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DARPA Robot Contest Update
rbrandis writes "DARPA has selected a wide variety of teams, after a series of last minute rule changes and a solid outpouring of anger, the final list of competitors for DARPA's Grand Challenge robot race has been set with 25 teams preparing to try and win a $1 million prize." The anger is exemplified by submissions like this one: Totally_Lost writes "Last spring we flocked to DARPA's Grand Challenge media event in Los Angeles to be told that they wanted everyone's participation in their Robot race this March. They told us that the race would be open to Mom and Pop garage sized participants - and Lied. This fall, nearly 100 teams completed technical paper submissions, with about half to be eliminated from the $1M prize race because they were too small to be 'real' competitors. Well, the rejected robot racing teams got together in Las Vegas last month, and formed the International Robot Racing Federation. This month IRRF is announcing its first competition with $1M in prizes pledged by sponsors, and lesser prizes too, to be offered in a REAL OPEN Challenge next September (providing the race that DARPA failed to deliver)."
They have always been heretofore so up front and honest. This is truly a departure for the military industrial complex.
...beyond their wildest dreams. Not only do they get to have their own competition, which may produce some interesting results, but in addition they get to see another competition that they don't have to pay for, and if anything cool comes of it they can always step in and make an offer on the technology. Plus, a new hobby is born. Sounds like everybody wins here.
From what I've read, it seems they were correct to cull the less-advanced robots from the "herd" - their reasoning is sound.
The presentation of the article, however, seems to be biased in favor of the poor losers; why?
Is there evidence that they were indeed up to snuff but were drubbed anyway?
.to the desire for household robots. Once upon a time, the very thought of a lawn mowing robot filled people with fear. You're not installing a robot lawn mower near my Fifi. (I'm looooking overrrrr, my dead dog Roverrrrrrr...) But robots are getting pretty good at recognizing objects, so there is hope that while mowing the lawn they won't mutilate your pets.
Of course people don't tend to realize that robotics is in use all around them, all the time. A robot is "A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance", or alternately, "a mechanism that can move automatically".
Besides the mechanical aspect necessary for something to be robotic, there is the usual criteria for a useful electronic circuit. It must sense, decide, and act. Even a door-opening device at your local supermarket can do this; it senses that something has entered sensor range, it decides whether the signal is strong enough to warrant opening the door (partly based on its sense of what its function switch is set to) and then decides whether or not to open it. The act stage in this case causes motion, which is what makes it a robot.
While we often hope to see robots become more useful around the house, I believe that it is in major industrial scenarios that they will take off first. This is not a shocking prediction given that this is where they currently enjoy their greatest successes, but I am referring to more autonomous robots than those which currently paint cars and so on. For instance, large earthmoving projects could be carried out with little to no human intervention simply because the problem domain is so simple. Through use of a combination of sensors (including visual/optical, radar, sonar, lidar, and others) a sophisticated map of geometry can be built. If you're not moving very quickly, this can be done with sufficient accuracy using current technology to carry out moderately complicated tasks.
I envision a cluster of wirelessly networked systems which will share computing time with one another when they have cycles to spare, working together to carry out such a project. The sum of the data from stress analyses, efficiency plans, and so on would be combined to carry out tasks as rapidly as possible. Ultimately, people will be able to focus on management tasks rather than laboring.
The question posed, then, is what do we do with all the people who will soon be unemployed by robots? Aside from forming labor unions and legislating inefficiency, what is the solution? I cannot picture any true capitalism managing to care for people displaced by robots, which will only happen with increasing regularity as robotics becomes a better-solved problem. It's bad enough when the jobs leave your country, but only the corporations (and of course the consumers - but they have to have jobs in order to consume!) benefit when the jobs go to robots.
The linux hacker
Nothing more profound? Hah! You're joking yourself if you think the military will not find some devious use for some or all of the technology. They're basically investing a million dollars to find the technology which will otherwise cost them many times more to research and fund and which will one day be incorporated in one way or another into machines that kill, such as autonomous tanks.
A blog like any other.
The some people don't have a clue as to the effects and circumstances of this. The purpose is not Autonomous Kill Vehicles though it might occur. Cruise Missiles etc already do this as does the Predator to one degree or another. The purpose here is to reduce the overhead cost on the army dramatically in hauling supplies etc over long distances with or without roads. To do this you need vehicles than can bypass disabled vehicles and overcome obstacles. They need to be free of drivers who get tired and eat up supplies.
