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TCP/IP Enabled Lego Brick
An anonymous reader submits: "Yesterday, Olaf Christ announced that he has the world's first TCP/IP-enabled Lego brick that can be used as a web server. Imagine the possibilities of connecting your collection of Lego Mindstorms to the Internet! He has ported the extremely small uIP TCP/IP stack to the Lego Mindstorms platform. uIP has also been used to run a Commodore 64 as a web server, and is ported to the 8-bit Ataris and laptop keyboard microcontrollers."
Ever since I added TCP/IP remote control capabilities to my Mindstorms web-cam robot, it's been trying to crawl up the intern's skirt...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
mirror the poor brick before you slashdot it.
[o]_O
imagine the possibilites....and all the new worms on the way :)
Macs as a fetish property
Next thing you know they are going to gain sentinence and then we'll be stepping on them barefoot all the time.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
This TCPIP stack has severe problems with overflow. I am working on limiting code to fix the problem. More info and a link to follow in a later post.
Do you want to remove linux?
They've always said there was supposed to be a second coming. At least this time, he's a GEEK like us :)
LEGO my webserver!
This looks kind of shady. I could go into a newsgroup and post that I had done, well... anything, and then come here and submit the story as an anonymous coward?
I thought someone validated these stories before posting them.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
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We killed it. The first lego block to take a step into the grand open world of the web, and its slashdotted beyond any sense of hope.
"Its worse than that, he's dead Jim!"
I'm not impressed.
Yesterday, Olaf Christ announced that he has the world's first TCP/IP-enabled Lego brick that can be used as a web server. Imagine the possibilities of connecting your collection of Lego Mindstorms to the Internet!
I would tend to think that if Christ's as powerful as everyone says he is, he would've done this years ago.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
--Chag
a beowu^H^H^H^H^Hlego city of these!!!
Have you no shame?
What happens when one of the bricks gets the Slashdot Effect? I forsee smoldering Lego structures and very frightened toddlers.
Yeah, so it's really cool that he was able to port a TCP/IP stack to the Mindstorms RCX. But isn't this just a novelty act?
*****
There are many people in this country who, through no fault of their own, are sane.
Maybe there should also be little sysadmin lego-people?
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
With IPv4 address space getting tighter every day, why not develop a small IPv6 stack so we can (at last) deploy thousands of gadgets without worrying about numbers and without resorting to ugly, nasty NATs?
Hope he's not using that thing as his webserver though...
;-)
Here's the text for those of you who reach a "server overload" message.
Subject:
true tcp/ip on the RCX
From:
"Olaf"
Olaf Christ
Newsgroups:
lugnet.robotics.rcx.legos
Date:
Mon, 28 Jan 2002 20:16:29 GMT
View Raw
Message
I ve got the very first and only tcp/ip enabled RCX in my room, cool, eh ?
I will make a webpage at the end of the week to make the very first
(rudimentary, but working) version available to the public.
Right now, the tcp/ip stack is compiled into the kernel and the stack calls
the usercode itself.
The code to pass the incoming packets to the stack and to send packets to the
pc is currently running as a simple userprogram. (*.lx).
On the pc the lnpd runs a program that acts as a gateway between the tower
and the pc.
This gateway passes the packets coming from the tower to e.g. 192.168.0.1
and sends packets from 192.168.0.1 to the rcx.
Right now the only thing you can do is pinging the RCX.
But writing e.g. a very small webserver shouldnt be that big a deal
Because, lnp is still alive i had to disable the sound support to free some
RAM.
Right now i got approx. 3 KB RAM left, still enough to do a lot of useful
stuff.
I think, the best way to fully integrate the tcp/ip-stack into the
Legos-kernel would be replacing lnp by a tiny slip-driver.
On the pc we could get rid of the lnpd.
Olaf Christ
If only it was on the internet, instead of that guy's local network, it could also be the first lego brick to get slashdotted!
...image the inevitable frustration forthcoming when your little brother brings down your high-traffic portal to build a dinosaur!
Oooh, imagine a beowulf cluster of those things. ;)
I'm still getting over my guilt complex about clicking the link to the Lisa web server and contributing to that poor girl's painful demise, and now you tempt me with an even meeker, treasured childhood toy? These poor little things don't deserve to be slashdotted. Oh the humanity!
Lego was nothing but red, square, identical blocks. You could connect them together to build larger red, square blocks. That's the real man's Lego, damnit!
sic transit gloria mundi
Imagine the possibilities of connecting your collection of Lego Mindstorms to the Internet!
That would be awesome! You could be the Biggest... Dork... EVER!
--
You're reading Managed Agreement.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!!!
slashdotted after 5 posts.
So what is next? a tcp/ip enabled condom? .plan might show up.
Just don't try to finger it.
