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Austria
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake/iso/ (Vienna)
Canada
http://sunsite.ualberta.ca/pub/Mirror/Linux/mandra ke/mandrake-8.0/iso/ (Alberta)
Czech Republic
ftp://klobouk.fsv.cvut.cz/pub/linux-mandrake/Mandr ake/iso/ (Prague)
ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake/iso/
France
ftp://chronos.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/pub/linux/dist ributions/Mandrake/iso/(Belfort)
ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/unix/linux/distribu tions/Mandrake/iso/ (Paris)
ftp://ftp.uvsq.fr/pub/mandrake/mandrake/iso/ (Versailles) Germany
ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/mandrake/iso/ (Chemnitz) Spain ftp://ftp.cica.es/pub/Linux/Mandrake/iso/ (Sevilla) United Kingdom
ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/sunsite.uio.no/pub/un ix/Linux/Mandrake/iso/ (Canterbury) United States
ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/iso/ (Georgia)
ftp://ftp.stealth.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.mandrake.com /Mandrake/iso/
ftp://jungle.metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/distributio ns/mandrake/Mandrake/iso/ (North Carolina)

This sounds like a larger version of the aerial robots developed for Georgia Tech's International Aerial Robotics Competition. Although the amateur designed robots don't have the range of the NASA version, the winning designs can perform all of the tasks that the expensive counterpart can. And I'm sure for a fraction of the price.

I've been pondering building my own wearable for several years now. I was fortunate to have some exposure to Thad Starner at Georgia Tech. I saw quite a few variations on the wearable in the halls of the College of Computing, but my main interest was in the "build-your-own" category, for which Thad has a few links for on his web site.

A $2K price tag is certainly more appealing than a $5K-$6K, but what's the point when you can build your own for less? Laptops are so thin/cheap/powerful these days that, combined with a Twiddler and some form of audio/video IO, you're set.

The Hitachi unit, on the other hand, has barely more horsepower than a handheld device. Do you really need a visor-ed CE device for $2K?

True Names - the novel by Vernor Vinge
Comment by the transcriber ... Bluejay Books) TRUE NAMES
VERNOR VINGE Bluejay Books Inc. All the ...
progoth.resnet.gatech.edu/truename/truename.htm - 101k - Cached - Similar pages

... I was modeling combustion during my undergrad years as far back as '93, and there were already several labs across the country doing computational combustion work. For a variety of reasons computational combustion is one of the hardest simulation fields you can tackle. Here's a plug to the leading lab of my old prof, the Computational Combustion Laboratory at Georgia Tech

There is a lot of good stuff here. Some of the more useful and general-purpose patches -- such as VLAN, TUX, and Software Suspend -- should get a chance to become mainstream. The various IPC and speed improvements should make it in, too.

There's currently a debate over which real-time scheduler is the best. Personally, I'd like to see it resolved in the same way as the other options with choices: let all of them be integrated into the mainstream, and let the user select which one to use, either at compile or boot time! I'd like to see an option in the kernel configuration, asking what real-time scheduler you wanted: MontaVista, RTLinux, RTSched, Linux-SRT, RTAI, DWCS, something else, or simply the default.

Linux needs a real-time scheduler today. Currently, things become choppy whenever it decides to service the system in some way, such as syncing the disk. Playing movies, audio/video recording, burning CD's, even playing games would benefit from real-time support. I hope that this can become mainstream in 2.6!

Super eurobeat from Avex and Konami unite in your DANCE!

Low budgets, encouraging volunteer participants -- now that's the way to run a space program!

An extreme version of this philosophy is central to the Portland State Aerospace Society, Portland State University's group operating under the auspices of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society (AESS). Check out in particular our ongoing work on our Inertial Navigation System, which currently costs out at around $500. All of our work is open source, and is specifically targeted at usability by other amateur rocketry groups.

I'm a student at Georgia Tech and it was made pretty clear to us when we were registering and moving in to our dorms that use of the networks for personal profit were prohibited. In the Computer and Network Usage Policy it states that Computing facilities, services, and networks may not be used in connection with compensated outside work nor for the benefit of organizations not related to Georgia Tech. It goes on to discuss incidental use of the systems and networks but this does not sound incidental and because there was a prize offered I assume it would fall under compensated outside work.

