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Vern Ehlers to talk on DMCA, Digital Divide
Monday, February 3, 2003 3:30 in SB 010

Abstraction, the Computer Science Club, is proud to welcome Representative Vern Ehlers to speak on the DCMA. The DMCA and related recent federal copyright and privacy legislation is having a chilling effect for software and hardware developers let alone end users. Rep. Vern Ehlers, one of Calvin's own, will address prospects for amending the DMCA plus address the digital divide. Please join us.

Audio from this event - 32k MP3

"The Athlon XP, the Opteron, and the HyperTransport Bus"
Wednesday, December 4, 2002, 3:30 in SB 010
Frank Hudziak, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Abstraction, the computer science club at Calvin College, is pleased to have Frank Hudziak, a Field Applications Engineer with AMD, come and speak at Calvin College. All are invited to this event on December 4 at 3:30 PM in SB 010.

His presentation will cover the Athlon XP family of processors, the upcoming Opteron CPU, and the HyperTransport system bus.

Information on directions to Calvin and the Science Building: http://www.calvin.edu/map/

Abstraction, the computer science club at Calvin College, is pleased to have Brad Kuhn, VP of the Free Software Foundation, come and speak at Calvin College. All are invited to this event on April 24 at 3:30 in the Calvin Commons Lecture Hall.

The topic for his speech will be "Software Freedom and the GNU Generation." It will last approximately two hours.

Information on directions to Calvin and the Commons Lecture Hall: http://www.calvin.edu/map/

Abstract: Software Freedom and the GNU Generation

For decades, high-performance computing has been done using row- and column-major order for storing matrices. Algorithms must be rewritten to accommodate these arrays for the various levels of memory (caches, RAM, virtual memory, distributed memory, etc.). There are better ways to store matrices that automatically block the matrix at each level of memory. One solution is a recursive structure called a quadtree matrix which can be stored using Morton order indexing.

Recursive functions over this quadtree matrix are tuned for all of the levels of memory with very little extra work. Furthermore, parallelizing the resulting recursive algorithms is straightforward.

This work looks at two matrix algorithms: matrix multiplication and QR factorization. Experimental results show that while traditional, decades-old solutions can be quite effective, the quadtree matrix algorithms are at least competitive and can even beat these ancient techniques.

Come to NH253 this Thursday, April 18 at 3:30. Refreshments will be provided.

Dr. Bos is a Calvin graduate doing exciting work in the University of Michigan's Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW).

His talk will discuss issues surrounding effective distant collaboration. New Internet-based tools often fall short of expectations. He will report on a several of experimental studies comparing how small groups of people develop trust in each other when they communicate.

More about him and his research can be found here:

• http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~serp/
• a related paper, another related paper

Router-based support for end-to-end services is necessary for deploying certain new services or for scaling existing services. Jim Griffioen will discuss the requirements of router-based support for end-to-end services whose simplicity, extensibility, scalability, and performance resemble that of the Internet Protocol. He will describe building block services can be used to create interesting and efficient application-specific network-level services.

• his presentation
• a related paper, another related paper

Can human-computer interaction be best understood as a kind of theatre? A number of prominent computer theorists have claimed that this is so.

This talk will evaluate this interface "metaphor" in relation to overaching issues that arise from artistic and humanistic approaches to the computer.

Tuesday, March 26 at 3:30 in NH253. Refreshments will be provided. See you there!

Abstraction will be going out for a rousing game of paintball this coming Saturday, April 6. We will tenatively be meeting at Calvin that morning to carpool.

Space is limited so signup soon! (before the spots are gone)

Signup Now!

This year Abstraction has opted for pint glasses as our "Abstraction item." We've ordered and received 72 glasses. We'll be selling these at four dollars each. We'll be ordering more if demand exceeds our quantity on hand. Those that order first will receive their glasses first.

Please note that even if you "pre-ordered" before you'll have to order again.

Order Now!

For those of you that don't know, CCEL is a project started by Professor Plantinga that puts a huge number of Christian texts online. This Thursday Wes Morgan will be talking about how CCEL uses XML and how its flexibility allows them to present documents in any form on-the-fly. This is a good chance to see what XML is about and how it can be used.

Visit CCEL at:
http://www.ccel.org/

This Thursday, March 21 at 3:30 in NH253. Refreshments will be provided. See you there!

Powerpoint Presentation

In the process of redesigning the Abstraction web site we stumbled across some old websites and documents. We've tried to gather and format some of this information to give you a glimpse of the past.

View the history page

Hans Dulimarta, Michigan State University

Hans Dulimarta from MSU will be here Tuesday to present his research regarding miniature climbing robots. He will cover the requirements and challenges involved in creating such a machine.

More information about him and his research can be found at: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~dulimart/

Tuesday, March 5 at 3:30 in NH253. See you there!

Abstract of his talk

Professor VanderLeest, Engineering Department

Abstraction has invited Professor VanderLeest from the engineering department to come and speak about his work at Smiths Aerospace regarding software in avionics systems.

Wednesday, Feb 27 at 3:30 in NH253. Refreshments will be served.