- csc-general - CSC Mailman

CSC Elections Procedure Update
by Computer Science Club 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

Upon request, there have been some updates to the election procedure this fall. Nominations are still open as usual (until Monday at 4:30 PM), and the election time and venue remain unchanged (Tuesday September 17 at 4:30 PM in the MC Comfy Lounge). Please attend if you are able (though absentee ballots will still be accepted until Tuesday at 3:30 PM if not). The only changes are procedural. 1. Eligibility Only current active Computer Science Club members will be permitted to vote; membership can be renewed before or at the election before voting has taken place. There is a conflict between informal historical precedent and the constitution about whether CSC members who are not social members of MathSoc may vote. In the event that any such people are present, the assembly will be asked to resolve this before the election. 2. Method of voting As concerns have been raised about the secrecy and integrity of the vote this election, the usual heads-down-hands-up vote will be replaced by a vote by secret paper ballot. Ballots will be handed out only to eligible members (see 1), and each position will be elected in sequence. The election will still be by approval. I expect that I will count the ballots; if the membership wishes, it may appoint another non-candidate to verify my count. Sorry for the additional complexity this introduces; thank you for your patience as we assure that all members are confident in the results of this election. -- Jeremy Roman Chief Returning Officer Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo

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CSC Elections, Fall 2013 – Tue Sept 17, 4:30 pm, MC Comfy Lounge
by Computer Science Club 05 Sep '13

05 Sep '13

The Computer Science Club will run its termly executive elections on Tuesday, September 17, 2013 at 4:30 pm in the MC Comfy Lounge. At this meeting, the president, vice-president, treasurer and secretary of the Computer Science Club will be elected. The system administrator, office manager, and other appointed positions are typically appointed at this meeting as well. Boring legalistic details follow. Any contingencies not accounted for below or mandated by the constitution or other applicable documents shall be determined at the discretion of the CRO or, in the case of disagreement on such a procedure, a majority vote of present voting members. Nomination procedure: 1. Anyone eligible to be a CSC member may be nominated for one or more of the positions for election: president, vice-president, treasurer, and secretary. 2. A person may nominate him/herself or someone else for any number of positions. 3. Nominations will be accepted by the CRO via any of the following means: (a) in person (b) email (to cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca) (c) the CSC mailbox in MathSoc (d) the whiteboard in the CSC office (MC 3036/3037) 4. Nominations will be accepted immediately, until the end of the nomination period (Mon Sept 16 2013 at 4:30 PM). Thereafter the final list will be posted on the CSC website. Election procedure: 1. Anyone present and eligible to join the CSC or renew CSC membership for the fall will be permitted to do so at the beginning of elections. 2. A list of the candidates for each position will be read. 3. The positions will be elected in the following order: president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary. Anyone elected to a position will be removed from consideration for following positions. 4. Before each position is elected, a summary of the duties attendant to that position will be given, and each candidate will be permitted to make a brief statement and take questions. 5. Elections will be conducted via heads-down-hands-up approval voting, with the CRO as the final authority on vote counts. Advance votes shall count equal to present votes, except that they are invalidated if the voter is present. In the event of a tie, a runoff election between the equal candidates will be run by the same procedure. 6. Anyone who is elected but discovered not to be a CSC member must resign the position immediately gain membership. 7. Following the election of these four positions, the meeting will be turned over to the president-elect, who shall begin his/her office by appointing (with the other new exec) the remaining positions. Advance voting procedure: 1. If you are unable to attend the election, you may submit an advance vote via email only. Such emails must be sent to cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca, and must be received at least one hour before the beginning of elections. 2. If you attend elections anyway, you must identify yourself to the CRO so that your advance ballot can be invalidated in favour of your present vote. -- Jeremy Roman Chief Returning Officer Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo

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Scheduled Downtime
by Computer Science Club 07 Aug '13

07 Aug '13

Taurine will be rebooted Thursday to complete kernel upgrades. Regards, Anthony "hatguy" Brennan CSC Sysadmin (S13)

