TISTHEL’

sincedepuis1988

PHOTOS BYJ-P SIMARDINSIDE:

CUSEC rocks Montreal andthe END OF THE INTERNET

GUERRE DES TUQUESIN PICTURES

JANUARY 2011 VOLUME 23 ISSUE 1

TISTHEL’

sincedepuis1988

L’Otis est un médium pour des articles intrigan-tes et informatives publié par l’Association des Étudi-ants en Génie.

Les opinions exprimées dans l’Otis sont seule-ment ceux des auteurs et ne reflètent pas néces-sairement ceux de l’Association des Étudiants en Génie ainsi que les entreprises qui ont des publicités dans l’Otis.

L’Otis encourage des soumissions par des étudiants, des membres de la faculté et des mem-bres de la communauté de l’Université. Le nom de l’auteur, l’année d’étude, la discipline et l’information contact devraient être inclus.

Toute soumission, sauf si autrement dit, devient la propriété du Otis, qui réserve le droit de refuser la publication de matériel que l’Otis juge inacceptable. L’Otis réserve aussi le droit de corriger la grammaire, l’orthographe et le texte qui ne rejoignent pas les standards du Otis.

Toute commentaires ou inquiétudes concernant l’Otis doivent être dirigé au Rédacteur en Chef, par courriel, à eic@theotis.ca

The Otis is a medium for thought provoking and informative articles published by the Engineering Students’ Society. Views expressed in The Otis are solely those of the authors and do not necessar-ily reflect the opinions of the Engineering Students’ Society as well as the companies advertising in The Otis.

The Otis encourages submissions from stu-dents, faculty and members of the University com-munity. The author’s name, year of study, discipline and contact information should be included.

All submissions, unless otherwise stated, be-come the property of the Otis, which reserves the right to refuse publication of material which it deems unsuitable. The Otis also reserves the right to edit grammar, spelling and text that do not meet The Otis’ standards.

For any comments or concerns regarding The Otis, please contact the Editor-in-Chief, by e-mail, at eic@theotis.ca

OFFICE OF THE DEAN BUREAU DU DOYEN

CBY 306 161 LOUIS PASTEUR

K1N 6N5

ASSISTANT EDITOR

RICHARD MAH

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

RÉDACTEUR-EN-CHEF

JONATHAN WEBER

PHOTOGRAPHY MANAGER

MICHELLE BOLTON

SPECIAL THANKS

THE EEF

ENGLISH EDITOR

JEROME CHOI

JOEL HERNBERGER

DISTRIBUTION MANAGER

ContributorsNicholas Crawford

Jerome ChoiLydia Krupp-Hunter

Dimitrie CepiscaJason BysiceJake SwartAlan Chin

Anonymouse & AssociatesAndréa Bourdeau

Thank you to all contributors. Without you, your fellow class-mates would actually have to pay attention in class.

Should you, dear reader, wish to have your name listed here, contact the Editor-in-Chief at eic@theotis.ca with your submis-sions.

CAN YOU WRITE GOOD ENGLISH?

The deadline for the next issue of The Otis is February 26th.

Email eic@theotis.ca today!

I don’t know about you, but I had a great winter vacation, but I’m really not ready to be back to the grindstone. That being said, my va-cation was also eight months long so maybe I’ve got some reason. For those of you feeling the same way as I do and whose vacations were less extensive as mine, I’ve got a protip for you: even though it might be tempting, DON’T SLACK OFF THIS SEMESTER!

For those of you who are grad-uating in the spring, you may be tempted to sail through the last three months of your degree, get your ring and laugh your way to the

bank. If you’ve got mad jedi skills and can somehow pull off A+s in all of your classes without trying, then please quit listening, otherwise take it from someone who’s been there. Even though the temptation to slack is great, you’ll feel even worse if you find out that you failed a class. Fortunately for me, I realized this quickly and turned my last semester of my (first) undergrad around and pulled off the best semester of my entire time here. THIS COULD BE YOU!

