IEEE Student Branch Passau

Adventcalendar 2025

2025-09-20T12:30:00+02:00

A programming door will be opened every day from December 1st to 24th.

If you'd like to help the calendar team, stop by one of our regular meetings or contact us. :)

Kein Adventskalender 2024

2024-09-13T12:00:00+02:00

As is well known, the Advent calendar runs throughout December every year. This requires the help of numerous authors, administrators and organizers who get involved months before the event.

During the preparations for this year, however, too few volunteers were found for the positions of taskmaster and admin. Therefore, we unfortunately have to pause the Programming Advent Calendar 2024. We hope that the event will be even bigger next year.

If you are interested in participating in the next Programming Advent Calendar yourself, we look forward to receiving your messages by e-mail to adventskalender@ieee.uni-passau.de

Thank you for your understanding.

Adventcalendar 2023

2023-12-01T09:00:00+01:00

From today until Christmas, every day a door will open on our Advent website https://advent.ieee.uni-passau.de/ . There will be prizes for the top places, which will be handed over at an awards ceremony beginning 2024. Have fun coding!

If you want to help the calendar team yourself, just visit us on our regular meetings and maybe you'll be part of the task or admin team next year :)

Tools for your (S)EP

2023-07-28T09:30:00+02:00

As every year we showed a selection of tools that are useful for both the SEP and EP.

You can find the corresponding slides here:

Project Management
Bugtracker
Git
Buildsystems
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing and UML

Markdown

Stratosphere Flight

2023-07-15T10:00:00+02:00

On the 15th of July 2023, together with the association of radio amateurs in Pocking (http://www.darc-u30.de/), we let a weather balloon soar up to the stratosphere. Equipped with sensors and an antenna for measuring air density, air humidity and temperature the ballon reached an incredible height of 40,600 km or 25228 miles. After reaching this height, the balloon popped due to the low air density and the styrofoam box filled with the measuring devices fell back down to earth with a parachute. During the balloon's ascent, we were able to use simulations to approximate the soaring time and the landing location of the balloon. With this we could start off early to retrieve the balloon, by driving towards the Lipno Reservoir in the Czech Republic together with members of the radio amateur association. The balloon however flew farther than expected, landing in a construction site in the Czech city of Budweis. Overall, the balloon landed after 4.5 hours, broadcasting its GPS data and measurements live on a website (https://aprs.fi/). The APRS data packages were transmitted over the LoRaWAN (https://www.lora-wan.de/) network. Luckily for us, the parachute grounded on a roadside and was not stuck on trees or fell into a body of water, so we could easily retrieve the undamaged devices and antenna. Overall, the flight was a big success, accompanied by nice weather and an interested audience.

Docker & Kubernetes Talk

2023-05-17T11:00:00+02:00

You can find the slides with the demonstration project at (https://github.com/stieglma/ieee-docker-kube-gitops). Questions were answered why Docker is such a great program and where the limits of it are. The solution - Kubernetes as a management tool - connected with Docker so that the multiple application possibilities can be well controlled and developed in a more relaxed way.

Ending of the Advent Calendar 2022

2023-03-16T12:00:00+01:00

The Advent Calendar 2022 is over. Thanks to all participants and their feedback.

If you are interested in more and also more challenging programming tasks in the style of the advent calendar: In the summer semester, there will be a lecture called "Competitive Programming" with a large practical part, where you can turn your task solving skills into ECTS points and of course learn many more new tricks.

We are already planning for the next advent and can always use new creative minds for the task creation. If you are interested, come to our 1st public meeting in the summer semester on Monday 22.05 at 18:00 (IM 242).

Adventcalendar 2022

2022-12-01T09:00:00+01:00

From today until Christmas, every day a door will open on our Advent website https://advent.ieee.uni-passau.de/ . Unfortunately, from last year to this year the team around the calendar has shrunk, so we can not guarantee the usual constant quality and there will be no prizes. Responses to requests may take longer and the tasks themselves may contain a few clerical errors. Thank you for your understanding. We wish you a lot of fun while coding until Christmas.

If you want to help the calendar team yourself, just visit us on our regular meetings and maybe you'll be part of the task or admin team next year :)

Tools for your (S)EP

2022-09-08T12:35:00+02:00

As every year we showed a selection of tools that are useful for both the SEP and EP.

You can find the corresponding slides here:

Project Management
Bugtracker
Git
Buildsystems
Continuous Integration
Unit Testing
LaTeX
UML

Meetings in summer term 2022

2022-04-26T22:11:00+02:00

For the summer term of 2022, we can return to in-person meetings at the uni (according to current information as of April 2022). Check our website for up-to-date meeting dates and room infos (in case we have to deviate from our usual room 242 IM at short notice).

Results of the Advent Calendar 2021

2022-01-29T22:00:00+01:00

The Advent Calendar 2021 is over. 24 tasks, 108 active users and 3089 submissions later was the award ceremony. This year it took place in a hybrid mode. You can find more details in the slides of the evening: https://ieee.uni-passau.de/uploads/2022/Abschluss2021.pdf

Meetings in Winterterm 2021

2020-11-08T18:50:00+01:00

As last semester our regular meetings will be held online per BigBlueButton. Join us here: https://ieee.uni-passau.de/meeting

Tools for your (S)EP

2020-08-06T16:08:00+02:00

Like every year we showed a selection of tools that are useful for the (S)EP ([Software] Engineering Project).

Please find the slides attached:

Additionally here are the slides on Doxygen and the Code for CI and Unit Testing

Regular Meetings will take place online!

2020-04-13T17:28:00+02:00

As already announced by the University of Passau, there will initially be no classroom teaching or events, which also applies to our Regular Meetings. For this reason, we have decided to have our two-week round meetings take place as usual - only online!

The Regular Meetings will take place via the "Big Blue Button" software, hosted and made available for free by the Students Council Dortmund. Thanks a lot for this! The link to the Regular Meeting will be announced on our Announce mailing list and here on our website. Registration is not required. We look forward to seeing you!

OpenStreetMap and Google Summer of Code

2020-04-06T01:30:00+02:00

On January 27 2020 Tobias Knerr visited us and talked about OpenStreetMap and the Google Summer of Code.

During the Summer of Code you work on open software from home and will be paid by Google (about 5000€). This event was first held in 2005 with roughly a thousand participants every year, all of which are required to be students above the age of eighteen. Of the 200+ projects every iteration more than 80 percent end up being successful. Participants can apply for multiple projects but will ultimately be accepted for one of them at most. After the organizers have reviewed the applications they request a certain amount of slots for participants from Google. When Google is finished assigning them the actual amount of slots, the project team fills those with applicants. All projects come with a description, which also entails what exactly needs to be done. It is also possible to present original ideas, but a mentor will be needed in either case, whom you will get to know during the community bonding phase before the coding itself starts. Contact can be established directly or via forums, chats, etc. The purpose of this is to learn more about the project and the idea that comes with it and to also leave a good first impression. Coding will take place from May to August with an evaluation every month. Only if the mentors decide you were successful, will you be paid. A successful first evaluation yields 30 percent of the total amount, the second one another 30 and after the third and final evaluation you will receive the rest.

OpenStreetMap is a free map with an open license. Anyone willing to help can be active in two huge areas: mapping data acquisition and work that needs to be done on a computer. OpenStreetMap is used for navigation systems, printed maps, on Wikipedia, as printing motif for shirts and lampshades, ...

Pokémon GO uses OpenStreetMap as well, which is why users changed the mapping data to manipulate Pokémon spawns.

Services are hosted by the OSM Foundation, which forms the small core in a grand ecosystem. The front end has the wiki, forum and the site, the back end encompasses the data, accounts and the history.

During the Summer of Code several projects in connection with OpenStreetMap were made as well. Tobias Knerr mentored and organized some of them and presented a few examples, including a better way to display the maps based on the OSM data or using that same data to generate 3D models.

All in all it was a nice and interesting talk and we were glad to have had Tobias Knerr as our guest.

Professors in Person with professor Rutter

2020-04-05T23:00:00+02:00

January 13 2020 was the day professor Rutter finally could no longer avoid facing the harsh questioning of "Professors in Person".

As usual we first examined his personal life a bit closer: Ignaz Rutter was born in Karlsruhe in 1981 where he experienced a radiant childhood thanks to the nearby nuclear power plant. In 2001 he began to study computer science, a task which took him only the standard amount of six years. Even before he was conferred his doctorate he wrote his first publication which had an astonishingly close connection to his diploma thesis. However, said publication could at first not exactly be called public as it was apparently "poorly written". Furthermore, initial correspondence related to his thesis showed great latency which could not possibly have been due to an intentionally ignored e-mail, no, it must have somehow landed in the spam folder. Happens to the best of the academic year.

In 2007 Ignaz Rutter started working with the academic chair and obtained his doctorate four years later. Subsequently he initiated his wandering years which led him to Prague in 2013 and 2014. Afterwards he arrived in Frankfurt where he was responsible for the lecture Data Structures until 2016, when he continued on towards the Netherlands, specifically Eindhoven, a place he choose to stay half a year longer than necessary in out of consideration for his family before finally coming to us here in Passau.

Professor Rutter's research concerns planar graphs - those that can be drawn in a plane without their edges intersecting. A more specific question in this field is whether a certain graph can be drawn in the aforementioned manner when a part of said graph is already correctly drawn and cannot be changed. This question is of interest when it comes to graphs that need to be expanded, for example. One approach to this problem is to check whether graphs contain certain "forbidden substructures", which are already known to be impossible to draw in the desired way. Professor Rutter has been working on this open question for seven or eight years now.

In Addition to that he also works on optimizing the calculation of traffic routes and he has cooperated with philosophers as well. One instance was about building a layouter for argument maps and another time they analysed the spread of fake news on Twitter.

Ignaz Rutter wanted to become a professor because he has fun doing research and received a job offer from his mentor. The final decision was made about a year (and a half) after he had gained his doctorate. What he likes about Passau is having the most beautiful place to live in so far, which, however, does not mean that much, as he has said himself. For his research he also traveled to India and Japan. As most computer scientists he enjoys programming, as confirmed by the two-player graph drawing game made in 2013. His other hobbies include the DLRG, theatre, squash, chess and board games with the kids. He also plays the piano and the guitar but he is not much of an artist despite his mother being active in this area.

We are happy to have a competent professor at our university who is additionally not afraid to make it rain sweets near the end of the semester at exam preparation time. One thing is for sure: Without Ignaz Rutter, Passau would loose a professional hard disk throwing champion.

Comfort and efficiency with Linux

2020-03-17T15:23:00+01:00

Simon Labrenz personalizes his linux computer with different desktops, tools and configuration files since he started studying.

On the 16.1., he gave an overview on his experiences and what tips about programs such as ZSH or tmux he gained over the time. Those were presented via live demos and were passed on interactively to the audience.

A talk for linux beginners that learned to chose a window manager which satisfies their needs, as well as a talk for intermediate linux users, which found new plugins and new configuration possibilities.

SuperMUC

2020-01-07T15:00:00+01:00

On Thursday, November 14, 2019 Prof. Dr. Dieter Kranzlmüller, head of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (not to be confused with the Leibniz Institute) honored us with a talk about SuperMUC, the most powerful computer in Germany.

The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre provides its services since 1962, which include IT for the universities in Munich, "BayernShare", a sort of dropbox for Bavarian scientists and the national task of having the strongest computer in Germany. This computer called SuperMUC is available for free to every German scientist, provided their application with a research proposal is accepted. Scientists from other parts of Europe can apply as well, though usually they will not be prioritized. However, SuperMUC is intended to be used for civil applications only, so military projects for example will not be approved, no matter how much money is offered.

The computing power of SuperMUC is mostly used for simulating and modelling things such as earthquakes, blood flow in the human body or the rotation of galaxies. The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre also cooperates with the environmental research station on the Zugspitze, but the supercomputer is also available for less CPU-intensive purposes. One example of this is German TV show "Tatort", one episode of which the computer played a huge part in. The movie "Snowden" was also shot in the SuperMUC building.

The very building itself is already considered a research project, as there is not that much data regarding building and operating supercomputers. The racks are located in the top-most floor, as this floor does not contain any pillars. The processors are cooled using hot water (40-45°C), which is pumped to the rooftop once it reaches 68°C, where it then cools down and enters the building again. This requires 3,000 liters of water per rack and hour. On an additional note, SuperMUC contains not a single GPU. Still, the power of the so-called first phase is about 3.2 PetaFLOPS and Phase 2 can reach 3.6 PetaFLOPS using only one-fourth of the area and one-third of the electricity of Phase 1, which was then dismantled due to its inefficiency. The next phase, called NextGen, consists of approximately 311,000 cores with a combined maximum power of 26.9 PetaFLOPS. It also has 719 TB of memory. When benchmarking this phase, the goal was to reach the top 10 of the best computers worldwide, which was a task from the government, and then immediately stop in order to save money, as running SuperMUC for an hour generates an electricity bill of 1000-1200€ and its total power consumption equals three times that of Munich. Different benchmarks produce different results: When running a SSSP benchmark, SuperMUC is placed at rank 1 and running LINPACK is a perfect reliability test for the infrastructure, as major faults in key components become evident if the whole system crashes and something smells burnt. But not only faulty components can cause failures, even too much dust on some parts can bring the whole system down, although they were cleaned as often as manufacturers recommended. If the whole power supply suddenly fails, this is not a big deal as long as the blackout lasts less than eleven seconds, as this is the duration the power wheels will continue to spin on their own. On average there is one failure everey nine hours and restarting the system takes about eight hours.