A nasty
isn't there enough crap connected via IP at the moment
Hook your Lego Mindstorm box up to the internet, attach a small LCD screen, and program it to check autopr0n periodically. Then it could drive around and find you to alert you to freshly-posted pr0n! YES!
Learn to Play Go
Build whatever computer I want out of LEGOs !! yippeeeeeeee
Bob: "Check out the new server cluster we got"
John: "uh... it's a big lego model of natalie portman"
Oh well.
Imagine a beowulf cluster that G.I. Joe and Barbie could live in!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A beowulf cluster of these?
How about a beowulf cluster of these shaped like an X-Wing?
I don't know about ya'll but I got a downed server. Another case of too much traffic from slashdot.
Server temporarily unavailable due to heavy load.
Please try again in a few minutes.
Bill, son, that's very nice, but why do all of your lego blocks spell out 1 0WNZ J00?
all ready built in
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Imagine a beowolf cluster of these ;9
I will bend your mind with my spoon
Taco's mom's ass has its own ZIP code.
Net-enabled lego-blocks, communicatng with each other... this is exactly how SkyNet got its start.
Sure, it starts with cute rocketships, next thing you know there'll be Hunter-Killer 'bots the size of houses, made entirely of lego.
To think that the end of humanity (until John Connor of course) should come out of Denmark...
uIP has also been used to run a Commodore 64 as a web server
I suggest he upgrade that server.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
However, it does make "assembling a cluster" have a whole new meaning.
"I'm a man... But I can change... If I have to... I guess..." -- the man's prayer, Red Green Show
Hahaha! Your posts always make me laugh out loud. You must be the best damn troll on slashdot. Keep on rocking the house! :D
They've already got this thing running! .. even has an LCD output screen!
1 60/index.html
http://www.applefritter.com/compubrick/compubrick
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
That's all I need. Getting spam saying, "You're running low on red bricks! Click here to order more below wholesale!" :-D
Now someone can *r00t* my lego's and command them to take over my home?!?!
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
In one submission, slashdot managed to /. all the major or high-profile uTCP/IP stack-powered web servers on the internet... I hope the C64 uServer was overclocked to a wh00ping 8mhz to handle all the requests :)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
'nuff said
Cheers
Stor
a Beowulf cluster of thes :)
He must be using his lego web server to serve up the news link site. Got timed out!
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
>has also been used to run a Commodore 64 as a web server
Come on folks, if we can't slashdot this, we aren't really trying.
Pretty soon all those lego servers will be serving this.
Very Good stuff. I've used mine to control my web cam for a while now. Hopefully others will build off of this :)
because it's necessary to say:
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these things. It would be like the cities I built...
and then my mom vacuumed up.
"It has always been this way and it won't change, god bless the fucked up USA" The Briefs
Wasn't Yellow Dog's Brique first? No, waitaminute... Nevermind. :)
Johnny are you looking at porn agian... no mom im playing with my legos
FOAD
Seriously though...
:D
I also love the fact that I'll be able to sell my DreamCast Broadband adapter to some dude who wants to run a DC server.
LEGO Mindstorms is so extremely cool. My girlfriend's little brother got it last x-mas and I was playing with it a lot more than him. :-) And this is even better, now you can ping your little robot and most likely you'll be able to control it remotely over the internet. DAMN, I wish I was ten years younger... or perhaps this is the best time to get some kids!? Honeeey!!
Ciryon
Very cool! Now what I want, is someone to port this wee tcp/ip stack to the Ti85, so that I can play z-tetris against my brother in Texas!! (of course, z-tetris would have to be updated as well...)
Hmmm, makes me wonder then if any other usefull Internet apps would work on the thing...the Z80 is faster than a C64, but the calc has only half the ram (32k)...
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these! In the form of a house! Watch out VA!!
Reminds me of something:
Karma: Ran over your dogma.
I have to be a party-pooper, but doesn't this violate the DMCA ? and to my knowledge, Lego doesn't much like people who rev-engineer their brick.
From his post:
Right now i got approx. 3 KB RAM left, still enough to do a lot of useful
stuff.
Oh, lordie, if every programmer had that kind of attitude...
i want a baewolf cluster of these... now i actually have a valid reason (since i'm a computer professional and all) to go buy me some legos. me 1 : wife 0. thank god. oh wait, that's a different christ.
I find that skor bars and dr. pepper make a magical comination. I can't explain it.
Veggie burger, french fries, and a peanut butter twix. Thanks for asking.
really needs to read up on this ...
And discover the excitement of something like this brings and the desire for people to go out and buy the product.
And in turn read up on how people feel very negative towards lawsuits and threats for even thinking of making modifications to there products.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Mindstorms is a great start - now all we need is the same technology embedded in Nerf guns, and I've finally got an excuse for ALL the toys on my desk at work :)
A sneak-preview of the new server-racks.
