Slashdot Mirror
Linux-Based Robot To Explore The Forest
crashoverride025 contributes this link to a BBC story about Treebot, "A Linux-based mobile robot equipped with a webcam and sensors swings into action to help monitor forests." Despite the Tarzan reference, it looks like this robot moves along a cable, rather than swinging from place to place.
Darl here, with another fine Fr1st P0st. After all -- SCO did everything first, and the rest of the responses to this story will owe their heritage to a foundation built on SCO's staff of talented programmers.
You may be wondering why SCO salesmen are not answering your numerous calls while you try to order more SCO licenses. Well, we aren't answering the phones because we're too busy celebrating our newest business partner. Rather than explaining it myself, I'll let our formal press release do the talking. Take it away, Mr. Reuters...
LINDON, Utah, Sept. 8/PRNewswire - FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX - News), the owner and licensor of the core UNIX operating system source code, today announced its second Fortune 500 clent for the SCO Linux IP license, the GNAA (Nasdaq: RHAT - News), developer of fine Slashdot trolls on irc.efnet.net #GNAA, also well-known for revolutionizing small business development with its "Step 2: ??????" profit model. The availability of the SCO Intellectual Property License for Linux affords Linux deployments to come into compliance with international law for the use of all 2.4 and future kernels. The run-time license permits the use of SCO's intellectual property, in binary form only, as contained in Linux distributions.
By purchasing a SCO Intellectual Property License, customers avoid infringement of SCO's intellectual property rights in Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.5 kernels and assure Darl financial security for the purchase of his second home. Because the SCO license authorizes run-time use only, customers also comply with the General Public License, under which Linux is distributed. Source may still be distributed under the terms of the GPL, however source distributors are held accountable for all violation of SCO's IP. Indemnification is provided for customers of runtime clients only. Read that twice, dirty hippy. You're not in the clear yet.
GNAA spokesperson penisbird said of the licensure, "coming into compliance affords us a new competitive advantage with the other Slashdot authors. By being in the right, we can thumb down our noses at not only the Windows users and the BSD-thieving Mac Users, but also the unwashed Linux hippies running stolen code on their parents' PCs." VP of anus enlargement goat-see added, "fr1st p0st? damn i miss. how do i next story?"
Mr. Darl McBride concurred with GNAA's analysis, adding "We soon hope to convince additional clients such as Trollklore and Cabal of Logged In Trolls of the benefits of licensing SCO's valuable IP. Also, I <3 GNAA bunny. (@.@)" JesuitX clarified the nature of the SCO and GNAA alliance, adding "We're more than just a licensing client. We're also going to be helping to bring these other potential licensors into compliance. We can break them in little by little as paying sublicensors. The alternative is pretty horrible. Our lawyers can take a reticent client from virgin to hello.jpg [figure 2] in under an hour, and believe me -- it is not pleasant."
Commander Taco was unavailable for comment, however Cowboy Kneel was said to ask for a print of [figure 2] for his basement apartment. Simoniker remained British and unable to spell "color," while Timothy responded by posting the same story six times, and Hemos reposted a seventh time, the submission differing only from his application of that damned Einstein icon.
If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.
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How can people say BSD is dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!
You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!
With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!
Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!
Now the forests are going to be polluted with non-indigenous directory trees!
--
Rate Naked People at FuckMeter (not work-safe)
I hope they have a good HSF, lest it overheat and start a forest fire.
what the hell is going on here?
I just submitted this story and now its been credited to crashoverride025
!!!!!!!!!
what???!!!!
Now the forests are going to be polluted with non-indigenous directory trees!
here.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
nt
But this has actually been done before according to a Yahoo! News article from early this year. And yes, this is actually a different project, not the same one from the article.
a cable? supagay.
what we all agreed before...
probes sent to mars should've been run by linux. Instead of worrying us to no end, now we would be discussing the data obtained and ways of improving the performance of futere missions.
Not only that, I'm sure that the code for those probes beeing opensource would've meant people contributing and finding solutions and apps no one would've thought of...
Wouldn't it be lovely that the routines of a mission to space would've been a truly world project, with programmers from all over the world taking part in it?
Well, I'm dreaming, maybe I'm not...
... y Dios vio que Linux era bueno... Genesis 99.666
Instead of remotely viewing a forest over the web, maybe a walk would solve some problems?
does it throw an exception???
how long until
..does it make a sound? My favorite line is "helps by being stealthy enough to travel through the forest canopy along specially-constructed cabling, night and day." Stealthy, riiight- it might scare the trees or the atmosphere.
"Never pet a burning dog."
ntext
Hooom... no one cares about the trees or free sharing of code anymore...it's all FUD and copyrights and lawsuits.... hooomm... time to rouse the forest!
