compsoc-announce

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Week 7: AGM; Peter Gradwell on Mobile VoIP
by Will Thompson 28 Feb '07

28 Feb '07

Dear Dr. Compsoc, My name is Will Thompson, a computer Student, and the joint proprietor of the above specialist Society (COMPUTER SOCIETY). I understand that through Internet is the best way to link up with you because of the confidentiality which the transaction demands. Do not be surprised at receiving this email. I have a unique business Proposition for you. On Wednesday 28th February, there will be the Annual General Meeting of our great society. I need you to come and Act as members of a greater union, in order that we might elect some of our numbers to positions of authority Within the society. Furthermore, on Thursday 1st March, we can be learning about the wonders of Mobile Voice over Internet Protocol. I will not fail to bring to your attention that This business is hitch free safe and legal. Annual General Meeting ====================== When: Wednesday 28th February, 19.00 Where: The Big Bang[0] Right, you should come to the AGM. It should be fun, and involves sausages. I've booked a table for 10. Fewer people turning up is not a problem as far as the Big Bang are concerned (although fewer than 8 would mean the meeting was not quorate, of course!), but more than 10 would pose a problem. It turns out that they have a jazz night downstairs on Wednesdays, and they can't (in theory) seat groups of more than 10 upstairs. It should be okay, though. Drop an email to -discuss if you're planning to attend, in any case. As announced, there will be elections for the 2007-2008 committee at this AGM! So far, we have received proposals for two candidates: * Martin Smith: Secretary (proposed by Andrew Godwin, seconded by Martin David North) * David North: Treasurer (proposed by Andrew Godwin, seconded by Martin Smith) You'll notice a gaping lack of anyone standing for President. This is a terrible calamity! The responsibilities of the position are defined by the constitution as "to preside over meetings, to authorise all expenditure and ultimately be responsible for the running of the Society". In practice, it involves liaising with potential speakers (mostly by email, and sometimes by phone), writing wonderful emails like this one, and delegating to the others on the committee as appropriate. :-) Feel free to get in touch with me if you want any other information. [0] http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Big_Bang Mobile VoIP - Will VoIP learn to walk in 2007? ============================================== When: Thursday 1st March, 20.00 Where: Denis Sciama Lecture Theatre, Denys Wilkinson Building[1] Peter Gradwell of Gradwell dot com[2] will be speaking to us on the possibilities of combining mobile devices with Voice over IP technology: The past two years have seen much development in the VoIP fixed handset market, and anyone who is purchasing a small office phone system would be silly to ignore it. But what about those who are mobile? Can VoIP be used in the mobile environment, who has working products and what are the challenges of making a call from a Wi-Fi hotspot? We'll have someone at the entrance to let you in. If you're late, you'll be stuck outside, since there's no phobile reception in the lecture theatre. If you're likely to get there late, let us know and we'll see what we can do. [1] http://tinyurl.com/yeqtzg [2] http://www.gradwell.com/ Coda ==== When you receive this letter, kindly send me an e-mail on this mail box including your most confidential telephone/fax numbers and your address for quick communication! Alternatively, please look at the following picture of a cat: http://tinyurl.com/32frh8 I hope I won't be marked as spam, Will -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President Jabber: <resiak(a)feayn.org>; Mobile: +44 (0)7771 77 40 70 <http://www.ox.compsoc.net>

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Software Freedom Day meeting on Saturday
by Will Thompson 26 Feb '07