For some reason I just imagined the future breed of software architects to talk about scalability of systems build from Lego bricks:
-Our system is designed with scalability in mind, we use multitier software. Once the software is pushed to the limit, the scalability problems will be resolved in the hardware level. We will simply add more of these Lego blocks to our servers and there will be no problem.
In related news, a large army of Robots build from lego pieces is taking over Manhatten. These robots are looting every toy store in the area and are using more Lego systems to build more robots.
You can't handle the truth.
Heh, imagine if as a kid you weren't just building a race car or a fishing boat. Soon it'll be time for your 6 year-old to make his first WAN :)
NAT and ipmasq are the only reasons we haven't run out of IP address space yet...
Not only are we going to brutaly slashdot a lego, but the C64 is going to be killed in the crossfire as well. Have you people no shame? It is a web-server with the processing power of your watch on a warm day...
All right... someone else noticed that great ad campaign. Second on the list of my all time favorites to the line they used when they ported Internet Explorer to Solaris: Microsoft brings the Web to UNIX.
And ./ a C=64 ? Bah...
If we could get Eric Harshbarger to build the Beowulf cluster it would rock. Either the Linux Penguin, R2D2, or the Desk are a few of the best.
As a fellow Mindstorms owner, this is incredibly interesting. I'm not that great of a builder myself - not compared with some of the folks I've seen on the 'net - but I'm looking into ways right now to get multiple bricks (RCX's) to communicate with each other.
Now with the ability to pass TCP/IP traffic back and forth, that opens up even greater avenues of possibility for device communication. Not only can you create software that will allow you (or someone over the web) to interact with the devices directly, it's now easier to get the RCX's to interact with other devices. One great example would be to have a brick as a part of a security system. How about intergrating it with an X10 system? Turn your robot on with the flick of a wall switch.
This just isn't a case of "let's port Apache to a Lego RCX brick!" The fact that these things are the brains of such a flexible system, with a wide variety of sensors, really opens up a great deal of possibility. More importantly, it allows for even more creativity and learning. After all, that's what these devices were made for, right?
--
Welcome to the land of the easily amused...
I guess microsoft has no hope of making any lego toys unless lego starts makin ctrl alt and delete bricks hehe
The concept of adding self-contained "bricks" of hardware/software to build functionality in a system of devices sounds a lot like the goals of Sun's Jini project, not necessarily limited to traditional computing applications though.
take your sig and shove it
Enough crap connected to the net?
Ok, I'll go buy a Aibo and hack it so you can serve up web page from where you can tell him to sleep, pee, etc.
That would be usefull-ess
First Lisa, now Lego.
No need to buy 42U racks for a couple thousand $. Just snap together and go!
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Microsoft responding to this new market has announced an IIS enabled lego brick. The IIS Lego Brick mesures 8"x5"x1", features a special edition of WinXP for Lego, and is fully .net enabled.
It's estimated reatil price is going to be $688.95 and will be available q3 of this year.
Inside sources at Microsoft reveailed a new "bumb" schema for "MSLego(tm)" that adds new "features," but may make it incompatable with industry standard Lego "bumps."
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
what about those people who have PC Case mods made out of lego's!
One Down Three to Go (Meatmen)
Chapman shot him dead-
Plugged him in the head.
No more slope-eyed wife to fuck.
No more 'squito bites to suck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck the Beatles!
Smelly, hairy old people.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck the Beatles
Smelly, hairy old people.
Lennon's dead, hip-hip hooray!
All his dues he now must pay.
George, Paul, Ringo-any day-
Will be dead we all must pray.
CHORUS
A paunched-out hippie fart he was.
A pot smoking scumbag,
Bespectacled old scuz.
His panface gook'n fuck so me stud;
Insurance money all covered in blood.
CHORUS
One year later
They paid their respects,
Prayed for his soul,
Then went home and had sex.
Hipocrites, all of them-
The worst kind of drugged-out phlegm
Not the Christ. Just His pesky little brother.
That would be Bob, right?
Hmmm. I have an Apple //gs sitting in my basement that has a 4Mb memory card, 40Mb HD and a 7Mhz accelerator card (and the old Orca C compilers). This might be an interesting project for it...
Does anyone else think Olaf Christ is the coolest name in the history of surnames?
Sigh. Stupid boring-ass "Ryan Bruels", yeesh. I'm changing my name.
Olaf
"All your base are belong to this file I send in order to have your advice."
The /. trolls will have a field day. We've actually hit a point in technology where you could make a Beowulf cluster in the shape of a full-sized replica of Natalie Portman.
Couldn't that be a very easy methode for programming ? Most humans can understand things they can touch much faster than abstract things like a source code file.
Wouldn't building your programm by putting together some lego bricks, be something that could make programming understandable for many people ?
