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Haskell Weekly News: Issue 130 - September 12, 2009
by Joe Fredette 12 Sep '09

12 Sep '09

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haskell Weekly News http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20090912 Issue 130 - September 12, 2009 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to issue 130 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the [1]Haskell community. Welcome to issue 130 of HWN! In the last week, HWN has gotten a new editor, me! I'm Joe Fredette (jfredett on IRC, reddit, and everywhere else), and I'll be taking over for Brent (byorgey) from now on. I think I speak for the whole community when I thank him for his excellent work on the HWN and associated tools. I have a few ideas about how I want to change HWN for the better, and hopefully you'll like them too! So, without further ado, The Haskell Weekly News! Announcements Looking for a new HWN editor. Brent Yorgey [2]went looking for a new editor for the HWN, and that's how you got me! See the editorial for more details. CfPart: FMICS 2009, 2-3 November 2009. Christophe Joubert [3]announced FMICS 2009 - FIRST CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, 14th International Workshop on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems. November 2-3, 2009 Call for Posters: APLAS 2009. Kiminori Matsuzaki [4]announced a CALL FOR POSTER PRESENTATIONS The Seventh ASIAN Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems (APLAS 2009) December 14 - 16, 2009 Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. hecc-0.1. Marcel Fourn√© [5]announced the first release of hecc, the Elliptic Curve Cryptography Library for Haskell. Implemented are affine, projective, jacobian and modified jacobian point formats with the basic operations. Included as an Example is a basic ECDH as well as a basic speed test. HLint 1.6.8. Neil Mitchell [6]announced HLint 1.6.8. HLint is a tool for suggesting improvements to your source code. It suggests the use of library functions you may have been unaware of, finds patterns of recursion that are really folds/maps, hints about extensions you aren't using and much more. HLint is now one of the top 20 applications on Hackage, and is used by the darcs project to improve and statically check their code base. A Levenberg-Marquardt implementation. Bas van Dijk [7]announced the release of a Haskell binding to Manolis Lourakis's C levmar library. This library implements the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm which is an iterative technique that finds a local minimum of a function that is expressed as the sum of squares of nonlinear functions. It has become a standard technique for nonlinear least-squares problems and can be thought of as a combination of steepest descent and the Gauss-Newton method. CCA-0.1. Paul L [8]announced that a library for Causal Commutative Arrows (CCA) has been uploaded to Hackage DB. It implements CCA normalization using Template Haskell and a modified arrow pre- processor (based on arrowp) to generate outout that Template Haskell can parse. It's highly experimental since we are still fiddling with several design choices, and by no means we imply Template Haskell is the best choice to implement CCA. Any suggestion or comment is welcome! graphviz-2999.5.0.0. Ivan Lazar Miljenovic [9]announced version 2999.5.0.0 of the graphviz package for Haskell. This is what I like to think of as the 'Hey, this is almost getting to be a decent library!' version. The graphviz package provides bindings to the GraphViz suite of programs by providing the ability to generate and parse GraphViz's Dot language as well as wrappers around the tools themselves. uvector-algorithms 0.2. Dan Doel [10]announced version 0.2 of the uvector-algorithms package. The package so far has implementations of several sorting and selection algorithms for use on the mutable arrays from the uvector library, as well as combinators for applying them to immutable arrays. dbmigrations 0.1. Jonathan Daugherty [11]announced dbmigrations, A library and program for the creation, management, and installation of schema updates (called migrations) for a relational database. In particular, this package lets the migration author express explicit dependencies between migrations and the management tool automatically installs or reverts migrations accordingly, using transactions for safety. This package is written to support any HDBC-supported database, although at present only PostgreSQL is fully supported. Palindromes 0.1. Johan Jeuring [12]announced Palindromes, a package for finding palindromes in files. Visit the [13]homepage The primary features of Palindromes include: A linear-time algorithm for finding exact palindromes, A linear-time algorithm for finding text palindromes, ignoring spaces, case of characters, and punctuation symbols. Discussion Averting QuickCheck Madness. Christopher Lane Hinson Christopher Hinson [14]asked about best practices with regards to QuickCheck, and it's inclusion/exclusion as a dependency for end-user programs. How to customize dyre recompile? Andy Stewart Andy Stewart [15]asked about how to customize Dyre's settings to do a whole-program recompilation. Externally derive instance of Data? Dimitry Golubovsky Dimitry Golubovsky [16]asked about stand-alone deriving for third-party datatypes. Parallel parsing & multicore. Anakim Border Anakim Border [17]talked about parallel parsing, specifically about a parser he had put together, which led to a discussion of Edward Kmett's recent talks at BAHUG. Ph.D position, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. S.Doaitse [18]announced Vacancy PhD student on Realizing Optimal Sharing in the Functional Language Implementations Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Blog