Notice, the site that Gile's page refers to, http://bash.current.nu/ is gone, hacked. Hope to see it back soon, and complete. BUT, there is another site that actually has the bashprompt package at http://www.neuro.gatech.edu/users/cwilson/cygutils /unversioned/bashprompt/, but that one is so old it refers to the bash.current.nu page before they even got thier own homepage.

Bashprompt, the original BASHISH was cool. I helped the project a little, providing screen captures of the themes, and making a theme of my own for bashprompt. Their server was recently cracked, and they've run out of funding. Lets all pitch in and save this project. Mods: mod this one up please, thx

da w00t.

Shut up, you know you just one of those spoiled white brats living South Africa where your wealthy family originaly moved to exploit the natives.

It is interesting that ignorant. ACs always make posts like this that insinuate that the only way an African can be a geek is if he is a White South African.

Sorry to dissappoint you but I'm a Black Nigerian. Thanks for playing.

--

This is a simplified version of bashprompt

### Uncomment whichever color scheme you want.
local COLOR_SCHEME=cyan
#local COLOR_SCHEME=grey
#local COLOR_SCHEME=red
#local COLOR_SCHEME=green
#local COLOR_SCHEME=magenta
#local COLOR_SCHEME=blue
#local COLOR_SCHEME=yellow
#local COLOR_SCHEME=white

### Leave these alone, unless you want the sky grass and the green blue =)
local NOBOLD="\033[0m"
local BOLD="\033[1m"
local BLACK="\033[30m"
local GREY="\033[0m"
local RED="\033[31m"
local GREEN="\033[32m"
local YELLOW="\033[33m"
local BLUE="\033[34m"
local MAGENTA="\033[35m"
local CYAN="\033[36m"
local WHITE="\033[37m"

case "$COLOR_SCHEME" in

black|BLACK)
local COLOR=$WHITE
;;
grey|GREY)
local COLOR=$WHITE
;;
red|RED)
local COLOR=$RED
;;
green|GREEN)
local COLOR=$GREEN
;;
yellow|YELLOW)
local COLOR=$YELLOW
;;
blue|BLUE)
local COLOR=$BLUE
;;
magenta|MAGENTA)
local COLOR=$MAGENTA
;;
cyan|CYAN)
local COLOR=$CYAN
;;
white|WHITE)
export COLOR=$WHITE
;;

esac

local COLOR1="\[$NOBOLD$COLOR\]"
local COLOR2="\[$BOLD$COLOR\]"
local COLOR3="\[$BOLD$BLACK\]"
local COLOR4="\[$GREY\]"
local GRAD1="\$(cut -f4 -d\ /proc/loadavg| cut -f2 -d/)"
local GRAD2="\$(echo \`users | wc --words\`)"
local GRAD3="\$(cut -f1 -d\ /proc/loadavg)"
local TTY="\$(tty|cut -d/ -f3)"
local TIME="\t"
local DATE="\d"
local PDP="$COLOR2)$COLOR1$DASH$COLOR2("
### PVL wil draw extra stuff from /proc/loadavg .. anyone know FreeBSD equiv?? =)
local PVL="$PDP$COLOR1$GRAD1$COLOR3/$COLOR1$GRAD2$COLOR3 /$COLOR1$GRAD3"

PS1="\n$COLOR3$OPENRIGHT$COLOR1$DASH$COLOR2($COLOR 1\u$COLOR3@$COLOR1\h$PDP$COLOR1\#$COLOR3/$COLOR1$T TY$PDP$COLOR1$TIME$COLOR3:$COLOR1$DATE$PVL$COLOR2) $COLOR1$DASH$COLOR3$DASH$COLOR3$CLOSERIGHT$COLOR1$ DASH$COLOR2($COLOR1\w$COLOR2)$COLOR1$DASH$COLOR3$D ASH$COLOR4 "
PS2="$COLOR2$DASH$COLOR1$DASH$COLOR3$DASH$COLOR4 "

This looks like a marketer's version of the Georgia Tech Aware Home Research Initiative which is more about building a house that is actually smart instead of just blindly adding IPs addresses and remote controls to a bunch of household devices.