SuperMUC is powered using renewable energies and in order to become more sustainable the heat generated by the processors is used to heat the buildings of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre. This, however does not nearly exhaust the hot water supply generated by the supercomputer, as this idea cannot be extended to all of Munich due to bureaucratic issues. Should the opportunity present itself Prof. Kranzlmüller considers using the hot water to brew a traditional Bavarian beverage.

We were very glad to receive such varied and detailed insights into the workings of a supercomputer and are thankful for the interesting talk.

PowerPoint Karaoke

2019-12-21T03:00:00+01:00

What happens if you ask a computer scientist to present a random paper?

They do a random presentation!

On Thursday, the 28th of November 2019, participants of the PowerPoint Karaoke got the chance to demonstrate their presentation skills. Their creativity and expertise combined with a presentation they had never seen before yielded interesting results. To help everyone get started, the first topic of the evening was the art of doing a proper presentation, which, of course, was subsequently applied marvelously. Additionally, one could learn the correct way of running over cyclists and hear all about the advantages a swimming holiday village provides (not to be confused with regular swimming villages, those occur in the USA after a hurricane). Preschools were used to conquer blue oceans and building bridges necessitated the discussion of the tensile strength of spaghetti. A colorful introduction of Scary, Baby, Ginger, Posh and Sporty spiced things up quite a bit, the asteroid apocalypse would cause you to meet your maker and talking about sewage plants gave rise to several more shitty puns. The slides were able to fascinate everyone with their delightful color schemes, subtle animations and neat arrangement and the presenters' wit and spontaneity enchanted the audience.

8. IEEE Programming Advent calendar

2019-11-23T21:08:00+01:00

Not in the mood for chocolate but you like the thought of an Advent calendar? You don't know what to do with all the time until Christmas? Then take the challenge and participate in the Advent calendar of the IEEE Student Branch Passau!

This is already the 8th iteration of our big programming Advent calendar with a small (or bigger) challenge for each day. We provide interesting tasks for novice coders as well as experienced developers.

Just write a small program in the language of your choice - we support 20! - upload it to our website and see, if you mastered the challenge. The best participants will, as every year, win great prices.

Special thanks go out to our sponsors, the Chair of Software Engineering II at the University of Passau, for providing us with a cluster of evaluation systems, the Centre for Information Technology and Media Services for providing the infrastructure. We also thank msg systems, ONE LOGIC, Innowerk and Micro-Epsilon for providing tasks and prizes for the advent calendar.

Blink LEDs like a pro

2019-11-09T17:30:00+01:00

The talk's presentation can be found here. On the 14th of October 2019 Rafael has shown us how to make LEDs blink on with a microcontroller - not quite, because this can be done in various differnt ways.

He showed us five ways to blink a LED. The first one is quiet easy and there's no code required - really - just a connection between the microcontroller and a debugger, where one can change the control value of the LED by hand, making it blink.

Another way is to write an infinite loop which switches the LED on, then the program waits some time, afterwards it switches it off, then waits again and returns to the the beginning. By the way, the program execution is stalled by simple executing a long for loop. Note: GPIOC_MODER is a virtual pointer to the LED control value.

/* Crude delay function */
void delay(uint32_t count) {
    for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
        __asm__("nop");
    }
}

int main() {
    /* Initialize APB2 (Advanced Peripheral Bus 2) */
    *RCC_APB2ENR = 0x10;
    /* Set GPIO port C pin 13 as output */
    *GPIOC_MODER |= 0x200000;

    /* Set and Reset Output Data Register of PC13 */
    while (1) {
        *GPIOC_ODR = 0x2000;
        delay(200000);
        *GPIOC_ODR = 0x0;
        delay(200000);
    }
}

This doesn't look like good C, because it is really low level. The presenter introduced as the HAL (Hardware abstraction layer), so our C program has the ability to look better. The next program's main function simply consists of an empty infinite loop which does nothing, preventing the program from terminating. Before that, a timer is created which periodically triggers an interupt. It toggles our LED control value or - in other words - making it blink.

But this solution still uses the CPU of our microcontroller. This time another empty infinity loop is used. Just before that the direct memory access controller, or short DMA, is instructed to write an array of zeros and ones periodically to the LED's control value. So the LED blinks again.

Just now last program still used basic microcontroller instructions. We could just install RTOS (Real-time operatoring system) and write a typical software program to make the LED blink yet again.

Introduction to Kotlin

2019-09-02T20:00:00+02:00

The material used during the talk (slides, etc.) can be found here. On the 13th of June 2019 Sebastian Aigner, Education Advocate at JetBrains, visited to enlighten us about everything related to Kotlin.

In short, Kotlin is a concise programming language, designed to be used for multiple platforms and adhering to multiple paradigms.

For example, this is a "Hello world!" program written in Kotlin:

fun main(){
    print("Hello world!")
}

On the one hand Kotlin is object-oriented, but on the other hand offering, amongst other features, higher-order functions, making the language functional as well. Furthermore, Kotlin is Null-Safe:

fun main(){
    val a : String? = null //a is a nullable String with value null
    print(a?.length)
}

Thanks to Null-Safety the code above will compile and not crash at runtime.

Now for the multi-platform characteristic of Kotlin. One could write code for a project, which will then run on a desktop computer and then add to that same project a little more platform-specific code so one may run it on Android, iOS or in the browser.

All these and more features were not just explained, but also demonstrated in an extensive Live-Coding-Session by solving the Fizz-Buzz Test and making the Game of Life.

Even after the talk many questions on various details about Kotlin arose, which were eagerly answered. All that is left to say after such an informative and entertaining talk is we are happy we could once again welcome JetBrains to our university and we hope this will not be the last time, as some of us still need to complete their merchandise collection.

Tools for your (S)EP

2019-08-22T19:15:00+02:00

Like every year we showed a selection of tools that are useful for the (S)EP ([Software] Engineering Project).

Please find the slides attached:

Additionally here are the slides on IntelliJ.

Introduction to Rust

2019-07-16T18:00:00+02:00

On the 27th of june Fabian Knorr, Master of Science in Computer Science and ex student of the university of Passau, held a talk about his beloved programming language Rust. He followed the language ever since its first release.

Rust is a system language like C or C++, allows to manipulate machine code but enforces safety without loosing speed and makes use of imperative as well as functional features.

The talk started with simple language concepts like bindings, macro invocations, how the language avoids dangling pointers or nullpointers, ownership and borrowing.

Also other concepts famous from like other languages like slicing of arrays or haskell-like pattern matching were introduced.

Afterwards generics and Rust's equivalent of a garbage collection, drop taints with the Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII) concept, were explained by Fabian. He even went more into other in depth concepts of the language and showed how the borrow checker works and causes a compile error if the lifetime of variables and references get missused.

As a great book to start and learn most of Rust's functionalitys Fabian recommends 'Learning Rust With Entirely Too Many Linked Lists'.

Overall a very good start into Rust vor everyone who just started learning the language, but also valuable information for fans of the language.

Professors in Person with Professor Fraser

2019-06-30T22:00:00+02:00

On Monday, the third of June as part of our ongoing series of talks "Professors in Person" we welcomed guest speaker Prof. Dr. Gordon Fraser so we might - with the assistance of a little cheat sheet - uncover the mysteries of his past together.

Sometime after popping into existence in Austria he successfully finished studying telematics in Graz before starting a doctorate in eTourism in Innsbruck, which he managed to endure two whole months. Afterwards his attention shifted to a "more interesting topic", Software Testing, the field which he later also obtained his degree in.

In 2009 our brave tester ventured forth into the beautiful Saarland, where his responsibilities as postdoc included passing on his vast knowledge to the students during the lecture Testing & Debugging. Additionally, he decided to support the mythical beasts residing in its capital by buying annual tickets for the zoo of Saarbrücken.

Three years later fate had drawn our hero into the lands his father had walked before him. Biding his time as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Sheffield, his longing for his true home, Austria, grew ever stronger until his heart could bear such pain no more. But then fortune smiled upon our champion as he was appointed to the chair of Software Engineering II - here in Passau. Close enough.

Now one might ask: What qualifies Prof. Dr. Gordon Fraser for such an enormous task, aside from the above-average number of Scottish clans in his name? The answer is simple: His deeds as computer scientist, classical pianist and former village organist naturally provide him rich experience regarding keyboards and a man who received the Google Focused Research Award in 2011 is not someone you can just look down on. Likewise he is also the proud winner of the Microsoft Software Engineering Innovation Award and Facebook, too, did not miss out on the opportunity to honor him victorious in their Testing and Verification Challenge in the year 2018.

After the handwritten notes ran out Professor Fraser had to withstand the audience's brutal questions and while answering them he even dropped some spicy personal details. But some secrets are best left untold...

The evening we spent with him was, all things considered, positively enjoyable and truly entertaining. We are profoundly delighted to have such a likeable professor with a rather unique English accent here at our university.

An Introduction to Scrum

2019-05-14T15:00:00+02:00

On the 9th of May Achim Kümmler, a man with decades of experience in software development and member of the Fraunhofer Institute, elaborated on the principles of a more modern approach to software development: Scrum.

Scrum is a method of agile software development and as such adheres to the values of the agile manifesto. Accordingly, people, results and flexibility are assigned a higher priority than detailed documentations and contracts, rigid plans and the processes utilized. The term itself is derived from rugby to emphasize the importance of teamwork.

Scrum can be broken down into three core parts: Roles, Ceremonies and Artifacts. The different Roles describe what part every individual of the group, which is sized anywhere between five and nine people, has to play in the project. The Product Owner, ideally a member of the party the software is developed for, defines, adjusts and prioritizes the required features, decides upon release dates and whether or not the fabricated results are to be accepted and is responsible for ensuring profit. The ScrumMaster essentially supports the group by enacting the Scrum values, removing obstacles and outside interference and enabling close cooperation. They, however, do not make decisions for the team, they may only assist them. The Team is usually composed of full-time members, who each work across multiple fields of software development. On the other hand, every area of expertise is covered by multiple people.

The Ceremonies describe the structure of the whole Scrum process. First of all, a so-called sprint is planned. A sprint is a phase of work lasting two to four weeks with the goal of producing a shippable product increment by the end of it. To plan one properly, the product backlog, a catalogue of requirements, is analyzed and a sprint goal working towards fulfilling one or more of those requirements is set. Also, the initial sprint backlog, a list of tasks needed to achieve the sprint goal, is created. During the sprint the first activity of every day is the Daily Scrum, a ceremony of about fifteen minutes in which every participant talks about what they did the day before, what they will be doing today and whether they have encountered any problems. Tasks can freely be added to and adjusted on the sprint backlog as needed. For every item on the backlog an estimate of remaining work hours is created and updated every day. Team members are not assigned their tasks, they themselves sign up for the tasks they want to work on and thus everyone carries responsibility, as they do not execute what someone else explicitly ordered them to. Afterwards the sprint is reviewed as the whole team demonstrates their accomplishments in an informal way. For the sprint retrospective everyone inspects what is or is not working, for example by asking themselves what to start doing, what to stop doing and what to continue doing.

Artifacts are the aforementioned product and sprint backlogs and a burn down chart, a visualization of the remaining amount of work in relation to time.

For projects which require more manpower, a Scrum of Scrums can be created. Every group delegates one member to send to a meeting to coordinate and communicate with the others.

The close customer collaboration greatly reduces risking to fail to provide the product needed to truly fulfill the established requirements and in the speaker's experience switching from the waterfall model to Scrum had increased productivity by about 40 to 50 percent. However, he also reported programmers to be under more pressure than before.

Ultimately it was quite fascinating to hear about agile software development from a man who was involved in "both worlds" extensively and could gladly provide detailed insights into just about any matter connected to it.

From Idea to Startup to Company

2019-01-24T13:34:00+01:00

On Monday, January 14, 2019, Dr. Andreas Böhm visited the IEEE Student Branch. Under the slogan "Data Science from Garage to Production", the founder and managing director of the company ONE LOGIC talked about the success story of his former Start-Up. In just five years he managed to acquire many customers and recruit 130 employees.

Dr. Andreas Böhm studied at the University of Passau and earned his doctorate in the area of data science. He founded his first company at the age of 23. At this time, he was already fascinated by the idea of filtering relevant information from big piles of data to gather new insights and improve existing processes. As a freelancing consultant at a large company in the automotive sector, he was able to improve the purchasing processes in a way that saves the company huge amounts of money.

The goal of ONE LOGIC is to bring transparency into big data collections and generating real value for their customers. Since the beginning, founder Andreas Böhm considers it important for his company to be solution-oriented. He achieves short waiting times and quick solutions by delivering minimal viable products (MVPs) to the customers. Based on the insights, which ONE LOGIC gathers using MVPs their main product ONE DATA is continuously refined and becomes even more valuable for their customers. This approach made it possible for the company to finance itself right from the beginning without the need of large investors or other funding.