We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!
We come, we come with horn and drum: ta-runa runa runa rom!
To Redmond! Though Redmond be ringed and barred with doors of stone;
Though Redmond be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,
We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;
For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars - we go to war!
To land of gloom with tramp of doom, with roll of drum, we come, we come;
To Redmond with doom we come!
With doom we come, with doom we come!
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Here's a list of some frequently asked and answered question here
and elsewhere that you may find useful in your quest to try linux.
Read these carefully before you decide to invest time in Linux, you
may find that you have better things you can do instead.
SECTION ONE - INSTALLATION
--
1.1 Q: I heard linux was easy to install, is it?
A: That depends on what distro you try. Most of them will have
trouble detecting all your hardware. Most new hardware devices
are not supported. If your lucky you might be able to find
something that someone threw together on the net. But that's
after spending a couple hours searching and probably won't take
advantage of your hardware to it's fullest capability.
1.2 Q: Once I get it installed, then what?
A: Then you get the joy of making sure everything is configured
right. Plan on a minimum of two hours per device to get it to
work. That's if the device is even supported.
1.3 Q: What happens if I'm in the middle of an install and the
installation freezes or just stops?
A: You get to reboot and start all over again.
every so often with Linux. It seems like it's buggy install
routines or something. Ain't Linux grand?
1.4 Q: What's the deal?! I installed Linux and it took up almost 2GB
hard drive space!
A: The Linux distros usually install a LOT of never-used programs
on the default install. You can pick and choose what you want,
but good luck figuring out what programs are needed and what is
useless, obscure tools. Linux usually installs stuff like 10
different editors, 12 different mail clients, and so on.
(more to come...)
SECTION TWO - CONFIGURATION
--
2.1 Q: What's with all these cryptic files?
A: All of Linux is configured with cryptic text files. Some of
the more user-friendly distros have configuration utilities
that claim to do it for you, but success with these works
sometimes and other times don't, so sometimes you have to
edit them by hand. With Linux's spotty reliability in UI
programming, you might as well get used to it.
2.2 Q: What is killall, HUP, ls, cat, rm, which, etc and why are
these programs telling me to do them? Arggg!!
A: These are command line programs that do things within the
system. It's what makes Linux a powerful OS for those that
are experienced with it. But it's also what makes it a pain
in the arse to use and inefficient as a desktop system. Who
wants to type all the time when they can just click?!
(more to come...)
SECTION THREE - APPLICATIONS
--
3.1 Q: Where can I get some programs to run on linux?
A: Good question. Because Linux doesn't have a large user base
on the desktop,(I think it's about 0.24%, less than 1%)
companies that make software won't write their programs for
Linux. There's a lot of community created programs out there,
and some are fairly good, but those are few and far between.
Most of the Linux software that tries to mimic it's windows
counterpart is substandard. It's usually slow and buggy and
early in development.
3.2 Q: I tried to install an RPM but I got 'failed dependencies', what
is that?
A: That's Linux's version of DLL hell. Different versions and
distros use different libraries. So unlike windows where
programs will run on many different versions, Linux programs
will fail if they're not made for your specific version.
3.3 Q: What is compiling and configure, make and make install? And
what is a makefile?
A: This is a way to bui
Finally, we'll find out...
* Do bears shit in the woods?
* If a tree falls and nobody's there to hear it, does it make a sound?
* Is the Pope Catholic...
Oh well, maybe 2 out of 3.
Just another day in Paradise
From the grant proposal: "As a source for ongoing additional funds, all Jane movies will be made available on a subscription website."
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
What runs the Jane robot? FreeBSD?
And Cheetah? Unixware?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What happens if the kernel inside of it panics. I mean there are a lot of hazards in a jungle. It would be a lot better to use a specialised os than Linux. You cant just press a button to reboot it when its in the middle of nowhere. Linux is okay when its sitting on a rack serving up web pages or doing general workstation tasks, but when your in the forest, who knows what could happen.
helps by being stealthy enough to travel through the forest canopy along specially-constructed cabling
I suppose a piece of metal crashing through tree branches hanging from a cable is more stealthy than, say a jackhammer. Wouldn't it be more quiet if many sensors were placed about the forest and used wifi to connect and send information? They could even still run linux to do so and get mentioned on slashdot!
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Squirrel
What this article really doens't say much about is that NIMS isn't just an open source program for controlling robots, it's a program developed by grants given to UCLA to develop AI, or Ambient Intelligence in this isntance. This robot isn't entirely remote controlled, and though the article touches on continual monitoring, it doesn't say that it's using open source robot AI developed by UCLA.
