam'' (note that case doesn't matter and only letters are important). Your task is to find the longest palindrome in a line of text (if there is a tie, print the leftmost one).
Input: Output: asfgjh12dsfgg kj0ab12321BA wdDwkj abBA abcbabCdcbaqwerewq abCdcba
An anagram is a word formed by reordering the letters of another word. Find all sets of anagrams that exist within a large dictionary. The input will be a sorted list of words (up to 4000 words), one per line. Output each set of anagrams on a separate line. Each set should be in alphabetical order, and all lines of sets should be in alphabetical order. A word with no anagrams is a set of anagrams itself, and should be displayed with no modifications.
Input: Output: post post pots stop pots start start stop
GNU Hurd is an operating system kernel based on the microkernel architecture design. It was the original GNU kernel, predating Linux, and is still being actively developed by many volunteers.
The Toronto-area Hurd Users Group, in co-operation with the Computer Science Club, is hosting an afternoon to show the Hurd to anyone interested. Jeff Bailey, a Hurd developer, will give a presentation on the Hurd, followed by a GnuPG/PGP keysigning party. To finish it off, James Morrison, also a Hurd developer, will be hosting a Debian GNU/Hurd installation session.
All interested are invited to attend. Bring your GnuPG/PGP fingerprint and mail your key to sjdutoit@uwaterloo.ca with the subject ``keysigning'' (see separate announcement).
Questions? Suggestions? Contact James Morrison.
GnuPG and PGP provide public-key based encryption for e-mail and other electronic communication. In addition to preventing others from reading your private e-mail, this allows you to verify that an e-mail or file was indeed written by its perceived author.
In order to make sure a GnuPG/PGP key belongs to the respective person, the key must be signed by someone who has checked the user's key fingerprint and verified the user's identification.
A keysigning party is an ideal occasion to have your key signed by many people, thus strengthening the authority of your key. Everyone showing up exchanges key signatures after verifying ID and fingerprints. The Computer Science Club will be hosting such a keysigning party together with the Hurd presentation by THUG (see separate announcement). See the keysigning party homepage for more information.
Before attending it is important that you mail your key to sjdutoit@uwaterloo.ca with the subject ``keysigning.'' Also make sure to bring photo ID and a copy of your GnuPG/PGP fingerprint on a sheet of paper to the event.
DVD copy protection: Content Scrambling System (CSS)
DVD-Video specifics: Menus and navigation
This is the second in a series of seminars that cover the use of the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's UNIX environment in this tutorial.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
The Asian game go is unique in a number of ways. It is the oldest board game known. It is a strategy game with very simple rules. Computer programs are very weak despite huge efforts and prizes of US$ > 1.5M for a program beating professional players. The talk will quickly explain the rules of go, compare go and chess, mention various attempts to program go and describe our own efforts in this field. Students will have an opportunity to solve computer generated go problems. Prizes will be available.
Vote for the exec this term. Meet at the CSC office.
Vote for the exec this term. Meet at the comfy lounge. There will be an opportunity to obtain or renew memberships. This term's CRO is Siyan Li (s8li@csclub.uwaterloo.ca).
The executive has unanimously decided to try to change our constitution to comply with MathSoc policy. The clause we are trying to change is the membership clause. The following is the proposed new reading of the clause.
In compliance with MathSoc regulations and in recognition of the club being primarily targeted at undergraduate students, full membership is open to all undergraduate students in the Faculty of Mathematics and restricted to the same.
The proposed change is illustrated on a web page.
There will be a business meeting on 30 Sept 2002 at 18:30 in the comfy lounge, MC 3001. Please come and vote
Get to know UNIX and be the envy of your friends!
This is the first in a series of seminars that cover the use of the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's UNIX environment in this seminar.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
Come out and meet your professors. This is a great opportunity to meet professors for Undergraduate Research jobs or to find out who you might have for future courses.
Profs who have confirmed their attendance are:
There will also be...
This is the second in a series of seminars that cover the use of the UNIX Operating System. UNIX is used in a variety of applications, both in academia and industry. We will provide you with hands-on experience with the Math Faculty's UNIX environment in this tutorial.
Topics that will be discussed include:
If you do not have a Math computer account, don't panic; one will be lent to you for the duration of this class.