Besides hard work, having good advisers with different backgrounds and much expertise is a key success factor. Specialists who can give you different perspectives on upcoming challenges are indispensable for a founder. Andreas Böhm was lucky in finding Prof. Dr. Andreas Pfeifer who already had over 20 years of experience in that sector at that time. Meanwhile, the management team around Böhm grew: the additional managing director Dr. Stefan Roskos, chief data scientist Dr. Sebastian Wernicke and chief developer Adrian Berndl help him to make informed decisions as well as to manage all employees. Andreas Böhm stresses to surround yourself with experts as a founder. The more work you can delegate, the better for your company - there is always a person, which is more experienced than yourself!

In reply to a question about the necessary mindset and skills of a founder, Böhm mentioned several: you shouldn't avoid (necessary) risks and have the ability to think out of the box (there's no such thing as impossible). Another requirement is to work significantly longer than normal employees (at least in the start-up phase of your company) as well as the ability to go for pragmatic solutions rather than the over-engineere one. The most important one however is to work in an area where you really have fun.

At the end of the talk, Andreas Böhm has some more advises for a successful Start-Up. He suggests to concentrate on finding solutions rather than problems, finding errors early, and admitting mistakes. Furthermore, it is important to find people who also love to work on the same idea and help you moving your product forward. Especially a sales person can help to make your company profitable. Of course, you need a little bit luck on your side as well.

The IEEE Student Branch wishes this luck to Dr. Andreas Böhm and his company ONE LOGIC, as well as to all other founders who were inspired by this talk.

Public-Key Cryptography for Dummies

2019-01-24T13:00:00+01:00

In modern days, cryptography is a very important part of many aspects of our modern society―especially in the Internet: safe communication between websites needs to be ensured to keep 3rd parties from interfering, e.g.in the process of logging into a website or accessing online databases. (Important to 'normal' users is http-encryption. On safe websites, a lock-symbol can be found next to the address bar in the browser, which also reveals more information regarding the encryption can be obtained) Thanks to Prof Zumbrägel and his talk "Public-Key Cryptography for Dummies", we had the opportunity to gain insights into the basics of cryptography.

The first part covered public-key cryptography: the idea is to enable encrypted communication between two unknown parties Alica and Bob: Alice and Bob agree on some common information that is made public. Then, both choose their (own) secret key that is only known to them, and then use the public information to derive a public key from their private key. In order to establish a common secret key, Alice sends her public key to Bob, who combines it with his own secret key. Bob also gives his public key to Alice, who can obtain the same secret as Bob did using her private key. The common secret is only known to Alice and Bob and can then be used for encryption.

This scheme can be implemented using primitive roots (which can be used to create a mathematical field). Binary sequences could be used as well, but they are easy to attack and therefore impracticable.

The last part was designed for "more advanced Dummies". Prof. Zumbrägel showed us modern (runtime) problems of Cryptography as well as past and current records (some of which he even helped establish).

All in all, it was a very interesting talk that provided a good opportunity to learn the very basics of cryptography.

All About Siltronic

2019-01-22T11:09:00+01:00

On Thursday, January 10, 2016, Peter Mader, graduate of our university and former chairman and founding member of the IEEE STudent Branch Passau, talked about the production of silicon wafers and the challenges they pose for his company Siltronic.

The company, who was formerly part of Wacker-Chemie, has existed for almost 50 years. During this period, Siltronic, as the only company in the Western world, became the 4th largest wafer manufacturer. The silicon wafers are produced at several locations around the world, including Burghausen, Portland and Singapore.

What are silicon wafers? This refers to thin slices of high-purity silicon, from which micro-chips are produced. While demand came from the computing segment about 20 years ago, the demand is much more widespread today and also includes the areas of communications, industry, cars, as well as IoT and direct consumer products. Thus, for the production of a Tesla a wafer with a diameter of 200mm and for a modern electric locomotive about 20 of these wafers needed.

How exactly is such a wafer produced? The first step in the manufacturing process is the "pulling" of a high-purity silicon single crystal, from molten raw material. This is then sliced in the following and obtaines by several cleaning, as well as laser or chemical treatments its desired properties. While the wafers currently support a thickness of 8nm and a maximum of 32 levels on top of each other, customers are already demanding 128 levels, and the minimum thickness should also be reduced to 5nm in a few years.

Depending on the wafer size the manufacturing process consists of about 45 to 70 individual steps for which again up to 6000 parameters are needed to obtain the desired results. In order to remain competitive in this complex process, a very good automation is needed, with the aim of obtaining a "black light factory" in a few years, in which one can simply switch off the light, and all work goes on as normal. At Siltronic, this plan is implemented by means of a central ERP system as well as the for production important IT infrastructure which is available at all sites.

Currently a big project, is the transport automation, where as two different systems are already in use. On the one hand there is the variant that smaller vehicles drive on rails over the machines and transport the containers with wafers. The other variant are larger vehicles traveling on the ground, which can transport more containers at the same time. Challenges in this project are the high accuracy with which the containers must be loaded into the machines and the often strict time constraints. In addition, the actual implementation is not as easy as many would think, since really all processes need to be standardized. You can not just say to a machine, "You knock once against it and then it works again."

Advantages of automation are not only the lower costs, but also a lower workload for the employes, since via data glasses, suppport can also be provided from outside the production areas and thus the time-consuming process of entering the clean rooms is eliminated.

All in all, the lecture was a very detailed insight into an industry that we are not so aware of, as we end up with only the processed products in our hands and little notice of the ingredients.

Basics of Embedded Hardware Design

2018-12-21T15:00:00+01:00

Rafael Bachmann honored our Student Branch with a talk about hardware design from scratch. This means no arduino and nothing preassembled, only the plain components designed and soldered by yourself. He mentioned this sounding like a lot of work, but it is necessary work to avoid abstraction.

Another interesting point he mentioned was to only consider the waterfall model for designing your board, in contrast to modern software design. Any other model is hard to realize since no quick iterations are possible, since the delivery of new hardware takes to long and also is expensive.

Following i will list the points listed by Rafael for his own design of a blinker.

Choice of processor To choose the processor you need, Rafael mentions these criteria:
- communication protocols
- whether you need many floating point operations (FPO)
- limits on energy consumption
- price and ease of circuit flashing
- available programming environment
As a small "pro tip" by Rafael: try to find a processor with a public scheme, this will ease your design and later adjustments to the board.
Draw a schematic of your board Rafael personally uses KiCad, a design suite which "treats the schematic like code", by sticking with the old Input -> Processing -> Output model.

Keep in mind, that up until this point you had not a single opportunity to test your design, so it it is especially important to be careful with every design decision.
Software Now, that you recieved your own board, completely designed by yourself, it is time to fill your board with software. Rafael proposes languages like C, C++ or (his very favorite) Rust to build your awesome application.

So if you ever try to design your own hardware completely from the start, make sure you take these advices seriously, it might help you out a lot.

JRobots 2018

2018-12-21T14:45:00+01:00

On Saturday, 01.12.2018 it was time once again for a jRobots Competition. The developer of the framework, Ray, and a representative of our sponsor Cipsoft, Tobias, came to the University of Passau to hold the event. Along they brought the jRobots Framework, adjusted so the tanks could drive, scan in an arc before them and shoot redirectable missiles. Empowered after some pizza the participants had 4 hours to design and code the strongest robot they came up with, so their tank would be the one defeating all the other tanks created during the event. At the end every robot had to duell each other robot in a tournament. The developers behind the Splasurobot managed to not loose a single fight and won the 2 Lego Mindstorm sets, so in the future they can also build and program physical roboters. Thanks a lot once again to Cipsoft for supplying the prices and to Ray for providing the framework!

7. IEEE Programming Advent calendar

2018-11-27T16:15:00+01:00

This is already the seventh iteration of our big programming Advent calendar with a small (or bigger) challenge for each day. We provide interesting tasks for novice coders as well as experienced developers.

Just write a small program in the language of your choice - we support 15! - upload it to our website and see, if you mastered the challenge. The best participants will, as every year, win great prices.

Interested? Register at https://advent.ieee.uni-passau.de and start solving your first task. As last year, we provide the tasks in English as well as in German, so everyone - even world wide - can enter the contest. Special thanks go out to our sponsors, the Chairs of Software Engineering I+II at the University of Passau, for providing us with a cluster of evaluation systems, the Centre for Information Technology and Media Services for providing the infrastructure and msg systems, Iteratec, ONE LOGIC and CipSoft for providing tasks and prices.

Powerpoint Karaoke

2018-11-02T11:11:00+01:00

What happens if you task a computer scientist to present a random paper?

They do a random presentation!

On October 29, 2018, fourteen participants demonstrated their presentation skills in this year's PowerPoint karaoke. All volunteers had to pick a presentation, which they have never seen before. In a spontaneous, creative and funny way, the lecturers presented (not very serious) topics like "How Hanna (79) is Using the Internet", "Internet Addiction - How the Internet Brings us to Higher Levels of Consciousness" or "Self Assessment for University Entrants - Demotivating Students to Achieve Lower Numbers of Students". We also learned facts about Bavaria (its only relevant cultural achievement seems to be beer) and some Japanese vocabulary (so we can now also say 'beer' in Japanese). The slides convinced the audience with marvelous animations, catchy colors and an ideal structure and the lecturers inspired the audience with a lot of humor and performances using all available means (acting, singing,...). All in all, it was a very funny event where everybody got the chance to work on his/her presentation skills.

Tools for your (S)EP

2018-07-26T20:21:00+02:00

Like every year we showed a selection of tools that are useful for the (S)EP ([Software] Engineering Project).

Please find the slides attached:

Additionally here are the slides on IntelliJ and Doxygen.

Continuous Integration for Everybody

2018-07-11T18:32:00+02:00

Setting up Continous Integration for a project can be quick and easy. Using a Java project with Maven, Jenkins and GitLab as an example, Thomas showed us how they ensure code quality at ONE LOGIC.

On June 21, our former member Thomas Stieglmaier from ONE LOGIC visited us, to show us how easy, fast and for everyone to use Continuous Integration (CI) is . For this he began with an overview of the software development process that starts before the first commit, continues with multiple code reviews until the next release and then starts over again. A powerful and often used tool for managing a software project is Maven. Maven stands out for being integrated into IDEs, as well as having a good dependency management. The resulting build script is neither large nor complex. To ensure the code quality, various tools can be integrated and be used to keep up to date with the development of the software in question. Thomas presented us two build system tools for CI: GitLab and Jenkins. Both support the most important functions to run CI. For occasional and small projects in the private sector GitLab is probably the most appropriate choice, as not much has to be prepared by yourself. In the business environment, you hardly come around without Jenkins, because it is more powerful and has more detailed error messages, but is also harder to set up. Thomas rounded the talk off with a vivid live demo including configuration examples. Then ONE LOGIC invited us to pizza, where we ended the evening.

The code for the live demo can be found under the following link:

https://gitlab.com/stieglma/ciSamples

You can download the slides of the talk here:

Continuous Integration for Everybody

Git - Advanced usage and details

2018-06-26T12:43:00+02:00

Development as a team is an important part of every bigger IT project. Version control are essential for this even if they bing some pitfalls you may want to avoid. On June 14th we were joined by Florian Sattler, a PhD student, for his talk "Git - Advanced usage and details", where he showed some tricks for efficiently working with the version control system git. He presented some basics as well as more advanced handling and went into dos and don'ts when working with git. Humorous bits about the "daily madness" helped him to develop and show a kind of handbook for tricky situations. For example, git reflog helps getting back lost commits, and for "but-it-worked-last-time"-situations git bisect can be a helpful tool. git blame finds the author of every bit of code (whereas blame in real life is not always the best for team building) and branches and git worktree are important features for all who want to mulit-task. Florian also went into detail about git rebase, but he warned the audience that changing pushed code is asking for problems by comparing it to time travel literature, both can have devastating effects on the present (code versions).

The whole talks was an entertaining introduction into some advanced git tools and techniques. In addition, the slides for the talk (to obtain, please contact pr-taskforce@ieee.uni-passau.de) could save you in your next git emergency.

Crypto-currencies

2018-05-26T21:00:00+02:00

On the 5/17 we were honored by ex-student branch member Tobias Hilbig from Munich, who shared his knowledge about crypto-currencies and so called "Smart Contracts". He gave a technical introduction on how the blockchain functions, how crypto-currencies, especially Bitcoin, developed and how realistic the relevance of this topic might be in the future. All of this was shown with examples of transactions and multiple statistics. Also an insight into the Do's and Don'ts of trading crypto-currencies was given. Additionally Tobias gave tips for those who themselves wanted to enter the world of mining and crypto-currencies after this talk, by offering sources for further research and tips for beginners in general. In conclusion the talk supplied a great entrance into the topic for people who only heard about crypto-currencies in the news, but also technical background information for those who maybe already traded digital money but did not understand the algorithms behind it.

The slides for this presentation can be found here.

6. IEEE Programming Advent calendar

2017-11-30T18:00:00+01:00

This is already the sixth iteration of our big programming Advent calendar with a small (or bigger) challenge for each day. We provide interesting tasks for novice coders as well as experienced developers.

Just write a small program in the language of your choice - we support over 25! - upload it to our website and see, if you mastered the challenge. The best participants will, as every year, win great prices.

Interested? Register at https://ieee.uni-passau.de/advent and start solving your first task. This year we have a special treat for all you English speaking participants. We have updated our system and now provide the tasks in English as well as in German, so everyone - even world wide - can enter the contest. Special thanks go out to our sponsors, the Chair of Software Engineering at the University of Passau, for provides us with a cluster of evaluation systems, the Centre for Information Technology and Media Services for providing the infrastructure, msg systems, Iteratec and ONE LOGIC for providing prices and all creators of tasks at those companies and other chairs at the University of Passau.