For those of you who aren’t grad-uating soon, you can benefit from this protip too. The winter semester is one of the worst semesters of the year: it’s cold and snowy and you could really go for another month

It’s a trap!RICHARD MAHASSISTANT EDITOR

of vacation. Get yourself back in the game and work hard. You’ll be surprised at what a little bit of extra work during the first few weeks will get you later in the semester, some of which include getting great grades for your next co-op term, less stress before deadlines and somehow hav-ing more free time (don’t ask me about the math behind that one, but it just seems to happen).

I could make you charts and graphs of the benefits of not slack-ing off, but I’ll leave it up to you take the challenge, work hard and prove me wrong.

Oh, and write for The Otis. It’s good for your health.

3

THERE WILL BE NO GRENADES TONIGHT.THEOTIS.CA

Everything is finally coming to-gether the day before we have to ship our concrete toboggan to Ed-monton--of course, I didn’t say ev-erything was done. Not even close. But it’s all coming together, finally.

The four concrete skis have been cast but still need to be sanded and waxed for maximum smoothness. We wouldn’t really want our to-boggan to stop in the middle of the race on the ski hill. The steering and braking system (both manda-tory in the competition) have to be assembled, but the rest of the frame is complete. Theoretically, it should be able to withstand a rollover at 80 km/h, but I honestly don’t know if I would trust it in that scenario. We’ll have to paint everything tonight to make it all nice and shiny, of course. The backdrop for the tech-nical display has been painted to look like the Royal Raceway track in Mario Kart 64, with the spon-sors’ logos running along the side of the race track. I can’t wait to see people from other teams lining up

to take a picture in our photo booth, which, when complete, will let peo-ple poke their heads through to look like characters from Mario Kart. The technical report is done save the safety calculations and part/as-sembly drawings. A potential spon-sor of the team, Hogs Back brew-ery, will be coming in to meet the team and see the toboggan later this afternoon. We can probably greet them while wearing our team’s Ma-rio Kart themed costumes (Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, Toad, and Yoshi) and cardboard carts. We can then keep the costumes on for the filming of our introductory skit.

It’s so exciting to take part in the oldest and largest undergraduate engineering competition in Canada. There’s just so much energy and spirit in the whole thing, with hun-dreds of engineering students from dozens of universities competing and partying together in costume. And there’s nothing quite like the feeling of crossing the finish line at the bottom of a ski hill with four of your teammates in a concrete to-boggan you built from scratch.

Concrete Toboggan Diary:January 17, 2011

JEROME CHOI5TH YEAR MCG

What is the Christmas bonus for the SFUO executive this year? Yachts.

The SFUO’s campaigns web-site (campaigns.sfuo.ca/current) features a “Debt Clock” – a ticker constantly incrementing a dollar value to represent the increasing debt of Canadian students. Drop Fees. What they’re not telling you is that they (the SFUO) profited over $300,000 last fiscal year alone and had a starting bank balance of $2.9 million (cash) this fiscal year. Meanwhile, they are cutting student association levy payments in half. Between 2008-2009 and 2009-2010, levy payment to the federated bodies (ESS, CSSA, PIDSSA, etc.)

was cut by $90,000 due to a reinter-pretation of their constitution. Over two years, that’s approximately $200,000 ($26,000 for the ESS).

What does this mean for you? This means that while the SFUO lines their wallets, we have to raise event prices and cut back on expens-es. Quite a few people have voiced their concerns to me this year about the increased event prices (DUST-ED from $10 to $15; 101 Week from $90 to $100) and funding cuts (Iron Ring Wine and Cheese budget reduced from $7,000 to $3,500). And no, you’re still paying the same amount to the SFUO; your student associations are just receiving less of it. While we’re struggling to manage our debt, the SFUO’s wal-let is getting fatter.

You might think this seems pret-

Non-negotiable is the new negotiableNICHOLAS CRAWFORDPRESIDENT - ESS

ty hypocritical. You might be right. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent on “Drop Fees” campaigns while their attitude is to take more and give less.