Templates are a useful feature in C++ when it comes to writing type-independent data structures and algorithms. Relatively soon after their appearance it was realised that they could be used to do much more than this. Essentially it is possible to write certain programs in C++ that execute completely at compile time rather than run time. Combined with constant-expression optimisation this is an interesting twist on regular C++ programming.
This talk will give a short overview of the features of templates and then go on to describe how to "abuse" templates to perform complex computations at compile time. The speaker will present three programs of increasing complexity which execute at compile time. First a factorial listing program, then a prime listing program will be presented. Finally the talk will conclude with the presentation of a Mandelbrot generator running at compile time.
If you are interested in programming for the fun of it, the C++ language or silly tricks to do with languages, this talk is for you. No C++ knowledge should be necessary to enjoy this talk, but programming experience will make it more worthwile for you.
The CSC, the KW-Linux User Group, and the UW Debian Interest Group are jointly hosting a GNU/Linux InstallFest. GNU/Linux is a powerful, free operating system for your computer. It is mostly written by talented volunteers who like to share their efforts and help each other.
Perhaps you have are you interested in installing GNU/Linux. If so, bring your computer, monitor and keyboard; and we will help you install GNU/Linux on your machine. You can also find knowledgeable people who can answer your questions about GNU/Linux.
Q: What is GNU/Linux?
A: GNU/Linux is a free operating system for your computer. It is mostly
written by talented volunteers who like to share their efforts.
Q: Free?
A: GNU/Linux is available for zero-cost. As well, it allows you such
freedom to share it with your friends, or to modify the software to
your own needs and share that with your friends. It's very friendly.
Q: What is an InstallFest?
A: An InstallFest is a meeting where volunteers help people install
GNU/Linux on their computers. It's also a place to meet users, and
talk to them about running GNU/Linux.
Q: What kind of computer do I need to use GNU/Linux?
A: Almost any recent computer will do. If you have an old machine
kicking around, you can install GNU/Linux on it as well. If it is
at least 5 years old, it should be good enough.
Q: Can I have Windows and GNU/Linux on the same computer?
A: If you can run Windows now, and you have an extra gigabyte (GB) of
disk space to spare; then it should be possible.
Q: What should I bring if I want to install GNU/Linux?
A: You will want to bring:
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software---to make sure the software is free for all its users.
--- Excerpt from the GNU GPL
The GNU General Public License is one of the most influential software licenses in this day. Written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project, it is used by software developers around the world to protect their work.
Unfortunately, software developers do not read licenses thoroughly, nor well. In this talk, we will read the entire GNU GPL and explain the implications of its passages. Along the way, we will debunk some myths and clarify common misunderstandings.
After this session, you ought to understand what the GNU GPL means, how to use it, and when you cannot use it. This session should also give you some insight into the social implications of this work.
Modern graphics accelerators, or "GPUs", have embedded high-performance programmable components in the form of vertex and fragment shading units. Recently, these units have evolved from 8-bit computations to floating-point, and other operations provide array gather, scatter, and summation. These capabilities make GPUs akin to array processors of the past, but with a difference: every PC now has one! I am interested in finding the best way to exploit this computational capacity for not only graphics but for general-purpose computation.
Current APIs permit specification of the programs for GPUs using an assembly-language level interface. Compilers for high-level shading languages are available, such as NVIDIA's Cg, and OpenGL 2.0 and DirectX will also include standardized shading languages. This talk will review these. However, compilers for these languages read in an external string specification, which can be inconvenient.
However, it is possible, using standard C++, to define a high-level shading language directly in the API. Such a language can be nearly indistinguishable from a special-purpose programming language, yet permits more direct interaction with the specification of textures (arrays) and parameters, simplifies implementation, and enables on-the-fly generation, manipulation, and specialization of shader programs. A shading language built into the API also permits the lifting of C++ host language type, modularity, and scoping constructs into the shading language without any additional implementation effort. Such an embedded language could be used to program other embedded processors (such as DSP chips in sound cards) or even to generate machine language on the fly for the host CPU.
YUCC and the UW CSC have having a join meeting at York University. Dave Makalsky, the President of YUCC, will be giving a talk on Design-by-contract and Eiffel. Stefanus Du Toit, Vice-President of the UW CSC, will be giving a talk on the evil depths of the black art known as C++.
