Slashdot Mirror

• Player/Stage http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
• RobotFlow (also check out Flowdesigner and MARIE) http://robotflow.sourceforge.net/
• CARMEN http://carmen.sourceforge.net/
• ADE http://ade.sourceforge.net/
• MIRO http://smart.informatik.uni-ulm.de/MIRO/
• ARIA http://robots.mobilerobots.com/
• YARP http://eris.liralab.it/yarp/
• Missionlab http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/resea rch/MissionLab/
• ORCA http://orca-robotics.sourceforge.net/
• GenoM http://softs.laas.fr/openrobots/tools/genom.php
• ROLE http://wurde.sourceforge.net/

• Player/Stage http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
• RobotFlow (also check out Flowdesigner and MARIE) http://robotflow.sourceforge.net/
• CARMEN http://carmen.sourceforge.net/
• ADE http://ade.sourceforge.net/
• MIRO http://smart.informatik.uni-ulm.de/MIRO/
• ARIA http://robots.mobilerobots.com/
• YARP http://eris.liralab.it/yarp/
• Missionlab http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/resea rch/MissionLab/
• ORCA http://orca-robotics.sourceforge.net/
• GenoM http://softs.laas.fr/openrobots/tools/genom.php
• ROLE http://wurde.sourceforge.net/

• Player/Stage http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
• RobotFlow (also check out Flowdesigner and MARIE) http://robotflow.sourceforge.net/
• CARMEN http://carmen.sourceforge.net/
• ADE http://ade.sourceforge.net/
• MIRO http://smart.informatik.uni-ulm.de/MIRO/
• ARIA http://robots.mobilerobots.com/
• YARP http://eris.liralab.it/yarp/
• Missionlab http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/resea rch/MissionLab/
• ORCA http://orca-robotics.sourceforge.net/
• GenoM http://softs.laas.fr/openrobots/tools/genom.php
• ROLE http://wurde.sourceforge.net/

It was on a previous /. password discussion that I heard about KeePass.

I have started using it to keep all my web passwords and a few router passwords.
It has a built in random password generator. The combination makes it easy to
have every password hard to guess, different, and not have me forget it.

It reduces, for me the problem to having one easy to remember password on the file
itself and to maintain physical security on the file itself.
Someone could get access to the file, but they would have to be up to the task
of cracking it. That is better security than a sticky note.

1) As far as I can tell, Player/Stage/Gazebo is limited to flat earth. (MSRS is not, arbitrary terrain)

Yes it does. First two hits when you google "gazebo terrain".

2) Part of the .NET framework there is a wealth of functionality: mathematics functions, quaternions, etc.

2b) Loss of portability to other operating systems.
This is not something to be overlooked, given the prevalence of Linux for headless embedded devices (i.e. robots). If you like object-oriented development, Player has bindings for C++, Java, Ruby, and Python.

Especially when you are simulating discrete objects. The ability to have TableObject *table and Robot *robot, instead of a bunch of c-calls, is a blessing and speeds up your development time.

Well, if you want to argue the simulator sucks, then I won't necessarily disagree with you. That's not the interface a robot *user* would be dealing with however, only the creator of a custom robot. A C++ interface for the robot "driver" would be nice, but I can understand the portability reasons for choosing plain C. In my graduate-level course on physical simulation, I did use C++ for my simulator. I don't think it was a huge advantage however, since everything was implemented as a large system of ODEs anyway, and the object oriented view was just translating to and from that (following the Baraff/Witkin approach).

(I know, this is my day job)

Guess what my day job is?

This is also why a lot of people choose DirectX over OpenGL.

It seems to me that the only people who prefer DirectX are game programmers. Scientific/visualization/engineering apps are still largely OpenGL. This is partly due to inertia, of course, but I'm sure they appreciate the portability too, since important scientific and engineering apps tend to work on more than one OS.

Just recently, support for Python's connection to MySQL, "MySQLdb", stopped working on Windows. See this discussion in the MySQLdb help forum on SourceForge.

Unlike Perl and PHP, the standard Python distribution doesn't support MySQL. There's a third-party add-on on SourceForge for that. It has one developer, and he's not interested in maintaining the Windows version. The Python 2.5 update apparently broke the Windows build.

Some help is being provided by a World of Warcraft guild, which has managed to build MySQLdb for Windows. But that hasn't been tested by anyone else.

Also, although the current MySQL understands Unicode, and the current Python understands Unicode, the MySQLdb module in the middle is reported to crash on Unicode.

I'd thought something as basic as a database connection for a language used primarily on web servers would be a solved problem, but for Python, it's not.

Just recently, support for Python's connection to MySQL, "MySQLdb", stopped working on Windows. See this discussion in the MySQLdb help forum on SourceForge.