Jan
... all stuck together.
I think this is how the borg was created...
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
I know what you mean, I'm really groovin' on this Open Sources Technology!! I mean, I've been installing Linux 7.0 at work and It's really cool. With Open Sources I like to have the C+ code right on my home machine. I can look at it and pretend I am programming it. I sent some patches to to Linux, but he forget to get back to me.
cpeterso
the future of information management in the u.s. intelligence community
frederick thomas martin
national security agency
usa
abstract
this paper will describe the future of information management within the various organizations and agencies that collectively are known as the us intelligence community, including the cia, nsa, dia, and the now declassified nro. the intelligence community of the us government recently confirmed that its budget -- kept secret as classified information in all 50 previous years since its inception -- totaled $26.6 billion dollars last year. because most of these funds are spent on providing information, the central focus of this paper will address what the us intelligence community believes to be the "information revolution" of the third millennium. this paper will provide an explanation of the possible role and impact that the information technology management reform act (itmra), passed by congress in august 1996, will have on the future of information within the intelligence community and how that relates to internet and intranet working professionals. it will describe the transition to web-centric electronic publishing of our nation's intelligence reports, known as "finished intelligence," into an integrated information space. describing the future, this paper will explore the concept of a more "agile" intelligence enterprise, giving us insight into how the us intelligence community plans to achieve its goal of an electronically networked environment for the production and exchange of intelligence, a goal deemed absolutely essential to national security in the 21st century.
perhaps the greatest paradigm shift in modern intelligence production is the transition to web-centric, electronic publishing of our nation's intelligence reports. as a result, there is much effort now being devoted within the government to addressing a number of electronic publishing concerns. sharing the results of several successful projects, this paper will take a look at a number of these concerns, including the issue of implementing "push" technology and the debate in many enterprises today over the appropriate roles for standards such as sgml and the role of new emerging standards such as xml. examples will include specific applications taken from the national security agency, the office of naval intelligence, the national imagery and mapping agency, and the joint intelligence center, pacific. these success stories have direct application to the organization or business today faced with the production and distribution of large volumes of documents, which describes virtually all businesses today!
the paper will also provide us with a look into the future: how does the us intelligence community plan to implement all of the information management improvements that it is working so hard on? we can begin to answer this with an examination of the underlying carriage to all of the information management improvements of the us intelligence community and a glimpse at the real future of the world of intelligence: the concept of "virtual intelligence." what will the world of virtual intelligence really look like?
to answer this, we will examine the idea of a more "agile" intelligence enterprise, as envisioned by dr. ruth david, the current cia deputy director for science and technology. this paper will explain that vision, including the perceived problems, security issues, and management challenges. the "agile" intelligence enterprise concept, combined with architectural, security, and other standards applied to the existing and planned telecommunications infrastructure, represents the primary components of one of the us intelligence community's most important goals.
contents
1. introduction
2. the us intelligence community: ultimate information producers
2.1 the agencies
2.2 the mission
2.3 the cost
3. information management challenges
4. the solution: an intranet for the intelligence community
4.1 what is intelink?
4.2 why is intelink the answer?
4.3 examples of organizational implementations of intelink
4.3.1 office of naval intelligence
4.3.2 joint intelligence center, pacific (jicpac)
5. the future world of intelligence: "virtual intelligence"
5.1 what is agility?
5.2 why is agility necessary?
5.3 what is an agile intelligence enterprise?
6. conclusion: challenge for the intelligence community
1. introduction
in the united states, the production of intelligence is a multi-billion-dollar effort that is vital to the country's security and prosperity, and arguably, that of the free world as well. the various organizations that are collectively known as the us intelligence community are in the process of tremendous cultural and technological change as the third millennium approaches. with technology changes, declining resources, an explosion of information, and a completely different set of geopolitical priorities, the us intelligence community must find smarter ways to manage its most critical resource: information. this paper addresses the future of information management within the intelligence community and describes how they plan to become flexible, adaptive, and more "agile" as an enterprise. it describes their development and implementation of "intelink," an intranet that provides electronic publishing and dissemination of their finished intelligence as well as a multi-security-level collaborative environment. two organizations with operational prototypes are cited to demonstrate the progress that is being made to become more "agile." lastly, the paper describes the transition to an "agile intelligence enterprise," where "virtual teams" collaborate online and all data becomes a shared asset as part of an enterprise-wide "information space."
