Week 6 (3/2/2012) Spring 2012

(taken from Huffington Post)

Week 6 (3/2/2012) Spring 2012

This week, Chronicle team did a beta test of their project - They videotaped the talks using android and posted in youtube (Thanks Bobby!)

Despite the snow Storm late Wednesday and Thursday, students flocked to RCOS meeting on Friday. We had four fantastic talks by

1) Chris Gizara, Mike Heise, Frank Kotarski - Unmake http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/unmake/

2) Dan Vegeto - Collective Congress http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/collective-congress/

3) Dan Berkowitz, Brian Stauffer - Enstall http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/enstall/

4) Bharath Santhosh,Michael Pomeranz and Samuel Sandeen - Pierce Logic http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/peirce-logic/

1) Chris, Mike and Frank talked about making the build process very simple - Their project involves converting one makefile to other makefiles (sounds like Convalot - continued!) They gave a compelling reason for their project and I was/am convinced of their project usefulness. The group has been hard at work and share their work load. They even posted their slides before the end of Friday in their blog post. The group gave an excellent demo (part of their software is working). Unake uses XSLT, XML, Perl, and knowledge of CMake. As usual there are many interesting questions and suggestions. Their Talk video is here.



2) Next Dan talked about collective congress in designing websites. Dan's talk was very convincing about democratizing the maintenance and running of websites and organizations. Dan has done a lot of background work and created a API for hs project. Dan is in the process of creating the infrastructure and a client. Dan is planning to use Java as an implementation language. Dan's talk elicited a number of questions and suggestions. Dan wants to test his system with RCOS as a guinea pig - in the process we hope RCOS escapes from the tyrannical dictatorship of Moorthy to a fully democratic organization! :)


Here are his talk video:



3)Dan and Brian gave a whirlwind talk of their project Enstall - an easy to install packaging system - similar to appstore/android market. Intiially their target is RPI students and Windows. Eventually they will include linux and macs. Their project has alread the blessings of doTCIO office at RPI. The client uses coffesscript and the web side uses php. Their talks also prompted a number of questions and suggestions.

Their talk video can be found here:



Finally Bharat, Mike and Samuel gave a nice talk on Pierce Logic - an educational tool for learning proofs in Propositional Logic and First Order Logic (and may be modal logic). All the three have a solid knowledge and background on proof systems and logic (judging from the ease with which they handled the topics). Their system use diagrams to show proofs (cut and join). They have a nice demo of displaying diagrams (using HTML 5) - They plan to use Javascript for implementation. They gave a small demo of the GUI. Students showed their enthusiasm for logic proofs (stemming from using outdated proof systems!) by asking interesting questions

Their talk video can be found here:



What a delightful way to spend a Friday evening listening to young, bright and creative students. I am extremely happy with the progress so far!