noise [19]Haskell news from the [20]blogosphere. Blog posts from people new to the Haskell community are marked with >>>, be sure to welcome them! * Eric Kow (kowey): [21]Cabal-Installing graphical apps on MacOS X. * Don Stewart (dons): [22]Improving Data Structures with Associated Types. * Manuel M T Chakravarty: [23]Haskell Arrays, Accelerated.. * Galois, Inc: [24]Tech Talk: Building Systems That Enforce Measurable Security Goals. * Kevin Reid (kpreid): [25]GSoC conclusion.. * Neil Brown: [26]Boids Simulation: Part 1. * Paul Potts: [27]MacPorts, Snow Leopard, and GHC == Sadness. * Andrew Calleja: [28]Haskell IDEs on Windows. * Sean Leather: [29]"Upwards and downwards accumulations on trees" translated into Haskell. * Xmonad: [30]The Design and Implementation of XMonad. * Galois, Inc: [31]Tech Talk: Constructing a Universal Domain for Reasoning About Haskell Datatypes. * Well-Typed.Com: [32]Slides from the IHG talk at CUFP. * Alex McLean: [33]Hackpact Documentation. This links to part one of a two part series. * Bas van Gijze: [34]Cannibals, Missionaries and the State Monad pt. 1. * Magnus Therning: [35]Wrapping IO. This links to part one of a two part series. * Don Stewart (dons): [36]Stream Fusion for Haskell Arrays. * Tom Schrijvers: [37]EffectiveAdvice: AOP, mixin inheritance, monads, parametricity, non-interference, .... * Johan Jeuring: [38]Finding palindromes. * Neil Brown: [39]Concurrent vs Parallel vs Sequential. * Don Stewart (dons): [40]DEFUN 2009: Multicore Programming in Haskell Now!. * Don Stewart (dons): [41]The Haskell Platform: Status Report: Haskell Symposium 2009. Quotes of the Week * lispy: All haskell lists have less than 400 elements * Jafet: The C preprocessor is purely dysfunctional * edwardk: so the -> is matched on the outside, but the -> and , fail to match on the inside, unification fails, dogs and cats start living together in harmony, general chaos. * yaxu: [about lambdabot] an irc bot that no-one understands the workings of has to be a fine precursor to artificial intelligence * Gracenotes: all in all, you're just another brick in the -Wall About the Haskell Weekly News New editions are posted to [42]the Haskell mailing list as well as to [43]the Haskell Sequence and [44]Planet Haskell. [45]RSS is also available, and headlines appear on [46]haskell.org. To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the information on [47]how to contribute. Send stories to jfredett . at . gmail . dot . com. The darcs repository is available at darcs get [48]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ . References 1. http://haskell.org/ 2. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63133 3. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/17476 4. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/17483 5. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/17482 6. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/17481 7. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63283 8. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63233 9. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63219 10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63205 11. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63187 12. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63157 13. http://www.jeuring.net/Palindromes/ 14. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63146 15. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63143 16. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63314 17. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/63223 18. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/17478 19. http://planet.haskell.org/ 20. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blog_articles 21. http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2009/09/cabal-installing-graphical-apps-on.ht… 22. http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/improving-data-structures-with-asso… 23. http://justtesting.org/post/185173082 24. http://www.galois.com/blog/2009/09/10/jaegermeasurablesecurit/ 25. http://kpreid.livejournal.com/16930.html 26. http://chplib.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/boids-simulation-part-1/ 27. http://praisecurseandrecurse.blogspot.com/2009/09/macports-snow-leopard-and… 28. http://lambdacolyte.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/haskell-ides-on-windows/ 29. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/splonderzoek/~3/4E8TZPDZ-aM/ upwards-and-downwards-accumulations-on.html 30. http://xmonad.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/the-design-and-implementation-of-xmo… 31. http://www.galois.com/blog/2009/09/08/huffman_universaldomain/ 32. http://blog.well-typed.com/2009/09/slides-from-the-ihg-talk-at-cufp/ 33. http://yaxu.org/hackpact-documentation/ 34. http://adoseoflogic.blogspot.com/2009/07/cannibals-missionaries-and-state-m… 35. http://therning.org/magnus/archives/738 36. http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/stream-fusion-for-haskell-arrays/ 37. http://tomschrijvers.blogspot.com/2009/09/effectiveadvice-aop-mixin-inherit… 38. http://johanjeuring.blogspot.com/2007/08/finding-palindromes.html 39. http://chplib.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/concurrent-vs-parallel-vs-sequential/ 40. http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/defun-2009-multicore-programming-in… 41. http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/the-haskell-platform-status-report-… 42. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell 43. http://sequence.complete.org/ 44. http://planet.haskell.org/ 45. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed 46. http://haskell.org/ 47. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN 48. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/