2. the us intelligence community: ultimate information producers
the leaders of civil and military organizations have always desired to have information that would forewarn them of danger, reduce uncertainty in the decision-making process, and otherwise prepare them for whatever future critical decisions they may face. the practice of intelligence can be defined as the sum of efforts revuired to achieve the fundamental needs of these leaders and decision-makers. the practice of intelligence involves tedious collection, interpretation, analysis, and reporting of information; and like so many business processes today, it also must grapple simultaneously with removing or at least reducing the various problems and barriers encountered. most people think of intelligence activities as occurring among foreign nations, powers, or other organizations (although "industrial espionage" involves the practice of intelligence among commercial, nongovernment entities) to determine various activities, plans, and even capabilities of those involved. but regardless of the "flavor" of intelligence, much of it comes down to the same set of activities that are so important to businesses today: making sense out of a deluge of information.
in today's world, the practice of intelligence is a key activity of the us government; indeed, it is vital to all governments, large and small, with an actual or perceived role on the international stage. every single day, the various components of the us intelligence community provide crucial information to those who manage our nation's strategic interests. generally, the "revuirements" of intelligence include the following:
what are an adversary's intentions?
what are his capabilities?
what are his limitations?
what are his vulnerabilities?
collectively, the business of intelligence is really about information: gathering, processing, analysis, reporting, and archiving for potential future analysis or reporting. the amount of information collected and processed is staggering and is measured in trillions of bytes.
2.1 the agencies
the us intelligence community is a coordinated network of thirteen primary agencies whose customers are a number of civilian and military organizations that work together to support efforts to ensure and maintain the security of the united states and its allies. this task is accomplished through the collection, analysis, and reporting of huge volumes of information that keep the president, cabinet members, members of congress, and other senior government decision makers informed. intelligence has become a vital element in every important activity of the us government. the thirteen primary components are
large agencies
1.central intelligence agency
coordinates all intelligence from all sources 2. national security agency
produces signals intelligence from both space-based and land-based collectors, as well as ensures the security of this nation's own information 3. defense intelligence agency
analyzes military targets 4. national reconnaissance office
builds and manages intelligence satellites 5. national imagery and mapping agency
performs military mapping and satellite photo interpretation
military intelligence
6. army intelligence
7. naval intelligence
8. marine corps intelligence
9. air force intelligence
other departments
10. department of state (bureau of intelligence and research)
11. department of energy (office of energy intelligence)
12. department of the treasury (office of intelligence support)
13. federal bureau of investigation
in addition to the thirteen primary components above, many people broaden the definition of the "intelligence community" to include the federation of us government organizations and users that have access to the primary intranet that serves the official intelligence community. this federation includes other department of defense civilian and military organizations, the department of justice, the drug enforcement agency (dea), the national aeronautics and space administration (nasa), and many others.
2.2 the mission
in recent years, the lines between various intelligence activities have become less distinct, but the goal has remained unchanged: to support key government decision-makers with the best possible information. in his report to the national performance review in 1996, then director of central intelligence john deutch stated
the united states intelligence effort shall provide the president and the national security council with the necessary information on which to base decisions concerning the conduct and development of foreign, defense, and economic policy and the protection of united states national interests from foreign security threats. specifically, the missions of u.s. intelligence are to:
provide intelligence support to national level policy makers,
provide intelligence support to military planning and operations,
provide intelligence support to law enforcement, and
counter foreign intelligence activities.
for members of the intelligence community, these "missions" refer to ensuring that policymakers and military leaders are provided with the information necessary to make decisions on such matters as
1. warning of impending crises, especially when national interests or the well-being of citizens is threatened;
2. long-term dangers such as the manufacture of chemical or biological weapons;
3. helping to safeguard public security by countering threats from terrorists and drug traffickers;
4. economic security by uncovering foreign efforts to influence international trade; and
5. increasing the effectiveness of us military forces deployed for operations.
2.3 the cost
special "select" committees control congressional oversight for the us intelligence efforts. in the us senate, this is accomplished by the senate select committee on intelligence (ssci), chaired by richard c. shelby of alabama and in the house of representatives by the house permanent select committee on intelligence (hpsci), chaired by representative porter j. goss, a former cia officer. the overall cost of intelligence production to the american public has remained secret as classified information since the inception of the central intelligence agency over 50 years ago. however, the intelligence community of the us government confirmed in the summer of 1997 that its total budget for the previous year was $26.6 billion dollars. this total includes the budgets of the central intelligence agency; the pentagon-run agencies such as the national reconnaissance office, the national security agency, the national imagery and mapping agency, and the defense intelligence agency (dia); and other operations and organizations at the pentagon, state department, and the federal bureau of investigation.
it is interesting to note that behind the primary missions of the national security agency (specifically the "signals intelligence" [sigint or "code breaking" mission] and the information systems security [infosec or "code making" mission]) is the fascinating story of the evolution of automation and information management. from the early code breaking days through the advent of the digital computer, the national security agency and the intelligence community played a critical role in shaping early automation, including mainframe and networking developments. for example, early cryptanalytical research was instrumental in the development of the first large-scale computer and the first solid-state computer, leading to mainframe computers and today's modern systems.