The real effect here will be civilian. The project which like it or not will happen regardless of DARPA someday soon, is going to very nearly completely alter how we live.
To illustrate: suppose you are old blind and unable to drive. (It happens to the best of us) Now you will be able to go where you want without somebody driving you. Suppose you want to go to work but don't want to own a car? Mass Transit? No! you just get on your cell phone and call for a car. It arrives shortly and takes you where you want to go and without a driver. Freight? No more Truck Drivers and the wreaks from them being too tired. No more Taxi Drivers. Close most of the Hospitals because wreaks are not filling them up. Kids will not need parents to drive them somewhere.
There is very nearly nothing more profound than this race! It will reorganize our world. The issue here is how will we adapt. This isn't an esoteric question. We had better face it now.
For the Luddites amung us, give it up. Stopping DARPA will only give the technological edge to China. They will do the work. This is a very high amplification Technology. It Amplifies People a LOT. The issue as always will be the morals of those being Amplified, and will we allow this to cause others to be lost in the "noise."
Well, it looks like you're a newbie here, so congratulations on getting a /. account. You're now a member of the most geeky society in the world.
Just a tiny nitpick. You don't actually have to type out "[url]" after a link, the system does it automatically, to prevent stupid goatse.cx links (Don't visit that site at work. You have been warned.)
Anyway, as far as your offer on C programmers is concerned, I'm more of a Java and web tech guy, so sorry I can't help you out there, but if you need a web guy, you have my number.
I'd help sponsor a robot army that could be marched on Washington. They could all go and try to lift up the Pentagon. Would be quite a sight, put those DARPA jerks in their place, and have a lot more teeth than those damn hippies who tried to levitate the building. Might just get some government contracts out of it, if you're willing to sell out to the man.
Oh, here we go again, repost from the anti-slash karma DB. Originally posted here.
Winning team gets classified as enemy combatants, free vacations in Gauntanamo, ceding all prize money and rights to the design. They only winning move is not to play.
I'm pretty good at smelling a troll, and this one reeks. A quick search of Google shows us that this exact same comment was posted here over 2 months ago. The parent is probably using the Anti-Slash Database Tool to find and search out previous popular posts.
In addition, the parent is a brand-new account, with an already rich posting history of highly-moderated comments, some of which are reposted from older articles.
Also, if you carefully read between the lines, you will notice the posts by this user bear a striking resembelance to those of Sir Haxalot, Pingular, and Steve 'Rim' Jobs, all of which are accounts created by the same user for the purposes of karma-whoring and building up large amounts of karma very quickly in an effor to use this to his advantage while trolling.
Please moderate his post down so this trolling karma-whore will not be able to annoy others and carefully work the system. If you fear the wrath of Meta-mod, you can always rate him as "Overrated" which gives negative karma but does not go to M2.
This has been a public service announcement from a helpful Slashdot user. Posted anonymously to avoid the groupthink.
Oh great. Just what we need. "Kids will not need parents to drive them somewhere." .. you left off "... and pay attention to what they're doing."
Thanks, no. I don't need any more fucking brats running amok, unsupervised, and screwing with me, my family, or my friends; ruining our otherwise-pleasant outings with their inattentive/non-existant "parents" (for exceptionally loose values of the word "parent") not teaching them right from wrong and how to behave/interact in a civilized society.
Now, if you want a good use then these autonomous robots could be set as hunter/killers for said same parents/offspring. Just be sure that it includes a spatula and baggies for the carnage and cleans up after itself.
-AC
All sorts of heated tempers and a split to a rival federation. All they need now is a few good rants, some cage matches, and one bot hitting another with a chair or something. It'll be a shoe-in for weekend afternoon TV. w00t!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The parent post is the troll. This is a fscking repost. Damn him.
....which will one day be incorporated in one way or another into machines that kill, such as autonomous tanks.
Yes, it most likely will. However, is this neccesarily a bad thing? Would you like to manning the convoy crossing enemy territory, or would you rather have a bot do it? Would you like to lead the spearhead, or would you rather have the autonomous tank do it? Personally the less likely I am to die in a battle, the happier I am.
...because you never can have too many autonomous bomb-delivery devices.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Oh no, I never said I was averse to any such machines or plans, but that they are indeed inevitable, and to believe that these will somehow only be used in the peaceful domain is naive.
A blog like any other.
Interesting how parent and this comment are so similar...
Not that I expected anything original from SexyKellyOsbourne (606860).
