- csc-general - CSC Mailman

Elections! / Palantir Tech Talk
by Computer Science Club 02 May '12

02 May '12

Hello all! I hope you had a nice break between terms. We're going to kick off the spring term fast, so get ready. ELECTIONS: Thursday, May 10, 4:30 PM, Comfy Lounge (MC 3001) --- Calum T. Dalek asked me to relay the details of the election. We will be holding the election at 4:30 PM in the Comfy Lounge on May 10th. Nominations are now open, so feel free to write your nominations on the whiteboard in the CSC office, or email them to cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca. PALANTIR TECH TALK: "mmap and the Mortgage Crisis" by Palantir Engineers; Monday, May 7, 6:00 PM, DC 1302 --- Palantir is a Palo Alto-based intelligence analysis software company that has partnered with the CSC to put on a tech talk and social. There will be free food, free drinks, and for one lucky winner, a free iPad, so why not come on out? Abstract: In the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, large banks have been saddled with the prospect of foreclosing on millions of distressed mortgages, at a financial cost of billions of dollars and an incalculable social cost. Crucial to solving this problem is the ability to model and analyze these millions of loans in real time, enabling lenders to price homes so that they can find effective and mutually beneficial alternatives to foreclosure. In this talk, we'll describe how engineers at Palantir are working on a calculation engine that supports such analyses. We’ll outline our design goals of constructing a platform that supports queries against large sets of data at interactive speeds and exposes a high-level object-oriented interface that enables analysts to construct models intuitively without having to worry about the underlying implementation details. We’ll describe the different architectures we explored in prototyping the system, demo how to use our product to analyze massive datasets, and discuss how we've ultimately deployed it in the field. Details: Monday, May 7th 6:00 - 7:30pm DC 1302 Free dinner and drinks after the talk at McGinnis FrontRow! For more details about Palantir and information about their info session earlier in the day, please see their csc-industry post: http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/csc-industry/2012-May/000030.html Good luck in all your classes this semester, or whatever endeavors you may be enjoying the next few months. I hope to see you out at the elections and talk---mark your calendars! ^_^ -- Elana Hashman Vice-President, Winter 2012 Computer Science Club University of Waterloo ehashman(a)uwaterloo.ca

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PSP Left in the CSC Office
by Computer Science Club 28 Apr '12

28 Apr '12

If you lost a PSP recently, CSC may have it. Come by the office and ask office staff. You will need to provide evidence that the PSP is yours (e.g. knowledge of the contents of its memory card.) Thanks

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Prof Talk: Multi-processor Real-time Systems
by Computer Science Club 20 Mar '12

20 Mar '12

Greetings, members! This Thursday, at 4:30 PM in MC 4021, the CSC will be hosting a talk by professor Bill Cowan on Multi-processor Real-time Systems. Here's an abstract: ------ Programming systems that obey hard real-time constraints is difficult. So is programming multiple CPUs that interact to solve a single problem. On rare occasions it is possible to mix two difficult problems to create one easy problem and multi-CPU real-time is, on the face of it, just such an occasion. Give each deadline its own CPU and it will never be missed. This intuition is, unfortunately, incorrect, which does not, however, prevent it being tried in many real-time systems. For three decades, fourth year students have been exploring this problem in CS452, using multiple tasks (virtual CPUs) running on a single CPU. It is now time to consider whether modern developments in CPU architecture make it possible to use multiple CPUs in CS452 given the practical constraint of a twelve week semester. This talk will describe the nature of computation typical of real-time systems, architectural solutions currently employed in the course, and possible architectures for multi-CPU systems. ------ Drinks will be served; we hope to see you there! Regards, Marc Burns President, University of Waterloo Computer Science Club.

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OpenCL Contest Winners / UNIX 102
by Computer Science Club 03 Mar '12

03 Mar '12

Greetings, members! We would like to announce the winners of the OpenCL competition, and inform you of some of our upcoming events. OPENCL CONTEST WINNERS --- Problem Set Winner: Tor Myklebust Open Problem Winners: Rob Suderman Scott Alexander Greenlay Congratulations to all our prize winners, and thank you to everyone who participated in the competition and who came out to the code party last night! A big thank you also goes out to AMD for all their support and for providing the prizes for the winners. UNIX 102: Thurs. March 8 at 5:30 PM in MC 3003 (Mac Lab) --- We will be running the second installment of this term's introductory UNIX tutorials. Topics will be covered with the intent to show off the development-friendliness of the UNIX computing environment: "real" document editors, development tools, bash scripting, and version control. Even if you weren't able to make it out to UNIX 101, please feel free to join us---someone will be available to give you as much instruction as you need. A reminder to come out to the Feynman Lectures being screened every Wednesday in PHY 150 at 5:30 PM. This week we will be featuring two back to back lectures: "The Relation of Mathematics and Physics" and "The Great Conservation Principles." As always, see the website for more event details. Regards, -- Elana Hashman Vice-President Computer Science Club University of Waterloo ehashman(a)uwaterloo.ca

