The ACM
See
ACM Contest
and
Events
below. See also the student-run ACM site at
www.niuacm.com
.
The Student Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) serves as a focal point for information regarding the advantages of being associated with this organization of computer professionals. As in the past, the ACM will sponsor speakers from industry to talk on various computer-related topics.
Speakers from companies such as International Truck and Engine Corporation, IBM San Jose, Deere and Co., and Caterpillar, Inc. not only have described their particular "real world" of IT, but also have emphasized the importance of knowledge gained from NIU course material in their actual computer operations.
Other activities sponsored by the Student Chapter of the ACM include Homecoming receptions for Computer Science alumni, job search preparation workshops, and resume writing workshops, as well as workshops and seminars on other professional topics.
Look for the Student Chapter of the ACM's fliers posted around campus for announcements of activities.
Officers:
Faculty Advisors:
ACM Programming Contest Results
On Saturday, October 24, 2009, three ACM teams competed
at the ACM's International Collegiate Programming
Contest (ICPC) held at UIC. One team
placed 3rd for this site and 5th for the region
by solving 5 out of 9 problems successfully, and
the other two teams did very well also by solving
3 out of the 9 problems. Congratulations, competitors!
See results from prior year's contest
Events
Unless otherwise indicated, the meeting and refreshments are from 3:30-4:00 p.m., and the speaker program is from 4:00-5:00 p.m., both held in PM 253.
Fall
2009 Events
- Tuesday, September 8,
2009,
PM 253, 3:30 p.m. for refreshments and meeting.
At 4:00 p.m., Greg York from Abbot Labs will
be presenting "
Vital
Practices to Avoid eP1C faIL in your
Web Application
."
- Friday, September 18, 2009,
a 3-hour seminar on Video Game Development,
taught by Aaron Henselin, an NIU Computer Science
Alumnus. He will teach you how to make an Xbox360
game from scratch. Space is limited, so please
register by contacting
niu.acm@gmail.com
. To follow along and program with Aaron as
he's presenting, you'll need to pre-install
two pieces of free software: XNA Game Studio
3.1 and Microsoft Visual C# 2008, both available
at
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/downloads
.
- Tuesday, September 29th, 2009, 3:30p.m.,
PM 253. Guest
speaker Mike Labrot from the NIU Computer Science
Alumni Council (CSAC) will give a presentation
about Source Code Management. Source code is
an important asset to any business. Source
Code Management (SCM) tools centralize and
secure that asset. SCM tools also track
the history of changes, which facilitates compliance
with many industry standards including ISO
9000, Six Sigma and SOx. But most importantly,
SCM tools enable multiple developers to collaborate
in the creation and maintenance of software
applications. This presentation will
focus on fundamentals such as checking code
out/in as well as the advanced concepts of
branching and merging that support concurrent
development. Join us for FREE
PIZZA afterwards
(courtesy of the CSAC) in the Barsema Alumni
and Visitors Center (BAVC)!
- Tuesday, October 13, 2009,
PM 253, 3:30 p.m. for refreshments and meeting.
At 4:00 p.m., Christopher O'Malley of
Computer Associates will be presenting "The
Future of Mainframe Technology." Chris
O'Malley is the Executive Vice President and
General Manager of the CA Mainframe Business
Unit (a.k.a. the Bill Gates of the mainframe
world). The mainframe has never been as important
as it is today — and
mainframe skills have never been as critical.
Learn how new tools, new interfaces, and new
approaches to mainframe management are making
the mainframe an even more compelling platform
for the future. Chris will explain how CA’s
mainframe 2.0 strategy is empowering younger
IT professionals with next-generation skills
such as Java and C++ to successfully manage
mainframe environments. He will also discuss
CA’s involvement
with colleges and universities to develop
a fresh supply of talent for the mainframe
platform.
- Tuesday, November 3, 2009, PM
253, 3:30 p.m. for refreshments and meeting. At
4:00 p.m.,
Dave Bost from Microsoft will discuss the building
of next-generation user-interfaces with Multitouch
on Windows 7.