The Aibo Kennel Club Robot AI Mind is one example of how primitive but evolving AI Minds are spreading outwards across the 'Net from the original Swarm-Hives.
These Robot AI Minds have the overriding advantage of being based on the (by default) most State-of-the-Art AI Mind Theory.
AI4U -- the foremost alternative AI textbook describes how to design and built these robot AI Minds.
>My team got cut from the competition unfairly.
Did you have a contract, or did you not?
If you did have a contract, and its terms were breached, there is recourse to the law.
If you did NOT have a contract, then why did you expect anything other than arbitrary treatment? Specifically, what is your basis for calling the process "unfair?"
You did yourself a serious disservice when you entered into a venture with another party, without a mutually binding legal agreement.
Disclaimer: not meant to refer to the parent poster personally.
Come play Moral Decay!
I'm good friends with a team in the Raleigh/Durham area (Team Insight), and they have been accepted into the grand challenge.
Both myself, along with every member of their team were shocked that DARPA accepted them. They are not on good financial footing at all. For their budget, they need approximately $250,000 (With 4 zeros); however, they know that there are many teams with budgets in excess of 3 and 4 million dollars.
They are looking actively for donations, but have not seen much come to them. They do not expect to be able to compete at all.
However, they were accepted into the challenge. DARPA didn't even require a site inspection of them. They are not affiliated with a major company, university, or anyone in particular, yet they have been accepted. Speaking with one of the members, he was just as confused that they got through as I, and his only explanation was, "We wrote a really good paper."
I'm very impressed that they got this far, but it shows that DARPA is obviously not being very even handed in their acceptance.
DARPA really screwed up this competition, and it's a shame.
That said, if you're rich and want to donate to them, there is a contact form on their website. I'd love to see them go all the way.
I appreciate that the DARPA teams are working in a different ballpark from your average garden shed RW team. But the same basic economic rules apply and looking at the web site the sense of deja vu is increased. If they've got these sponsors then power to them but yet again the www site is a little sparse on the subject. You need more than just a shared sense of rejection to make a business model.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
Don't Plagiarize
You may want to check out RARS, a simulator framework in which you can write programs to run in a simulated auto race against other programs. I haven't messed with RARS in a while, but at the time I was using it, (IIRC) your driver was a C++ class that received a huge struct as a parameter and returned a small struct indicating the direction you wanted to steer and a number indicating gas/brake magnitude.
But what do I know -- my car could barely make it around the track without running into the wall.
So pretty much you are a product of the dot com boom, and have no actual skills.
You do know mankind has good devices in civilian hands based on research done by military funding, right? The world isn't out to get you. Go back to using the cell phone (thanks to NASA space research) and your GPS (thanks to military research). Next time you fly you can thank military research on jet engines too. The examples here are endless. A more on-topic example would be the robotic arms used in surgery.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
Join the Anonymous Cowards Against CLiT, today!
SKO's timestamp is 11:37. Tirel's is 11:40. Therefore, SKO was first by 3 minutes.
You are close! Al Gore is the robot leader/prototype. Check your facts next time, you n00b.
John Nagle
Tell 'em to post a paypal link - worked for wikipedia...
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
Maybe it's just me, but I detect a tone of "the government should be our caretakers" tone in the story.
In reality what this group is doing is exactly what should happen in our free society. Especially in this case where the government primed the pump in promoting science and an independant group comes in to provide more promotion of science.
Why the reaction of surprise? A project like this is most certainly something to be expected and welcomed.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Here's a Slashcode hint, since you too seem to suffer from "Dangerously High User ID Syndrome" (also known as 'being a lame n00b').
...where the [url] part appears twice, you can bet that nine times out of 10, the commment was reposted by some lazy shitbox viewing the source and copy/pasting, without regard to proper formatting. It's karma-whores who are so preoccupied with their own cocks that they can't even bother to review HTML 101 and properly fool us.
When you see something like this:
Hey I'm a link! [link.com]
Actually... (Not related to grandparent)
;)
This is very much of what's wrong with world today. You can't expect anything if not explicitly stated so.
It might sound fair that in an election process to a competition you would be treated exactly like your competitors. But why? Why would you if it was not explicitly stated that the election process is equal/well-matched (which is the proper term?).
This applies to so many aspects nowadays.
Just think...
How many times you were screwed around in the past year because you trusted the other party to follow the same implications you had of a non-formal contract? (Like a verbal promise with further reaching implications)
PS. Yeah.. I'm a sucker. Not going to details here
Bot Assisted Blogging
don't forget the babes and their 'puppies'! any wrestling federation worth its salt makes sure to include some eye candy for all their monstertruck-worshiping, blatz-beer-swilling, worn-out-tshirt-wearing fans!