Schedule
Perl, the Practical Extraction and Reporting Language can only be described as an eclectic language, invented and refined by a deranged system administrator, who was trained as a linguist. This man, however, has declared:
Perl 5 was my rewrite of Perl. I want Perl 6 to be the community's rewrite of Perl and of the community.
--- Larry Wall
Whenever a language is designed by a committee, it is common wisdom to avoid it. Not so with Perl, for it cannot get worse. However strange these Perl people seem, Perl 6 is a good thing coming. In this talk, I will demonstrate some Perl 5 programs, and talk about their Perl 6 counterparts, to show you that Perl 6 will be cleaner, friendlier, and prettier.
Samba is a free implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. It also implements the Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol, used by Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP to share files and printers.
SMB was originally developed in the early to mid-80's by IBM and was further improved by Microsoft, Intel, SCO, Network Appliances, Digital and many others over a period of 15 years. It has now morphed into CIFS, a form strongly influenced by Microsoft.
Samba is considered to be one of the key projects for the acceptance of GNU/Linux and other Free operating systems (e.g. FreeBSD) in the corporate world: a traditional Windows NT/2000 stronghold.
We will talk about interfacing Samba servers and desktops with the Windows world. From a simple GNU/Linux desktop in your home to the corporate server that provides collaborative file/printer sharing, logons and home directories to hundreds of users a day.
This whirlwind talk is aimed at providing an overview of the GNU/Linux port for the HP PARISC processor. The talk will focus on the "intricacies" of the processor, and in particular the implementations of the Linux kernel and GNU Libc. After the talk you should be acutely aware of how little code needs to be written to support a new architecture! Carlos has been working on the port for two years, and enjoying the fruits of his labour on a 46-node PARISC cluster.
Carlos is currently in his 5th year of study at the University of Western Ontario. This is his last year in a concurrent Computer Engineering and Computer Science degree. His research interest range from distributed and parallel systems to low level optimized hardware design. He likes playing guitar and just bought a Cort NTL-20, jumbo body, solid spruce top with a mahogany back. Carlos hacks on the PARISC Linux kernel, GNU libc, GNU Debugger, GNU Binutils and various Debian packages.
The Hurd server interfaces are at the heart of the Hurd system. They define the remote procedure calls (RPCs) that are used by the servers, the GNU C library and the utility programs to communicate with the Hurd system and to implement the POSIX personality of the Hurd as well as other features.
This talk is a walk through the Hurd RPCs, and will give an overview of how they are used to implement the system. Individual RPCs will be used to illustrate important or exciting features of the Hurd system in general, and it will be shown how those features are accessible to the user at the command line, too.
Marcus Brinkmann is a math student at the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum in Germany. He is one of maintainers of the GNU Hurd project and the initiator of the Debian GNU/Hurd binary distribution. He designed and implemented the console subsystem of the Hurd, wrote the FAT filesystem server, and fixed a lot of bugs, thus increasing the stability and usability of the system.
Virtual memory management is one of the cornerstones of multiuser operating systems. Most systems available today place all of the policy in a monolithic virtual memory manager, VMM, isolated from the rest of the system. Although secure and lightweight, users have no way to communicate their anticipated memory needs and usage to the system pager. As a result, the VMM can only implement a global paging policy (typically, an approximation of LRU) which may be good on average but is best for nobody.
With the port of Hurd to the L4 microkernel, this situation is being readdressed. Due to its more distributed nature, a centralized resource manager is not only more difficult to implement efficiently but also contrary to the philosophy of the rest of the system. We are currently exploring a model whereby each program is fully self-paged and all compete for memory from a physical memory server. This talk will first discuss how paging currently works in Mach and other systems. An argument for an external paging policy will then be presented followed by the requirements of such a design and the design itself.
Neal Walfield, a GNU Hurd developer, is from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Neal spent the summer of 2002 at University of Karlsruhe working on porting the GNU Hurd to L4.
The Debian Project produces a "Universal Operating System" that is comprised entirely of Free Software. This talk focuses on using Debian GNU/Linux in an enterprise environment. This includes:
Do you ever wonder what java is doing while you wait? Have you ever used Modula-3? Do you wonder how lazily you can Mark and Sweep? Would you like to know how to Stop-and-Copy?
Come out to this talk and learn these things and more. No prior knowledge of Garbage Collection or memory management is needed.