Adrian Thurston is a Ph.D. student at Queen’s University, where he hacks on source transformation systems. His current work focuses on the analysis and manipulation of real-world languages. Many computer languages cause trouble for the grammar-based generalized parsers that are normally used in generic transformation systems. His current project, Colm, is a new transformation system that will solve this problem. Adrian is also the creator of Ragel, a software development tool that allows for the embedding of arbitrary code into statically compiled regular expressions. It can be described as a regular language parser generator; as such it can be used to make very fast parsers. Adrian did his Master’s degree also at Queen’s and his Undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo.
Abstract: A talk on what Ragel can do for you and what it requires of you for effective use.
Jeff Bailey works for Google in the Open Source Programs Office. Prior employers includes places like Canonical, Sirius Sattelite Radio, and Hollinger Digital Canada. Jeff is also a member of several Free and Open Source projects, such as GNU, Debian, Ubuntu, and Gnome.
Jeff is originally from Vancouver, but considers Montreal to be “Home”. He is currently studying for his Masters of Science in Computing and Information Systems with the University of Athabasca.
Abstract: Jeff will be talking about the growth and development of Open Source Software in corporations. This will include a bit on what Open Source is, an overview of some licenses, snippets about the growth of Open Source in corporate Canada over the past decade, and information on how Google (his currently employer) uses Open Source Software. He will also cover what it’s like being an Open Source hacker working in these environments, and how to sell OSS to enterprises.
This is the last video we have from CUSEC 2008. This presentation by Dr. Jeremy Cooperstock from McGill University shows how the need for low-latency in games and music can drive innovation.
Abstract: Musical interaction and games have long been ignored by the mainstream of engineering, perhaps considered as unworthy of serious attention. On the contrary, these applications pose serious design challenges and present important opportunties to test core technologies, with implications to a broad range of other activities. Examples of such technologies, motivated by the needs of music and games, include video tracking systems for identifying body pose and position, low-cost accelerometers with efficient gesture recognition algorithms, low-latency network transport protocols, high-fidelity spatilized audio, and advanced video rendering. This talk illustrates the development of some of these core technologies along with their associated research challenges and implications to future applications.
It’s time to award the best blog post and best picture from CUSEC 2008.
The best blog post, or shall I say blog coverage goes to Bnerd[TM] (link).
The best photo goes to hyfen (link).
Congratulations to Bnerd[TM] and hyfen. You each get a free ticket to CUSEC 2009!
And remember, you can have a chance to win a free ticket to CUSC 2010 by blogging about CUSEC 2009 or taking photos. If you blog, please send us the link to the post(s) to info [at] cusec [dot] net. For photos, upload them to Flickr and tag them with with ‘cusec’ and ‘cusec2009′.
Leila Boujnane and Paul Bloore are the co-founders of Idée Inc., developers of advanced image identification and visual search software.
At CUSEC 2008, Leila and Paul talk about how to conquer technology challenges, build a team and change an entire industry. They are both software industry veterans and in this presentation they will take you through their current start up adventures. A day in the life of Idée Inc, a technology retrospective (how far have we come), a lesson in building great technologies, large compute clusters and landing some of the largest clients in the world. All without ever stopping to have fun.
Bruce Miner has over thirty years of IT experience, specializing in enterprise grade systems architecture, large scale development, database design, database internals, operating systems internals and management consulting.
Bruce gave a talk at CUSEC 2008 on how the underlying themes of thinking strategically and taking risks are applied to a variety of real life experiences ranging from Internet giants to up and coming environment applications.
The response to Zed’s keynote at CUSEC 2008 was so huge that many attendees wanted him to do another talk during the conference. Zed caved and was gracious enough to fill in for Slava Pestov and give a tutorial on Factor. Check it out below!
Note: Unfortunately there are no slides, code or video for this talk.
The last keynote speaker from CUSEC 2008 was Jeff Atwood, popular blogger at Coding Horror and recent founder of Stack Overflow. In this talk he gives some great advice about writing, communicating, and how that could be the most important skill an engineer needs.
Abstract:
Programming, like all writing, is just another form of communication. Writing code that the compiler understands is easy. Writing code that other people understand is far more difficult. And that’s assuming you’re persuasive enough to convince other people that your code, in a world positively overflowing with free code, is worth looking at in the first place. Good luck. You’re gonna need it. History books are written by the winners and the winners in the software industry were those whose voices were heard over the din. Code speaks, but writing– for machines and the people who love them– speaks loudest of all.
Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Here is the video of Zed Shaw’s keynote speech from CUSEC 2008. This was the opening keynote in 2008 and was repeatedly quoted by many delegates for the rest of the conference. Our feedback forms consistently said “Zed Shaw” was their favourite part of CUSEC, and suggested we have more steaks and strippers. Don’t get it? Watch this video.
A tale of suspense, intrigue, corporate greed, and the stupidity of an authorization mechanism that isn’t turing complete. With code.
Dr. Jeffrey Ullman is the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Computer Science (Emeritus). His interests include database theory, database integration, data mining, and education using the information infrastructure. We were fortunate enough to have him as a keynote for CUSEC 2008. Here’s his presentation from CUSEC 2008.
Abstract:
Some of the most profound ways in which the Web changes our lives would not have happened without a heavy dose of computer-science theory. PageRank, and how it makes Google work, is a well-known example, but there are many others. We shall explore briefly some of the interesting algorithms, such as PageRank variants, minhashing, and locality-sensitive hashing that have given us surprising capabilities.
Creating fast, maintainable and secure parsers with Ragel [50:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download