But something must be wrong? Can’t we fix this? Some of the SFUO executive’s replies include “it’s a gray area”, “the money’s been spent”, and “it’s not in the budget”. It doesn’t take an account-ing wiz to see that the money was not spent; it went straight into their bank account. It’s not in the bud-get because they neglected to put it there. It’s not a gray area, the num-bers are clear-cut.

If this concerns you, I encourage you take a look at the evidence; the information is public. The SFUO website – “http://www.sfuo.ca/about_us/financial” provides a fi-

nancial audit of the past two fiscal years. Election time is just around the corner. Take a stand and ask the tough questions: where is the mon-ey going; why is the constitution not being followed; how can they justify a $90,000 cut while main-taining a $300,000 profit?

The ESS executive is working hard to represent you, your mon-ey, and your rights. We need your help. Make your voice heard and send your opinion on the matter to the SFUO’s President (president@sfuo.ca) and VP Finance (vp.fi-nance@sfuo.ca). While you’re at it, CC your BOA representative (bbay031@uOttawa.ca) and myself (president@uottawaess.ca).

Each year, engineering students come together for an “engineers only” ice hockey tournament host-ed at a different Ontario university. The event is a great way to make new friends and presents the oppor-tunity to explore both the hosting school and city.

This year, the tournament is host-ed by Western University located in London, Ontario and will take place on March 11-13. Seven other teams will be competing in the famous Western Fair recreational centre. We are looking for a team of play-ers consisting of seven forwards, five defence and two goalies.

If you are interested in playing or looking for more information, con-tact internal@uottawaess.ca

Engineering Hockey

DIMITRIE CEPISCA3RD YEAR ELG

On March 10th, the uOttawa and Carleton University IEEE student branches will be joining to bring you the Student Professional Aware-ness Conference (SPAC) 2011. This year, SPAC will be focusing on entrepreneurship, and how you can engineer your own future. Dr. Bruce Firestone of Telfer School of Management will be speaking, as well as Erin Bury of Sprouter, and Ian Graham from The Code Fac-tory. The evening will be rounded off with a career fair, so be sure to bring a resume!

SPAC 2011 will be held at the National Arts Centre, and registra-tion is only $15 (with a discount for IEEE members), but seating is limited, so be sure to register soon! Registration can be done online at http://www.ieeespac.ca, or at the IEEE office in SITE 2023.

Get professionalat SPAC

LYDIA KRUPP-HUNTER2ND YEAR SEG

4

Chances are you or someone close to you uses the internet. Have you heard about the impending doom that is the exhaustion of the IPv4 address pool? Probably not. I’m here to educate you on this is-sue and why we should panic and freak out (or maybe just keep calm and carry on).

Just for reference, we’ll go over a little background. Computer net-works, and the internet in general, use protocols to help their clients talking to each other. In order for computers to know who is who, ev-erybody on the network gets an ad-dress. The current scheme uses 32-bit addresses, which roughly ends up being four billion-ish addresses. This standard was published in RFC 791 (a fancy technical document by some guys in a room somewhere) in 1981, so suffice it to say this stan-dard has been around for some time. Back in the eighties, we didn’t have nearly as many computers as we do

today so nobody thought we’d end up with problems.

Now, in 2011, we’ve reached the end of the line for good old IPv4. There have been many technologies over the past few years to hold off the addressing apocalypse, but un-fortunately the last few blocks of addresses are being assigned.

Fortunately, other guys in other rooms in other places have been working diligently for years waiting for this moment. Some have been working on the next widely adopt-able addressing standard: IPv6. This makes a larger (arguably fan-cier) address consisting of 128-bits, resulting in about 340 undecillion addresses. Hopefully widespread adoption of this standard will give us many, many more years to pre-pare for the next doomsday.