Unlike Perl and PHP, the standard Python distribution doesn't support MySQL. There's a third-party add-on on SourceForge for that. It has one developer, and he's not interested in maintaining the Windows version. The Python 2.5 update apparently broke the Windows build.

Some help is being provided by a World of Warcraft guild, which has managed to build MySQLdb for Windows. But that hasn't been tested by anyone else.

Also, although the current MySQL understands Unicode, and the current Python understands Unicode, the MySQLdb module in the middle is reported to crash on Unicode.

I'd thought something as basic as a database connection for a language used primarily on web servers would be a solved problem, but for Python, it's not.

Date: 2002-01-11 15:48
Summary: Player/Stage 1.1 released

It may be a little off topic, but it seems worthwhile to plug to a nice GPL'd robotics package which runs on *nix, has built in simulators for 2D and 3D, and supports a lot of COTS robots (including Roombas):

Player/Stage: http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/

Probably not exactly the same target audience as MS's SDK, but we're all geeks, here, right?

Rossum: http://rossum.sourceforge.net/, Lejos: http://lejos.sourceforge.net/, and many others.

Personally the thought of little Redmondiods running around BSODing is very disturbing.

Rossum: http://rossum.sourceforge.net/, Lejos: http://lejos.sourceforge.net/, and many others.

Personally the thought of little Redmondiods running around BSODing is very disturbing.

The license for the software is $399, and the 'standard' Pioneer P3DX robot that's made for home use is $40,000.

[A]s I look at the trends that are now starting to converge, I can envision a future in which robotic devices will become a nearly ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives,' Gates writes in the January issue of Scientific American.

One could get around this problem simply by restricting the effects of the overrides to a subset of classes. For instance, one could restrict it to a certain namespace, or a certain application domain. I should point out that the JVM-based language Nice allows one to override existing methods without incompatibility issues with standard class files, so it's quite possible to have the functionality described without compromising security.

According to the xoft decoder hosted on Sourceforge, decoding that results in gibberish. So no, I cannot dig it.

I really hate responding to shadows, but here goes:

The only reason such tools are deemed necessary for Java, C and C++ apps is because those languages just aren't as suited for static analysis as most functional languages.

There's a list of warnings that FindBugs outputs. If you want to claim that static analysis is unnecessary for Haskell or OCaml, then go over the list and say why. It's not enough to just claim by fiat that your favorite language doesn't have that problem and then tell "Blub" to go master it.

I've seen this before....http://netreg.sourceforge.net/

My university uses a custom netreg implementation that checks for patches and antivirus before it lets you on the network. Sounds a lot like this. I love innovation.

The JVM isn't written in Java.

Which one? There is not just one JVM. There are JVMs that ARE written in Java, such as this http://joeq.sourceforge.net/

However, there is a good reason why most JVMs aren't written in Java - the highest performance Java implementations use run-time optimisations from within a JVM. So you would need a JVM to run the Java which would implement the JVM - which is recursive. You need to bootstrap things somehow.

Maybe not, but it sounds like it will render obsolete most computers developed before the past 5 years. Nothing before Windows 2000 is compatible with the new version of Gecko? It sounds like something is wrong with that.

around is qalabs, see example report below

http://qalab.sourceforge.net/multiproject/maven2-q alab-plugin/qalab/index.html

aggregates reports from Checkstyle,Pmd,findbugs & cobertura and creates trend reports over time.

Also has an excellent maven plugin :)

One more example report : http://edemocrazy.sourceforge.net/qalab/index.html

around is qalabs, see example report below

http://qalab.sourceforge.net/multiproject/maven2-q alab-plugin/qalab/index.html

aggregates reports from Checkstyle,Pmd,findbugs & cobertura and creates trend reports over time.

Also has an excellent maven plugin :)

One more example report : http://edemocrazy.sourceforge.net/qalab/index.html

Frameworks help decouple a lot of things. For example, instead of using M$ 'Atlas' Ajax framework which is not only a bugger to use but introduces a lot of unnecessary coupling, I use Anthem.NET. It takes the existing ASP.NET form tags and extends them. This produces 3 net effects: 1) I don't have to do the crap load of mundane javascript coding (Anthem.Net takes care of that), 2) Should javascript functionality be disabled on the client, the form objects revert back to their regular POST behavior (because of inheritance), and 3) Should I wish to strip out my AJAX functionality there are a lot less dependencies in my code.

If you go the Atlas route, you're looking for a load of trouble in any of those three scenarios.

Face recognition is okay, but to really do augmented reality well you need to first figure out the geometry of the whole scene. Hardware is just getting fast enough to do that in real time, but portable hardware that can do it is still a few years away. For example, OpenVIDIA is fast enough to track 1000 features in real time, but requires a high-end SLI setup to do it (at least, if I remember the benchmark correctly -- I can't find it again).

