Author: Michael

Seminar by Ryszard Janicki on Feb 16 at 6pm in Del Norte 1545

Refreshments will be served

Speaker: Ryszard Janicki

Time/Place: Monday February 16, 2015, 6:00-7:00pm, in Del Norte 1545

Title: On Pairwise Comparisons Based Rankings

Bio: Ryszard Janicki received the M.Sc. degree in applied mathematics from the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland in 1975, and the Ph.D. and Habiliatation in computer science from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland in 1977 and 1981 respectively. He taught computer science and mathematics at the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland and Aalborg University, Denmark in, before joining McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario in 1986. He published more than 120 papers and coauthored a monograph on concurrency theory. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Fundamenta Informaticae and Journal of Computational Science. His research interests include concurrency theory, fundamentals of software engineering, mereology, ranking theory and relational methods in computer science.

Abstract: The talk will be devoted to various aspects of pairwise comparisons based ranking. Both standard numerical case and more abstract non-numerical case and their relationship will be discussed. The concept of consistency, for both models, numerical and non-numerical, will be analyzed. Moreover, partially ordered approximations of arbitrary binary relations will formally be defined and some solutions proposed. The problem of testing and the importance of indifference and the power of weak order extensions will also be discussed.

My Ventura County Reporter Technology 2015 Forecast

This [2014] has been a tumultuous year in technology; we have seen security breaches, iPhone 6, Google Glass, drones and the virtual reality of Oculus Rift. In 2015 we will see that mobile devices will continue to become the prevalent way for people to browse the Internet. Highly visited sites such as google.com provide the mobile experience by sensing that the request for a web page originates from a hand-held device, and more sites are going to follow suit. Already, over half of consumer time spent on the Internet is on mobile devices, and hence the prediction of great growth in the mobile web, and, in particular, in mobile shopping.

But mobile devices are not only becoming the window of choice to the Internet; they are in fact becoming the computing platform of choice. For example, the CIO at Hargrove Inc., a trade-show and event services company in Lanham, Maryland, is investing in mobile technologies that will make it easier to access floor plans and information from the trade-show floor. For this to be practical, the screen size of mobile devices has to increase, and indeed it already has. Take, for instance, the seven-inch MediaPad X1 by Huawei, a giant smartphone. Thus, another prediction is that the line between mobiles and tablets will become more blurred and we will have devices that qualify as both smartphones and tablets.

3-D printing will continue leaving the domain of academics and enthusiasts, and it will become more and more of a standard, bringing the manufacturing of small parts to the household. The next generation of at-home 3-D printers will use lasers, heat or liquid to bind powders into solid materials.

via Ventura County Reporter – 2015 Forecast.

Ojai based GenRocket is looking for Computer Science interns

GenRocket, based in Ojai, CA, is looking for two Computer Science Interns to work on a paid project. GenRocket is a platform for test data generation and software testing that is in the process of transforming how the industry tests software applications.

This is an exciting opportunity to work with and learn about best practices in software development and testing from senior level engineers and from architects. You’ll have the opportunity to work on projects from the ground up learning industry standard skills that you can apply throughout your career.

And you’ll become one of the first engineers in the industry to become “GenRocket Certified”.

The Project:

Interns will be helping to implement a custom built online store.

The online store will rely heavily on Web services. The Web services will allow the front-end and back-end of the application to be implemented independent of each other since all communication between the two tiers will be over web services.

The Web services and back-end tier will be implemented in the modern and cool Groovy language using the Grails platform.

The front-end tier will be implemented in EmberJS, a front-end Javascript framework.

As the application is being developed and implemented it will also be fully tested using the GenRocket test data generation platform and using GenRocket testing design patterns. This will allow the application to be fully tested end-to-end prior to going into production – something that is practically unheard of in our industry.

This will be a fun and aggressive project as the online store needs to be completed in 90 days.

Intern Benefits:

 Interns get to learn and hone their skills in the following areas.

  • Groovy Scripting language
  • Grails Framework
  • EmberJS, a front-end Javascript framework
  • Back-end service tire implementation
  • MySQL Database Server
  • Web services implementation
  • GenRocket test data generation platform and testing design patterns
  • Fast paced, startup like implementation of a custom designed online store that you will actually see in production and get to show your friends.

