Events Archive: Fall 2007

An overview on Google Summer of Code 2007. This talk will look at some of the Summer of Code projects, the project organization, etc.

Holden Karau participated in Google Summer of Code 2007 as a student on the subversion team. He created a set of scheme bindings for the subversion project.

Come out for multi-player gaming on Linux. If you don't have linux on your machine, we will have LiveCDs available. Lots of fun! Possible Pizzaa!

A lecture on the fundamentals of Pi-Calculus followed by an introduction to Join-Calculus in JoCaml with some great examples. Various concurrent control structures are explored, as well as the current limitations of JoCaml. The examples section will mostly be concurrent programming, however some basic distributed examples will be explored. This lecture focuses on how easy concurrent programming can be.

Instant messaging (IM) is an increasingly popular mode of communication on the Internet. Although it is used for personal and private conversations, it is not at all a private medium. Not only are all of the messages unencrypted and unauthenticated, but they are all routedthrough a central server, forming a convenient interception point for an attacker. Users would benefit from being able to have truly private conversations over IM, combining the features of encryption, authentication, deniability, and forward secrecy, while working within their existing IM infrastructure.

In this talk, I will discuss "Off-the-Record Messaging" (OTR), a widely used software tool for secure and private instant messaging. I will outline the properties of Useful Security and Privacy Technologies that motivated OTR's design, compare it to other IM security mechanisms, and talk about its ongoing development directions.

Ian Goldberg is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, where he is a founding member of the Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) research group. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he discovered serious weaknesses in a number of widely deployed security systems, including those used by cellular phones and wireless networks. He also studied systems for protecting the personal privacy of Internet users, which led to his role as Chief Scientist at Zero-Knowledge Systems (now known as Radialpoint), where he commercialized his research as the Freedom Network.

A quick introduction on the current state of distributed programming and various grid computing projects. Followed by some history and features of the Erlang language and finishing with distributed examples including operating on a cluster.

This talk is run by the School of Computer Science

How should virtual property created in games, such as weapons used in games like Mir 3 and real estate or clothing created or acquired in games like Second Life, be treated in law. Although the videogaming industry continues to multiply in value, virtual property created in virtual worlds has not been formally recognized by any North American court or legislature. A bridge has been taking shape from gaming's virtual economies to real world economies, for example, through unauthorized copying of designer clothes sold on Second Life for in-game cash, or real court damages awarded against deletion of player-earned swords in Mir 3. The trading of virtual property is important to a large number of people and property rights in virtual property are currently being recognized by some foreign legal bodies.

Susan Abramovitch will explain the legal considerations in determining how virtual property can or should be governed, and ways it can be legally similar to tangible property. Virtual property can carry both physical and intellectual property rights. Typically video game developers retain these rights via online agreements, but Ms. Abramovitch questions whether these rights are ultimately enforceable and will describe policy issues that may impact law makers in deciding how to treat virtual property under such agreements.