--

1. Ignore The Rules - Unless you've done something dramatic to catch the attention of head haunchos, nobody is going to notice/care. If, however, you have something really valuable, you might think twice before starting your own corporation to market it... the official policies may not always be fair or moral, but the university has badder, meaner lawyers than you do.
2. Incorporate the GPL - In my senior project, I used connection-pooling software from the guys at bitmechanic.com. This stunt can theoretically tie the hands of a university that wishes to capitalize on a student's project. Could you still get in trouble? Maybe. But at least the university would have to rewrite parts of your code to make it legal for other licenses.
3. Rewrite - If you've done something commercially viable, rewrite it from scratch. You'll create a better product with a longer lifespan and a clear path for the introduction of new features.
4. Cooperate - If you're not the entreprenurial type, but you created some valuable code and you want to make money off of it, try working with the university. They can take care of those pesky funding/marketing/accounting/legal details. Your piece of the pie will be small (see section 5.14.7.6 of GT's policy), but you'll have time to do the stuff you love and loads of prestige/job offers too.

1. Ignore The Rules - Unless you've done something dramatic to catch the attention of head haunchos, nobody is going to notice/care. If, however, you have something really valuable, you might think twice before starting your own corporation to market it... the official policies may not always be fair or moral, but the university has badder, meaner lawyers than you do.
2. Incorporate the GPL - In my senior project, I used connection-pooling software from the guys at bitmechanic.com. This stunt can theoretically tie the hands of a university that wishes to capitalize on a student's project. Could you still get in trouble? Maybe. But at least the university would have to rewrite parts of your code to make it legal for other licenses.
3. Rewrite - If you've done something commercially viable, rewrite it from scratch. You'll create a better product with a longer lifespan and a clear path for the introduction of new features.
4. Cooperate - If you're not the entreprenurial type, but you created some valuable code and you want to make money off of it, try working with the university. They can take care of those pesky funding/marketing/accounting/legal details. Your piece of the pie will be small (see section 5.14.7.6 of GT's policy), but you'll have time to do the stuff you love and loads of prestige/job offers too.

1. Ignore The Rules - Unless you've done something dramatic to catch the attention of head haunchos, nobody is going to notice/care. If, however, you have something really valuable, you might think twice before starting your own corporation to market it... the official policies may not always be fair or moral, but the university has badder, meaner lawyers than you do.
2. Incorporate the GPL - In my senior project, I used connection-pooling software from the guys at bitmechanic.com. This stunt can theoretically tie the hands of a university that wishes to capitalize on a student's project. Could you still get in trouble? Maybe. But at least the university would have to rewrite parts of your code to make it legal for other licenses.
3. Rewrite - If you've done something commercially viable, rewrite it from scratch. You'll create a better product with a longer lifespan and a clear path for the introduction of new features.
4. Cooperate - If you're not the entreprenurial type, but you created some valuable code and you want to make money off of it, try working with the university. They can take care of those pesky funding/marketing/accounting/legal details. Your piece of the pie will be small (see section 5.14.7.6 of GT's policy), but you'll have time to do the stuff you love and loads of prestige/job offers too.

1. Ignore The Rules - Unless you've done something dramatic to catch the attention of head haunchos, nobody is going to notice/care. If, however, you have something really valuable, you might think twice before starting your own corporation to market it... the official policies may not always be fair or moral, but the university has badder, meaner lawyers than you do.
2. Incorporate the GPL - In my senior project, I used connection-pooling software from the guys at bitmechanic.com. This stunt can theoretically tie the hands of a university that wishes to capitalize on a student's project. Could you still get in trouble? Maybe. But at least the university would have to rewrite parts of your code to make it legal for other licenses.
3. Rewrite - If you've done something commercially viable, rewrite it from scratch. You'll create a better product with a longer lifespan and a clear path for the introduction of new features.
4. Cooperate - If you're not the entreprenurial type, but you created some valuable code and you want to make money off of it, try working with the university. They can take care of those pesky funding/marketing/accounting/legal details. Your piece of the pie will be small (see section 5.14.7.6 of GT's policy), but you'll have time to do the stuff you love and loads of prestige/job offers too.