Learn how Multitouch provides powerful capabilities
to differentiate your application from the
norm. Multitouch is how we interact with
objects all day every day in the physical world.
Windows 7 supports Multitouch out of the box
so you can extend this same paradigm into the
software world. With very little code,
you are able to recognize and respond to multiple
gestures at once and give your users a very
natural method of interacting with your application. In
this session, we will explore the Multitouch
APIs found in the Windows 7 SDK and how you
can take advantage to build gesture-based applications.
Dave Bost is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft
and co-host of the Thirsty Developer Podcast. He
has been a Software Developer and Solution Architect
for over 15-years. Prior to joining Microsoft,
he cut his technical teeth working with many
Fortune-500 companies as a technical mentor and
consultant. Dave received his degree from NIU's
Department of Computer Science.
Past Events, Spring 2009
- Tuesday, January 27, 2009, PM 253, 3:30 p.m. for refreshments and meeting. At 4:00 p.m., members of our Computer Science Alumni Council (CSAC -- see the "Alumni" link above for more information) will present tips and tricks for interviewing and surviving in the real world. They will also answer any questions you might have. You will find this to be an extremely valuable resource to help you in your job hunt. Students are also invited for
free pizza a Pizza Villa at 6 p.m. as well. We expect this to be a great event (and possibly a tradition), at which NIU Computer Science students get to learn more about CSAC and vice versa.
- Tuesday, February 10, 2009, PM 253, 3:30 p.m. for refreshments and meeting. The speaker is Dr. Raimund Ege of the Department of Computer Science. The topic is Virtualization, a technique to provide the complete simulation of a
virtual machine. The technique has been around for many years, such as
in IBM's VM virtual machine operating system. It gained new prominence
recently with the advent of being able to simulate platforms that are
based on x86 family processors. In x86 virtualization, a host operating
system, i.e. Windows Vista, running on standard PC hardware provides a
virtual machine environment to run a guest operation system, e.g. Linux.
The guest is installed and runs without any modification, and does so
with performance that is close to running on a physical PC. This
presentation will cover the technical details of how virtualization is
achieved on today's PC hardware, what virtualization tools are available
today, and discuss many typical application scenarios where
virtualization is used. The presentation will include demonstrations on
how to use the VirtualBox software to run a Linux guest on a Windows
host, and vice versa.
- Tuesday, March 17, 2009, PM 253, 3:30 p.m. for refreshments and meeting. At 4:00 p.m., there will be a presentation by Amy Frazier and Ryan Harley of Archer Daniels Midland Co. "Every day, the 27,000 people of Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE: ADM) turn crops into renewable products that meet the demands of a growing world. At more than 240 processing plants, we convert corn, oilseeds, wheat and cocoa into products for food, animal feed, chemical and energy uses. We operate the world’s premier crop origination and transportation network, connecting crops and markets in more than 60 countries. Our global headquarters is in Decatur, Illinois, and our net sales for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008, were $70 billion. For more information about our Company and our products, visit
www.admworld.com
."
- Thursday, April 30, 2009, 3:30 p.m. for refreshments and meeting. At 4:00 p.m., John Volmer, NIU CS Alumnus and CSAC member from Argonne National Laboratory in Batavia, will give a presentation on Public Key Infrastructures and the Federal Smart Card Initiative. Many of us are familiar with the small lock that appears on our World Wide Web (WWW) browsers signifying that session communications are secure. What most people don’t realize is that the protocol used to secure those communications, Transport Layer Security (TLS), formerly known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), is actually a bidirectional protocol that also allows the server to authenticate the user. This presentation will overview the mechanics of public/private key cryptography and how public/private key cryptography is the basis for digital signature, email encryption, and most recently cross domain logical authentication; that is, credentials (certificates) that are independent of the local computer system. Mr. Volmer will discuss how the federal government has adopted public/private key technology to form its own Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and how this infrastructure is being incorporated into the new standard government issued identity badges under Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 (HSPD-12). He will demonstrate how they are used for logical authentication.
