CS Activities
For the past two days I volunteered for the Seminar in CS for Young Women. I helped out with the digital hardware lab. They had breadboards to setup circuits to help them learn about binary, logic gates and etc. It was funny to remember all that stuff again from way back in second year. They even had a lesson in K-Maps if anyone remembers what that was (for designing circuits). Because I volunteered, we also get to go to the banquet tomorrow evening - a free dinner at Golf's steakhouse.
Today we went to see a lecture given by Vint Cerf known as the "father of the internet". He created the TCP/IP protocol on which the internet runs. He was a very interesting person and a really good speaker. He gave the lecture in Hagey Hall (which is a big theater) and the place was full. He told the story of how the internet started. They actually had the first connection of three networks (land, radio van, and satellite) in November of 1977 almost 30 years ago. He also spoke about the future of the internet including some neat applications like having your refrigerator hooked up to the internet so it can search for recipes on the internet with ingredients that it has the food for, or a washing machine that sends you an email when the laundry is done. He also talked about research areas for Google including semantic searches (understanding the meaning of what you are searching for) and maintaining a history of your searches to improve future results. After the talk he gave, I went to a meet and greet with the grad students. He came to a room with about 30-40 grad students and answered questions. He talked more about the different research areas. One of the interesting questions that he answered was what he thought might bring the end to IP. He mentioned that if we begin to take advantage of the benefits of broadcasting there may be limitations in the IP protocol which is used more for point to point. He was a really interesting person to listen to.
It seems to be one of the benefits of living near a University Campus that you can go to some interesting and unique lectures that I never took advantage of during my undergrad. Apparently Bjarne Stroustrup is coming to Waterloo in July. He invented C++.
Oh and a hello goes out to Mrs. Teather. I hope the peach and cherry trees are doing well. :)
Today we went to see a lecture given by Vint Cerf known as the "father of the internet". He created the TCP/IP protocol on which the internet runs. He was a very interesting person and a really good speaker. He gave the lecture in Hagey Hall (which is a big theater) and the place was full. He told the story of how the internet started. They actually had the first connection of three networks (land, radio van, and satellite) in November of 1977 almost 30 years ago. He also spoke about the future of the internet including some neat applications like having your refrigerator hooked up to the internet so it can search for recipes on the internet with ingredients that it has the food for, or a washing machine that sends you an email when the laundry is done. He also talked about research areas for Google including semantic searches (understanding the meaning of what you are searching for) and maintaining a history of your searches to improve future results. After the talk he gave, I went to a meet and greet with the grad students. He came to a room with about 30-40 grad students and answered questions. He talked more about the different research areas. One of the interesting questions that he answered was what he thought might bring the end to IP. He mentioned that if we begin to take advantage of the benefits of broadcasting there may be limitations in the IP protocol which is used more for point to point. He was a really interesting person to listen to.
It seems to be one of the benefits of living near a University Campus that you can go to some interesting and unique lectures that I never took advantage of during my undergrad. Apparently Bjarne Stroustrup is coming to Waterloo in July. He invented C++.
Oh and a hello goes out to Mrs. Teather. I hope the peach and cherry trees are doing well. :)