UDACM Minutes for 2/28/07

2/28/07

First meeting of 2007.

A hot new animation provided by Van Lang was presented at the beginning of the meeting. There was an OK turnout, approximately 15 people, including Dr. Saunders.

Joint venture between UPE and ACM

UPE is Computer Science Honor society, created last spring. Dr. Saunders is the advisor and the group is in its infancy with only 5 members. $50 admission for a lifetime membership. Tangible advantages: official 1 year membership with ACM and something valuable to list on your resume. 3.25 GPA requirement. Comp Sci majors only and you need 64 credits with MATH210 being a part of the total. A treasurer is needed! Visit http://udel.edu/stu-org/upe (locally) or www.acm.org/upe (nationally) or write questions to frank@udel.edu.

Weekly News

1. Apple TV
1. The realease was delayed till march. $300 with the ability to stream any HD AV to any TV wirelessly from any computer running iTunes.
2. Sony in the lead with Blu-ray over Toshiba
1. New $600 player which is much cheaper
2. In competition with PS3
3. Dell to start selling Linux-Powered machines!
1. Working with Novell so it allows users to chose which version
2. However, Dell backpedaled by saying, “It’s just a thought.”
3. You can however, with enough yelling over the phone with Dell, they will ship you a machine without an OS.
4. China has laws against ‘Internet Addiction’
1. One man has had his life plotted out in jail where he will NOT come into contact with the Internet until he is 84 years old.
5. WordPerfect Lightning Beta Available
1. Free beta to encourage people to branch away from Microsoft’s Office Suites
6. AMD integrates ATI Graphics
1. Energy efficient and can support up to 4 monitors!
2. Designed for the demanding graphics needs of Windows Vista.
7. Fat Gamer passes from playing too much MMO
1. Over Chinese new year, a man dies from gaming too hard
8. Google Maps now adds real-time traffic data
1. Interesting to note that Yahoo has had this for quite some time, but is still a great advancement.
9. 34% people use wireless that are connected to the internet
1. 40% of people have connection to the Internet
10. Firefox 3.0 makes lead in for Web based Apps
11. RIAA Announces New Campus Lawsuit Strategy
1. Encourages the individual law suites to students offering an ultimatum to them and makes them pay harsher fines.
12. BitFast, sorts linked lists 10 times faster than mergesort.
1. Rumored to simply just be a variation on Radix Sort

Dr. Conrad talked about how he used VoIP 20 years before the World Wide Web was created. Talked about book called TCP Illustrated, this book goes into great detail on socket programming. He explained this book in context on how he did VoIP programming over a UDP network protocol.

Steve talks about The Code Book. This book goes into cryptography and explains how Europe had computers way before the US did. We just had the first ‘publicly used’ machine.

The Last Question, a story about a computer that can answer nearly any question. When it can’t, it says it doesn’t have enough data. Mind blowing ending!

Next week…

- Presentation on Network Management from Steve Mahoney’s boss.

o Eventually, there will be a field trip to Steve’s place of work to see this content hands-on. Possibly, sometime after spring break

Before Spring Break…

- Second Xbox tourney

o Using multiple rooms

o More organized this time

o Up to 16 players per game!

- Using the new Student Media Center

o Dr. Conrad has great influence in this area in renting the rooms for 2 hour periods.

§ Some controversy about the staff limiting the use of the services.

§ Steve Mahoney gave a detailed layout of the new basement in the library.