In support of this new standard, the Internet Society (yes, there actu-ally is an Internet Society), as well as other big internet names such as Google, Facebook and Akamai have banded together to host World IPv6 Day. This event will be

The internet is dead, now panic and freak outRICHARD MAHASSISTANT EDITOR

the first wide-scale public test of the IPv6 deployment. If your ISP sup-ports IPv6, or if you’ve got a tunnel running, you’ll be able to access all of these websites for 24 hours from 0:00 UTC on June 8th over IPv6. Alternatively, if everything breaks, they’ll be using this opportunity to fix things before things go main-stream. I’d suggest being super hip and ensuring you’ve got access to IPv6. I hear it works well as a pick-up line.

In the mean time, while we wait for IPv6 to show up on our door-steps, the good people at the Ré-seaux IP Européens (RIPE) have been working hard gathering pro-posals of what to do. They have sug-gested that unused addresses could be reclaimed and reallocated or per-haps creating a marketplace for the buying and selling of address space. Furthermore, they suggest that per-haps larger internet service provid-ers could implement protocols on their networks to reduce the number of actual public addresses assigned

to their customers, freeing them up for other uses.

None of these bandaid solutions are ideal, but something needs to be done soon. At press time, the IANA address pool had about two million addresses remaining and they were estimating exhaustion on February 1. The addresses in this pool are al-located to regional internet regis-tries who handle the day-to-day al-location and administration of their local clients. The estimated exhaus-tion of their pool is forecast for the end of September 2011.

Now that you’re equipped with this knowledge of the coming dark-ness, remember to treasure your time watching videos on YouTube and all of your procrastination on Facebook--soon there may not be an internet. This is, of course, un-less all of those guys in rooms somewhere figure this out. If they get it figured out, we’ll be fine to watch all of the cute cat videos in the world.

theotis.cadance, dance, like it’s the last, last night of your life, life.

5

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The OCEPP (Ontario Centre for Engineering and Public Policy) 2011 Student Essay Competition is sponsored by the Ontario Centre for Engineering and Public Policy. The winning essay’s author will received a $1,000 award and an in-vitation to present their work at the OCEPP 2011 Public Policy Confer-ence in Ottawa on May 6, 2011.

The essay competition is open to undergraduate and graduate stu-dents in any engineering discipline and who are enrolled in Professional Engineers Ontario’s (PEO) Student Membership Program (SMP) or En-gineering Intern (EIT) program.

If you’re an undergrad engineer-ing student and aren’t already regis-tered to the SMP, allow me to direct

you over to www.engineeringstu-dents.peo.on.ca and permit me to encourage you to do so. Registra-tion is free and also comes with the following helpful and enticing ben-efits:

Customized student website with postings about engineering news/presentations/surveys and issues.

Access to Engineering Dimen-sions, PEO’s official journal.

Important information about your engineering career, including the required experience for licens-ing.

Invitations/e-mail notices for lo-cal events/presentations offered by PEO chapters and other organiza-tions.

Opportunities to have PEO and members of the engineering com-munity answer your questions about engineering.

OCEPP 2011 Student Essay CompetitionANDRÉA BOURDEAU3RD YEAR SEG

Your essay submission’s subject matter may treat any topic broadly related to engineering and public policy. Such topics include, but are not limited to, the following: discus-sions of technologically intensive policy areas (energy, the environ-ment, infrastructure, etc), engineer-ing impacts on policy issues, and the interaction of technology and policy. You are only limited by your interests and your imagination!

Additionally, the winner’s essays from the 2009 and 2010 competi-tions are available on the “For Stu-dents” page at www.ocepp.ca. The winning articles were: Privacy and Security of Medical Hospital Re-cords, Proposal for a Policy Frame-work to Transform Brownfields into Industrial Mustard Biofuel Produc-tion Sites, Managing Ontario River Restoration Projects, and Why On-

tario Needs a Sustainable – Not Green – Energy Policy.