What Mathematics does in the Brain—Mathematics and Brain Research

2016-12-01T21:35:00+01:00

Professor Sauer held a very interesting presentation about the topic. He showed some examples of how mathematics impact the brain and how diverse the separate areas in our head react to different numbers and methods. He also made great use of his own experiences in this field he gained from working together with the university of Gießen and drew a fascinating connection between mathematics and medical science. Thus also non-mathematicians were able to learn to differentiate between calculating numbers and doing mathematics via scientific images of the brain and understand the complex modeling of such data, that in its theory even reaches to the model of tone. All in all a really impressive talk that showed how practical mathematics are of immense importance, even for scientific domains which actually do not have anything to do with numbers.

Baby Steps—a Practical Introduction into Test-Driven Development

2016-11-27T16:44:00+01:00

On the 26th of November the Iteratec GmbH was hosting a coding dojo at the University of Passau, entitled "Baby Steps - a very practical introduction into testdriven development". Dojo is japanese and literally translates to "place of the way", but more frequently is used as the training area in martial arts. For the participants this converted into test-driven pair-programming and always implementing the smallest "baby-steps" of code possible for a certain usecase. The usecase was playfully adjusted during the sessions by the "client". This way there were always new problems and beginners as well as programming experts could learn something new from it. Afterwards the attendees left with new experiences and exchanged their programming habits over diner and were able to gather further insights into the work of Iteratec.

Awards for the Student Branch

2016-10-28T10:05:00+02:00

In the course of our first meeting on October 10, 2016, we were able to announce some awards the Student Branch received recently.

For the second time we were able to receive the IEEE Region 8 Exemplary Student Branch Award. This honor is awarded to Student Branches that on the one hand act on behalf of the rules of IEEE and on the other hand perform extraordinarily. The figure shows our chairman Stephan Lukasczyk and our vice-chairman Sebastian Böhm with the IEEE Region 8 Exemplary Student branch Award.

For organizing the IEEE Region 8 Student and Young Professional Congress 2016 in Regensburg, which was organized by the Student Branches of Passau and Regensburg, both Student Branches received an award of the German Section of IEEE, which was presented at the meeting of the executive committee of the German Section. The figure shows our chairman Stephan Lukasczyk while presenting the award to our past chairman Thomas Ziegler who was our chairman back then and was participating in the organizing committee.

Additionally to the award for the Student Branch for organizing the IEEE Region 8 Student and Young Professional Congress 2016, the co-chair of the organization committee, Thomas Stieglmaier, received an award by the German Section of IEEE. Stephan Lukasczyk presented this award to Thomas and again thanked him for his work.

Tools for your SEP

2016-10-18T21:59:00+02:00

Like every year we will show a selection of tools that are useful for the SEP (Software Engineering Project). The event will be held in HS11 (IM).

Please find the slides attached:

Additionally here are the slides on Bugtracking.

jRobots 2016

2016-07-16T21:40:00+02:00

On June 11, we again had a jRobots event.

For this event, Wolfgang Scholz of iteratec and Raymund Fülöp of Cipsoft came to Passau to hold the competition. Again, the fights were interesting due to a changed ruleset of the framework, which caused the participants to think of new algorithms. New features were a new weapon and a different behaviour of the sensors.

Research Talks by the Chair of Software Engineering

2016-07-15T21:34:00+02:00

On June, 13th, 2016 three PhD students of Professor Apel’s Chair of Software Engineering visited us: Alexander Grebhahn, Claus Hunsen, and Andreas Stahlbauer. All three gave us an introduction into their research topics.

The first talk by Alexander Grebhahn was about non-functional properties and optimization. It is a significant topic in the context of Configurable Software Systems (CSS) because of the combinatorial explosion of the number of possible configurations. He presented different approaches to evaluate the performance of the different configurations to us. Because of the large number of configurations a brute force analysis is not a good choice.

Therefore, a sampling of the different configurations is necessary. This approach has also some challenges: one has to decide, which configurations should chosen. Afterwards, the influence of a single feature can be quantified. However, feature interactions have to be considered. An approach to solve this are performance influence models. By using multiple regression learning, the influences and interactions of the features can be quantified. In every iteration of the regression learning, the error value decreases, which is the difference between the calculated values and the empirical test data.

Alex closed his talk with some results on example data. By that, he strikingly showed the effect of different options in the performance influence model.

The second talk by Andreas Stahlbauer was about model checking of configurable software systems. Because of the exponentially growing number of configurations it is impossible to test each of them. His approach is to test families of products; by detecting similar paths in the program, the evaluation of the path is necessary only once. In order to achieve that, the code with its preprocessor instructions gets transformed into an abstract syntax tree by custom tools; the syntax trees will then be converted to a program source code with conditions for the configurations.

Obviously, all parts of the program should satisfy their specification. In order to achieve this without running twice over the same statements, the features are enabled only when needed.

With this approach, another explosion can happen with variants: program variants, configuration variants, and specification variants, which are necessary to check the new product variants. For the analysis, a combination of several techniques is used: a predicate analysis with adjustable block encoding, lazy abstraction and CEGAR (Counterexample Guided Abstraction Refinement). State-of-the-art SMT solvers are used for the analysis. The goal is to find similar parts in configurations or code in order to do the check only once and reuse the result for similar other parts. The specification checks are done in parallel of the control flow of the program. The talk concluded with some results on the Busybox modules.

The third talk by Claus Hunsen was on communication and coordination between developers. The idea is to prevent unnecessary conflicts by intensive communication; this was shown by Claus with several examples. Additionally, he provided answers on how to detect “good” communication and on how the conflicts can be categorized. Finally, he showed some empirical results of his work that visualized the topic even more.

"ATOS Live Hacking Talk"

2016-07-15T21:08:00+02:00

On June 30th, two penetration testers of ATOS, Alex and Stephan, visited us. About 50 people joined the talk.

While Alex explained the backgrounds and methods to us, Stephan worked as the attacker. The took a simulated web shop as their example and were looking for weaknesses in it. The started with a cross-site-scripting attack in order to get the admin's session; combined with a cross-site-request-forgery, the web page was manipulated and some bugs were shown. They continued with attacks on the database using SQL injections.

Manual testing on simple weaknesses is an easy and mechanical job; hence, they showed the Burp Suite to us—a framework for such simple attacks. Be aware that the usage of such tools is a crime in Germany and therefore should never be used without authorization. Penetration tests are only done with the acknowledgement of the product's owner. Everybody who is interested in these tools can use DVWA, the Damn Vulnerable Web Application.

The next tool they showed was sqlmap. With this tool, Stephan was able to dump the whole database and also further information like files.

By using an upload functionality they were able to install a web shell to get access to the server.

In the end, Alex and Stephan gave as an idea of their daily work and told some interesting stories.

Micro-Epsilon - automatic detection of lack defects

2016-07-08T21:29:00+02:00

After last year's exciting talk we had the pleasure of having Achim Sonntag of Micro-Epsilon again for a talk. This time his talk was on automated detection of paint defects with the reflectCONTROL system.

He started with an introduction in the structure and work of the global acting company, Micro-Epsilon. Cooperations with different universities, for example the institute FORWISS at the University of Passau, are very interesting.

Besides their current orders, the main focus of the talk was reflectCONTROL, a roboter-based system to detect paint defects on cars. Manual control is a quality problem as the results are very subjective. The new system tries to lower the costs of the high effort by a standardized procedure. After the short view of the history of the system the so called defectometry was shown in detail. The system consists of a screen showing different patterns and cameras that capture the reflections on irregularities. The three roborts can be added to existing production lanes and are able to reduce the time for the checks to less than a minute with an accuracy of 98%. By this system, faults can be fixed faster and therefore quality rises.

Current development wants to not only find the faults but also to fix them in order to reduce the checking time.

A Beginner’s Guide to Scientific Data Presentation using LaTeX

2016-07-07T21:50:00+02:00

Our tools of choice are all from the LaTeX universe; obviously, the formal aspects of data presentation are valid for other tools as well. We show a variety of LaTeX packages and give an introduction into their usage, in order to show how easy the presentation of data can be.

Only a small knowledge of LaTeX is needed to understand the source examples, as we try to provide all examples in a very simple and self-explaining way.

The talk will be in German or English, depending on the audience’s wish.

All material can be downloaded: slides, paper, supplementary web page, GitHub repository.

Git - Better commit than sorry

2016-05-02T21:33:00+02:00

Dass git ein mächtiges Werkzeug ist, davon wurden am Montag dem 25.4. alle Anwesenden überzeugt, als es hieß "Git - better commit than sorry". Florian hielt einen umfassenden Vortrag, bei dem jeder etwas dazulernen konnte. Am Anfang wurden für alle git-Neulinge die Basics vorgestellt, auf die dann im Laufe des Vortrags immer wieder aufgebaut wurde. So wurden neben dem normalen Arbeitsablauf mit git auch erweiterte Szenarien vorgestellt und einige Interna, wie der baumartige Aufbau der Commits selber. Am Ende gab es dann noch einige Tipps, wie man die Mächtigkeit des Systems ausnutzen kann, um zum Beispiel mit git bisect Bugs zu finden oder mit Plugins sogar noch mehr als nur Sourcecode-Versionen mit git verwalten kann.

Auch dass der Vortrag sehr gut besucht war, hat alle umso mehr darin bestätigt, dass git mit das beste Versionsverwaltungssystem überhaupt ist. Für alle die es leider nicht geschafft haben, oder die die einzelne Befehle nochmal nachschlagen wollen, gibt es hier die Folien der Präsentation.

Advent calendar

2015-11-30T00:58:00+01:00

Slides of the award presentation (german): here

By now it's already a small tradition: the award-winning programming advent claendar of the IEEE Student Branch Passau. The 4th time in a row there will be a daily programming task set during advent time. Everyone may participate and the are cool prizes waiting.

Starting from the first day of December there will be a new task behind the door every day. These tasks include problems from various fields of computer science and range from easy to hard. Every task leads to writing a small program which will get fed test cases of the problem as input and has to produce the correct output.

These tasks are especially suited as an opportunity to gain experience in various programming languages as our system supports over 24 Languages. These are not only the nowadays common and popular ones like Java or C++ but also more exotic ones like TCL, OCAML or COBOL.

Not only the students at the computer science department in Passau may participate but everyone who is interested. As every year there will be an award ceremony in January where the best participants receive their prizes.

The IEEE Student Branch Passau organizes the advent calendar the 4th time in a row. Last year it was given IEEEs »Darrel Chong Student Activity Award« which honors outstanding student activities.

The IEEE Student Branch Passau is especially thankful for the support of the Software Systems Lab and the IT department of the University for providing the necessary computing infrastructure to serve the Website and evaluate the submissions.

Open Source Development

2015-11-23T07:28:00+01:00

Last Thursday, 19th of November, we have had the honor of recieving an all surrounding talk about the topic Open Source Development, reaching from what license to use over the steps how a project is changed and developed over time and finally how to distribute your package to the rest of the world.

Therefor the both ex-members of the IEEE Student Branch Passau went further into detail about Version Control Systems (like GitHub for example), how to version your process correctly and keep track of the changes. Furthermore they explained the best ways to contribute, run your project through automatic tests and finally distribute and promote your result, once it is finished.

Overall this was the go-to event if you were interested in Open Source Development or just wanted to hear about new things in this area, like the benefits and measures of providing your work for others but recieving someone elses work as well.

The slides of the presentation can be found under https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kXpsOjGGVcL_szQZjBvohOgZ33QnE7bBxBmYktSc1mo/edit#slide=id.p

IEEEXtreme 9.0

2015-10-27T16:47:00+01:00

The IEEEXtreme is a yearly international programming competition hosted by IEEE, where students all over the world try to solve programming challenges over the course of 24 hours.

Four teams of three students form Passau took part in this year's competition. Further we were joined by two teams from the neighboring student branch at the OTH Regensburg.

To see our participants at work, cracking down on the problems (and vice versa), watch this timelapse.

Beginning of the winter term 2015

2015-10-15T13:59:00+02:00

The IEEE Student Branch Passau wishes all students a good start in the winter term 2015. We want to invite you at the same time to join our first regular meeting on 2015/10/19. It starts at 6pm c.t. in the room IM 242. There we will introduce ourselves, and talk about organizational stuff for planned events. Afterwards we will have a dinner at the restaurant “Akropolis Athen”.

IEEE Germany Student Conference 2015

2015-06-29T19:30:00+02:00

On Wednesday, June 17th, four members of our branch took a long ride to Hamburg to participate at the 6th IEEE Germany Student Conference at the TU Hamburg-Harburg. On our way we also picked up two members of the Regensburg

Student Branch, who joined our ride.

After arriving at the Hostel near Hamburg's football stadium, we started our search for a dinner at Hamburg's wellknown "Schanzenviertel". After having a breakfast the next morning, we took the S-Bahn to Harbug, where to conference took place. During this first day, also Thomas and Tommy gave their talk about "Live variables in CPAchecker". In the afternoon, the social event of the conference was scheduled.

