CGL Meeting Agenda

Wednesday, 22 November 1995


Location:
DC 1304
Time:
1:30 PM
Chair:
Ian Bell

1. Adoption of the Agenda - additions or deletions

2. Coffee Hour

Coffee hour this week:
Julie and Andrew
Coffee hour next week:
???

3. Next week's meeting

Date:
29 November 1995
Location:
DC 1304
Time:
1:30 PM
Chair:
Leith Chan
Technical presentation:
Richard Bartels

4. Forthcoming

Chairs:
  1. Leo Chan
  2. Stewart Chao
  3. Wilkin Chau
  4. Ada Cheung
Tech Presenters:
  1. John Beatty
  2. Ian Bell
  3. Leith Chan
  4. Leo Chan

5. Technical Presentation

Presenter:
Raymond Yiu
Title:
??? Programming
Abstract:
???

6. General Discussion Items

  • Anne Jenson: How about Wed, Dec 6 for the CGL Xmas party?
  • 7. Action List

    8. Director's Meeting

    There was none.

    9. Seminars

                                   Gray Matter
                                        by
                       Chris Gray, President of Gray Matter
    
                                     Overview
     Do  you like  Video Games?   Do  you like  Pizza?   Would  you like  a
    job someday?
     Come and learn about  Gray Matter, Canada's largest independent video
    game software developer.    With a staff  of over  65 programmers,
    producers and artists, Gray Matter has sold over 3 million games
    worldwide.
     At  this presentation, you will  meet the president of Gray  Matter,
    Chris Gray.  He'll be talking about his company, and employment
    prospects there.
    
                                  Wed 22nd, 1995
                                     4:30 pm
                                     MC 4058
    
    

                              THE PURE MATH CLUB
                                   presents
    
                             PROF. DAVID JACKSON
                                 speaking on
    
                        GRAPHS, SURFACES, and PHYSICS
    
    
    There is an apparently simple question about graphs drawn on a surface
    (sphere, torus, double torus, etc.) so that
       i) edges meet only at vertices (they do not cross)
      ii) deletion of the edges decomposes the surface into discs.
    The question is:
       How many such structures are there with a given number of
       vertices, edges, and faces (the dics in the above deletion)?
    
    This seemingly easy question touches on some nice combinatorial and
    algebraic ideas, and is related to the material on strings in the later
    part of Hawking's book "A Brief History of Time".  Indeed, this is a
    question that requires a good deal of classical mathematics and stands
    at the meeting point of these areas.
    
    This talk will sketch out how it is that such a structure can lead to
    algebraic ideas and to integration over random matrices and will tell
    a little bit about how the desired information can be extracted.
    
    
                               ALL ARE WELCOME!
                      Wednesday, November 22, 4:30 p.m.
                                   MC 2036
    
    

                                  The Internet:
                       A Corporate Approach to a New Medium
                                        by
                           Klaus Doose and Frank Juhasz
                          of ROGERS Communications Inc.
    
                                     Abstract
     The  Internet has  been a  hot topic  in the  media for  over a year  now.
    Come to this talk  to hear one view of how a  leading communications company
    is approaching those  new opportunities.   This presentation will  cover the
    three major types of content:  providing information, service provision, and
    transaction facilitation.
     Rogers  Communications  is a  leading information  provider  in the  cable
    industry, with over one third of the cable market.
    
                           Thursday, November 23, 1995
                                     4:30 pm
                                     MC 4020
    
    

                  The Institute for Computer Research (ICR)
                                   and
               The Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance
                         Present a Colloquium on
    
                          "Finance to Physics"
    
    
    by:     Dr. Joseph F. Traub
    
    of:     Department of Computer Science
            Columbia University
    
    Date:   Thursday, November 30, 1995 
    Time:   3:30 pm.
    Place:  William G. Davis Computer Research Centre, Room 1302
    
    Abstract:
    The talk will consist of three parts.  Some  recent  results  and
    open  problems in information-based complexity will be described.
    Some of the results will be applied to the valuation of financial
    derivatives, an important topic in mathematical finance.  The fi-
    nal part of the talk considers whether it  is  possible  to  move
    from  limitative results in formal systems (Goedel, Turing, Cook,
    ...) to limits in empirical science.  Are there  provable  limits
    to what is knowable in physics and, more generally, in science?
    
    _________________
    Joseph Traub is the Edwin Howard Armstrong Professor of  Computer
    Science at Columbia University and on the external faculty of the
    Santa Fe Institute.  Previously, he was Head of the Computer Sci-
    ence   Department   at  Carnegie-Mellon  University.  He  started
    research in what is now called  information-based  complexity  in
    1959.
    
    Everyone is welcome.  Refreshments served.
    

                       The University of Waterloo
                          200 University Avenue
                            Waterloo, Ontario
    
    
               The Institute for Computer Research (ICR)
    
                  Presents an Evening Lecture Series on
    
    
               "Using the Internet as a Parallel Computer"
    
    
    by:     Dr. Kenneth Salem
    
    of:     Department of Computer Science
            University of Waterloo
    
    
    Date:   Monday, November 27, 1995    
    Time:   8:00 pm.
    Place:  William G. Davis Computer Research Centre, Room 1302
    
    
    Abstract:
    
    The Internet is a vast and powerful collection of resources.   It
    serves as a communications system and as an information reposito-
    ry.  It can also be viewed as a computer consisting  of  millions
    of  interconnected,  autonomous computers capable of operating in
    parallel.  The question is, can this computer, or  a  portion  of
    it,  be programmed and used to solve real problems?  Can its com-
    putational power be tapped?
    
    This talk presents some of the practical problems of computing on
    the  Internet.   It describes some of the existing tools, such as
    PVM and Condor, that support computing on clusters  of  intercon-
    nected  workstations.   For  a  variety of reasons, such clusters
    tend to be relatively small.  It also describes  the  Distributed
    Batch  Controller (DBC), a tool designed to support data process-
    ing on a larger scale.  The  DBC  combines  independent  clusters
    into a loose federation which can then be used as a powerful data
    processing engine.
    
    
    ___________
    Kenneth Salem is a member of the faculty  of  the  University  of
    Waterloo  in  the  Department of Computer Science.  He joined the
    department in 1994, after spending a year there as a visitor.  He
    has  also been a member of the faculty of the University of Mary-
    land in its Department of Computer Science, and a staff scientist
    at CESDIS, NASA's Center of Excellence in Space Data and Informa-
    tion Sciences.  His research interests are in the areas  of  data
    management  and operating systems.  Dr. Salem received his BSc in
    electrical engineering and  applied  mathematics  from  Carnegie-
    Mellon  University  in 1983, and his PhD in computer science from
    Princeton University in 1989.
    
    
    Everyone is welcome.   Refreshments served.
    

                       Java, SGML, and the Metamedia Project
                                         by
                               Prof.  Michael McCool
    
                             Tuesday, November 28, 1995
                                      4:30 pm
                                      MC 4060
    

    10. Lab Cleanup (until 2:30 or 5 minutes)