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ANNOUNCE: A Levenberg-Marquardt implementation
by Bas van Dijk 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

Dear all, We like to announce the release of a Haskell binding to Manolis Lourakis's C levmar library at: http://www.ics.forth.gr/~lourakis/levmar/ This library implements the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm which is an iterative technique that finds a local minimum of a function that is expressed as the sum of squares of nonlinear functions. It has become a standard technique for nonlinear least-squares problems and can be thought of as a combination of steepest descent and the Gauss-Newton method. When the current solution is far from the correct one, the algorithm behaves like a steepest descent method: slow, but guaranteed to converge. When the current solution is close to the correct solution, it becomes a Gauss-Newton method. Our binding consists of three packages: * http://hackage.haskell.org/package/bindings-levmar-0.1 A low-level wrapper around the C library. Note that the C library is lightly patched so that the functions can be safely called inside unsafePerformIO. The patched C library is bundled with this package. * http://hackage.haskell.org/package/levmar-0.1 A high-level wrapper around bindings-levmar. It provides a more familiar Haskell interface. For example, instead of passing a 'Ptr r' to the levmar function you can pass a [r]. levmar also provides some higher-level modules that use some type-level programming to add more type safety. * http://hackage.haskell.org/package/levmar-chart-0.1 Finally levmar-chart is a small package for quickly viewing the output of levmar in a chart. Unfortunately the documentation of these libraries is not available from hackage because bindings-levmar won't configure because of a missing dependency (lapack) on the hackage server. Instead I put the documentation at the following places: http://code.haskell.org/bindings-levmar/bindings-levmar-0.1/doc/html/bindin… http://code.haskell.org/levmar/levmar-0.1/doc/html/levmar/index.html Here follows a quick example: Suppose we have the following model functions: constant :: Num r => Model N1 r r linear :: Num r => Model N2 r r quadratic :: Num r => Model N3 r r cubic :: Num r => Model N4 r r constant a _ = a linear b a x = b * x + constant a x quadratic c b a x = c * x*x + linear b a x cubic d c b a x = d * x*x*x + quadratic c b a x And the jacobians: constantJacob :: Num r => Jacobian N1 r r linearJacob :: Num r => Jacobian N2 r r quadraticJacob :: Num r => Jacobian N3 r r cubicJacob :: Num r => Jacobian N4 r r constantJacob _ _ = 1 ::: Nil linearJacob _ a x = x ::: constantJacob a x quadraticJacob _ b a x = x*x ::: linearJacob b a x cubicJacob _ c b a x = x*x*x ::: quadraticJacob c b a x Now assume we have some sample data. If you call levmar like this: levmar cubic (Just cubicJacob) (-0.05 ::: 0.5 ::: -12 ::: 10 ::: Nil) samples 1000 defaultOpts Nothing Nothing noLinearConstraints Nothing You get the following fit (using levmar-chart): http://code.haskell.org/~roelvandijk/code/levmar-chart/cubicFit.png Note that levmar contains a demo with a lot more examples: http://code.haskell.org/levmar/Demo.hs Happy fitting, Roel and Bas van Dijk

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Call for Posters: APLAS 2009
by Kiminori Matsuzaki 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