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Guest Speaker Gavriel State: The Future of 3D Graphics is in Software! this Monday. | Code Party 1 Friday | CSC/CMC Cleanup (Important Notice Within) | Ctrl+D
by Computer Science Club 20 Jul '13

20 Jul '13

Greetings again Daleklings, Finishing up our graphics-themed talks this term are Guest Speakers Gavriel State and Nicolas Capens from TransGaming giving a talk entitled "The Future of 3D Graphics is in Software!" The talk will happen Monday, July 22nd, 17:00, in MC 4020. Summary and link to full abstract below: Convergence between CPU and GPU approaches to processing sets the stage for an exciting transition to 3D rendering that takes place entirely in software. TransGaming's Nicolas Capens and Gavriel State will speak about this convergence and how it will influence the future of graphics. For more information please visit http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/events/MC_4020-2013-07-22-5:00PM. == Then, this coming Friday, come out to the Code Party (1) happening in the MC Comfy Lounge, July 26, at 19:00! Why sleep when you could be hacking on $your_favourite_project or doing $something_classy in great company? Join us for a night of coding, music, snacks, and camaraderie! Pizza and other refreshments will be provided. == The following Monday, July 29, we will be performing a thorough cleaning of the CSC and ex-CMC offices. ***** Items appearing to be forsaken and using up precious space, including electronics, food paraphernalia, personal papers, useless print material, etc. will (upon some consultation with regular office denizens) be disposed of. If you happen to be storing items in these rooms, please remove them or let us know when you will be able to pick them up. ***** The offices are considerably more welcoming to fall term frosh Daleklings when they are clean and have space. =) == Lastly, Ctrl+D, our termly EOT event, will be happening most likely Friday, August 2, at the usual Westcourt abode. If you are interested in coming and don't know the location, feel free to inquire at the office. == Your overlord, Calum T. Dalek EXSANGUINATE

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CSC Goes Outside tonight!
by Computer Science Club 19 Jul '13

19 Jul '13

Fellow Dalek-lings! The weather forecast for tonight isn't looking that bad. We will start setting up at the EV Firepit at 7 and will have ice cream sandwiches available to cool you down. If it starts pouring at any point, we can wait it out inside EV, but at the moment it looks like rain will only be temporary and shouldn't interfere later in the night. Your overlord, Calum T. Dalek EXUBERATE

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Upcoming events: Gavriel State on future of 3D graphics in software, Path Tracing tutorial, CSC Goes Outside, and Code Party 1
by Computer Science Club 12 Jul '13