Intern Technical Skills Requirements:

Interns need to have the following technical skills:

  • Basic understanding of one or more Object Oriented Programming languages like Java.
  • Must understand basic Object Oriented Programming design patterns
  • Basic understanding of one or more scripting languages like Groovy, Python, or Ruby.
  • Experience with a Model View Controller based web application framework like Grails or Rails.
  • Basic understanding of relational databases and SQL
  • Basic understanding of both XML and JSON
  • Basic understanding of Unit Testing including Integration, Functional, and Load Testing ***
  • Basic understanding of front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, and Javascript
  • Basic understanding of Version Control

A working knowledge of the following is preferred but not required:

  • Groovy / Grails
  • Unix based Operating Systems (Linux, OSX)
  • MySQL
  • Git / Github

And any of the following skills would be a plus:

  • Emberjs or a similar Javascript MVC framework
  • Experience working with RESTful Webservices both in writing API’s and consuming

*** Note: the Intern will be required to fully test all written code using the GenRocket Platform.

If interested, contact: Garth Rose, email: garth@genrocket.com

My mathematical genealogy

Using: http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu

Nicolò Fontana Tartaglia (year & location unknown)
Ostilio Ricci (Università di Brescia)
Galileo Galilei (1585 – Università di Pisa)
Vincenzo Viviani (1642 – Università di Pisa)
Isaac Barrow (1652 – University of Cambridge)
Isaac Newton (1668 – Cambridge)
Roger Cotes (1706 – Cambridge)
Robert Smith (1715 – Cambridge)
Walter Taylor (1723 – Cambridge)
Stephen Whisson (1742 – Cambridge)
Thomas Postlethwaite (1756 – Cambridge)
Thomas Jones (1782 – Cambridge)
Adam Sedgwick (1811 – Cambridge)
William Hopkins (1830 – Cambridge)
Edward John Routh (1857 – Cambridge)
Alfred North Whitehead (1884 – Cambridge)
Willard Van Orman Quine (1932 – Harvard)
Hao Wang (1948 – Harvard)
Stephen Cook (1966 – Harvard)
Michael Soltys (2001 – UofT)

Study examines websites’ password practices

Global IT giants including Amazon and LinkedIn could be doing far more to raise awareness of the need for better password practices among their users.

Analysis by Professor Steve Furnell, Director of the Centre for Security, Communications and Network Research at Plymouth University, looked into the password security controls in place among ten of the world’s most visited websites.

It revealed very few of them give detailed guidance about the importance of providing secure passwords, either when users were creating or updating accounts.

The majority also provided little or no information about the reasons why password protection is important, and while some did make suggestions about best practice, very few went on to enforce their own advice.

via Study examines websites’ password practices – Plymouth University.

Taking the grunt work out of Web development

A Web page today is the result of a number of interacting components — like cascading style sheets, XML code, ad hoc database queries, and JavaScript functions. For all but the most rudimentary sites, keeping track of how these different elements interact, refer to each other, and pass data back and forth can be a time-consuming chore.

In a paper being presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Adam Chlipala, the Douglas Ross Career Development Professor of Software Technology, describes a new programming language, called Ur/Web, that lets developers write Web applications as self-contained programs. The language’s compiler — the program that turns high-level instructions into machine-executable code — then automatically generates the corresponding XML code and style-sheet specifications and embeds the JavaScript and database code in the right places.

In addition to making Web applications easier to write, Ur/Web also makes them more secure. “Let’s say you want to have a calendar widget on your Web page, and you’re going to use a library that provides the calendar widget, and on the same page there’s also an advertisement box that’s based on code that’s provided by the ad network,” Chlipala says. “What you don’t want is for the ad network to be able to change how the calendar works or the author of the calendar code to be able to interfere with delivering the ads.” Ur/Web automatically prohibits that kind of unauthorized access between page elements.

via Taking the grunt work out of Web development | MIT News.

PhD position Department of Computer Science at Royal Holloway University of London

The Department of Computer Science at Royal Holloway University of London is offering a three-year full-time PhD studentship in algorithms and complexity starting in October 2015. The studentship includes a full tuition-fee waiver and a maintenance award in line with the level recommended by Research Councils UK (exact value to be confirmed, circa GBP 16,000 pa). The student will be hosted in the Center for Algorithms and Applications and will work under the supervision of Dr Iddo Tzameret.

via Iddo Tzameret Homepage.