CALL FOR POSTER PRESENTATIONS The Seventh ASIAN Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems (APLAS 2009) December 14 - 16, 2009 Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea http://ropas.snu.ac.kr/aplas09/ FYI: The list of accepted papers is now on the webpage. APLAS 2009 will include a poster session during the conference. The session aims to give students and researchers an opportunity to present their research to the community, and to get responses from other researchers. SCOPE: Poster presentations describing research advances or experience with non-trivial systems are sought in all areas of programming languages and systems, including (but not limited to): - semantics, logics, foundational theory - type systems, language design - program analysis, optimization, transformation - software security, safety, verification - compiler systems, interpreters, abstract machines - domain-specific languages and systems - programming tools and environments FORMAT: A space of A1 paper size (594 mm wide and 841 mm high) will be provided for each presentation. If you need more space, contact the poster chair (kmatsu AT ipl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp). To prepare a good poster, search the Web for "poster presentation" and you will find many useful resources. SUBMISSION: Each presenter should e-mail a 1-2 page abstract in PDF or PostScript to the poster chair (Kiminori Matsuzaki; kmatsu AT ipl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp) by September 30th 2009. The abstract should include the title, author(s), affiliation(s), and summary of the work, and a LaTeX-template will be available at "http://ropas.snu.ac.kr/aplas09/aplas_poster_template.tex". The program of the poster session will be announced by October 10th, 2009. We hope to accommodate every poster, but may restrict presentations (based on relevance and interest to the community) due to space constraints. IMPORTANT DATES: - 1-2 page abstract September 30, 2009 - Notification October 10, 2009 - Conference December 14 - 16, 2009 CONTACT: For questions or requests, please contact the APLAS 2009 poster chair, Kiminori Matsuzaki (kmatsu AT ipl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp). -- Kiminori MATSUZAKI, Ph.D. Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, University of Tokyo Email: kmatsu(a)ipl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

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ANNOUNCE: hecc-0.1
by Marcel Fourné 09 Sep '09

09 Sep '09

Hi, this is the first release of hecc, the Elliptic Curve Cryptography Library for Haskell, to be found at http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hecc Implemented are affine, projective, jacobian and modified jacobian point formats with the basic operations. Included as an Example is a basic ECDH as well as a basic speed test (just a point multiplication on NIST P-256). The code grew out of some finger exercises used during my Master-studies and has been molded into some (arguably) releasable state. The library tries to be fast (achieving the above-mentioned test in just under 10ms on my hardware) but won't compete with a C or assembler-implementation (meaning: it stays more readable). The API is not stable, there may be bugs, you have been warned... Further algorithms may come at a point, but there is no timeframe atm. Please send feedback! Marcel -- Marcel Fourné OpenPGP-Key-ID: 0x74545C72

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ANN: HLint 1.6.8
by Neil Mitchell 09 Sep '09

09 Sep '09

Hi, I am pleased to announce HLint 1.6.8. HLint is a tool for suggesting improvements to your source code. It suggests the use of library functions you may have been unaware of, finds patterns of recursion that are really folds/maps, hints about extensions you aren't using and much more. HLint is now one of the top 20 applications on Hackage, and is used by the darcs project to improve and statically check their code base. HLint is ideal for learning Haskell, but is of use even to experienced developers. I now refuse to code review any Haskell that hasn't had HLint applied, as HLint automates the dull bits allowing people to do the more advanced higher-level reviews. Installation: cabal update && cabal install hlint Hackage: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hlint Home page: http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/hlint/ Manual: http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/darcs/hlint/hlint.htm HLint 1.6.8 is a _strongly_ recommended upgrade. It fixes quite a few bugs, in particular it requires a newer version of cpphs which doesn't have a very severe bug that could lead to non-termination. == NEW FEATURES (since the last announcement) == * Changelog is now maintained: http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/darcs/hlint/CHANGES.txt * Lots of bugfixes (thanks to everyone who reported bugs) * Add suggestion to replace lambda with operator sections * Hints about redundant imports * Added -threaded flag to Cabal to disable threaded mode * Hints about unused extensions * Hints about functors * Integrates with cpphs to process CPP files * Integrate with HPC, and increase the test coverage (now ~ 70%). I would like to express my thanks to the HPC authors (Andy Gill and Colin Runciman) and encourage everyone to use it in their testing. I welcome any comments/bug reports for HLint, Thanks, Neil

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ANNOUNCE: graphviz-2999.5.0.0
by Ivan Lazar Miljenovic 09 Sep '09