If you are using Tapestry, depending on Tapestry's version it either has AJAX functionality built-in (v4.1) or available through add-on components (e.g. Tacos)

Remember all those free hosting services? Where are they now?

Besides, web hosting is so cheap today. For under $10/month, you can have a full web site on a good commercial hosting service. You can use CGI, Java, Perl, Python, MySQL, and AJAX. You get a gigabyte of disk space and no limit on traffic.

Further down the food chain, there's 50megs.com, at $2.00/month. Free if you're willing to accept ads. Less space and fewer features.

If you don't want the bother of running a web site, there's Myspace and its clones. Geocities is still around, although now owned by Yahoo.

If you want to store public domain material of lasting value that others might someday need, you can get a free Internet Archive account and upload it there. They have petabytes of disk space. If you have software source, there's SourceForge.

So who needs another free hosting service?

You left out dosemu (the earliest hardware virtualization, using the V86 mode of all 386-compatible processors - but also supporting 32-bit DPMI applications) and DOSBox (which is based on bochs). Also Cooperative Linux for running a Linux system under other OSes, such as Windows.

Why is this comment rated informative ?
For thoses who are interested, look at this page :
http://kvm.sourceforge.net/faq.html

It is the same thing, but it is actually readable.

According to http://kvm.sourceforge.net/faq.html is will support VMWare images and it does run win32.

Now turn that kernel into a BIOS http://linuxbios.org/Welcome_to_LinuxBIOS and you will be able to use the same images for all your machines.

Xen
VMWare
linux-vserver
UML
OpenVZ
Plex86
Qemu
Bochs
lhype

and now

KVM

http://linuxvirtualization.com/ has some good linux to recent announcements regarding virtualisation software on Linux.

Are there any more?

Xen
VMWare
linux-vserver
UML
OpenVZ
Plex86
Qemu
Bochs
lhype

and now

KVM

http://linuxvirtualization.com/ has some good linux to recent announcements regarding virtualisation software on Linux.

Are there any more?

Xen
VMWare
linux-vserver
UML
OpenVZ
Plex86
Qemu
Bochs
lhype

and now

KVM

http://linuxvirtualization.com/ has some good linux to recent announcements regarding virtualisation software on Linux.

Are there any more?

Xen
VMWare
linux-vserver
UML
OpenVZ
Plex86
Qemu
Bochs
lhype

and now

KVM

http://linuxvirtualization.com/ has some good linux to recent announcements regarding virtualisation software on Linux.

Are there any more?

.. and don't confuse it with User Mode Linux either.

Not first post, but at least I can be the first not to kvetch about them not integrating a physical object with a piece of software. -sigh-

The article talks about a news article mistakenly stating it was for Intel processors only. I imagine it said that because the official site says it's for Intel only. http://kvm.sourceforge.net/howto.html

It does also say elsewhere on the site http://kvm.sourceforge.net/faq.html that it's for certain AMDs also.

It claims it can run 32-bit windows inside the virtualization. Does this mean Windows can directly access the hardware, and provide true 3D support and such? Or is it simply another hardware emulator with all the associated problems? Too bad 'windows guest' installation is broken at the moment.

Not first post, but at least I can be the first not to kvetch about them not integrating a physical object with a piece of software. -sigh-

The article talks about a news article mistakenly stating it was for Intel processors only. I imagine it said that because the official site says it's for Intel only. http://kvm.sourceforge.net/howto.html

It does also say elsewhere on the site http://kvm.sourceforge.net/faq.html that it's for certain AMDs also.

It claims it can run 32-bit windows inside the virtualization. Does this mean Windows can directly access the hardware, and provide true 3D support and such? Or is it simply another hardware emulator with all the associated problems? Too bad 'windows guest' installation is broken at the moment.

GBA is the sweet spot

I've been sporadically working on a remake/sequel/whatever to Darklands in my spare time. I'll have a few weeks over the holidays to continue. The amount of time required for research alone is overwhelming, even with access to a university library and resources like JSTOR. There's so much that goes into creating an accurate setting. My goals include a fully simulated world (trade/economy, wars, city growth, communication, etc.), realistic combat, and mythologically-accurate alchemy. It's a massive project that I wish I had time for. My first milestone is just a simple one-on-one mêlée combat in much the same style as the original Darklands combat view. I'm pretty close to this; the code in SVN displays a plane with a few models that can be selected (left-click) and told to walk around (right-click on plane). It needs a GUI display and a combat backend.

Work on the game engine itself has been difficult because PyOgre sort of died, so I switched to a combination of C++ and Python, with only the parts I need exposed via Boost.Python. Anyway, I hope to get a few people re-interested once I've gotten something playable. I don't know what I'm going to do about artwork. The Darklands Yahoo group is the best (and only) DL community around, and probably worth subscribing to for the occasional interesting post. Look for posts by Ron Losey, who has real-life experience in fighting with swords and knives, and the injuries that result.

dvdisaster does the same thing basically but is easier if you intend on making error correction codes for entire discs.