The essay must be submit-ted and received by OCEPP no later than March 1, 2011. You can get more information about the essay word limit and formatting criteria in the “For Students” section, under “De-tails” for 2011 Student Essay Competition.

The Iron Ring ceremony will be happening on the first of April from 5:30 till 7:30. A committee has been formed for the wine and cheese made up of that semester’s gradu-ates. This gives them a say in how they want things done. Two meetings have happened so far and happen each Thurs-day night at 5:30.

A guest speaker evening will be happening on Febru-ary 9th for SITE students. As well, emails about the MAT-Lab workshops have been sent out. Plans for them are in the works, with support from the CSSA and IEEE.

VP Academic Update

JASON BYSICE3RD YEAR CVG

On January 29th, students and industry professionals alike flocked to 90 University for the Google Hackathon – an event held by the uOttawa IEEE in conjunction with Google. The event was geared around HTML5, and featured a loose structure where attendees worked together in groups to get a feel for HTML5, whether through adding it to their current personal projects, or starting something new. Google representatives gave short presentations in the morning to point attendees in the right direction, and the rest of the day was spent hack-ing, with the Googlers available for extra help when the coding got rough. Attendees worked on a vari-ety of projects, from torrent clients to open-data driven games. The event was very well-attended - reg-istration was filled well in advance, and a number of people came day-of in hopes of scoring an extra seat. Hackathon-goers enjoyed breakfast and lunch courtesy of Google, as well as some cool swag. Lounge 140 was packed full, going to show that anything Google-related can get geeks up and out of bed early even on a Saturday (free registra-tion never hurts either). Afterwards, attendees headed to the market for drinks and socializing to wind down from a long day of coding. Fun was had by all, so for those who missed the event, be sure to keep an eye out next year!

Hackathon a great successLYDIA KRUPP-HUNTER2ND YEAR SEG

6

Hey Engineers! It’s a well known fact that you can’t dress yourselves too well. We have spent much time observing your dire fashion sense, and have compiled a table for you follow.

We have tried our best to keep

things simple, we know you aren’t into anything trendy, flashy, or that required too much time. You like simple, efficient, and foolproof, so that’s what you’re getting.

The chart outlines some key pieces that will never go out of style. These are classic and sharp styles that you can wear now and in your future lives after universi-

What not to wear PART ONE: Engineering BoysANONYMOUSE& ASSOCIATES

ty. This way, you can always look good, and not have to go shopping every season.

We also kept your wallet in mind. Just because you look like a million bucks, doesn’t mean you have to spend a million bucks to get there. A student budget doesn’t allow for much clothing shopping, so we pulled our examples from stores in

the nearby malls to make it easier.From your Monday morning

class, to your Tuesday afternoon co-op interview, through to your Friday evening date, we have you covered. You’ll find all the major situations in our easy-to-read chart below.

SETTING: WHAT NOT TO WEAR: INSTEAD:

Your Co-op Interview Your dad’s dress pants. These are pleated in the front and too long. You shouldn’t look like you are wearing a diaper.

Flat front dress pants. Buy your own, get them hemmed if they are too long. It costs 10$ and takes less than an hour.

Shoes for your Co-op Interview

Pumas, black sneakers, steel toe boots, Timberlands, or any-thing white. These are not considered dress shoes, and are not going to impress your potential employer.

Formal leather lace-ups, or slip-on loafers. Preferrably black or dark brown, with a sleek profile.

Going to Class

Sweat pants. It looks like you came from the gym and didn’t change after. So you either didn’t work up a sweat at the gym, or you did, and you stink.

Jeans. There are classic and comfortable. Stick with uniform washes, straight leg, not too baggy, and just the right length. You don’t want to have wet salt stains near the bottom of your jeans.

Old, sloppy hoodies that are too big, faded, and shapeless. These are best kept for studying in at home.

Sweaters, or zip-up cardigans. Colours look great, and will catch the eye of many a gal. If you’re iffy on colours, try deeper hues like dark red, dark blue, or dark green.