09 Sep '09

I am pleased to announce version 2999.5.0.0 [1] of the graphviz [2] package for Haskell. This is what I like to think of as the "Hey, this is almost getting to be a decent library!" version :p [1] http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/graphviz/2999.5.0.0/graphviz-29… [2] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/graphviz The graphviz package provides bindings to the GraphViz [3] suite of programs by providing the ability to generate and parse GraphViz's Dot [4] language as well as wrappers around the tools themselves. [3] http://www.graphviz.org/ [4] http://www.graphviz.org/doc/info/lang.html This is an almost complete re-write of the previously released version (2999.1.0.2): I do not mean that this version was re-written from scratch, but substantial portions of the library have been improved or replaced. As such, current users of this library will unfortunately have to update their code that uses it. The major changes (becuase there's probably heaps of smaller changes I've forgotten about) are: * Parsing and printing of Dot code was re-written to use the new ParseDot and PrintDot classes rather than the old Parseable class and the Show class. What this means for the end-user is that quotation problems should finally all be resolved (I hope...). In particular, proper quotation of String values is now done automagically: if it is found that the String to be printed requires quoting (because it does not match the format required for non-quoted String values), then quotes within the String are escaped and the entire String is quoted. As part of this, the Data.GraphViz.ParserCombinators module has been moved to Data.GraphViz.Types.Parsing. * Re-write the various Dot* datatypes in Data.GraphViz.Types. Sub-graphs/clusters are now their own entity rather than being part of DotNode and the Node ID type is now a type parameter rather than being just Int. Sub-graphs/clusters can now also be parsed. DotGraph and DotSubGraph now both contain a "DotStatements" value, which in turn contains global attributes, subgraphs, nodes and edges. * The various conversion functions in Data.GraphViz now come in two flavours: the unprimed versions take in a Bool indicating if the graph is directed or not; the primed versions attempt to automatically detect this. Also add cluster support for the graph -> dot -> graph conversion-style functions, as requested by Nikolas Mayr. * Allow custom arrow types as supported by GraphViz; as requested by Han Joosten. * Fixed a bug in HSV-style Color values where Int was used instead of Double; spotted by Michael deLorimier. * Properly resolved the situation initially spotted by Neil Brown: Matthew Sackman was following Dot terminology for an edge `a -> b' when using "head" for `b' and "tail" for `a' (this is presumably because the head/tail of the arrow are at those nodes). DotEdge now uses "from" and "to" avoid ambiguity; the various Attribute values still follow upstream usage. This should hopefully be the last update that is such an intrusive change. The next release will most likely contain updates on how to specify a particular output to use (including variants), with most of the rest remain as-is. -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic(a)gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

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ANNOUNCE: uvector-algorithms 0.2
by Dan Doel 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

Greetings, It is my pleasure to announce version 0.2 of the uvector-algorithms package. The package so far has implementations of several sorting and selection algorithms for use on the mutable arrays from the uvector library, as well as combinators for applying them to immutable arrays. New developments in this version include: - A simple benchmarking program for testing the performance of the algorithms (it's what I use to measure them, but I only have one computer to run it on, so perhaps other folks might want to see how it works on their machine) - A testing program, written with quick check to verify properties of the algorithms - Several bugs found and fixed due to the above tests and using HPC to verify good program coverage - Combinators for Schwartzian transform - Reworking radix sort to be more amenable to optimization. It's now around twice as fast. - A Radix instance for strict pairs, and a radix sortBy - Merge sort is now slightly faster due to memcpy in uvector :) The library can be found at hackage: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/uvector-algorithms or in its darcs repository: http://code.haskell.org/~dolio/uvector-algorithms/ As always, I can be notified of any issues. Enjoy. -- Dan

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Ph.D position, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
by S.Doaitse Swierstra 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