26 Feb '07

HELLO DEAR MEMBERS, I am a muppet and totally forgot to pass on this announcement that flew past on the OxLUG[0] mailing list in my earlier email (which scored a pitiful 0.3 points on the Oxmail spam filter (which came from my use of the words "unique business proposal". Oops, there it goes again)). Those of you who like Free Software may well be interested. Those of you who do not may want to hit their delete button now. [0] http://www.oxlug.org/ The coordinators of Software Freedom Day are meeting in Oxford, UK, on 3 March this year - and supporters of FOSS are invited to come chat with us about software freedom in general and SFD in particular. * DATE: Saturday 3 March 2007 * TIME: 1330 UTC onwards (till late afternoon) * VENUE: Freud's Bar, Walton Street, Oxford (walking distance from bus and train stations) * Maps and information about venue at the end of this email.[1], [2] Please drop an email to info(a)sf-day.org if you're planning to come - so that we can work out (approximate) numbers. == Background == Software Freedom Day is getting a professional makeover this year as Software Freedom International (SFI), the organisation behind this annual event, holds their first ever face-to-face board meeting. The coordination of SFD in previous years has been undertaken by the board [3], consisting of members in Australia, Pakistan, Nigeria, UK, Denmark and USA, using IRC and email as their primary means of communication. Their coordination has supported teams all over the world in staging their own local events, which vary from giving away FOSS CDs to staging seminars to demonstrating FOSS to their communities. After the overwhelming positive response for SFD 2006 (with close to 200 teams from all over the world registered) and the late delivery of support to some teams, the board has decided to shake things up and sharpen their strategy for bringing software freedom to the streets. Part of this has involved restructuring the board to enhance contact with teams, but we've also decided to sit down together and make some serious plans to grow SFD and further promote the spread of free software. The SFI board will be meeting in Oxford from 1 to 3 March, and on our last day of meetings we wanted to invite members of the local FOSS communities - or even those just curious about SFD - to come for a few drinks, some food, and to share your thoughts with us. Please do come along if you're anywhere near Oxford, and find out about our new ideas for Software Freedom Day! Our face-to-face meeting could not take place without the assistance of OSS Watch [4], the open source advisory service based at the University of Oxford. Many thanks to them, to our other sponsors, and to the teams that make SFD worthwhile. Make sure you have Saturday 15 September in your diaries for Software Freedom Day 2007, and we hope to see you in person, in Oxford! [1] Freud's website: http://www.freudliving.co.uk/cgi-bin/shop/page.cgi?user_id=526&file=bars.ht… [2] Google map to Freud's: http://tinyurl.com/2cenps [3] SFI board: http://softwarefreedomday.org/sfi [4] OSS Watch: http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/ -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President Jabber: <resiak(a)feayn.org>; Mobile: +44 (0)7771 77 40 70 <http://www.ox.compsoc.net>

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AGM; AMD talk added; BCS event this week
by Will Thompson 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

Good morning, Compsoccers! Summary for those who don't want to read the whole mail and will hence miss the entertaining URL I will mention later: a couple of events have been added to the termcard[0], namely the AGM and a talk by Simon Cole of AMD. There are no Compsoc events this week, but there is a British Computer Society event at Comlab on Thursday to which Compsoc folks are (as always) welcome. [0] http://www.ox.compsoc.net/events/termcards/current/ Annual General Meeting ====================== The AGM will take place on Wednesday 28th February, provisionally at the Big Bang[1] once again. There will be elections for positions on the 07-08 committee: president, treasurer and secretary. As per section 5.6 of the constitution[2], candidates for posts need to be proposed and seconded before the meeting, and the proposer and seconder need to be at the meeting. [1] http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Big_Bang [2] http://www.ox.compsoc.net/info/constitution.shtml Quite a few people have asked if the current committee will be standing again. To clear this up, we're not. Dave will not be a student next year; Michael and I hope to stay involved, but aren't standing for re-election. (However, we intend to appoint Michael as System Administration Coordinator, since he's actually set up the machines.) If you're interested in standing for any of the positions, please do contact us with any questions or just to mention your intent. :-) (Also, Michael suggests that "anyone wanting to be treasurer uses/learns gnucash[3] :)".) [3] http://www.gnucash.org/ AMD Virtualization and Barcelona (Simon Cole) ============================================= I mentioned an extra talk a few emails ago. It's now been arranged: Simon Cole of AMD will be speaking about on-chip virtualization technology and AMD's forthcoming "Barcelona" four-core processor on Tuesday 6th March. Add it to your diary! A more detailed abstract should be on the termcard shortly. BCS talk: Towards secure distributed healthcare research and delivery ===================================================================== When: 22nd February 2006, 19:30 (tea and coffee from 19:00) Where: Comlab[4] > Over the past few years, members of the Software Engineering group > at Oxford have been involved in a number of e-Science projects. In > particular, they have been leading the development of distributed > infrastructures to support large-scale research. Examples of such > projects include climateprediction.net, CancerGrid, Integrative > Biology, and e-DiaMoND. > The talk will first provide an overview of the activities of the > Software Engineering group before describing the DTI-funded project > GIMI The primary focus of GIMI is the development of dynamic > authorisation techniques for the facilitation of secure aggregation > of medical data from disparate sources. This is a British Computer Society event, but Compsoc members are welcome. More information over at <http://www.oxon.bcs.org/program2006-7.htm#Feb>. [4] http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Computing_Laboratory You've reached the end of the email! I feel verbose today. As compensation for your feat of endurance, you can now wander over to <http://tinyurl.com/2wp86v> to see a stuffed squirrel riding a go-cart for sale on eBay. Will -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President Jabber: <resiak(a)feayn.org>; Mobile: +44 (0)7771 77 40 70 <http://www.ox.compsoc.net>