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Feynman Lectures Screening / OpenCL Final Code Party / SDN's CSS & JQuery Workshop
by Computer Science Club 27 Feb '12

27 Feb '12

Hello, membership! I trust that you all had a relaxing reading week. Now that things are back to the grind, I have a few events to announce that should lighten the week a little! FEYNMAN MESSENGER LECTURES: Every Wed. at 5:30 PM in PHY 150 --- The Computer Science Club and PhysClub will be screening the classic 1964 Messenger Lecture Series by Richard Feynman for the rest of term. Join us every Wednesday evening at 5:30 PM in PHY 150 for our five single and double feature evenings. Dinner will be provided, so come on out, relax in the comfy PHY 150 theatre, and enjoy. We will be screening the lectures as follows: - Feb. 29, 5:30-6:30 PM: Law of Gravitation: An Example of Physical Law - Mar. 7, 5:30-7:30 PM: The Relation of Mathematics and Physics; The Great Conservation Principles (double feature) - Mar. 14, 5:30-6:30 PM: Symmetry in Physical Law - Mar. 21, 5:30-7:30 PM: The Distinction of Past and Future; Probability and Uncertainty: The Quantum Mechanical View (double feature) - Mar. 28, 5:30-6:30 PM: Seeking New Laws OPENCL FINAL CODE PARTY: Fri. March 2, 7:00 PM - 12:00 AM --- The OpenCL competition comes to an end this Friday, with submissions closing at 11:59 PM. The submissions will be judged this evening, with prizes being awarded at the close of the party. Even if you're not registered, feel free to come out, write some code, support the contestants, and of course enjoy the available food. SDN'S WEBSITE THEMING WITH CSS & JQUERY WORKSHOP --- Our friends at the Student Developer Network invite you to this workshop for an introductory walk-through of CSS and JQuery. As always, free snacks are provided. Date: Thursday, Mar. 1 Time: 6PM- 9PM Location: MC 4060 Skill Level: Beginner Also, look forward to UNIX 102 coming up next week, and a hardware tutorial later in March. Announcements with official dates and times will be made soon. Hope to see you there! -- Elana Hashman Vice-President Computer Science Club University of Waterloo ehashman(a)uwaterloo.ca

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CSC/AMD OpenCL Competition
by Computer Science Club 15 Feb '12

15 Feb '12

Hello CSC Members, Want to win a new laptop or GPU? The University of Waterloo Computer Science Club and AMD are running an OpenCL programming competition. If you're interested in writing massively parallel software on the OpenCL platform, come out and join us for our introductory code party! The introductory part is at 7:00 PM on February 16th, 2012, in MC's Comfy Lounge (MC 3001). We'll be presenting a tutorial on writing OpenCL and GPGPU applications. OpenCL reference books will be available at this tutorial, courtesy of AMD. OpenCL is an open standard, and works as an extension of the C and C++ programming languages to allow programmers to control different types of processors at one time - multiple CPUs, GPUs, and Cell processors. OpenCL's parallel computing features make it very effective at simulating a variety of real-world systems as well as solving interesting computer science problems. Contest registration begins after the introductory code party on the 16th. If you want to participate and possibly win prizes, you'll need to register here between the 16th and 24th of February. On March 2nd, we'll be holding a contest code party. All contestants are invited; the submissions deadline will be at 12:00 AM. At the conclusion of the party, there will be judging and prizes. Participants will have the chance to win one of two HP laptops or an AMD desktop GPU. If you have any questions, please contact exec(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca or drop by the Computer Science Club in MC 3036. We hope you'll join us! Cheers, Marc Burns President, University of Waterloo Computer Science Club.

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Algorithms Talk / UNIX 101 / SDN Hackathon!
by Computer Science Club 02 Feb '12