=================================================== Vacancy PhD student on Realizing Optimal Sharing in the Functional Language Implementations Utrecht University, The Netherlands. =================================================== Within the Software Technology group of the Information and Computing Sciences department of Utrecht University there is a vacancy for a PhD student to work on the efficient implementation of functional languages. The position is funded by NWO, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Project summary: Lambda-calculus and term rewriting are models of computation lying at the basis of functional programming languages. Both possess syntactic meta-theories based on analyzing rewrite steps. Unfortunately, naive implementations are inefficient, since subterms are frequently copied. To overcome this problem in both theoretical systems and actual implementations, duplicate work is avoided by using graph-based term representations, in which identical subterms can be (but not always are) shared. The question arises whether graph-representations and their reductions that are optimal in a theoretical sense can also be practical from an implementer's point of view. However, so far it is unclear whether nice theoretical ideas combine well with existing implementation methods. The overall-goal of this project is to answer this question in a back-and-forth communication between theoretical concepts and practical realizations. Starting points are the recent work on the optimal Lambdascope implementation based on context sharing, and the Haskell implementation developed at Utrecht University. One of the open problems is whether the Lambdascope framework can be extended to efficiently represent sets of mutually recursive definitions. Another, whether global program analysis can discover where Lambdascope-based approaches solve problems due to insufficient sharing. If both questions can be solved, we want to combine Lambdascope-based implementations with conventional frameworks, and investigate how efficient the resulting implementations become. The unique combination of the theoretical depth from the Logic department and the implementation skills and compiler infrastructure from the Computer Science department make Utrecht University the optimal surroundings for such a project. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Project leaders are Prof.dr. Doaitse Swierstra and dr. Vincent van Oostrom (principal investigator). The project will be executed in close cooperation between * the Software Technology group (http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/Center) of the Information and Computing Sciences department (http://www.cs.uu.nl/ ) * and the Theoretical Philosophy group (http://www.uu.nl/EN/faculties/Humanities/research/researchinstitutes/zeno/r… ) of the Philosophy department (http://www.phil.uu.nl/) and between * the more practically oriented PhD student and * the more theory oriented postdoc. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Requirements: Master degree in Computer Science, Logic, or equivalent. Good knowledge of functional programming, and several advanced computer science techniques. Knowledge of lambda-calculus implementations, Haskell, and compiler construction will be useful. Both theory and software development based on this should appeal to you. Terms of employment: the PhD student should start as soon as possible, but no later than January 1, 2010. The position is for four years (after one year there will be an evaluation), full-time. Gross salary starts with € 2042,-- per month in the first year and increases to € 2612,-- in the fourth year of employment. The salary is supplemented with a holiday bonus of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 3%. In addition we offer: a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave, facilities for child care, flexible employment conditions in which you may trade salary for vacation days or vice versa. Conditions are based on the Collective Employment Agreement of the Dutch Universities: http://www.vsnu.nl/Workstudy/Universities-as-employers-/Collective-Labour-A… More information: * about the project can be found on http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/bin/view/Center/OptimalSharing * about the Software Technology group on http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/Center * about the Information and Computing Sciences department on http://www.cs.uu.nl/ * about this vacancy can be obtained from Doaitse Swierstra (doaitse(a)cs.uu.nl , +31 6 4613 6929). Send your application in pdf (or another non-proprietary format) to mailto:SciencePenO@uu.nl with a cc to mailto:doaitse@cs.uu.nl. on or before Sept 31, 2009. Mention vacancy nr 62910.

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Looking for a new HWN editor
by Brent Yorgey 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

Executive summary: * I'm looking for someone to take over as HWN editor * It is highly automated and doesn't take as much time as you might think (about 3-4 hours/week on average) * You DON'T need to be a Haskell guru * It is far from a thankless job and is a fun way to provide an appreciated service to the community! Read on for more details! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi all, As you probably know, I've been the editor of the Haskell Weekly News for a little over a year now, and I've decided that it's time for me to move on to other things. So, I'm looking for someone to volunteer to take over as HWN editor. Why might you want to do this? It's true that there is no concrete reward. But judging from the number of comments I have received from people over the past year, the HWN provides a valuable and appreciated service to the Haskell community: there are many who simply don't have time to read the mailing lists, but like to know about new libraries, compiler releases, interesting discussions, and other major goings-on in the community. What does the editorship entail? Thanks to some automated tools developed specifically for the job, it doesn't take as much time as you might think: usually about 4 hours per week; most of that is spent simply reading/skimming various Haskell mailing lists to pick out items for the HWN. The process generally goes like this: * pick out funny quotes from the IRC channel using an automated tool * pick out Haskell-related blog posts using an automated tool * pick out announcements and discussions from the mailing list with an automated tool, writing a short blurb for each (usually this just involves cutting and pasting from the announcement itself, with a bit of editing to make it flow * compile text and HTML versions with an automated tool * post to sequence.complete.org and the mailing list. There are much more detailed instructions written up, and of course I'll be happy to provide detailed help and support for the first few weeks of the new editor's tenure. I should emphasize that the HWN editor does NOT need to be a Haskell guru. In fact, this could be an ideal job for someone who is relatively new to Haskell and the community, but would like to contribute in a tangible way. I also want to emphasize that with the change in editorship, the HWN need not remain exactly the same: if you have exciting ideas about changes to make to the format or content, be my guest! The HWN will be whatever you make of it. So, let me know if you are interested! There won't be any formal interview process; the first person to contact me who wants to do it, gets the job. But of course, if you are not sure and want more information, feel free to email me with questions. -Brent