From the Unisys History Newsletter : "The first UNIVAC passed its formal acceptance test on March 29-30, 1951 and was turned over to the Census Bureau, which operated it in the factory for nearly a year. A formal dedication ceremony was held on June 14, but coverage in the general press was minimal."

Squeak is based around a very portable and graphical Smalltalk environment. Squeak is GPL'd and available for a wide variety of platforms including MAC, Windows, and Linux.

Here's a quote about Squeak stolen from the squeakland.org web site:

Squeak Is An Idea Processor For Children Of All Ages! ... an instrument whose music is ideas ... We all know what a word processor is, but what is an idea processor? Of course, we can play with some ideas and express them in a word processor, but a lot of important ideas need more, for example: art, music, math and science. And some of these ideas really need a "dynamic medium for creative thought": music, animation, and many areas of science. Squeak aims to have "no threshold", in that many five year olds can explore ideas in it; and "no ceiling": its range includes all of the things that can be done with computers. When five year olds learn English, they are starting to learn the language of Shakespeare and Feynman. Their journey through the next decade will enrich their vocabulary, ideas about people and the world, and give them stronger ways to structure ideas in language. In a similar fashion, the language learned by the five year olds to do simple projects in Squeak is also the language used by the experts to make 3D graphics engines and get things to happen on the Internet. All the projects done in Squeak are directly transmittable to others over the Internet. Users can chat (by text or voice), send and receive email, exchange objects by dragging and dropping, and multiple users can share a project to interact in real time. Each time a project is created there is an opportunity to set up a new interest group that can provide mutual assitance and kudos.

Here are some links about using Squeak in education.

Is four colors really so many?

Having technology at their disposal doesn't make it easier for students to cheat, its the method of testing which makes it easier. It all depends on how the exams are structured. I still sweat at the thought of taking an open book exam where the last person slips the exams underneath the teacher's locked door. And yes, I did go to a pretty decent school. On the other other hand, notes from previous courses (called the word ) were used frequently at that institution as well.

Have a look at the activities of Mark Guzdial and the Collaborative Software Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology.

And - yes, they are using Squeak, an open source implementation of Smalltalk-80 which is lead by many of the original Smalltalk inventors including Alan Kay.

You should try the new mandrake 8.0 it was the easiest O.S. install I have tried in a long time, if not ever. You can get an ISO HERE.

Robotic aircraft is a popular avocation, viz.: Aerial Robotics Competition, The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and, in particular, their Unmanned Air Vehicles page. Each of these sites has links to many other projects.

It works better with a direct pointing device like a pen, less well with an indirect pointing device like a mouse, and badly with a velocity pointing device, like a joystick or force-sensing button. Basically, if you can't handwrite with the input device, gestural input will be a pain.

God, someone just had to bring up Squeak. Ugh.
<rant>
Wow, someone who uses Squeak in the real world! I hope you're getting paid a very large sum of money to do so, since I can't imagine anyone doing it out of personal preference.
As stated above I'm currently in a OOP class using Squeak, and maybe 75% of the people I know in there would agree with me when I say Squeak has been the worst programming language I've ever had to deal with (out of the seven or eight I've learned).
The Squeak IDE is one of the most frustrating pieces of software I've ever had to use. Slow, ugly as sin (both the original MVC and the newer Morphic GUI), and bloated as all hell. You must have superhuman patience to be able to create a game for your wife using it.
But good luck trying to turn it into a binary to distribute to your friends, because you can't! And don't ask them to try and learn the language either, because there's no documented API, and the purportedly self-commented code really isn't. Did I mention that that same code sometimes breaks on you, fresh from an install? Yep, believe it.
Also (and yes, I realize I'm reaching here), but the syntax is all backwards. It's not sufficiently like natural laugnage to be easy for beginners to use, and it just frustrates experienced programmers used to nearly every other language (i.e., based on C). It's going the way of Hypercard, Apple's old natural language-based multimedia programming environment.
It's *really* hard to believe that Squeak was supposed to become the language used on the Dynabook, If a bunch of college students can't get the hang of it, I don't see how elementary-school kids could either.
</rant>

Well, aside from the fact that the Chinese are helping themselves to a lot of our best hardware...there's always this:

Immediate Action

This is intended for humor purposes only, I certainly don't encourage hollow point diplomacy.
~HK

Here's the link to George Gray's "online Unisys History Newsletter".