A Date A traditional button-down shirt, half-tucked in. This looks messy, and will wrinkle quickly.

A slim-fitting (but not tight!) button-down. Try a subtle pat-tern, with different shades of one colour. With dress pants or khakis, tuck it in. With jeans, you can leave it out, but only if it fits properly.

Engineering GalaSemi-formal attire does not mean khakis, a polo shirt, or a tweed jacket. Just because it’s called semi-formal, doesn’t mean that only half of you has to dress up!

Dress pants, dress shirt, dress shoes, and tie at a minimum! A matching jacket won’t hurt. Remember, ladies can’t resist a man in a suit!

7

PHOTO BYJAKE SWART

PART OF THE UOTTAWA CUSEC DELEGATION

PHOTO BYALAN CHIN

MICHAEL LOPP GIVING THE OPENING KEYNOTE

In January, twenty-three del-egates from the University of Ot-tawa ventured to Montreal, along with twenty-four delegates from Carleton University, for the 2011 Canadian University Software En-gineering Conference, more gener-ally referred to as CUSEC. CUSEC is held in Montreal annually. This year, both the conference and the at-tendees were housed at the Marriott Chateau Champlain, in Montreal’s business district. CUSEC 2011 ran from Thursday morning, January 13th, until the afternoon of Janu-ary 15th. The uOttawa IEEE branch organized a school bus to transport both the uOttawa and Carleton del-egates to and from CUSEC, leaving Wednesday evening and returning

Saturday night. Three uOttawa stu-dents – Dan Godfrey, Alex Phillips, and Sam Wilson – were on the CU-SEC organization committee, mak-ing for a solid overall representa-tion of UO engineers and computer scientists alike.

The 2011 speaker line-up was packed full of heavy hitters, with a good mixture of keynotes and tuto-rials, headed by industry profession-als and students alike. Talks ranged in subject matter. Michael Lopp of Planatir and Julie Steele from IBM, among others, gave fun, high-level talks on everything ranging from how to make data beautiful and in-formative, to just being a geek. Oth-er speakers got into the gritty details, with Marc-Antoine Ruel giving a highly technical talk on data cor-ruption, and Yehuda Katz getting into his thoughts on Ruby on Rails.

CUSEC rocks Montreal; gets the party startedLYDIA KRUPP-HUNTER2ND YEAR SEG

The University of Ottawa also had representation on the microphone, with 4th year Software Engineering student Daniel Beauchamp giving a two-part tutorial alongside Edward Ocampo-Gooding of Shopify on how to make the most of CUSEC as an attendee, and on open data and why it’s awesome. Daniel joined the ranks of past CUSEC speakers representing uOttawa, with profes-sors Timothy Lethbridge and Mo-hammad Eid having given talks in past years.

In addition to the amazing speak-er lineup, CUSEC featured a two-day career fair, with employers in-cluding IBM, Shopify, and Direct Energy. Employers logged hours talking to students, conducted ad hoc interviews, and gave out mad swag. The career fair gave students a great opportunity to get a better

feel for the skills and qualities that employers look for in software engi-neers, and some talented and lucky people even landed jobs.

CUSEC wasn’t entirely business, however – Thursday night featured Start-up Drinks, where attendees had a chance to chat with start-up reps over beer. Friday night featured a gala to celebrate the tenth anniver-sary of CUSEC, and Shopify threw an awesome after-party at Brew-topia for the CUSEC attendees. In addition to drinks and partying in Montreal, the entire experience was topped off with the usual memories made at conferences packed full of like-minded people excited to be somewhere. There was great food, shopping, adventures in the tunnels of Montreal, IRC shenanigans and a fire alarm, among countless other fun times.

Overall, CUSEC was a great experience, with learning, bond-ing, partying, and adventuring. New friends were made, jobs were landed, and liquor was consumed (as well as poutine). Sadly, CUSEC 2011 is over, but worry not – CU-SEC 2012 is already in the works, and will be just as awesome, if not more!