3. information management challenges
as the ultimate information producers, spending billions of dollars annually, the intelligence community has always faced enormous information management challenges in the collection, processing, and dissemination of intelligence. in this ever-changing environment, they needed several things: an architectural framework that allowed for sharing of intelligence data, products, and information across the various intelligence organizations; a methodology for collaboration to facilitate their production; and an improved mechanism for their dissemination electronically. several important factors shaped and intensified these needs, including
1. broadening intelligence dissemination base. the customer set of the us intelligence community revuires a much broader base of intelligence dissemination today and in the foreseeable future. the world is no less dangerous today than it was during the cold war. however, the wide diversity of us intelligence revuirements for the modern warfighter (soldier in the field) today sharply contrasts with the days of the cold war, when there was essentially one adversary, the former soviet union. we once feared a global thermonuclear war that had the potential to destroy most of the planet in a single confrontation. however, today the focus is on a wide variety of potential adversaries and problems that range from the control of weapons of mass destruction and terrorist activities to economic and information warfare. since the end of the cold war, the intelligence mission also has included international law enforcement activities such as drug trafficking.
2. increase in exploitable data/information. a true information explosion has occurred: the amount of information available to intelligence producers continues to increase exponentially. since not all information can be processed, smart tools and methods of sorting and determining which information we can use must be developed.
3. government "cutbacks." downsizing or "rightsizing" has become a way of life in the us government this decade, and the intelligence community is no exception. base closures, consolidations, and decreasing resources in terms of both funds and people continue to have the potential to adversely impact intelligence operations.
4. need for the intelligence community to become more "agile." this is perhaps the single most important factor. the intelligence community must become adaptive, flexible, and more "agile" as an enterprise in order to respond to new and unexpected intelligence situations. they must be able to manage and share all of their information across the entire intelligence commu
To me the most interesting part of the entire story is how well the C64 webserver is holding up, I have seen much larger servers fail under the /. load.
:) (if you know what that is then you can call your self a c64 user :))
AT 5:40 cst (about 30 minutes after story was posted) the site had couted 2002 hits on index page. It is bit slow though need to plug in that mach 5 card
man
No manual entry for
One great example would be to have a brick as a part of a security system. How about intergrating it with an X10 system? Turn your robot on with the flick of a wall switch.
It's already possible thanks to IR. Of course you need PC to read signals from RCX.
TCP/IP Enabled Lego Brick
Makes me immediately think of a generic 4x2x3 (you know the one) lego brick with a Cable Modem, keyboard and monitor attached.
Probably a yellow brick I think.
I believe the Inferno language by Lucent at Bell Labs has been around a year or so at least. There is a package to make the brick show up as a directory structure w/ pseudo files.
More info:
http://plan9.bell-labs.com
http://einstein.ssz.com/hangar18
were the key premise of the Open Source world...
You know, IP on a Lego (hey - I did a funny), Linux on a dreamcast, linux on a fire hydrant, linux on a self-flushing toilet...
Granted, the images are timing out, but I'm still getting the main HTML page back from it.
Seriously, maybe the admins of /. think its funny to have people try and hit sites they know will be slashdotted.
/. ask permission prior to posting an article/link to a site? If not then i'm sure by creating a link to a site with prior knowledge that the site will stall under the weight of the hits could be a potential legal liabilty to OSDN.
I should think with all the resources at OSDN creating a static image with the page in question should be no problem.
Does
While i'm on the soap box, the other MAJOR gripe i have is slashdots search engine,,,HOW hard is it to include the YEAR? Looks like at times one gets a month,day,hour,minute, AM/PM however looks like thats not even consistant, as the deeper one searches, the month gets dropped. I guess this is a function of the postings title.
Yawn
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
This gives me another item to tinker with when it comes to building a CD Changer out of Lego's.
My brother has a small cd-r label, and so does a lot of burning. I've been contemplating how I could make a cd-changer to automate the most boring part of it all, changing cd's, one at a time.
So far I've gotton it mostly figured out, except how to load a new cd from a spindle.
It's either figure out the spindle issue, or find some way to preload cd's for easy swapping.
Now, maybe I can have the cd-changer interact with the burning process. woot! "Hey, do I put in a cd now? NO, we're stuck!" at which point I activate some little lego man to wave his arms. heh.
Computational Madness in a round package.
Because Luke was stupid.
That reminds me of the scence where the single ornament nearly smites the lowly tree.
"Arrggg, I've killed it!"
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
It melts and you get a very cool lego mouse pad
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
I hadn't seen the C64 before, but since its wimpy 38400bps link is slashdotted right now, I mirrored it here.
;)
It's not quite the same, though, seeing as I don't have a C64 to mirror it on
Image how easy it would be to build a beowulf out of these?!?
Zack Zack he's a Beowulf maniac
whoo hoo
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
the meatmen fucking rule!