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The Compsoc network
by Michael Howe 15 Feb '07

15 Feb '07

Hi all, I'm pleased to announce that we do in fact now have a working machine, hosted in Worcester, with the firewall finally sorted so it is accessible. The setup is not yet complete - I need to make user management actually work in a sensible fashion, wait for OUCS to unblock smtp and http at their firewall, and connect it to stanley (our other server) - but we finally have something. If you are interested in having an account on the new server, please fill in a copy of the account application form [0] and get it to me (bring it along tonight, or pidge me at Worcester), and I'll try and sort you out an account. If you used to have an account, and want one again, please get in touch with me directly. I should point out that this new server is hosted on the Oxford network, and is subject to the same rules as all the other servers there. This means that this machine is not a playground from which to nmap every host in the world - if I have to go and explain to Worcester that they've got complaints from OUCS because someone was bored and felt like probing firewalls, I will not be happy (and neither will they). I'm sure this won't happen, however. Right, I should go and do some of this 'work' stuff. Hopefully see many of you tonight for the OpenStreetmap talk. Michael 0: http://www.ox.compsoc.net/network/apply/accountform-new.pdf -- Michael Howe Treasurer and Sysadmin, Oxford University Computer Society http://www.ox.compsoc.net/

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Week 5: OpenStreetMap, OpenGuides and friends; AGM plotting
by Will Thompson 15 Feb '07

15 Feb '07

Happy 5th week! This week, former Compsoc System Administration Co-ordinator and self-proclaimed "interfering busybody" Dominic Hargreaves is speaking on Thursday. Also, scroll down for information about the AGM (including elections for the next committee!), and other miscellany. OpenStreetMap, OpenGuides and friends ===================================== When: Thursday 15th February, 20:00 Where: Keble College, Pusey Room The last few years has seen an explosion of interest in geographically-aware applications, especially web applications, powered partly by the availability of cheap GPS units. Flickr, a leading photo hosting provider, has integrated geo-tagged photo processing to its site, and Google Earth and Google Maps has popularised the use of high quality mapping and satellite imagery. OpenStreetMap and OpenGuides are two projects that are harnessing this enthusiasm in the "Free" data and code spheres. Together, and with many other projects, they are helping us to describe the world we live in richly, and make this information availble to all in open formats and under open licences. Dominic will be introducing both projects; giving an overview of their aims and processes; explain how to participate in the projects; and hopefully to show off some cool technologies and uses the data is being used with. A few people at the Geek Night last week were using OSM information for neat things, and you may have seen me linking to the Oxford OpenGuide in the past. If you came to the EA talk last term, this is in the same place. If not, http://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/about/tour might prove useful. The Pusey room is on the Pusey Quad, roughly opposite the lodge. Someone will be hovering in the lodge to point you in the right direction in any case. Annual General Meeting ====================== The AGM is this term, and we'll have elections for a new president, secretary and treasurer. If you want to stand for election, you'll need a proposer and a seconder, who both need to be at the AGM, as per the constitution[0] (5.6). The meeting will be either on Wednesday of 7th week or Tuesday of 8th week, depending partly on when a speaker we're arranging could come to Oxford, and will probably be in the Big Bang[1] (again!). If you want to come to the meeting and either day is particularly bad, or you'd rather not go to the Big Bang again, let us know. [0] http://www.ox.compsoc.net/info/constitution.shtml [1] http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Big_Bang If you want to see more behind-the-scenes committee stuff and perhaps get involved (or maybe even just socialise), come hang out on our IRC channel: #compsoc on OxIRC (irc.oxirc.org). If you need an IRC client, you might like to try X-Chat on Windows[2], Colloquy[3] on OS X, and irssi or X-Chat or Konversation or whatever else takes your fancy on whatever Unix-like system you prefer (if indeed you do prefer one). [2] http://www.silverex.org/news/ [3] http://colloquy.info/ Bits from the Sysadmin ====================== Michael tells me that the Reply-To address for compsoc-members mails was incorrectly set to csoc(a)ox.compsoc.net , which is an address that goes straight into the bin. We know we lost at least one reply into that particular black hole --- if you think we lost yours, resend it to compsoc-discuss(a)ox.compsoc.net . compsoc-members now has a sensible return address (we hope!). He adds: "We now have a switch, and are just looking for rails [for Compsoc's server in Worcester]." If you can help out, send us an email. If you already _had_ sent us an email, see the previous paragraph. :-) He concludes: "Urg, it must be 5th week." Right, more from us later in the week. I might even have thought of an entertaining link to give you all by then. Will -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President Jabber: <resiak(a)feayn.org>; Mobile: +44 (0)7771 77 40 70 <http://www.ox.compsoc.net>