12 Jul '13

Hello CSC Members! Hope your term's coming to an agreeable end. We have a variety of events coming up in the next couple of weeks to finish off the term. == Path Tracing by Syed Albiz Thursday, July 18, 17:00, in MC 4041 Abstract: As a follow on to last term's tutorial on building a ray-tracer from scratch, I'll be presenting the basic mechanics of how a bidirectional path- tracer creates a globally illuminated scene, advantages and limitations of this approach over other offline global illumination techniques along with simple example path-tracer written in C++, and (time permitting) opportunities for hardware acceleration on GPUs. == CSC Goes Outside! Friday, July 19, 19:00, EV Fire Pit Event will happen rain or shine. Come out for an evening at a campfire BBQ at the Laurel Creek Firepit across from the Environment building / near Velocity. Feel free to bring friends, musical instruments, frisbees, or other entertainment. We'll have more than sufficient meat, Smores, Ice cream, etc. available for enjoyment. =) == The Future of 3D Graphics is in Software! by Gavriel State, founder of TransGaming and Nicolas Capens Monday, July 22nd, 17:00, in MC 4020 Abstract: For some time now, it has been clear that there is strong momentum for convergence between CPU and GPU technologies. Initially, each technology used radically different approaches to processing, but over time GPUs have evolved to support more general purpose use while CPUs have evolved to include advanced vector processing and multiple execution cores. At TransGaming, we believe that this convergence will continue to the point where typical systems have only one type of processing unit, with large numbers of cores and very wide vector execution units available for high performance parallel execution. In this kind of environment, all graphics processing will ultimately take place in software. In this talk, we will explore the converging nature of CPU and GPU approaches to processing, how dynamic specialization allows CPUs to efficiently perform tasks usually done by GPUs, and why we believe that the increased flexibility of more programmable architectures will ultimately win out over fixed function hardware, even in areas such as texture sampling. *TransGaming Inc.* works at the cutting edge of 3D graphics, building technologies that bridge the gap between platform boundaries to allow games to be played on a variety of devices and operating systems. TransGaming works with other industry leaders to update established APIs such as OpenGL, while also breaking new ground in software rendering technology, which we believe will become increasingly important as CPU and GPU technologies converge. *Nicolas Capens* is the architect of SwiftShader, TransGaming's high performance software renderer, and is also deeply involved in the ANGLE project, which provides efficient translation from OpenGL ES to Direct3D APIs for implementing WebGL on Windows. Nicolas received his MSci.Eng. degree in computer science from Ghent University in 2007. *Gavriel* *State *(Gav) is TransGaming's Founder & CTO, and has worked in graphics and portability for over 20 year on dozens of platforms and APIs. Gav wrote his first software renderer when taking CS488 at UW, where he later graduated with a B.A.Sc. in Systems Design Engineering. == Code Party 1 Friday, July 26, 19:00, in MC Comfy Lounge Celebrate the last Friday of classes working on some personal projects or just hanging out with the cool crowd. Pizza and other refreshments will be provided, as well as music, entertainment, and potentially more Artemis later in the evening. (We do want to get some coding done this time around ;) ) == Future events: The following week is likely to include CSC Clean Up Party and our termly Ctrl+D EOT party. Information will come forth closer to date. == Looking forward to seeing you at our events. Calum T. Dalek Overlord, CSC X-TERMINATE

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Upcoming CSC Talk: 3D Movies and Computer Science
by Computer Science Club 08 Jul '13

08 Jul '13

Hello CSC Members! We are hosting a faculty talk this Thursday, July 11 in MC 4041: 3D Movies and Computer Science by Lesley Northam Abstract: While humans started making 3D motion pictures in the 1800's, several technical and artistic challenges prevented widespread interest in the medium. By investing heavily in a computerized production pipeline, James Cameron's 2009 release of Avatar ushered in an era of mainstream interest in 3D film. However, many technical and artistic problems still find their way into otherwise-modern 3D movies. The talk explores some of these problems while introducing the fundamentals of 3D film-making from a CS perspective. Hope to see you there! Calum T. Dalek Overlord, CSC X-TERMINATE

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Re: [CSC] CSC Goes Outside POSTPONED DUE TO RAIN to Friday, July 12, 2013
by Computer Science Club 05 Jul '13

05 Jul '13

Hey all, CSC Goes Outside has been cancelled tonight due to rain. We will announce location once we have everything booked early next week. Enjoy your weekend everyone! =) Calum T. Dalek / ctdalek EXTERMINATE

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CSC Goes Outside | Friday, July 5, 2013
by Computer Science Club 04 Jul '13

04 Jul '13

Hello, CSC is going outside tomorrow: Friday, July 5. We're having a campfire BBQ at 7PM at the Laurel Creek firepit, across from Environment 3. There will be meat and other food items for consumption. Feel free to bring friends, musical instruments, a frisbee, and/or other fun things. We hope to see you there! Shane Creighton-Young / srcreigh President

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CODE PARTY 0!
by Computer Science Club 31 May '13

31 May '13

Dear CS Clubers, I am excited to announce our first code party of Spring 2013! Code Party 0 will take place in MC Comfy Lounge at 7:00pm on Friday June 7, 2013. Please bring your laptops and get ready to have fun! Unix 101 will precede the code party and will start at 6:00pm in the same location. I can't wait to see you all there! Cheers, VVIJAYAN CSC VEEP

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