After a S-Bahn and bus ride, in which we thought of where Hamburg's bus drivers got their license from, we finally arrived at the DESY, the German Electron Synchrotron, an accelerator for electrons. After an introduction about DESY and all its parts by a young physics PhD student, we took an elevator to about 30m under ground. There we could see parts of the big accelerator ring "Hera", that's turned off for years now. Afterwards we also had a short visit of one of their linear accelerators. The evening ended with the conference dinner at a nice restaurant right next to Hamburg harbor.

The next morning started with the second part of the conference, which wasn't that interesting for us, as most talks where about topics of Electrical Engineering and we are all Computer Scientists. In the afternoon we visited the "Miniatur Wunderland", one of the largest model railways in the world. In the evening we met with some other Student Branch board members for dinner.

On Saturday morning, the meeting of the chairmen of the German IEEE Student Branches took place, and after an afternoon of sightseeing or relaxing and a dinner, we drove home on Sunday.

Retreat weekend 2015

2015-06-29T17:15:00+02:00

The Weekend of the 12th to 14th July, one of our "Members-only" events, the retreat weekend took place. On Friday afternoon, 15 of our members started their trip to a small cottage in Haidmühle 45 minutes out of Passau near the border between Germany and the Czech Republic. As a special guest, the Past-Chair of the IEEE Student Branch from Regensburg followed our invitation and joined us.

After the arrival and check-in, the weekend got kicked of with coffee and self made pie. Later on, a keg of beer was tapped and we had a barbecue. Far into the night we sat together, chatted and played various games.

Early on Saturday morning, even before the big breakfast, some of us started the day with a jogging tour. Then some of us continued their games from the last evening while the others took a hike to the Dreisessel, a local mountain. The hour long walk to the tip was rewarded with a great view over the Bavarian Forest and the Bohemian Forest. For dinner we had a big bowl of paste with a selection of different sauces. Late at night the last game was won by Philipp, who subsequently was only called the "Imperator of the Universe".

After the Sunday morning breakfast we packed up all our things into our cars and headed back home to Passau.

Sicherheit in Online-Spielen

2015-06-15T16:15:00+02:00

Am Donnerstag den 11. Juni hielt Stefan Payer, einer der Gründer von CipSoft, einen Vortrag über die verschiedenen Sicherheitsaspekte in Online-Spielen. Als Beispiel dienten Tibia und Tibia ME, zwei Spiele, die von CipSoft entwickelt werden.

Angefangen bei der Differenzierung zwischen Sicherheit FÜR den Spieler (z.B. in Bezug auf Epilepsie), die im Englischen mit „safety“ bezeichnet wird, und der Sicherheit des Spiels (eng. security) wurden zahlreiche wichtige Details betrachtet, die bei der Implementierung von Online-Spielen beachtet werden müssen.

Als Anbieter von Onlinespielen muss sich die Regensburger Spieleschmiede mit verschiedensten Arten böswilliger Angriffe auf ihre Server auseinandersetzen. So unterschiedlich wie die Attacken selbst sind dabei auch die Motive der Angreifer.

Während einige schlichtweg ihre Fähigkeiten als Programmierer testen wollen, suchen andere nach Wegen im betroffenen Onlinespiel (im Falle von CipSoft ist das Tibia) einen Vorteil gegenüber anderen Spielern zu erlangen. Zusätzlich wollen Hacker die Nutzerdaten der Spieler erbeuten und sich daran bereichern.

Um Spieler daran zu hindern Kommandos abzusetzen, die ihnen nicht erlaubt sind, ist eine serverseitige Validierung aller Benutzereingaben sehr wichtig. Ein weiteres Problem ist zum Beispiel die Veränderung des Clients, sodass zusätzliche Informationen im User Interface angezeigt werden oder das Spiel teilweise automatisiert wird. Während das sogenannte Botting meist durch die AGB eines Spieles untersagt werden, ist es schwer bis unmöglich, solche Veränderungen an Spielclients festzustellen. Hier lautet die einzige Lösung, das Botting durch passende Regeländerungen in der Ingame-Logik oder durch Hinzufügen zusätzlicher Features zum eigentlichen Client (bzw. Verkauf als Premium Features) unattraktiv zu machen. Weiter werden Spieler, die beim Cheaten erwischt werden, vom Spiel ausgeschlossen.

Neben solchen allgemeinen Problemen, mit denen wahrscheinlich jeder Spieleentwickler zu kämpfen hat, ging Herr Payer auch auf ein paar Fehler ein, die sich zu Beginn eines solchen Projekts meistens durch Unerfahrenheit einschleichen (oder weil man sich nicht vorstellen kann, was Spieler alles machen...). Ein prominenter Vertreter dieser Art ist die Verschlüsselung des gesamten Datenverkehrs zwischen Spielclient und Server, die sowohl gegen Replay-Attacks als auch gegen einfache MITM Attacken geschützt sein muss. Der Test aller Parameter einer Funktion auf Validität gehört hier ebenso dazu (z.B. schieße auf Feld XY, wobei XY aber im Sichtbereich des Charakters sein sollte).

Am Ende des Vortrags wurde auf DDoS Attacken eingegangen und wie man zumindest einen Teil verhindern kann. Hier werden z.B. "Stateful Firewalls" eingesetzt. Die Wahl des Rechenzentrums spielt ebenso eine Rolle, denn je besser die Anbindung des Rechenzentrums und der gemieteten Server innerhalb jenes ist, desto größer müssen eingehende DDoS Attacken ausfallen, um Schaden anzurichten.

Abschließend gingen wir zusammen mit Herr Payer zum Pizza essen ins PADU, wo wir den Abend bei regen Diskussionen über die verschiedensten Sicherheitsmechanismen, aber auch Angriffsvektoren, ausklingen ließen.

Industrielle Messmaschinen - eine Herausforderung an Software

2015-06-12T14:00:00+02:00

Am Montag den 8. Juni hielt Achim Sonntag, ein Mitarbeiter der Firma Micro-Epsilon, einen Vortrag über die Herausforderungen die in Software für industriellen Messmaschinen bewältigt werden muss.

Zu Beginn stellte er sich kurz selbst, und danach die Micro-Epsilon vor. Seit über 45 Jahren arbeitet diese Firma im Bereich der Wegmessung. Wegmessung aber nicht in üblichen Maßstäben, sondern im Nano- /Micro- und Picometer bereich. Gemessen wird mit verschiedensten Techniken die Dicke und Breite von Materialien (aber auch z.B. die Erkennung von Unebenheiten spielt eine Rolle), sowohl laserbasiert als auch mit kapazitiven oder induktiven Verfahren. Die weltweit 600 Mitarbeiter (300 davon arbeiten in Ortenburg) haben mittlerweile über 8000 Ingenieursjahre in Forschung und Entwicklung investiert.

Ein weiteres Verfahren das von Micro-Epsilon in Zusammenarbeit mit dem FORWISS Uni Passau entwickelt wurde ist das System reflectControl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDXlakEU-zM) das zur Erkennung von Lackschäden in der Autoindustrie dient.

Nach diesem einleitenden Teil ging Herr Sonntag auf die vielen Hindernisse ein, die bei der Wegmessung beachtet werden müssen. Sei es ein Metallband das etwas schräg durch die Messanlage läuft, oder Ungenauigkeiten durch hohe Temperaturunterschiede, mit den passenden Messmethoden und Mathematik / Physik lassen sich die meisten Ungenauigkeiten ausgleichen.

Die Zeit für diesen Vortrag war leider viel zu kurz um diesem interessanten Thema gerecht zu werden, sodass uns Herr Sonntag schon einen Folgevortrag für das nächste Semester in Aussicht gestellt hat. Nach dem Vortrag gingen wir noch gemeinsam Pizza essen.

Kanban-Pizza Game

2015-06-01T12:01:00+02:00

Unser Sponsor msgGillardon war am 28. Mai mit einem Workshop zu
Kanban-Systemen bei uns zu Gast. Bei agilen Entwicklungsmethoden wird
auch besonders auf Effizienz geachtet werden, sodass keine Ressource
ungenutzt bleibt. Es wird also nur beim Vorgänger im Produktionsfluss
angefragt, wenn eine Nachfrage besteht. Dies wird im Prinzip auch bei
Scrum eingesetzt. Erst wenn ein Team seine Aufgaben in einem Sprint
erledigt hat, bekommen sie Neue. Der Scrum Master ist in diesem Fall
der Kanban-Regelungskreis und regelt die Arbeitslast zwischen Team und
Product Owner.
Im Workshop war das Ziel mit möglichst wenig Ressourcen eine Pizza
herzustellen. Es gab 3 Teams mit 5-7 Teilnehmern. Es gab einen Ofen,
eine Schere zum Zubereiten der Zutaten und zwei rote Stifte für die
Tomatensoße. Der Ofen kann nur alle 30 Sekunden befüllt werden. Die
Schere muss Pizzateigstücke (Papierkarton) und die Zutaten (POST-ITs)
zurecht schneiden. Mit den roten Stiften wurde die Tomatensoße auf die
Pizzateigstücke aufgebracht.
Der Produktionsfluss war also folgender: Pizzateigstücke schneiden ->
Pizzateigstücke anmalen -> Zutaten schneiden und belegen -> im Ofen 30
Sekunden backen.
Als Zutaten mussten für die Pizza Hawaii 3 Schinken-, 2 Käse- und 1
Ananas-Streifen auf das Pizzastück gelegt werden. Für die Rucola nur 8
Streifen, aber erst nach dem backen.
Die Aufgabe in der ersten Runde war möglichst viele Hawaii-Pizzastücke
nach Ablauf einer unbekannten Zeit zu produzieren. In der zweiten
Runde gab es Abzüge, falls im Produktionsfluss noch unfertige
Pizzastücke oder Zutaten vorhanden waren. Die dritte Runde bestand
darin, dass die Teams möglichst viele Bestellungen (mit 1 bis 4
verschiedenen Pizzastücken) abarbeiten mussten.
Zwischen den Runden sprach sich das Team ab, was es optimieren könnte
und tauschten sogar die Arbeitsplätze einzelner Personen. Die
Vortragenden stellten immer wieder neue Aufgaben, Fragen zu den
Prozessen und überwachten, dass auch die Teams nicht versuchten mit
unerlaubten Mitteln sich einen Vorteil zu verschaffen.

Am Ende des Abends bekam jeder Teilnehmer seine richtige Pizza und konnte sich gleichzeitig mit den beiden Vortragenden von msgGillardon unterhalten.

Looking back to the Eggdrop Contest 2015

2015-06-01T11:05:00+02:00

This year, again as part of the Campusfest, our 6. Eggdrop Contest
recently took place. Despite of rainy weather in the afternoon of May
23 14 teams took the challenge of constructing a device called
"Eggdropper" to protect a raw egg from breaking while falling from a
height of 20 meters onto the ground. To lift the Eggdroppers into the
air a turntable ladder was used which was provided by the volunteer
fire department of Passau which also allowed the participants to enjoy
the view of Passau from above.
After two rounds 8 teams had managed to protect their Egg at least one
time from destruction. The scoring did not only include the state of
the eggs but also how far away from a defined point the Eggdropper
landed and the creativity put into the construction. Team "Hartoff"
scored the first place closely followed by the team of the fire
department and team "Milch" which equal on points scored the second
place. All three were rewarded with coupons for local restaurants.
We thank the fire department for their support and are looking forward
to the next iteration of the contest, surely with sunny weather.

Moderne Software für Endkunden entwickeln

2015-05-31T10:00:00+02:00

Am 11. Mai 2015 hielt Alexander Hofmann, technischer Geschäftsführer
der Firma
MaibornWolff GmbH, bei uns einen Vortrag zum Thema "Moderne Software
für
Endkunden bauen"

Die Geschäftsbereiche von MaibornWolff umfassen IT-Beratung und
Software-Engineering
für Kunden wie z.B. Daimler, BMW, DB und DLR. Ein großes Augenmerk
liegt dabei
auf Forschung & Entwicklung. 6% des Umsatzes fließen in diesen
Bereich. Die Methoden
und Tools, die dabei entwickelt werden, stellt MaibornWolff für jeden
frei zur
Verfügung Maibornwolff Plaza.

Der Vortrag gliederte sich in vier große Punkte:
- Glaskugel
- Spiel
- Basics
- Software-Städte

Beim ersten Punkt, der Glaskugel, ging es um Trends und die Zukunft
der IT.
Beispielsweise geht MaibornWolff davon aus, dass die zunehmende
Vernetzung
und die steigende Bedeutung mobiler Anwendungen die Wirtschaft radikal
verändern wird. Auch beim Software-Engineering würden sich viele neue
Herausforderungen ergeben.

MaibornWolff legt viel Wert auf die frühen Phasen in einem Projekt.
Um die Anforderungsanalyse zu vereinfachen und die Kommunikation
zwischen
den beteiligten Parteien zu verbessern, wird viel mit Gamification
experimentiert.
Eines dieser Spiele ist das "Game of Things". Kleine Teams bekommen
Kärtchen
ausgeteilt, von denen jede ein Konzept wie "Quantified Self" oder
"Smart Home"
repräsentiert. Basierend darauf werden anschließend Ideen zu einer
gegebenen
Aufgaben- oder Problemstellung entwickelt. Diese werden dann unter den
Teams
versteigert.