If all you want is to run LISP with Java's speed, JDK 1.6 doesn't really change anything for you. There have been LISP implemntations (here are a couple of options) for some time now.

What JSR-223 means is that it's now possible to integrate scripting languages into Java programs without having to use a project-specific API. As far as I can tell, the only LISP(ish) implementation that supports JSR-223 is SISC. This means that you can write your Java in such a way that you can very simply switch scripting language or framework without much modification to your Java code. It also means there is a standard way for scripting languages to interact with a running Java program. This is nice for anyone who wants to write a hybrid application where some parts naturally lend themselves to being implemented in Java and some parts don't.

I recently graduated from school with a CS degree, and several of my classes were very theoretical in nature. I remember first time I saw them, I thought console emulators were really cool. I have no idea how someone would begin writing one.

clc
  lda #2
  adc #2

But as I read slashdot, and other tech sites / articles, and realize for some of the software being written nowadays, I would have absolutely NO IDEA how to even begin writing it.

Fear not your own ignorance. Only fear your acceptance of it. I am confident that if I wanted to build an emulator I could. I personally find other things more interesting but you just have to buckle down and really pick it apart and look for answers. As I said above, these emulators might have proprietary reverse engineering so these backwards black boxes might not be the best place to start as you may be met with frustration. On top of that, the newer consoles are now fighting a war & implementing encryption scheme which just makes the emulator all that more complicated. Why don't you pick a project like Firefox? Get the source, find out what the common developing environment is and step through the code when you visit a page. That's where it all starts.

Most importantly, you don't need to do everything from the ground up. It helps to know everything that's going on below the abstractions you sit upon but you don't need to think about that every time you write code. Learn to use libraries & frameworks. To quote Salvador Dali: "Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." I couldn't start writing an emulater either. But if I looked at the source trees and structures of the more popular ones out there, I'm damn sure I could figure it out. That confidence I have in myself is infallible and that's important to me. Sorry to sound like Dr. Phil but you asked for my opinion.

There are different tricks to different applications. Some are more simple than others. In my opinion, the less tricks you need to get started in a language, the better. Because we're not all world class magicians (although every language has some players that could rock your world in said language). This is why Java, while not as efficient as C, is probably taught to you first. There are very few tricks one needs to know in Java. But you know what? Java is still quite useful. Those responsible for implementing it did a decent job and now the web service programmer needs to know very little about them because configuring them has been abstracted and made easier by many UI & IDE tools out there. But web services are a very practical and widely accepted concept out there today. In fact, pay the bills by writing some very inane web se

Example.

I would like to recommend Y(aho)o!Sucker, to those of you who also think that Yahoo! mail sucks big time, but can't change to Gmail because of the lock-in Yahoo! is shamelessly practicing (no free email forwarding or POP access).

Also they get 500 million unique users a day on the world's most popular web site.

http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/

YES.

And I thought ezquake was the only game you would ever need? It's available for Windows, OS X and Linux.

I wonder why I never see the JVM start up when I compile with javac.

Because you aren't paying attention. Javac is in the package com.sun.tools, see documentation here.

When you're done reading, download jikes and use that instead.

http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/

The 'big media' conglomerates have always been geriatric/glacial in their movements into new technology.

I'm thinking this is worthy of note on just how fast they are um... talking about this. They probably see it as targeting a key demographic (the teenager - young adult crowd), which it does and would.

*deep breath* The reason, I'm guessing, for the seemingly slow movement would be the decision makers are older, fiscal conservatives who are fearful of new technology and systems/processes that transcend general media broadcast methods.

I had to chuckle over "a Web video player that could play clips". TFA doesn't go into enough detail, but it leads one to assume that it is a web client similar to what we have been using for YouTube. (May the Master Control Program derez it softly into oblivion.)

However, in the context, the hypothetical player could be either a physical web-appliance (doubtful) or a program that runs on a PC with web connectivity (similar to Media Player Classic).

I would imagine that they want complete control over the project and will want a proprietary codec/format that they can load with DRM. Given their feelings (and their lawyer's) on the subject, this is fairly obvious. If this were not the case, I'd imagine they would use Apple Quicktime.

It is also obvious that Walt Disney wouldn't want to join in on this just yet. They are berserk about their intellectual property rights.

Given their track record, I'm slightly impressed. I think they will mess it up by being over-protective of their rights by having some snake-oil salesman tell them what they want to hear, but I'm still (mildly) impressed.

Seriously, http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/ Automate your home. I'll agree more with the above poster though, rent it out.