compsoc-announce January 2007

compsoc-announce@lists.ox.compsoc.net

2 participants
5 discussions

Game On and assorted things
by Will Thompson 31 Jan '07

31 Jan '07

Evening, Game On on Saturday ------------------- Saturday is approaching rapidly! We've not heard from many of you wanting to come along, but I'm hoping you'll crawl out of the woodwork when you get more details. (Also, I'm assured that Durham's Compsoc "are not that scary, honest!", in case fear of the unknown is holding you back.) The plan is to get to the Science Museum by noon to meet the Durham people; if we catch the 10:05 train from Oxford Station, we'll reach Paddington at 11:06, and have some spare time. Sound good? (I believe that, with a Young Person's Railcard, a return on the train costs around £11, which is the same as the cost of taking a bus, and the train's quicker. If people want to take the bus instead, we can do that and leave a bit earlier. Let me know if so.) Oxford Algorithm Programming Training Website --------------------------------------------- Jakub Zavodny, a second-year maths and computer scientist, says: If you are interested in programming, algorithmics or just a small contest against other Oxford (&Cambridge:) programmers every now and then, this website is just for you: http://people.ksp.sk/~dano After registering a username, you get access to a bunch of nice and interesting problems in the archive (ranging from trivial to pretty difficult), you can code up a solution in your favourite language (C,C++,Pascal,Java,C# supported so far - sorry, no Haskell:) and get it tested automatically & instantly. Each week or two (or according to popularity), we will be holding a short contest (1.5 hours) for you to match your skills in real-time under time pressure. If they are popular enough, we may put in some prizes as well! This all is free, non-binding, hopefully fun and also useful, so don't hesitate to try it out! The first contest is scheduled on Monday 5th Feb, so get ready by then:) Any questions, write me (jakub.zavodny at seh.ox.ac.uk) or (dano at ksp.sk). Oxford Geek Nights - February 7th --------------------------------- Matthew Westcott of Torchbox wrote to us thusly: Just wanted to pass on news of an event that Compsoc members may be interested in - an evening of talks and socialising with a primarily web-development focus, upstairs at the Jericho Tavern from 8pm on Wednesday 7th February. All are welcome: http://oxford.geeknights.net/2007/february-7th/ Sounds like fun to me. We put this on the termcard, but I said I'd let you all know about it and then totally failed to do so in my last email. Sorry about that. asp.net programmer needed! www.odauk.org ---------------------------------------- ODA is a student-run charity that sends volunteers on small-scale development projects, and we're looking for a budding web designer to help write a new website. You'll be interested in charity work, and have a solid knowledge of web design. Our current site is asp-based, (see link above) but the already-constructed barebones of our new one are in asp.net, so knowledge of this would be preferable. Please contact ian.ross(a)bnc.ox.ac.uk if you're interested. I'll leave you with news that the BBC Trust have a public consultation on the BBC's proposed on-demand access to TV shows over the interblag. The current idea is to only support Windows Media Player 10, so people who like to use other platforms might want to pay attention to question 5. In any case, head over to http://tinyurl.com/ypdmd6 and let them know your opinions. It's a pretty interesting proposal. Will -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President <http://www.ox.compsoc.net/>

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Game On and assorted things
by Will Thompson 31 Jan '07

31 Jan '07

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Bits relating to the Compsoc network
by Michael Howe 31 Jan '07