Als nächstes wurden uns einige Grundlagen moderner Softwarearchitektur
vorgestellt.
Dabei wird sehr auf ein 5-Schichten Modell gesetzt. Eine strikte
Trennung der
Businesslogik und die Anwendung des Server-Client-Prinzips ermöglicht
es
hierbei, schnell auf veränderte Anforderungen reagieren zu können.

Den Abschluss des Vortrags bildeten die "Software-Karten, die dabei
helfen sollen,
die Softwarequalität zu bewerten und Brennpunkte sofort erkennen zu
können.
Die Software visualisiert ein Projekt, indem jede Klasse durch ein
Gebäude
dargestellt wird. Über dessen Grundfläche, Höhe und Farbe lassen sich
verschiedene Metriken darstellen, wie zum Beispiel die Größe der
Klasse, die
Komplexität oder die Testabdeckung. Duch das Vergleichen verschiedener
Stände
dieser Karte erhält man auch einen guten Überblick über den Verlauf
der Entwicklung.

Insgesamt war es ein äußerst interessanter und kurzweiliger Vortrag. Wir würden uns

freuen, wenn wir MaibornWolff in Zukunft wieder bei uns begrüßen dürften.

Die Folien können hier heruntergeladen werden Folien zum Vortrag MaibornWolff.

Android

2015-05-11T17:49:00+02:00

On the 30th of April, a talk on Android App Development was held by Marco and Nico who are both members of our Student Branch Passau. There were about 30 attendees present, showing that the Android framework seems to be something a lot of students are interested in.

Firstly, the two speakers presented general information about Android such as the Android versions and in which ways it is tailored to different devices. This aspect is much more important in Android than in iOS or in other comparable systems as Android does not have any standardisation concerning the hardware of its devices and has to support different configurations.

Secondly, Marco and Nico introduced the audience to layouts, listener and the life cycle of Android apps among other topics. These concepts were illustrated with numerous examples as well as with comparisons to Java/Swing. They also went into detail concerning the processing of sensor data and concerning permissions to access different services, e.g. GPS. These permissions, of which there are about 100 different ones, have to be requested in the configuraiton file of the app. Furthermore, intents were explained. These are a method of "communication" between different apps, allowing an app to access and utilize other Android applications, e.g. in order to send an image via mail.

Lastly, the speakers treated threading in Android which is handled quite unusually: Threads only live as long as the activity that started them does. This can be problematic, for example in case of a rotation of the screen as the activity and thus all its threads are restarted. AsyncTask and Services were presented as two alernative solutions.

We want to point out another opportunity to learn more about Android app development to anyone who might be interested: the vhb is going to offer a lecture on Android starting summer term 2016 in which app development, models for the development of mobile software and economic aspects such as the monetisation and marketing of apps are going to be presented.

The slides for the talk as well as an app that was used as an example are available at: https://github.com/N-Coder/android-talk-app

The event is here.

IEEE Advent calendar 2014 retrospect

2015-02-07T22:32:00+01:00

With our prize giving ceremony at the 26.01.2015 the advent calendar
2014 has completed. Thanks to all participants and we congratulate the
winners alefu, 3_of_8, conan_the_librarian, Frodewin,
ChiliconCarne and Mat2095!
This year we had 91 registered participants and a total of 2,309
submissions. The outcome of this were 8,505 test cases our backend had
to manage. You will find an archive with all of these 24 tasks and the
slides from the final presentation at the end of this report.
The next Advent calendar starts in less than 11 months.

Tasks:
Tasks.zip
Slides PDF:
Slides.pdf
Slides Google (with animations): Google Presentation
Slides

Single Page Applications with AngularJS

2015-01-16T10:40:00+01:00

On 2015-01-15 our members Max and Sibi showed the JavaScript framework "AngularJS" to us. It's a framework to create so called Single Page Applications, developed by Google and a huge community.

Using simple examples of how the framework could be used, they showed us how to use AngularJS (the slides are available on Github). Only view additions to the normal HTML code are needed to create some awesome dynamic effects.

After this they showed us how the framework is builded internally with simple and well designed components. The whole framework has a modern design approach and uses almost all design patterns from the famous "Gang of Four" book, as Sibi stated.

Both of them are using the framework at their employer in a professional environment and therefore there's a need to have different tools to test code, which where shown afterwards. Neither unit tests nor continious integration nor coverage reports were missing in the tools they presented to us.

They had the opportunity to design a build and deployment process with their employer as well using more JavaScript based tools like npm or gulp.

Finally both showed us some project that use AngularJS, for example the YouTube application of the PlayStation3.

The IEEE Student Branch Passau thanks Max and Sibi for their interesting talk. We look forward to have them present more interesting topics by the future.

IEEE Advent calendar

2014-11-29T21:50:00+01:00

IEEE SB Passau offers this Christmas season an
Advent calendar again. Every day take a new chance to open a window of
our calendar and solve the problem behind it.
If you have completed all tasks successfully and have passed the test
cases, a Raspberry Pi B+ may be waiting for you.
Go to http://advent.ieee-passau.org/

Report of our professors face-to-face with Prof. Schuller

2014-11-16T12:21:00+01:00

On thursday, november 06th 2014 Professor Dr. Björn Schuller held a talk at an IEEE Professors Personally Event.

Professor Schuller has already worked at the University of Passau for quite some time. First, he was the substitute professor of the Chair of Sensor Technology. Since October 1st 2014, he now holds the Chair of Complex Systems Engineering.

He started his presentation by giving the audience some details of his
career progression up until now. He pursued and completed his studies
in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the Technische
Universität München (University of Technology Munich).
In 2006 he obtained his doctorate at the aforementioned university and
in 2012 he was promoted to professor as well as co-founding a
start-up.
So far, Professor Schuller has worked at research facilities in
France, Great Britain and Austria. On top of that he worked as a
visiting professor and scientist in Australia, Switzerland and the
Netherlands. Furthermore, he gained the status of visiting professor
at the Chinese Harbin Institute of Technology in 2013.

Afterwards, the professor gave several examples of his research thus
far.
One of his numerous projects included the recognization of emotions
based on language as a possibility of helping autistic children
understand and verbalize emotions.
Among others, he also did some research into analyzing music as well
as creating an avatar who is capable of holding a conversation and
reacting to human emotions.
Professor Schuller is currently working on a project focusing on
language analysis for which he received an ERC Starting Grant. This
project bears the name 'iHEARu'.

Björn Schuller's passions include publishing, as one can easily recognize by looking at his numerous scientific puflications. On top of that Professor Schuller publishes the journal 'IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing'.

Among other hobbies, he also practices as well as teaches martial arts and plays several musical instruments. Additionally, he used to work as a DJ.

Lastly, he told the audience about the differences in the countries he has visited concerning research and education.

Take Great Britain for instance: Because of the high tuition costs of attending university, professors in particular but also educational institutions in general are much more service-oriented than in Germany, e.g., professors also hold tutorials or mark exams.

We want to thank Professor Schuller for giving this interesting and educative talk and are pleased that he joined the University of Passau.

Report of our professors face-to-face with Prof. Wirth

2014-11-10T09:09:00+01:00

On Thursday the 23rd of October 2014, professor Dr. Fabian
Wirth introduced himself at our professors personally event.
First, he gave everyone a detailed insight into his academic and
professional career. After conferring his doctorate in Bremen, he set
off to Italy, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, and France
for several short research trips.
After these trips, he worked at the Hamilton Institute in Ireland. One
of the research topics was concerned with improving the implementation
of TCP to use high-bandwidth links more efficiently
(see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-TCP). Additionally, he discovered
his favourite hobby during his stay in Ireland: Golf.
Professor Wirth returned from Ireland to Germany after two years with
the goal to start teaching again. He worked at the chair for
mathematics II of the University of Würzburg as a professor for
dynamic systems.
His next job offer came from the University of Passau for the chair of
mathematics with focus on dynamic systems. However, professor Wirth
also received an offer from IBM's Dublin office at the same time.
Therefore, he spent another year in Ireland before finally arriving in
Passau.
He was asked about his favourite programming language, but could not
quite come up with an answer. He mentioned that he learnt and used
BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, Modula II and C in school and university.
However, he does not prefer one language over the other. For
simulations he usually uses MatLab/Scilab. Afterwards, the subject
changed to his favourite mathematical theorems. He used two examples
to illustrate the meaning of these theorems.
All in all, the evening with professor Wirth was quite short but
nevertheless very interesting. We are pleased that he took place in
the professors personally event and that he joined the University of
Passau.

R8 SYP Congress Krakow

2014-10-13T00:02:00+02:00

Six members of the SB Passau visited the IEEE Region 8 Student & Young Professional Congress in Krakow from August 5th 2014 till the 10th.

Our journey started in the early morning hours of August 5th in Passau. We loaded two cars with our luggage, and Student Branch members of course, and drove through Austria and the Czech Republic to Poland. After a long drive and some detours we finally arrived at the hostel in Krakow during the early afternoon. The hostel was conveniently located on the campus of the university. After checking into our rooms we walked towards the city center to exchange Euro for Sloty. Returning to the hotel, we ran into a familiar face - Christian Schmid, Region 8 Student Representative - who welcomed us with a cold beer. Later that night, we joined Maciej Krol and other congress visitors in a nice, small restaurant for dinner.

The following day, was used by all Student Branch members to do some sight seeing in Krakow. In the evening, the conges's opening gala took place. We used the streetcars to get from the hostel to Wawel castle, the former residency of the Polish royalty. Unfortunately, we had to wait quite a while in front of the castle before the opening ceremony started inside the castle's beautiful arcade court. Afterwards, the schedule promised a reception with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. We were quite disappointed to find a very small buffet that was almost immediately empty. Therefore, we decided to set off towards the city to get some food and drinks together with the other congress visitors.

Thursday's schedule was filled with many events: After breakfast, we walked across the big campus to attend the plenary session. Following lunch, the first round of workshops took place. Unfortunately, the schedule was very tight: Therefore, we had to hurry back to the hostel in the evening to quickly get dressed for the gala-dinner. Before the dinner, we walked down a very long staircase into a former salt mine. Our tour guide showed us huge caverns decorated with sculptures chiseled from rock-salt. After this impressive tour, we arrived at the gala dinner hall at a depth of 130 meters. The hall was decorated beautifully and the food was delicious. During the dinner several awards were handed out to different student branches. Fortunately, we used an elevator instead of the stairs to get back to daylight after the dinner.

Friday began with a plenary session, followed by workshops held by the sponsors. In the late afternoon, the poster session took place: Each student branch presented themselves and their activities on a poster. Every conference visitor could cast a vote for her favorite poster. For the evening, the schedule mentioned a BBQ. We traveled through Krakow by bus to arrive at a breathtaking location: A fortress on a mountain with a beautiful view over all of Krakow. Before the buffet was opened, a group picture of all participants was scheduled. After the photographers finally managed to get the perfect shot, people rushed to the buffet. At the same time a small presentation was given on the history and renovation of the fortress. Later, a wine-buffet was opened on the fortress's walls. After enjoying the nighttime view of Krakow from the fortress, we traveled back to the university campus. The party continued in a club on the campus until the early morning hours.

Due to the extensive partying on Friday, some conference participants missed breakfast and visits to local technology companies. After traveling through Krakow in a hot and crowded bus, we finally arrived on the outskirts of the city. Here Nokia and Motorola have their offices. During the tour we learned about the company, its products, engineering practices, and even managed to take a look at some unreleased projects in their lab. In the afternoon, one more workshop took place. However, we were all excited about the multicultural evening that followed. This is one of the most anticipated events of every congress. Every visiting country set up a table with local delicatessen. The Germany Section offered a well-cooled 30 liter keg of beer, obatzda, Jägermeister. Many congress visitors stopped by and enjoyed the food. Unfortunately, the multicultural evening was ended too early by the organizers. Therefore, the party continued in front of the hostel until sunrise.

After breakfast on Sunday, the closing ceremony took place. During this event, the winners of the Best Poster Award were announced: The IEEE Student Branch Passau achieved the third place. In the afternoon we started the trip back to Germany. We arrived in Passau at about 20:00 and ended our exciting trip with dinner at Va bene.

Poster Competition

2014-08-11T00:29:00+02:00

The IEEE Region 8 Student and Young Professional Congress 2014 took place in Krakow from August 4th until August 10th. Passau was represented by six student branch members. To present their activities at the congress, each branch was asked to create a poster before traveling to Krakow.

Additionally, a competition was held to determine the best posters. Each congress visitor was able to cast one vote for his or her favorite poster. Shortly after the voting was opened, certain posters quickly gathered votes. The official winners were announced at the closing ceremony: Passau reached the third place with 25 votes. The second place was taken by students from the Lebanese American University in Beirut. 34 votes were given to the poster from the student branch from the University of Porto which won the competition. A more detailed report about the congress will be available shortly.

Tools for your Software Engineering Project

2014-07-04T22:15:00+02:00

On Thursday, July 3rd 2014, the event Tools for your Software Engineering Project took place for the second time. Students from higher semester introduced some tools that are maybe helpful for the Software Engineering Project.

Attached are the slides of the talks (only available in German).

Talk on SVN and
GIT
Talk about code analysis with IntelliJ
IDEA
Talk on
LaTeX
Bugtracking
Project
Management

Looking back to the Eggdrop Contest 2014

2014-06-22T15:51:00+02:00

At the 7th of June 2014 our 5. Eggdrop Contest took place. This time it was part of the Campusfest. 9 teams had set themselves to the task of building an Eggdropper which is a construction to protect a raw egg from breaking while falling freely from a height of 20 meters onto the ground. At the end four of the nine teams succeeded.