I recently submitted an article about how I found a piece of spyware that is installed by a number of music sharing systems including AudioGalaxy and iMesh on my machine. Of course, Slashdot rejected it. Since it is ontopic for this discussion here it is:

The SpyWare Invasion

While writing a proxy server for a class I noticed that for each URL I clicked, a number of POST requests were being sent to d2.webhancer.com and d3.webhancer.com. Wondering what was up I decided to go to the Web Hancer website where I found out that WebHancer is a company that claims to have an installed base of millions of WebHancer agents that report web browsing statistics to their corporate headquarters.

WebHancer currently charges businesses $12,000 a month to access these usage statistics. I found the webHancer agent on my Windows machine (after a quick 'ps -W | grep gent')in "C:\Program Files\webHancer\Programs\whAgent.exe" and deleted it. What I am wondering is how the Web Hancer agent got on my machine since I don't recall being asked whether I wanted to install any spyware. Also exactly how many of their millions of anonymous usage statistics are being generated by unsuspecting users?

Which program did I install that decided to place this Trojan on my machine and is there a blacklist of such programs? AudioGalaxy

Finally, while searching for info on Web Hancer I found Ad-Aware which claims to locate and uninstall such spyware.

Moravec's approach is a classic example of the SMPA (sense-model-plan-act) approach to mobile robotics. A lot of people think this is a dead end - not least among them Rodney Brooks, who advocates what is called the behavior-based approach. Behavior-based robotics basically relies on integrating several independently operating reflexes into a robot, which is much more lifelike. A nifty intermediate approach is taken by Ronald Arkin, who seems a little more pragmatic (and less dogmatic).

You can read some superficial information about all of these guys (and others) in the book Robo sapiens.

A review of Robo sapiens can be found here.

All in due time. :)

Here at Georgia Tech the CMPE program is part of the school of Electrical Engineering, and deals more with the hardware side of computing, where the CS dapartment is it's own school which focuses more on the software side.

Here at Georgia Tech the CMPE program is part of the school of Electrical Engineering, and deals more with the hardware side of computing, where the CS dapartment is it's own school which focuses more on the software side.

Here at Georgia Tech the CMPE program is part of the school of Electrical Engineering, and deals more with the hardware side of computing, where the CS dapartment is it's own school which focuses more on the software side.

At Georgia Tech, the main IT stuff is still handled by professionals. However, the student organization server, cyberbuzz, is student run. Personally, I think this is a good mix -- the Really Important services are handled by people who can afford to have monitoring 24/7 and such, while the less mission critical stuff gives students a chance to do IT stuff.

At Georgia Tech, the main IT stuff is still handled by professionals. However, the student organization server, cyberbuzz, is student run. Personally, I think this is a good mix -- the Really Important services are handled by people who can afford to have monitoring 24/7 and such, while the less mission critical stuff gives students a chance to do IT stuff.

At Georgia Tech, the main IT stuff is still handled by professionals. However, the student organization server, cyberbuzz, is student run. Personally, I think this is a good mix -- the Really Important services are handled by people who can afford to have monitoring 24/7 and such, while the less mission critical stuff gives students a chance to do IT stuff.

At Georgia Tech, the main IT stuff is still handled by professionals. However, the student organization server, cyberbuzz, is student run. Personally, I think this is a good mix -- the Really Important services are handled by people who can afford to have monitoring 24/7 and such, while the less mission critical stuff gives students a chance to do IT stuff.

For 2-3 yeare the Georgia Tech Residential Network has been run by student voulenteers.

For 2-3 yeare the Georgia Tech Residential Network has been run by student voulenteers.

gatech.edu

I don't know about any high schools that've used it, but it was required reading in my freshman English class at Georgia Tech.