Mess Stuff Up
...imageine a beowulf cluster of people saying "can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these"?
Mess Stuff Up
Which is when my son will be old enough for me to buy myself some without the wife complaining. I'm looking forward to gigabit wireless ultra-wide-band network communications between Mindstorms bots and my central server.
Maybe I'll be able to use Mindstorms to measure the distance to the moon to the nearest millimetre, or the speed of light.... or I'll just have fun building them and making them hurt eachother. Yeah, that's it... Robot Wars with Mindstorms... who care's about running a stupid lego web server?
would you be meaning "sentience"? oh but i forgot, proper spelling is not an important part of communication
Sentience \Sen"ti*ence\, Sentiency \Sen"ti*en*cy\, n. [See Sentient, Sentence.]
The quality or state of being sentient; esp., the quality or
state of having sensation. --G. H. Lewes
An example of harmonious action between the
intelligence and the sentieny of the mind. --Earle.
WOw, seeing the C64 spit out bytes so slow reminds me of the BBS days. This is almost exactly like 2400 baud.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things?!?!
No, this isn't a joke.. =)
I haven't touched uIP myself, but we're using lwIP (its big brother) in KallistiOS, the DC hobbyist OS project. Adam sent this to me pretty recently and I thought it kicked ass beyond belief:
lwIP will be used in the post-production of Lord of the Rings 2 and 3
-Dan Potter
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Slashdotting a poor C64. That's mean!!
/me notes a C64 with smoke coming out of it in the corner...
--joshua
With one of those big green backplanes, Olaf could probably put together quite a cluster.
The coolest part is that you can download your model into Quake and frag your friends inside the structure you built.
There was a paper on this at Siggraph 2000 and a tech report is here.
obviously the Nerf projectiles can substitute for avian carriers. You can also use the Legos as a reconfigurable version of clay tablets...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"Yesterday, Olaf Christ announced that he has the world's first TCP/IP-enabled Lego brick that can be used as a web server.
To Jesus?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
NAT / ipmasq / etc. are one approach to hiding large private address spaces behind small numbers of IP addresses, but they're not the only one. Another approach is proxy-type firewalls and DMZs. In a typical corporate network, to get to the web you use a proxy server (which also does some caching), and to send email you go through an SMTP server at the firewall, and to receive email you go to a corporate server which actually gets the mail from outside and either forwards it to your internal mail server or else provides the mailbox service itself. NAT can be useful if you want to run other protocols, and ftp can either be handled by NAT or by proxies.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
My Beowulf can beat up your dinosaur
Apple is thinking of using Lego blocks, but they've announced they will only use the higher-tech, fancier (and more expensive) Lego Technic blocks, even though it's actually slower to build stuff with them.
If we had a Beowulf cluster of these arranged in a 2-D grid (sitting on top of a Lego desk of course), we could use it to do image processing. First image to process? Calista.
By the way, has anyone built a cellular phone out of Lego blocks yet? I.e. do we have Wireless Lego yet?
I hope nobody's said this already, but hell, imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things!
FYI someone's making a webserver for the gameboy advance. check it out here http://www.fivemouse.com
Now you really can build your own TCP/IP stack, and make it as tall as you want.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
This is what they look like:
horror.jpg.html
This news is cool, but the cost of outfitting your server farm may be going up a bit if eBay has their way.
They are trying to put the hurt on the best fan run brick source. See: Legal Notice (on BrickBay(tm) ) for details, as well as this story on LUGNET(tm)
your just another brick in the wall
I think it's used in a wearable computer on some hockeyplayers in Sweden. The audience can read the players pulse, the players tackling strength and much more.
It's pretty cool...
Good thing they aren't hosting the story on the lego block webserver.. image how fast that would get slashdotted..
..."
and don't anyone bother with the "...imagine a
Here is some technical information about this achievement.
The "brain" in the Lego Mindstorms product family is the RCX; essentially a small microcontroller with an LCD display built into a Lego brick. It has connectors for sensors and motors as well as an infra-red port. The microcontroller is an Hitachi H8/3292 from the H8S/300 family. It has 32k RAM and a 16k ROM which hosts Lego firmware code.
The microcontroller can be entirely reprogrammed, which turns the RCX into a small but powerful embedded computer. With 32k RAM, this is enough to run the open-source legOS operating system - an operating system written for the RCX Lego bricks. Olaf Christ has taken the uIP TCP/IP stack (which was originally written for this project) and incorporated it into the legOS system.
IP packets are sent to and from the RCX over the IR link. The LNP protocol is used as a link layer protocol to deal with collision detection and link layer checksums.
The main problem with the TCP/IP-enabled Lego bricks is that the IR port on the RCX only is capable of running 4800 bit/sec. Since that's even slower than most really old modems, a Lego web server is easily slashdotted by one user alone...