To lift the Eggdroppers into the air a turntable ladder was used which was provided by the volunteer fire department of Passau.

The scoring did not only include the state of the eggs but also how far away from a defined point the Eggdropper landed and the creativity put into the construction. It was no surprise that the winner was a complex and extraordinary Eggdropper named "Hello-Kitty-Chainsaw-Massacre".

The team consisting of student firefighters scored the second place.

Every participating team won a gift certificate provided by several bars and restaurants in Passau.

We thank the fire department for their support and to all participants: enjoy your meal!

FIM Barbecue Party

2014-06-20T19:45:00+02:00

At the 17th of June 2014 we organized the FIM Barbecue Party together with the Fachschaft Informatik.

Professors, research assistants and students met at the place between the FIM and the ITZ eating steaks and sausages and drinking beer.

Even though the weather was not perfect at first, over 100 people attended the party.

Along with food and drink, we saw to fun and excitement organizing the first Beer-Box-Far-Piling-Event.

Twelve teams competed in building a pile of beer-boxes, as long as
possible, and keeping it above the ground horizontally.
The teams that won the first round succeeded in piling up to 14
beer-boxes. In the second round, we set up more complicated rules.
Simultaneously the teams had to build a pile as large and as fast as
possible. We limited the number of boxes to 23 which hat to be shared
by the teams according to the "first come first served"-principle.
In a thrilling final round, the team of the FS Philo (consisting of
Luisa, Bene and Jürgen) won the game against an "Info-Team"
(consisting of Lisa, Johannes and Manuel).

On the third rank was a further "Info-Team" (consisting of Jennifer, Claudia and Florian).

The three winners got a (full) box of beer.

The band Chord Dump which consists of members of the faculty entertained us with live music.

We are delighted, that we had a nice barbecue-party and wish all members of the faculty a good further semester.

Vim - the modern IDE

2014-05-27T14:53:00+02:00

On Thursday, May 22, Olaf and Andreas were invited to give a talk about VIM and how easy it is to work with it. At the beginning, Olaf showed us basic commands like :wq and dd, which should be known by every VIM user. After that he gave us an introduction to a more sophisticated way of using VIM, in order to edit text faster and more efficiently, for example with macros. In the second part of the talk Andreas showed us how VIM plugins can transform the editor into a modern and usable IDE. Some examples are vundle, a plugin which manages other VIM plugins, and the autocompletion engine YouCompleteMe.

Slides:

Professors face-to-face – Prof. Dr. Amft

2014-05-15T18:11:00+02:00

On April 24, 2014 Prof. Dr. Amft has been our guest in a professors face-to-face. He spent one and a half hours to talk about his career, his research and his ambitions.

Professor Amft has been holding the new Chair for Sensors Technologies, which was created in the context of the "Technik Plus" program, since January 1, 2014. He deals with senors systems and their application in daily things like health or alimentation. Within this applications not only the hardware but also the software are big topics. One can easily imagine that sensors built into cloths would be much more comfortable than maybe the belts of heartbeat diagnostic tools. Main topics here are not only the integration of the sensors but also the quality of the measurement's results.

Before coming to University of Passau, Professor Amft has been the leader of a research group at TU Eindhoven. From this group, three PhD students and one Post-Doc also moved to Passau.

After his studies in Electrical Engineering, Professor Amft did not immediately continue his way in the academic world, but has worked in economy for several years, before doing his PhD studies and finally moving to Eindhoven in 2009.

With teaching he wants to establish some other concepts beside the normal lectures. He organised a seminar in last summer's semester break, in which the students did up-to-date research in small projects and increased their knowledge in a practical and interactive way. The feedback on this was excellent.

Although he is "married with his job" as a scientist, he really likes kite surfing and would be happy to receive some hints for good spots.

Due to many stays in foreign countries, Professor Amft has a large network of contacts and would provide them to students who are interested in a stay in a foreign country.

We thank Professor Amft for his time and an interesting and entertaining professors face-to-face session.

Roberto de Marca: Emerging technologies within IEEE

2014-04-23T19:06:00+02:00

President Elect of IEEE

IEEE President-Elect J. Roberto de Marca will give a speech about Open Access and "Emerging technologies within IEEE". The talk will be in english.

Beginning of the summer term 2014

2014-04-02T10:38:00+02:00

The IEEE Student Branch Passau wishes all students a good start in the summer term 2014. We want to invite you at the same time to join our first regular meeting on 2014/04/07. It starts at 6pm c.t. in the room IM 242, afterwards we will have a dinner at the restaurant "Akropolis Athen".

IEEE Student Conference - Deadline extended

2014-02-21T16:42:00+01:00

From June 26th to 27th, the IEEE Germany Student Conference will take place for the fifth time. Submissions are possible until February, 28st. More information is available here.

IEEE Student Branch Passu celebrates its 25th birthday

2014-02-20T00:43:00+01:00

On February 20, IEEE Student Branch Passau celebrates its 25th anniversary. We are glad to be participating in and enhancing day-to-day life at the university with fascinating talks and workshops for Passau's Computer Science

students. We will celebrate our 25th anniversary in summer, following the 5th IEEE Germany Student Conference.

We organize events like Research Talks and "Professors face-to-face", where we invite professors to talk about their life and career. We also host workshops and competitions (e.g. the Weekend of Code and the Egg-Drop contests). Last but not least we have some fun events like our annual weekend trips into the countryside, barbecues or our regular meetings.

What happened in the last Semester?

Every once in a while, we visit other Student Branches or invite them over to us. In summer we have been in Linz, Austria, at the SB JKU Linz where we've visited Ars Electronica Center. The Student Branch of Leuven (Belgium) has been our guest in early September. We showed them the city of Passau, the brewery "Andorfer" and some other points of interest in Passau.

With October 1st beeing IEEE Day, we've had an
prominent visitor at Passau. On October 2nd, IEEE president elect,
Roberto de Marca, visited Passau and
gave a talk on Open Access and Emerging Technologies.
Another highlight was our programming-advent-calendar. We had about 80
participants and in the end 10 first places. We want to thank all the
participants for the numerous participation. Furthermore we are
preparing the fifth IEEE Germany Student Conference. This conference
will take place on June 26th and 27th at the University of Passau.
After the conference we will celebrate our 25th anniversary where
everybody is invited.

Advent calendar

2013-12-01T12:37:00+01:00

Like last year the IEEE SB Passau provides an Advent calender. "Code, no chocolate!" – There are 24 tasks to solve and everyone is invited to take part in this competition.

Every day at 0:00 o'clock there will be a new programmers task. You may solve it in Java, Python, C, C++ or PHP. The code is tested by us and accepted if the task is solved correctly. Of course there will be an award for the best coders. The primary award will be a BeagleBone Black. To take part, follow this link.

JRobots Contest

2013-11-09T11:37:00+01:00

JRobot Coding Convention

The current JRobots-Framework

One team, one robot, one arena. Within four hours the participants develop a control algorithm for a Java-bot - target acquisition, path finding and everything which is helpful for a robot to hold its ground.

Several methods are provided for controlling your bot: you can move it, you can use the radar to find your enemies and you can control the fat rocket launcher mounted onto your bot to give your enemy hell. But your enemy isn't idle! He moves constantly and tries to hit you with his rockets!

The participants develop their own algorithms in Java and release their bot into the arena. There it combats the other teams. The participants can watch the battle but are unable to intercept. At the end there will be one winner…

But doing this isn't even half as complicated a it sounds and also beginners in Java programming are able to participate! There also is help available on site if you are stuck. The framework is revised every time which assures that beginners and experienced participants have equal opportunities.

In the last years JRobots was supported by our sponsor CipSoft whose programmers have extended the famework. The most work was done by Raymund Fülop and Wolfgang Scholz.

Procedure

The procedure of a JRobots contest is usually the following:

11:00 JRobots-Introduction

Introduction into the framework

12:00 Pizza-Time

Pizza for everyone

13:00 Robot-Coding

Extreme Programming. One team, one computer, one bot

18:00 Tournament

The decision: the robots are battling using a sophisticated lap system.

Earlier Events

Tools for your SEP

2013-07-12T11:00:00+02:00

In advance of the Software Engineering Project (SEP) in the winter term 2013/14 we organized a series of talks helping you to get started with the SEP for the first time.

The slides of each talk can be found here:

Gentoo Install Party

2013-07-11T16:53:00+02:00

As the installation of Ubuntu is easy nowadays it's not worthwhile anymore to organize a Linux Install Party so we invented something new! We show you how to install a Gentoo system from ground up und how to perform the first steps. Ssecondarily we explain to you how to compile your own kernel und how to use the basic tools. You can not only listen to exciting talks from professionals who use Gentoo in a productive environment but also install the system on your own brought Machine.

Flood clearance: Passau cleans up (Passau räumt auf)

2013-06-04T17:08:00+02:00

We would like to point out that the student representatives of the University of Passau recently launched a campaign to clean up the city of Passau after the flooding. See this link for further information.

Linux Install Party

2013-04-16T11:37:00+02:00

The IEEE student branch Passau has been hosting Linux install parties since 2004.

If you would like to try out the Linux feeling which you know from the CIP pool on your own computer, join us on one of our Linux install parties. Everybody is invited to these events, in particular our dear freshmen. Our competent and experienced Linux gurus help you to take the first steps on your way to the fascinating world of the open source operating system.

Currently we do not have any concrete plans for the next Linux install party. However, Linux (particularly Ubuntu) is very easy to install nowadays. We are sure you will be able to do this on your own.

Eligibility requirements

If you want to participate, your need be at least 18 years old or come with a parent. Furthermore your should not be afraid of trying out alternative operating systems and you should be able to backup your files, as much as knowing which parts a computer consists of. The attendance is free.

Topics

Since we don't want to leave you alone with your new Linux system, we offer a couple of talks on various topics around Linux, too.

For example, we had these topics for beginners at our last event:

Installation and introduction to Ubuntu Linux
Applications
Shell
Remote usage
Interaktion with Windows systems
Shellscripting
Games for Linux

Moreover there were some lectures for advanced Linux users who want to learn something new:

Compiling from source
Kernel compiling
FTP-Server
Perl
Mailserver
Iptables
System programming
Zimbra Groupware

You want to contribute?

Every help for hosting the events is very welcome, especially in the area of guiding new users on their way to Linux or giving a short lecture on a topic of your choice.

PowerPoint Karaoke

2013-04-16T11:02:00+02:00

What do you get if you let some computer science students go to a conference with a randomly generated paper?

They give a randomly generated talk! And you can do the same!

What happens there?

Every participant gives a paper. He will get a projector, a notebook, the audience and the slides from us. Disadvantage: The participant gets slides he has never seen before.

In Short: impromptu presentations of each participant

When and where?

We had several PowerPoint Karaoke Events in the past. On the 11. April 2013, 13. July 2009, the 08. May 2008 and on the 13. June 2007. We currently have no scheduled another appointment, but we will organise this maybe in the future.

The rules

Everybody is allowed to participate. He or she only have to made an impromptu presentation about unknown slides.

You can bring some slides to this event, whether you want. There are some regulations to comply with:

The slides must be online and used by a person.
The slides should be understand without special knowledge. It seems that math-slides aren't so well.
Good slides are e.g. slides from a local club or public events

How does this look like?

Here are some pictures of the event in 2007.

Downloads

PPTKaraoke - Eine Vorstellung der Idee des Events

Deconstructing_Compilers - Ein automatisch generiertes Paper (siehe Präsentation)

[Call for Papers] 4rd IEEE Germany Student Conference

2013-02-19T18:24:00+01:00

The submission-deadline of the 4th IEEE Germany Student Conference in Hamburg will end at the 3rd of March 2012. Anyone who wants to submit a paper, please find further information at www.ieee-student-conference.de.

Research Talk with Philipp Jovanovic: Attacks on Cryptographic Hardware

2013-01-28T18:00:00+01:00

At the 28th of January 2013, Philipp Jovanovic, a researcher at the Chair of Mathematics with focus Symbolic Computation, gave a talk about „Attacks on Cryptographic Hardware”.

The slides can be downloaded here.

Abstract: Algebraische Fehlerbasierte Angriffe

Die Untersuchung kryptographischer Verfahren auf ihre Stärke, sprich auf ihre Sicherheit, ist die wesentliche Aufgabe der Kryptoanalyse. Neben der klassischen Kryptoanalyse, die den Verschlüsselungsalgorithmus eines Verfahrens angreift, wurden in den letzten 15 Jahren verstärkt neue Formen der Kryptoanalyse entwickelt, nämlich die sogenannten Seitenkanalangriffe. Solche Angriffe haben nicht die kryptographischen Verfahren selbst sondern ihre Implementierungen in Hard- und Software zum Ziel. Durch physikalische Messungen werden Parameter wie Stromverbrauch, elektromagnetische Emissionen oder Cache-Antwortzeiten erfasst und daraus die geheimen Informationen, z.B. einzelne Bits des geheimen Schlüssels, hergeleitet. Als eine besonders effiziente Form der Seitenkanalangriffe haben sich fehlerbasierte Angriffe herausgestellt.