31 Jan '07

Hi all, So, this network of which I keep speaking. It is happening, and Real Soon Now (or as soon as Worcester IT department has a day where backups don't fail and servers don't blow up), we should be able to bring you salami, the first of our servers to go up. However, before this can happen, there are a couple of bits of kit that are needed: * Rails Salami is a 1U server, with rails that go back ~60cm. However, we have no tracks for these rails, so we can't actually _mount_ the server. Does anyone have any hiding anywhere, or know of somewhere that we could get them? (People who now get paid to work with servers are the main people I'm looking at here...). If not, we shall just have to buy them. A couple of people may possibly be able to find some in a few weeks/months, but if anyone has any that might be available sooner, they would be much appreciated. * Switch If we want more than one computer hosted in Worcester (and they're happy to...), we really need a switch (chaining everything together by using the second network card in the server isn't an option). Ideally, we want a rack-mountable one, so we can stick it above our servers. Does anyone have such a beast they'd be willing to donate? It doesn't need to have many ports (8 would be more than we would use). This isn't actually necessary to get this first server up, but I thought I'd mention now that we're looking for one, in case anyone sees one somewhere. We've been offered a 10MB switch; if anyone has a 100MB one lurking in a cupboard somewhere, that would be most useful. I'm afraid to inform you of the death of our AMD server 'chili' (or 'scooby', as it will be known to many of you). Something between the CPU, motherboard and power supply is broken, and despite trying with a different motherboard, I couldn't get it to boot. However, we are considering approaching AMD to see if they would like to give us another server, hopefully one which we will be able to run xen on. That's all for now, Michael -- Michael Howe Treasurer and Sysadmin, Oxford University Computer Society http://www.ox.compsoc.net/

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Yes! Yes! A termcard!
by Will Thompson 26 Jan '07

26 Jan '07

Hi all, Uhm. It's somehow the end of second week already, and you've all heard nothing from us since the pubmeet in first week. Sorry about that. It's mostly my fault --- I wanted to wait for a few more potential speakers to get back to us rather than putting up a sparse termcard. But now I'm being harassed in lectures, so it's time to throw http://www.ox.compsoc.net/events/termcards/current/ out. With any luck a few more events will be popping up on it next week, and I'll try to throw together an iCal file and an RSS feed at some point, thereby jumping into this century. One thing which will definitely be added in the next few days is the Annual General Meeting, which will probably be in sixth or seventh week. There'll be elections for next year (TT07 to HT08)'s President, Secretary and Treasurer. The others in the committee seem to want to go to the Big Bang again; let us know if you'd rather go elsewhere, and if there are days you can't do, and we'll see if we can work around them. Next Saturday, Durham's Compsoc are going to Game On at the Science Museum in London. We're thinking it'd be fun to go down at the same time, check out Game On, and meet the Durham lot. Anyone interested? Send us (or compsoc-discuss) an email, and we'll get a group of people together. The sooner, the better! http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/gameon/ That's enough for now. Sorry for the long period of silence, and see you at an event soon, Will -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President <http://www.ox.compsoc.net/>

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Week 1: pub, BCS malware talk; Game On exhibition in London?
by Will Thompson 16 Jan '07

16 Jan '07

Hi folks, Did you all have a good holiday? I hope so. Anyway! You might be wondering what's happening in Compsoc this term. This week, come to the Turf Tavern on Wednesday 17th at some time after 8.30pm, and we can all catch up. As for the rest of term, well, we're still working on the termcard, I'm afraid. One thing we're planning is a visit to the Game On exhibition in the Barbican Centre in London[0]. Who'd be interested in going down there in a group? Would you prefer a weeknight or a weekend? (Durham's Compsoc are going down there on Saturday 3rd February, and it'd be neat to meet up with them, but EA are organising an event there on Wednesday 24th January evening with free drinks and a Q&A session with Bing Gordon[1].) Let us know which you'd prefer, so we can get things organised. [0] http://www.gameonweb.co.uk/ [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Gordon Also, on Thursday the British Computer Society's Oxfordshire Branch are running a talk at Comlab: Viruses and Malware, How many more threats are there? ----------------------------------------------------- Date: Thursday 18 January 2007 Time: 19:30 (Tea and Coffee from 19:00) Location: Computing Lab, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QG Speaker: Stuart Taylor, Manager SophosLabs(TM) UK. In the last ten years the number of threats has increased ten fold with approximately 5,000 new threats being seen every month. The presentation covers the rapid rise in the number of threats and the changing nature of those threats. It will discuss the issues faced by both vendors and consumers in protecting themselves against this global problem. The presentation will look at some of the myths surrounding protection and explore the reality of providing a rapid response against the unknown threat. http://www.oxon.bcs.org/program2006-7.htm#Jan has more details. Anyway, that's enough from me for now. Hope to see people at the Turf on Wednesday, wjt -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President <http://www.ox.compsoc.net/>

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compsoc-announce January 2007