Termcard for Hilary Term 2002

Hustings and Video Night

Thursday 17th January, 20:00
Corpus

Hilary term is when the Compsoc committee hand their roles over to three fresh-faced new recruits. If you are considering being on the committee for the coming year, this meeting will give you a chance to talk informally with the current committee about the responsibilities and rewards of committeeship. However, this evening is not solely for committee wanabees: we'll be showing a couple of famous vaguely computer based films, potentially including Hackers, Sneakers, Wargames and whatever else we can find.

OxCERT

Wednesday 23rd January, 20:30
Comlab

Neil Long and Patrick Green from the Oxford Computer Emergency Response Team (OxCERT) will be giving a short talk about computer security issues before opening the floor for a general security discussion. So if you've ever wondered about the University's security policy or the risks and necessary precautions associated with having a machine on the Internet, this talk provides an ideal forum to get your questions answered.

PGP and GPG — encryption for the masses

Tuesday 29th January, 20:00
Trinity

Public key encryption systems are used by programs such as PGP and GPG to provide secure and tamper-proof digital communications. This talk will present an outline of the ideas behind public key cryptography and a practical guide to using freely available code to secure your Internet communications. A follow up PGP/GPG keysigning party is taking place in 4th week.

PGP and GPG key signing party

Tuesday 5th February, 20:00
Trinity

Please note the change in time and venue for this event.

A potential weakness of the public key architecture is that it can be difficult to establish that a given public key actually belongs to whom it claims. In signing a key, you guarantee that you have verified it to be bona fide. The Compsoc key signing party provides just such an opportunity to sign other's keys and thereby build a so-called 'web of trust'. After the serious stuff is out of the way we shall be heading to the pub to emphasise the 'Party' aspect of the event!

More details of how the event will be conducted are available here. If you plan to come to the meeting, please send your public key to pgp@ox.compsoc.net not later than 20:00 on Monday 4th February. Please note that it will be necessary to bring photographic ID and the details of your key with you.

Hands on .NET

Wednesday 6th February, 20:00
NAPL

Following on from last term's talk on .NET this hands-on session will give you the opportunity to design and implement a web service and experiment with new technologies such as SOAP.

Black Tie Dinner

Tuesday 12th February, 19:00
Balliol

Please note the change in time and venue for this event.

Following on from our successful 21st anniversary dinner at Linacre this promises to be something special. If you've not already told us that you're coming, you're too late — sorry! If you have, you should have received details by e-mail.

Lout — a document preparation system

Wednesday 13th February, 20:00
Comlab

Many Compsoc members find it necessary to produce technical documents as part of their studies. Many feel these stretch the capabilities of traditional wordprocessors to breaking point, and so look for an alternative. The traditional solution is LaTeX, which can sometimes be so dominant that other systems get overlooked. In this talk we'll be taking a look at another possibility in the form of Lout, with a particular emphasis on producing project reports.

Annual General Meeting

Tuesday 19th February, 19:00
Corpus

Come along to the Compsoc AGM, discuss the past, present and future of the society and vote in a new committee for next year. Simon Cole from AMD will generously be presenting a computer to the society and then be accompanying us for a celebratory meal.

Image and video compression

Tuesday 26th February, 20:30
Comlab

Please note the change in the time of this event.

This meeting will be immediately preceeded by an Extraordinary General Meeting.

Image and video compression is playing an increasingly prominent role as the Internet evolves into a large scale delivery platform for video information. This talk will outline the fundamental principles behind the popular JPEG and MPEG formats and touch on other new formats, such as DivX.

The WorldForge Project: Forging Open Worlds

Thursday 28th February, 20:30
Comlab

The WorldForge project aims to bring professional quality Open Source software to the games industry, an area still dominated by proprietary technology. The very fast pace of technological progress and the need for creative as well as technical expertise makes this industry very hard to break into. By developing reusable technology and open standards members have built a solid base for anyone seeking to develop Open Source games, but delivering a product while keeping up with the ever changing expectations of the gaming community has proved to be quite a challenge.

Al Riddoch, a WorldForge developer, will be coming from Southampton to talk about the project.

LaserQuest

Tuesday 5th March, 20:00
Gloucester Green

End the term in time-honoured style making new friends and enemies down the barrel of a laser gun. Meet outside LaserQuest at Gloucester Green.

If you're coming, you should already have told us about it. If you haven't, please e-mail compsoc@compsoc.net as soon as possible and we'll probably be able to fit you in.