Well, this puts me into an interesting position, Jon, because I like you even less than I do Katie Hafner. But until Ms. Hafner asks me why I don't like Jon Katz, I'll answer your questions.

1. Does she have to be a technology advocate to be on a panel?

No, she doesn't have to have any credentials at all to be on any panel, although one would hope the credentials one does have would lend themselves to whatever the subject is at hand. Her speaker bio for this conference certainly leads one to the impression that she is not only a technology writer, but has been one for 17 years. One would hope, in that sort of starry-eyed mistiness I get whenever I think about journalism, that someone who writes about a subject for such a long time would have some small respect for the figures within that subject, and more importantly would be focused on bringing to light the story that a group or subculture might have to tell. It's not altogether earth-shattering to note that there's people who like computers or who are really driven to create things, but it is important that someone who calls themselves a journalist help these folks express their motivations and story in a way that people not intimately involved with them will understand or at least have a clear picture of what these folks are about. If you're not using your skills as a writer to bring your audience an improved awareness of your subject, then you're just another sideshow barker, gaining a quick buck for your publishing masters by redrawing perfectly normal/human people as scary, freakish monsters bent on the destruction of all.

I see very little evidence that Katie doesn't "use" her subjects, a technique possibly learned from Markoff. She certainly doesn't bring, in her writing, the thoughts of the people she's writing about in the hacking/hacker community; she DOES do an awful lot of finger-pointing and telling you what they're thinking. This is a subtle difference, but important. These figures that she and Markoff choose to cover are alive, and quite capable of communicating, but she chooses instead to speculate on what they're thinking (which she generally doesn't know) and guesses at motivations. She doesn't quote; she narrates. This is not a very flattering approach, and often not all that accurate.

Nowhere in her writing, I might add, does she ever profess an understanding of the draw of technology. She might as well be talking about serial killers, pharmacists, or alligator wrestlers for all she brings to the table in writing about her subject. I can make a pretty assured bet that she would write about all these subcultures with the same distant lack of fundamental characterization. She can string sentences together, but she does her subject (and audience) no favors.

2. You really think she's anti-hacker. I didn't get that from her book at all..plse explain.

There's many examples, and remember she's written several books and articles on hackers and hacker culture, so you can't just say "her book". One burning example of her approach is her hatchet job on Mitnick in Cyberpunk, which is captured wonderfully in Charles Platt's review of Markoff's later book Takedown, where Hafner admits quite freely that she never talked to Mitnick before writing the book, and professes ignorance of her subject. Platt goes on to Focus on Markoff, worse than the two of you (Katz/Hafner) combined, but my insistence that she has not only a lack of understanding of the Hacker Subculture, but a fundamental distrust/dislike of this group of people, stays firm.

As for her upcoming book on The WELL, I'm one of those folks who has really cringed at the Canonization of The WELL by yourself and others, and another "Book of Revelations" onto the pile will no doubt add to that mythology, but I would say that I have very little faith that Hafner will capture anything but a surface glimmer of the motivations of the hacker psyche, assuming of course she actually touches on it at all in this book! There's actually a very good chance she could avoid that aspect entirely. But now we're running into a smorgasbord of conflicting dislikes I have about this whole rotten business that Hafner, Markoff, Yourself, and Littman have in what you've all done.

I apologize to any outside readers if my dislike of Katz has distorted the clarity of what I'm trying to get across. I'll probably cover it some time on my site, in better thought-out detail, starting from Richard Sandza and progressing forward.

- Jason Scott
TEXTFILES.COM

The Classroom 2000 system at Georgia Tech has explored many of the issues in dealing with a distance learning class. It does, however, assume large amounts of bandwidth are available because its primary objective is to be able to teach other students in Georgia colleges using instructors at Georgia Tech. More info is available here.

The Classroom 2000 system at Georgia Tech has explored many of the issues in dealing with a distance learning class. It does, however, assume large amounts of bandwidth are available because its primary objective is to be able to teach other students in Georgia colleges using instructors at Georgia Tech. More info is available here.

um, that makes no sense. I think I know what you mean though. The problem with that argument is that the closer a BEAM robot gets to an obstruction, the more likely it will be to turn away. And it will eventually find it's target. I've never heard anyone in BEAM say that a BEAM robot had the ability to 'pathfind'. They simply aren't designed to do so. Why is that so hard for you to understand? For example...