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CfPart: FMICS 2009, 2-3 November 2009
by Christophe Joubert 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

FMICS 2009 - FIRST CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Please visit: http://users.dsic.upv.es/workshops/fmics2009 ************************************************************ * 14th International Workshop on * * Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems * * FMICS 2009 * * * * November 2-3, 2009 * * Eindhoven, The Netherlands * ************************************************************ * ** NEWS ** * * * * >> Full programme for FMICS 2009 now available * * * * >> Registration for FMICS 2009 is open * * Early registration before September 14 * * * * >> FMICS 2009 proceedings available as LNCS 5825 * * * ************************************************************ FMICS 2009 is the fourteenth in a series of International Workshop on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems. Previous workshops of the ERCIM working group on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems were held in Oxford (March 1996), Cesena (July 1997), Amsterdam (May 1998), Trento (July 1999), Berlin (April 2000), Paris (July 2001), Malaga (July 2002), Trondheim (June 2003), Linz (September 2004), Lisbon (September 2005), Bonn (August 2006), Berlin (July 2007), and L'Aquila (September 2008). The aim of the FMICS workshop series is to provide a forum for researchers who are interested in the development and application of formal methods in industry. In particular, these workshops bring together scientists and engineers who are active in the area of formal methods and are interested in exchanging their experiences in the industrial usage of these methods. These workshops also strive to promote research and development for the improvement of formal methods and tools for industrial applications. Complete and up to date information can be found at the event website http://users.dsic.upv.es/workshops/fmics2009/. FMICS 2009 is part of the 1st FMweek (Formal Methods week, http://www.win.tue.nl/fmweek/) which brings together 10 international scientific events, 6 project and working group meetings, and a variety of other activities in the area. Further information about the FMICS working group and the next FMICS workshop can be found at: http://www.inrialpes.fr/vasy/fmics. The topics chosen for FMICS 2009 include: - design, specification, code generation and testing based on formal methods; - methods, techniques and tools to support automated analysis, certification, debugging, learning, optimization and transformation of complex, distributed, real-time and embedded systems; - verification and validation methods that address shortcomings of existing methods with respect to their industrial applicability (e.g., scalability and usability issues); - tools for the development of formal design descriptions; - case studies and experience reports on industrial applications of formal methods, focusing on lessons learned or new research directions; - impact and costs of the adoption of formal methods; - application of formal methods in standardization and industrial forums; In response to the call for papers, 24 contributions were submitted from 16 different countries. The Program Committee selected ten papers, basing this choice on their scientific quality, originality, and relevance to the workshop. Each paper was reviewed by at least three Program Committee members or external referees. The programme also includes four invited contributions as well as six poster descriptions. INVITED SPEAKERS ---------------- Dino Distefano Queen Mary, University of London, UK Diego Latella CNR/ISTI, Italy Thierry Lecomte ClearSy, France Ken McMillan Cadence Berkeley Labs, USA Following a tradition established over the past few years, the European Association of Software Science and Technology (EASST) will offer an award to the best FMICS paper. VENUE ----- The venue for FMICS 2009 is the Auditorium of Eindhoven University of Technology. The university campus lies in the centre of Eindhoven, within walking distance of conference hotels. The city itself can easily be reached via both its own airport and Schiphol (the Dutch mainport). REGISTRATION ------------ The event website provides a one-stop window where participants can register to FMICS 2009 and to any combination of FMweek events they would like to participate in, and make hotel reservation for their stay in Eindhoven. ************************************************************ * * * +============================================+ * * | | * * | ** FMweek ** | * * | | * * +============================================+ * * | FMICS | FM2009 | REFINE | * * +--------------------------------------------+ * * | PDMC | TESTCOM/FATES | * * +--------------------------------------------+ * * | FACS | CPA | FAST | FMCO | * * +--------------------------------------------+ * * | http://www.win.tue.nl/fmweek | * * +============================================+ * * * ************************************************************ SPONSORS -------- FMICS 2009 is sponsored by the following institutions: the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, ERCIM, FME, Microsoft Research, the Departamento de Sistemas Informaticos y Computacion (UPV), MEC (Feder) Tin2007-30509-E, EASST, and the Technical University of Eindhoven.

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