02 Feb '12

Hello, membership! I hope you have all been having a pleasant term. We have a few events coming up that we'd like to share... ALGORITHMS TALK: Feb. 7, 6:00 - 7:00 pm, MC 4045 --- Are you interested in algorithms? What is an algorithm anyway? We will discuss two or three neat problems with very elegant answers. Some of these answers are actually fast, and some will result in a proof that the problem is NP-complete. (What does that mean?) We will also discuss the motivating thoughts that led us to the solutions. Join Victor Fan for his talk, intended for all second-year math students with a solid first-year background. Even if you are a first-year or a seasoned veteran, you will probably still take home something new, so please come out to enjoy the talk! Refreshments will be served. UNIX 101: Feb. 9, 5:00 - 6:00 pm, MC 3003 --- New to the Unix computing environment? If you seek an introduction, look no further. We will be holding a series of tutorials on using Unix, beginning with Unix 101 this upcoming Thursday. Topics that will be covered include basic interaction with the shell and the motivations behind using it, and an introduction to compilation. You'll have to learn this stuff in CS 246 anyways, so why not get a head start! If you're interested in attending, make sure you can log into the Macs on the third floor, or show up to the CSC office (MC 3036) 20 minutes early for some help. If you're already familiar with these topics, don't hesitate to come to Unix 102, planned to be held after Reading Week. SDN HACKATHON: Feb. 10, 7:00 pm to Feb. 11, 2:00 pm, Comfy Lounge (MC 3001) --- Jenna, on behalf of the Student Developers Network, has requested I pass this on: Do you have an idea? It's time to ship it. Event: SDN Hackathon Event Website: http://goo.gl/qBRPQ Place: MC Comfy Lounge Start: Friday Feb. 10 @ 7PM Finish: Saturday, Feb. 11 @ 2PM Details: - Edibles: Dinner (~9PM, Friday) & Lunch (~12PM, Saturday). - Tunes: Spun by Qifan Xi. - Practice your pitch: Show what you finished on Saturday at noon. - Stuck for an idea? See the website for a Google doc with some excellent project ideas brainstormed during the SDN Brainstorming session. - Don't know how to code? That's okay. We need designers, testers, and writers to join the teams. Make sure to sign up on the website to ensure enough food will be available. *** Good luck on your upcoming midterms, and hope to see you out at our events! -- Elana Hashman Vice-President Computer Science Club University of Waterloo ehashman(a)uwaterloo.ca

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Reminders / Code Party 0 / Call For Member Talks!
by Computer Science Club 18 Jan '12

18 Jan '12

Hello, membership! Welcome back. A few quick reminders for members. - Don't forget to renew your membership! If you come to the office to renew for two or more terms (which is only $4!), you will receive a FREE POP! That's right, one can of pop, entirely gratis. - We have lots of free t-shirts in the office. When you come by to renew your membership or hang out in the office, pick one up! We also have CSC t-shirts for sale: $10 mens'/$11 womens'. - If you're interested in industry opportunities, don't forget to subscribe to our new csc-industry mailing list. For job postings, industry events, and more, you may want to sign up. Visit http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/csc-industry to subscribe. CODE PARTY 0 --- Come out to our first code party of the term next Friday, Jan. 27 in the CnD lounge (MC 3002) from 6:30 pm onwards. Hack on your open source projects, your personal codebases, your homework! We'll be up late writing code, so join us now and share the software, caffeine, and munchies. Bring your laptop and bring your friends. Hope to see you there. CALL FOR MEMBER TALKS --- The CSC wants YOU to give a talk. Maybe you're really passionate about a certain topic, or maybe you've worked on a project you really want to share. Maybe you just want to practice your public speaking on a technical topic. Our members want to hear it! Please send an abstract of your talk, or a proposal for a talk topic if you're unsure, and dates that are convenient for your talk to our program committee: progcom(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca. Wishing you a most successful Winter 2012, -- Elana Hashman Vice-President Computer Science Club University of Waterloo ehashman(a)uwaterloo.ca

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Elections tomorrow for W12 exec
by Computer Science Club 11 Jan '12

11 Jan '12

Hello all, Nominations have closed. Elections are happening tomorrow in the Comfy Lounge on the third floor of MC at 4:30PM. Candidates are as follows: President Marc Burns Elana Hashman Vice President Marc Burns Elana Hashman The following positions have been acclaimed: Treasurer Jacob Parker Secretary Matthew McPherrin The new exec will also be choosing this term's systems administrator, librarian and office manager. If you think you can maintain the CSC's machines, help with our collection of books or make sure the office gets taken care of, come out and introduce yourself! Jenny Wong Chief Returning Officer, W2012 Computer Science Club

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Elections Winter 2012
by Computer Science Club 05 Jan '12

05 Jan '12

It's elections time again! On Thursday January 12th at 4:30PM, come to the Comfy Lounge on the 3rd floor of the MC to vote in this term's President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary. The sysadmin, librarian and office manager will also be chosen at this time. Nominations are open until 4:30PM on Wednesday January 11th, and can be written on the CSC office whiteboard (yes, you can nominate yourself). All CSC members who have paid their Mathsoc fee can vote and are invited to drop by. You may also send nominations to the Chief Returning Officer <cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca>. A full list of candidates will be posted when nominations close. Good luck to our candidates! Jenny Wong Chief Returning Officer W2012 Computer Science Club

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