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Tonight: Pub food, and Java in the Real World
by Will Thompson 08 Feb '07

08 Feb '07

G'day all, Just thought I'd let you all know that tonight's speakers from Decisionsoft plus 2/3 of the committee are meeting in the Goose[0] on Gloucester Green at 6.30 for food, and you should all feel free to come join us. We should be easy enough to find, but if you're stuck my phone number's at the bottom of the email. [0] http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Goose If you're not meeting us at the pub but are coming to the talk, be aware that there's a small wrench in the works. Apparently the door we normally use to enter the Denys Wilkinson Building is in some way broken. We'll still meet at that side of the building, but will enter through a different door that people who are coming but are not me know the location of. If you're going to be late, phone or SMS me in advance. In case you need a reminder of the talk itself: Java in the Real World (DecisionSoft) ===================================== When: Thursday 8th February, 20.00 Where: Denis Sciama Lecture Theatre, Denys Wilkinson Building[1] DecisionSoft[2], a local software development company, will talk about why Java is their development platform of choice. This will include the advantages and disadvantages of developing in Java, as well as a look at the new features offered by the latest version of Java. They will not tell you whether to call this version of Java "6" or "1.6". [1] http://tinyurl.com/yeqtzg [2] http://www.decisionsoft.com/ I think I'm going to call it "Java 6.11 for Workgroups". I'll leave you with a haiku about Eclipse that I found the other day: startApplication() thenWaitFriggingForever() thenItGoesRealSlow() Will -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President Jabber: <resiak(a)feayn.org>; Mobile: +44 (0)7771 77 40 70 <http://www.ox.compsoc.net>

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Week 4: Java in the Real World, Geek Night
by Will Thompson 06 Feb '07

06 Feb '07

Hi people, It's already fourth week. I have no idea how that happened. I guess I've spent a lot of time staring at my Eclipse window. Oh well. Also, those of you who didn't come with us to Game On[0] last week missed out, because it was ace. If you get a chance to go before the exhibition ends, you should do. [0] http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/gameon/ Speaking of Eclipse reminds me. I recently installed Sun Java 6 (or is it 1.6 this week?), and I have no idea what it gives me that Java 1.5 (or maybe 5) did not. Quite by chance, the Compsoc talk on Thursday should help me out here: Java in the Real World (DecisionSoft) ===================================== When: Thursday 8th February, 20.00 Where: Denis Sciama Lecture Theatre, Denys Wilkinson Building[1] DecisionSoft[2], a local software development company, will talk about why Java is their development platform of choice. This will include the advantages and disadvantages of developing in Java, as well as a look at the new features offered by the latest version of Java. They will not tell you whether to call this version of Java "6" or "1.6". [1] http://tinyurl.com/yeqtzg [2] http://www.decisionsoft.com/ We'll have someone at the entrance to let you in. If you're late, you'll be stuck outside, since there's no phobile reception in the lecture theatre. If you're likely to get there late, let us know and we'll see what we can do. Oxford Geek Night ================= When: Wednesday 7th February, 20:00 Where: Jericho Tavern[3] This isn't a Compsoc event, but you might well be interested. According to the website: Oxford Geek Nights offer a chance for web developers and designers in the local area to get together, share their skills and talk about new ideas, techniques and technologies. The format of the night will include two or three keynote talks of 15 minutes each, followed after a healthy period of socialising with a set of 5 minute long open microslot sessions. We have a fantastic line-up for the evening including two keynotes on very different subjects. Simon Willison gives an introduction to OpenID followed by Olly Willans demonstrating the latest version of Photoshop - Photoshop CS3. The microslots cover a wide range of exciting topics. The first set of 6 covers content management, frameworks and statistics, the second set explores maps, mashups, JavaScript and accessibility. http://oxford.geeknights.net/2007/february-7th/ has more information. I'll definitely be there; find me and say hi if you come along. [3] http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Jericho_Tavern This is Spinal Tap is on TV in half an hour. You should watch that. See you on Wednesday and/or Thursday, 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

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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