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Domain: polimi.it

Stories and comments across the archive that link to polimi.it.

Stories · 6

  1. New AI Challenge Is All About Wanton Destruction

    Games · Programming · · posted by timothy · from the losers-are-made-into-wanton-soup dept. · 45 comments
    togelius writes "Previous years have seen a number of car racing competitions where neural nets, rule-based systems and other fancy AI techniques have been put to the test by letting them drive on a track and seeing who gets the best lap time. Recognizing that finding the Michael Schumacher of AI is not enough, a team of researchers from University of Wuerzburg now wants to find the Mad Max of AI. Their new competition is called 'Demolition Derby' and the goal is to 'wreck all opponent cars by crashing into them without getting wrecked yourself.' For this, they use the open-source TORCS game and a custom AI interface, allowing all and any AI researchers and enthusiasts (including you!) to submit their best and most aggressive controllers." (There's a competition for conventional racing, too; competitors can enter either or both.)

  2. Kosmotras Launches Again

    Science · Space · · posted by timothy · from the crowded-up-there dept. · 11 comments
    apsmith writes "When somebody says "world space power", how many of you think of Ukraine? Kosmotras has done it again though, with a third $1000/pound launch December 20, 2002 to low Earth orbit of six spacecraft on the Dnepr (formerly SS-18 ICBM) launch vehicle. Among the six were a variety of small European, South American, and one Saudi satellite, and a 'dummy' of the commercial TrailBlazer craft headed to the Moon next year. The Rubin2 craft launched yesterday is also of interest, as it will be the first Internet-controlled spacecraft to operate 24 hours a day without having to use ground stations."

  3. Patent-Free Approach to Real-Time Free Systems

    Developers · Linux · · posted by timothy · from the do-it-right-now dept. · 11 comments
    Karin Kosina writes: "Real-time Free Software solutions are moving forward with the first release of ADEOS, a hardware abstraction layer allowing a real-time kernel and a general purpose kernel to co-exist. RTAI will eventually use ADEOS services, thus offering a real-time kernel based on a principle clearly different from the 5,995,745 US Patent. Read the official press release by Philippe Gerum, Karim Yaghmour, Paolo Mantegazza et al. for details."

  4. Real-Time Linux Experiences?

    Ask · Linux · · posted by Cliff · from the hardware-heaven-or-hardware-hell dept. · 20 comments
    fidget42 asks: "I was wondering what types of experiences people have had with using some of the 'real-time' variants of Linux. I have looked at some of the choices (RTLinux, RTIA, etc.) but would also like to tap the experiences of the Slashdot readers. I am not looking for an embedded solution (while I will be on a single board computer, it will not be for a 'set-top box'), but one that will live happily on a PowerPC running in a VME chassis or something similar. Have you had good luck controlling VME devices from within a real-time Linux system? What problems did you encounter? While I do not need to run hard real-time, I still need tight tolerances on my timing. Our current platform gives us 5ms of jitter per 50ms cycle (very bad) and we would like to get down to 0.5ms, or less, of jitter per 50ms cycle. I also need guaranteed deadlines. One vendor told me that '97% of the time, you should be able to make the deadline' but 97%, and should, is still not good enough. Any and all help would be appreciated."

  5. Lineo Pays To License Real-Time Linux Capability

    Yro · Patents · · posted by timothy · from the now-how-much-would-you-pay?- dept. · 143 comments
    An Anonymous Coward writes: "Embedded linux vendor Lineo has apparently caved in to Victor Yodaiken, and become the first software company to publicly announce the licensing of Yodaiken's patented process for running a general purpose operating system (such as Linux) as a task under a real-time kernel(such as RTLinux or RTAI)."

    There's a special report at LinuxDevices which includes . . .

    • text of the Lineo press release
    • comments from Victor Yodaiken
    • news of a non-patented open source alternative ("Adeos")
    • a reference list about RTLinux and the RTLinux patent
    • a whitepaper about Adeos
    There's an interesting quote where Yodaiken claims his patent will help open source."

  6. First Thoughts On WebML?

    Ask · Programming · · posted by Cliff · from the new-language-on-the-block dept. · 8 comments
    martin asks: "Just saw this page on WebML. Looks quite interesting for spec-ing out a Web site and its navigation, how does this compare with the more general UML [?] and WML [?] ?"