For Westjet you simply buy a ticket, call them, and then they'll refund your credit card for the amount of your credit, no need to drive over an hour to an airport.
8:36:09 PM   []

So right now the big choice is either Amazon as a front end developer or Microsoft as a Windows Media Center 'program manager'.

Yay Seattle!
8:31:34 PM   []

If anyone can point me to some good directions on how to circumvent the restrictions using ssh port forward, it would be appreciated.
8:16:18 PM   []

Unless your coding is divinely inspired, your programs do not work the first time you run them.

Which lead one housemate to comment, 'What is this!? John on Software?'. And 'John has colleagues in the realtime lab?'
3:26:08 PM   []

John believes that since we think school should have been cancelled today then clearly we have spent too much time in Southern Ontario.
11:15:53 AM   []

Sorry we missed announcing to the undergrads. These rules were announced in advance to all CS faculty and grad students. Sorry we missed announcing to the undergrads.

Anyhow, here it is.

The wireless network access points are being used by many unmaintained systems (primarily Windows based) that are often found by campus network security scans to be compromised by so-called "viruses" that can damage other machines and overload the network itself. The cost of simply tracking the problems and contacting the offenders has become non-trivial.

Given that there is usually no provision for support of such machines, the alternative seems to be to restrict wireless network access in a way that reduces the impact of the compromised machines. Specifically, only the following network protocols will be available to machines on the wireless network...

Of course, I complained. One of my complaints is that there are not enough CS undergrad resources which is why a lot of people use their laptops as development environments which is why we need to have ports open. Their response was:

There are currently nine CPU servers in the CS teaching environment, so I don't see how you can say there are not enough machines. Having said that, we are currently investigating the purchase of more CPU for the CS teaching environment.

Everyone who believes the CS undergrad environment has sufficient resources raise your hand.

Update: John posted a good comment in the uw.mfcf.gripe thread:

We should be moving AWAY from centralized computing resources (for the slowness reasons Matt mentioned) and towards the "laptop for every student" model. Actions like this that diminish the utility of students' personal computers don't help.

11:11:01 AM   []