Are you just stupid? You don't understand a beacon that can be seen anywhere within a building? There's a nice law of electromagnetics that says the field intensity decreases with the square of the distance away from the source. Close to beacon... strong signal. Far from beacon... weak signal. Got it? You seriously have no clue about BEAM robotics from what I am hearing.

The problem with that argument is that the closer a BEAM robot gets to an obstruction, the more likely it will be to turn away.

Let's take your 'find the beacon in a building' robot. Can it lift off of the ground, land somewhere, retrieve a beacon, and then return to it's original location? Well, if it can't, it must not be a real robot. What a fool you are.

You keep jumping around with different arguments, none of which have an extremely solid basis. You keep saying that BEAM sucks (basically), and yet you backup to mention that reactive robotics works and is proven to work. You insist that a BEAM robot can't do anything useful, and refuse to recognize the usefulness that has already been mentioned. And then you compare two seperate robotic fields, expecting that the comparison will save your argument.

Georgia Tech's CS3210 class (OS Design, the first in the Systems specialization) is taught exclusively by tinkering with the Linux kernel. We use a Compaq test platform that runs on the ARM processor. Students were organized into teams of three; each team was issued a board to run all their test kernels on. It's still a very new course, so nothing is etched in stone -- they're adding more material each semester -- but this semester we had projects wherein we tinkered with the scheduler & played with devices. It was still pretty much an overview, but I think with more preparation and time it should turn into a great course. I took it this semester -- turned in the final exam on Tuesday -- and really enjoyed it.

Is anyone else thinking about the movie Virus? Or is this the super army or robots anime has been warning us about for years. Maybe we should start considering the status of our own army of super robots. Some of the people I could find working on it are The Georgia Tech Mobile Robot Laboratory, The MIT Mobot Group, The University of Texas at Austin has a Robotics Research Group, and there is the Stanford Robotics Laboratory. All in all pretty dismal. you only have to go a few links down in a search result list to get to the Biped Robot Research in the World link. If you check it out you may notice, They are all in Japan. We are soooo gonna get our asses kicked. Even Robodex 2000, the world's first exhibition of "Robots as Partner" from November 24-26 is in Yokohama, Japan.

I said:
Java shackles developers by forcing them to use the Java[tm] platform for all development in all three tiers of a client-server application if they plan to use the Java[tm] language for any aspect development

You said:
Not true. CORBA has bindings right now for just about as many languages as .NET is planning to support, and these systems can all interoperate. In fact, Java's network and component specifications are going towards a more language neutral format with RMI over IIOP and the next generation CORBA specs and products that allow IIOP access to EJBs and deployment of EJB-like services in any language.

CORBA is a broken specification, and this has lead to the creation of the CORBA Component Model based on EJB which is modelled after DCOM and MTS.

With .NET objects created in C++ can inherit from objects created in any other language including Java. In .NET, local (none networked) cross-langauge object reuse is easily done unlike in broken-ass CORBA.

In .NET security, transactions, high availability, failure recovery, naming services, are clearly defined and built into the architecture unlike in CORBA where different ORBs have different behavior since the base CORBA specification is so loose and most services are optional and thus unsupported.

PS: If you are interested I've written a paper comparing CORBA, DCOM and RMI which points out the myriad shortcomings of CORBA.

Second Law of Blissful Ignorance

1. Being a reference point for the entire team when implementing features and wondering what behavior should be exhibited on certain events.

1. It is a good way to handle feature creep since it is a formalized list of features. Only things in the SRS are implemented and if a new feature comes along that everyone wants, it should be retroactively added to the SRS.

1. It gives developers an idea of the size and scope of their project.

1. Priority levels for different features can be set by using the
2. must-will-should rule. Any feature description preceded with a must is absolutely necessary, any feature preceded with a will is important but not absolutely necessary while features preceded with should are typically wishlist features.