Dabei werden gezielt Fehler in die kryptographische Schaltung injiziert und so die Berechnung kontrolliert verfälscht. Durch die Gegenüberstellung von fehlerfreien und fehlerbehafteten Berechnungen können dann geheime Informationen ermittelt werden. Zur physikalischen Fehlerinjektion werden Techniken wie abrupte Absenkung der Versorgungsspannung oder gezielte Bestrahlung von einzelnen Hardwarestrukturen (Register, Speicherzellen, Logikgatter) eingesetzt.

Bei den sogenannten algebraischen fehlerbasierten Angriffen werden Seitenkanal-Informationen, die man mittels Fehlerinjektionen erhält mit Hilfe algebraischer Methoden der klassischen Kryptoanalyse analysiert.

JRobots

2012-06-30T11:37:00+02:00

We want to thank our Sponsor CipSoft for paying for the gadgets and the pizza!

JRobots Coding Convention

The current JRobots-Framework

A team, a bot and an arena. During four hours, the participants developed algorithms for a Java-Bot – Aiming, driving and shooting have to be perfect so a bot can stand its ground.

Your bot can drive around, can find the enemy with its scanner and is equipped with a fat cannon to kick you enemies ass. But beware! The enemy will not be standing still. He will try everything to hit you as much as he can.

The participants develop their own algorithms in Java and will deploy their bots in the arena. There it will fight against bots from other teams: The programmers may watch the battle but never intervene after it started. At the end, there will only be one winner…

That's not as hard as it may sound. Even a beginner can take part and succeed. Of course, there will be tutors that help you, if you're stuck. The framework is changed before every contest, so the new guys have the same chances as the old dogs.

During the last years, the JRobots events were sponsored by CipSoft. Their programmers continuously improved the framework during the last years. Especially, we want to thank Raymund Fülop and Wolfgang Scholz for their work.

Schedule --------------------

Normally the schedule looks like that:

11:00 JRobots-Introduction

Introduction to the JRobots-Framework

12:00 Pizza-Time

Pizza!

13:00 Robot-Coding

Extreme-Programming in the CIP-Pool. One Team, one PC, one Bot

18:00 Tournament
The showdown!

Past Events

Here you can find the posters of the old events.

Talks – Tools used at the University

2012-06-10T11:18:00+02:00

In the winter-term 2012/13 we will host the talk-series "Tools für dein Studium" where some tools will be presented, that may come in handy during your time at the university. Different experienced students will give talks about their favorite tools. They will present software and best practices they discovered during their studies and think that are useful.

We will post the slides below after the talks.

Egg-Drop Contest

2011-07-16T11:37:00+02:00

|Anmeldeinformation „EGG-DROP-CONTEST XXL”|

The IEEE Student Branch Passau hosts the so called Egg-Drop-Contest, where you have to protect chickens eggs when they are dropped from a height of [STRIKEOUT:10] [STRIKEOUT:15] 20 meters. The eggs will be put into a so called egg-dropper, any kind of construct, built by you, to protect the egg, and then, the whole thing will be dropped. The one who built the best egg-dropper will win. They will be ranked by the effectiveness of the protection and the creativity. If it strays from the course, this will be negatively marked.

There are cool prices for the winners and everyone will get free food and drinks.

Until 2006 the contest took place at the FIM. But now, we get even higher so in 2011 the contest will take place at the site of the volunteer Fire-Department of Passau where the eggs will be dropped from an extended turntable ladder.

Fail!

Past Events

Date	Height
04.06.2003	10m
24.06.2004	10m
06.07.2006	15m
16.07.2011	20m

Rules

You have to create a construct (e.g. a Cage or a Parachute) that prevents an egg, dropped of a height of [STRIKEOUT:10m] [STRIKEOUT:15m] 20m, from breaking and will land on the target area as precisely as possible.

The construct is called an Egg-Dropper (ED). There are the following limitations on the ED:

The maximum size is 40cm x 40cm x 50cm.
It may not be heavier than 1500g.
The ED has to be able to stand on its own so it may be dropped through a trapdoor.
The ED has to provide simple access to the egg.
You are not allowed to use material with high viscosity like gelatin.
The ED may not be influenced in any way during the fall.
You have to make sure no person or property. (That means that you are not allowed to use dangerous substances (like acid or explosives) and electronic parts have maximum voltage of 25.)
Holes in the rules may not be exploited.
Up to 42% (weight) of the ED may consist of food. The egg does not count as food in this case.

Score

Apart from points, that every successful Egg-Dropper is assigned by a secret formula (including weigth, time to land, distance to target), there will be a independent and incorruptible jury will assign a B-Vote for geniality and innovation.

The winner is the one that constructed the Egg-Dropper with the most points.

Inspiration

If you didn't take part in such an event and didn't completely understand what the event is about, watch videos on youtube:

YouTube – egg-drop

Of course, if you build an individual Egg-Dropper, it will achieve a better B-Vote, so be creative :-)

Attendance

Normally an Egg-Drop-Team consists of 2 to 5 persons. Participating alone is allowed, too. Every member of the University of Passau (including Professors) are allowed to take part.

Git talk

2011-07-14T11:31:00+02:00

Git is one of the most commonly used distributed version control systems (VCS). It has been developed by Linus Torvalds and is known for being used as the VCS for the Linux kernel. In comparison to other VCS, such as Subversion, distributed VCS do not rely on a central repository; in fact, the repository is distributed among all the users. The talk by Michael Käufl offers an introduction to the use of git and explains typical workflows that are usually applied using git. Talk slides

jRobots

2011-07-02T11:37:00+02:00

We want to thank our Sponsor CipSoft for paying for the gadgets and the pizza!

JRobots Coding Convention

The current JRobots-Framework

A team, a bot and an arena. During four hours, the participants developed algorithms for a Java-Bot – Aiming, driving and shooting have to be perfect so a bot can stand its ground.

Schedule --------------------

Normally the schedule looks like that:

11:00 JRobots-Introduction

Introduction to the JRobots-Framework

12:00 Pizza-Time

Pizza!

13:00 Robot-Coding

Extreme-Programming in the CIP-Pool. One Team, one PC, one Bot

18:00 Tournament
The showdown!

Past Events

Here you can find the posters of the old events.

Talk about OpenStreetMap

2010-11-22T12:40:00+01:00

OpenStreetMap is an Open Source Project with the goal to achieve a worldwide geographic database everyone can use for free. Even today, the data, provided by volunteers, is used in maps, for navigation and as part of websites and mobile apps.

In their talk, Michael Käufl and Tobias Knerr will explain the idea of OpenStreetMap, point out possible applications and will provide a live demo of the first steps for taking part in the project.

The talk will take place at the 2nd of December 2010 in room 242 IM.

The slides can be downloaded here.

Vim - more than just :wq!

2010-06-22T11:53:00+02:00

On June 22nd 2010, Andreas Fischer, Christopher Auer, Katrin Hanauer, Philipp Wendler and Sebastian Henneberg gave a series of talks on vim, the well known editor. The talks covered an introduction to vim and its history, as well as advanced topics such as the use of vim for writing LaTeX documents and software programs.

The event was completed by a short demo of what you can do with vim and a talk about the usability concepts around "Act withoud thinking".

Slides:

Examples for the .vimrc file:

JRobots

2010-05-01T11:37:00+02:00

JRobot Coding Convention

The current JRobots-Framework

In the last years JRobots was supported by our sponsor CipSoft whose programmers have extended the famework. The most work was done by Raymund Fülop and Wolfgang Scholz.

Procedure

The procedure of a JRobots contest is usually the following:

11:00 JRobots-Introduction

Introduction into the framework

12:00 Pizza-Time

Pizza for everyone

13:00 Robot-Coding

Extreme Programming. One team, one computer, one bot

18:00 Tournament

The decision: the robots are battling using a sophisticated lap system.

Earlier Events

Here you find more information of past JRobot events, such as photos and old versions of the framework:

Ask your questions on Stud.IP

2009-12-01T13:57:00+01:00

On Monday, December 7th 2009, the Stud.IP team will talk about their hardware and software and offer the opportunity to ask questions. Additionally, you may ask for new features or other changes on the system. Among other things, they will talk about:

Statistics on server requests and load
Server choice: hardware and software
Historical overview: how everything began
Scheduled features (roadmap)
Feature requests

... and many more.

Whatever you want to know on OpenSolaris!

2009-11-24T13:46:00+01:00

On November 24th 2009, Wolfgang Stief and Constantin Gonzalez had two talks on the topics "OpenSolaris" and "ZFS". The first talk gave an impression of the features of OpenSolaris and the projects in the community. Moreover, the possibilities in comparison to other operating systems were illustrated. The second talk explained the file system ZFS in detail: Which features work better than other file systems? What new features are available? Which possibilities are offered by ZFS?

Slides:

Riding the flow - scientific work with the method Getting Things Done

2009-11-11T13:07:00+01:00

PhD candicates and scientists often face unclear priorities and
motivation problems. "Getting Things Done" shows ways to solve both
challenges.
The workshop on November 9th 2009 by Jens
Oberender started with an introduction to the
method in general. Subsequently, the participants discussed how the
GTD principles can make their everyday life better. Open questions on
the concrete application of these principles were collected on cards,
before they were clustered and discussed.
You can find a selection of the discussed points and the slides on
jens-oberender.name.

Professional and ethical behavior with the Code of Ethics

2009-07-15T13:05:00+02:00

When dealing with professional and ethical behavior, complex questions
can arise very quickly. A Code of Ethics provides a consensus created
by experts, which can guide to professional practices for a specific
career path.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) provides
such behavior recommendations for engineers and computer scientists.
Moreover, there is a special version for questions on ethical
practices in software engineering.
The talk on June 2nd 2009 by Jens Oberender outlined the emergence of
the IEEE Code of Ethics and explained its application. The
participants were able to test their knowledge on professional ethics
in a subsequent discussion which was lead by Severin Neumann.

Links:

Slides & Handout by Jens Oberender
IEEE Code of Ethics
Software Engineering Ethics in a Digital World, Computer Magazine, June 2009

Linux Kernel Programmierung

2009-06-24T13:37:00+02:00

Mit großer Freude verkünden wir, dass Professor Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Quade, bekannt durch die Kernel-Reihe des Linux-Magazins und durch mehrere Bücher, für uns einen Workshop zum Thema Linux-Kernel-Programmierung hält. Er wird hierbei nach einer allgemeinen Einführung insbesondere die Entwicklung von Treibern behandeln.

Der Workshop findet statt am Samstag, dem 11. Juli 2009 im Raum 242 IM. Beginn ist um 9:30 Uhr, insgesamt wird es 4 Stunden plus Pausen dauern.

Bitte bringt euer Notebook mit den Kernel-Build-Tools (s.u.) und wenn möglich eine Steckerleiste.

Professor Quade empfiehlt übrigens Kubuntu.

Programm

09:30 - 09:45 Uhr: Begrüßung

09:45 - 11:00 Uhr: Einführung in den Linux-Kernel

11:15 - 12:30 Uhr: Treiberprogrammierung I (Hands on)

12:30 - 13:45 Uhr: Mittagspause

13:45 - 15:00 Uhr: Treiberprogrammierung II (Hands on)

Materialien

Kernel-Build-Tools installieren

Damit ihr auf eurem mitgebrachten Notebook alles gleich ausprobieren könnt, benötigt ihr die entsprechende Software (GCC, Make, etc.) und die Header-Files des Linux-Kernel. Unter Ubuntu installiert dazu einfach die Pakete "build-essential" und "linux-source".

Die Kernel-Header müssen exakt die gleiche Version haben wie der aktuell laufende Kernel. Dessen Version erfahrt ihr mit "uname -r" auf der Kommandozeile.

Zum Überprüfen, ob alles klappt, ladet euch dieses Dummy Modul herunter, entpackt das Archiv und führt auf der Kommandozeile das Skript "./build.sh" aus. Das kompiliert ein Hello-World-Modul. Mit "sudo insmod hello.ko" könnt ihr es in den Kernel laden, "dmesg|grep Hello" zeigt an, ob alles funktioniert hat. Mit "sudo rmmod hello" könnt ihr es wieder entladen.

Threats of TPM and RFID

2009-06-24T11:37:00+02:00

On June 26th 2008, Franz Pletz, member of the Chaos Computer Club e.V., will talk about the threats of TMP and RFID chips. If you wonder about the meaning of these abbreviations and their threats to your privacy, you can find a good explanation on the website of the Chaos Computer Club.

RFID - Radio Frequency Identification - Today in your cafeteria debit card, tomorrow in your shirt?

TPM - Trusted Platform Module - Who owns my computer?

After the talk and the subsequent discussion you can get your copy of Datenschleuder, which is the scientific trade journal for data voyagers.

Downloads:

Slides

LDAP Special

2009-05-29T15:20:00+02:00

Am 28. Mai 2009 hielt Philipp Wendler einen Vortrag zu "LDAP", dem Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. Themen waren eine Einführung in das Verzeichnis und das Protokoll, und wie man es zur Benutzerauthentifizierung verwenden kann.

Hinweise:

Während des Vortrags gab es ein paar Hinweise. So ist es möglich mehrere Bäume in einem LDAP-Server zu halten und das Schema zur Laufzeit des Servers zu modifizieren.

Christian Bachmaier hat mir das Apache Directory Studio als LDAP-Browser/Editor empfohlen, der auf mich ebenfalls einen guten Eindruck macht.

Downloads:

Vortragsfolien