While the uIP TCP/IP stack was originally written for this project it has since taken a life of its own and has not only been used to power good old C64s, but is also used in several embedded systems such as card-readers and other point-of-sale-type applications.
I have personally been running Olaf Christ's TCP/IP code on an RCX and can confirm that it works. In fact, I have one sitting here and serving web pages right now. Sorry, I won't give out the IP address due to the slashdot effect...
A web server on lego?
OLAF CHRIST!
This is great - now the athiest geeks who are too used to exclaiming 'christ' thanks to their practicing relatives can now insist, "I was referring to Olaf, the guy who hacked lego."
It's called a server rack. You want to add a web server? Buy a 1U "brick" and plug it in. To get to what you are talking about, all we need is a standardized hot swappable bus that runs along a backplane, so that you plug in a 1U server and it docks (similar to a laptop) and with that one hot swap connection has electricity, network, and KVM connection. That'd be cool, the worst thing about rack servers is going behind them and rummaging through the tangle of wires. A standardized rack bus would be great!
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
For those who don't pay much attention to Lego-ings-on, Lego has a VERY ENLIGHTENED attitude to Mindstorms hackers. They don't explicitly support RCX-hacking, but they definitely approve. Based on their statements to the press, they understand that RCX-hacking helps both the users and Lego. They *want* people to go nuts with the thing. (It's a great toy, and I love it; I just wish it had a port-extender for more sensors/actuators. Maybe a piggyback module that communicates with the RCX via the IR port?)
./ story a while back), but Lego were extremely reasonable and polite about the whole thing. (In trademark law, they MUST defend the trademark or else lose it).
There was an incident with the LegOS alternate operating system recently where Lego requested that the fellow change the name so as to not dilute Lego's trademark (see
As concerns DMCA, there's NO issue there, 'cause there's no attempt to prevent or control access to the brick's brains. Lego are the complete opposite of Sony in this regard.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
http://www.foundrydx.com/zaku_factory_01.htm
Imagine if your cluster could look like this!
I also think this is great, but thinking about connecting to other devices, the IR builtin in RCX isn't that well suited for a robot running around without boundaries, is it?
How about Bluetooth support? If they make a Bluetooth brick that can communicate with RCX on the robot, wouldn't that be better?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
This is tangentially similar to an idea I've been playing with for some time. My main problem is that as as S/W enginner I have little idea where to start, I was thinking PIC, but I'm really not sure. The idea would facilitate real large scale automation. Perhaps this could be the first 'open-hardware design' :-) However the main reason I'm raising this an attempt to invalidate any future patent.
It's a TCP/IP/UDP trigger/switch. However the concept relies on being tiny, simple and cheap to produce, pence rather like the 555 timers we played with in school electronics. It needs to be a mass produced chip with a [very] low price point.
The chip(s) must operate in two modes. Switch and Trigger.
The trigger operates by producing a [multicast]packet contanining a unique GUID, when a specific input line is triggered dragged high(low).
The switch operates the opposite way by dragging a line high(low) when it receives specific GUID, within a [multicast] packet.
I'm thinking PIC(s) Would it be possible to implement a TCP/IP stack in PIC logic ?
I'm thinking multicast packets with TTL:1, to keep everything withing the subnet.
I'm thinking the IP equivalent of mecrcury/magnetic switches, relays etc for burglar/fire alarms, door switches, light switches, thermostatic switches, infact massive automation. It would then be possible to control just about any device via pretty much any IP enabled/connected computing device.
Consider some applications.
Switching Night Lights.
Burglar/Fire Alarm switches.
Light switches
Thermostats
See the potential ?
What do you think ?
Martin
I was thinking...with all this talk about 'emergent' behavior and AI, it wouldn't be very cheap to by a thousand Lego Turtles to try Starlogo in realtime BUT with an internet connection...couldn't you link a buncha Lego Turtles together and try doing a Starlogo thing, Hardware style? Just a thought Tim the Moron
"Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?"
I had hoped to see some interesting posts concerning the idea to connect a Mindstorms module to the internet. There are some problems, sure, and some venues for Borg-ian humor, of course...but where is the intelligent dialogue I was hoping for? Are you Nerds or Nerd-wannabees? If it won't work...explain why! If there is some promise...let's discuss it...if there is room for humor...get a separate thread and sew away! I want to see some intellectual action! For instance...has anyone thought of Starlogo and Lego Mindstorms Bricks? Has anyone thought of the possibilities of taking something out of the clouds of software and slamming it down onto the ground of Hardware? Talk about parallel processing! And if a few toddlers get frightened...good! Fear is a great motivator! Hunter/Killer Bots the size of a house made out of Legos...bring 'em on! Now, how about the main course? Make mine a big heaping bowl of Intelligent discourse, please!
"Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?"