For more info about NIMS:
UCLA doc in PDF
Google HTML Cache
.. featuring web cam footage of the tragic demise of a team of SCO lawyers who went into the woods to impound the robot due to the makers not paying the Linux license fees for it, only to be eaten by a tribe of hithertoe unknown Cannibalistic Californian Forest Dwellers.
cesspool?
pheWWW.
lookout bullow. the daze of the phonIE payper liesense ?pr? ?firm? hypenosys stock markup FraUD softwar gangster execrable, is WANing into coolapps/the abyss, at the increasing speed of right.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... get ready to brighten up?
A robot that goes into the forest. Great.
I think Linux's motto should be something like "To again go where everyone else has gone before".
I'd say it's been the fark effect. Read: the post description is more amusing than the story itself.
Probably if you included Tarzan in your post you'd have get it. You know, makes it easier for those who don't RTFA to make quick jokes.
2003-12-29 08:55:57 Linux powered tarzan robots (articles,linux) (rejected)
I have suffered a dodgy cable to my sky tv box, a powercut, my second best laptop burst into flames, and now rejection by slashdot. oh woe is me.
blog and junk
As the article says, the treebot is part of a "Networked Infomechanical System", a type of wireless sensor network, developed by the UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing. The forest network is used to develop practical wireless sensing technology while simultaneously providing an example of its utility. The use of a mobile network node in a wireless sensor network requires some engineering of the multihop message routing protocol, since such networks are usually assumed to have stationary nodes. I don't know what they've done to address this; it could be anything from MANET-style routing (e.g., AODV, in which they accept the resulting increase in route establishment overhead), to a quasi-static approach in which the treebot reassociates to the network every time it stops.
http://flightlinux.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Or by proxy Like these
Oh, and I forgot to mention the NIMS website, which has a lot more pretty pictures.
Despite the change of venue, the bot, nor the scientists who created it, are going to get laid.
Hell, Tarzan had fewer cycles than the box they have swinging from tree to tree, but rain is the only way that box or its makers are going to get wet...
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Maybe NASA should take note and start using Linux to save tax payer money powering their multi million dollar space shuttle toilets. If robots can watch logs, they can flush 'em too.
I heard about this some time ago. I seem to recall that due to the fact it's travelling along the tree tops, it has a problem actually seeing the forest because the trees get in the way ...
seek counseling....?
FlightLinux is a customized copy of a standard Linux distribution, adapted to the unique environment of a spacecraft embedded control computer.
The first instance of FlightLinux will be on the 80386EX processor of the currently in-orbit UoSat-12 spacecraft, of Surrey Space Technology, Ltd (UK). As a basis, we are currently using the ELKS distribution, due to its small size. We will migrate to BlueCat Linux from LynuxWorks, and add real-time features as required.
[...]
At the moment, we have not posted any downloadable code, due to issues of export restrictions on satellite control software.
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make install -not war
I wonder if we can spots them Hobbits... yesh...
"rather than swinging from place to place."
This is one of those comments that make you say "well, duh!", and then somebody just goes on and invents something that does this. It is quite a challenge on numerous levels.. would be impressive if someone pulled this one off..
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Put cables with robots in every forest! They'll get in the way of people trying to cut down trees. Wait. How much will the forest be impacted by installation, maintenance, and resulting debris?
Using Linux in any way you choose is not restricted by the GPL.
Restrictions based on agreement with the licensing conditions of the GPL are limited to the manner by which YOU offer code up for distribution.
So if NASA chooses not to distribute their copy of the code, how are they in violation of the GPL?
(I admit I'm not sure how, in this case, distribution within an organization might be regarded by the FSF law team.)
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
That's a joke! Insightful? You need to rethink that one.
"It can move where it likes, night and day"
NO IT CAN'T! IT IS ON A FREAKIN' CABLE..what a bunch of idiots.
make one that can actually swing around like tarzan, and I'll be interested. until then...
Where does the organization end, an another begin? NASA is a good place to examine this murky, yet fundamental, factor of the GPL. Can the GSFC use it internally, without triggering the distribution clauses? All of NASA? The US Federal Government? US Citizens? The American People?
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make install -not war
Maybe they can use this device to finally find those poor kids out in the woods near Burkittsville, MD. They've been missing since 1994, I understand.
Bush is a cylon.
Where does the organization end, an another begin?
If the source code is provide to the recipient, it is a moot point. The GPL has been satisfied.
Presumably this would only happen where (satellite) security concerns have been satisfied.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Fangorn Forest?
EHC
While a year around season should be maintained for treebots, shotguns should be limited to 20 gague or smaller, a bag and possession limit of three bots per week should be imposed and it should be considered bad etiquette to shoot a stationary bot.
he wants you to click his website URL
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"