Maybe you should try to sell your intelligent AI to the U.S. We could use a president with an IQ higher than .5 ...
The selection process wasn't hard for anyone who had a clue. DARPA was evaluating papers for months, and you could resubmit as many times as you wanted. DARPA warned entrants in the rules that it might take several turnarounds to get a paper through. The people whining about rejection submitted papers at the last minute.
We'll be in Fontana in March.
John Nagle
Team Overbot
A simple, and typical DARPA formula:
1. Announce a nice, big, open competition for ideas, welcome everyone.
2. Get everyone's papers and technical submissions for free.
3. Suddenly, cut the field to 25 well-qualified, well-financed groups. Forget you welcomed everyone.
4. Change the specifications to include some of the more innovative ideas you got, for free, from the small groups you exclude.
5. Run your "competition" touting how fair it is.
6. In the end, award the contract to Raytheon, Boeing, Lockeed. Pay them three times what the small contractor would have charged.
7. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The reason we don't innovate anymore in this country is because true innovation comes from free-thinkers. Darpa and the DOD don't get that anymore, and rely on the same old staid companies to do everything. They'll get a RC vehicle with half the capabilities they originally hoped for at three times the price. Who needs innovation? Just keep feeding the defense-contract monster.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I think Clinton used his Python a bit too much while in office...
I am a member of a robotics team. We are building a sub-AI mobile robot very similar to the ones involved in the DARPA Challenge. In fact, we had illusions at some point of competing in a future challenge iff the challenge was not won this year.
We compete in a similar, less-publicized contest. We have three members on our team and had a starting budget of $300. We had our PC104 board and $200 diff. GPS donated, and all of the coding has thus far been done by the three of us. We didn't have any money, and thus we selected an embedded Linux system, which introduced all of us to the world of Linux for the very first time. We work in the lab at all hours of the night, with no help, and no budget. The teams we compete against have corporate backing, 30+ members, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our robot looks very rough and overly simple compared to their corporate-sponsored monsters. Yet, we continually *stomp* them in competition. If that contest were administered like the DARPA one, we would not even be allowed to compete, yet we do compete and win.
Part of this is because our simple solution is: INNOVATION.
Throwing money and lots of members at something does not make it innovative. Advanced Technology doesn't mean that the robot is any good. We compete against a military academy and their robot, despite its "advanced" bells and whistles, does not hold a candle to ours. Heck, we have duct tape holding things onto our bot and it looks pathetic beside the smooth-formed frames of the other robots. But we win because our lack of support and budget forced us to be creative.
And wasn't innovation supposed to be the purpose of this competition?
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
Many of those who submitted papers could not even build based on the whitepapers they sent in. Many had problems with sponsors as well. DARPA is not at fault but you get the anti-DARPA cooks who like to stir up trouble anyway.
Jesus fucking Christ on a fucking crutch. Don't ANY of the people with mod points have a fucking sense of humor? Whoever so meta mods this should bitch slap the idiot who flamebait modded the parent to this post. Dumbshit.
Anit-DARPA cooks?
As in, they like to use ingredients DARPA people are allergic to, or what?
I think if DARPA wants to limit entries, they should do so up front. It wouldn't be unusual for them to not ebven publicise the event and individually contact each organization who might be interested.
When a private company takes bids or opens a contest according to publicly disclosed rules then rewrites the rules without warning, that's a crime. DARPA should follow the rules set by the government for the people, even if it's not held to the same punishment for breaking the rules.
jeapordize the lives of hundreds of thousands of troops!
Except that if they thought signing up for the military was going to be all rosey and easy, and not harm a hair on their head, they're morons. Ever troop I've ever talked to knew what they were getting into, accepted it willingly, and were more than happy to go over and fight for their country.
One of my friends had to miss his childs first birthday because he was out making sure N. Korea didn't take advantage of the US during the second Gulf War, and he said if he were given the facts he has now, and knew he'd miss what he did, he'd still choose to go out there and be a presence to N. Korea. Why? Because it's what he signed up for. Further, he had more information at his desposal as to the current world situation than the rest of the world (and he's just a mechanic!).
So, basically, don't speak for the troops unless you know some that feel that way, and then only speak for the troops you know specifically, not the entire force.
i find it hilarious that the reposter is modbombed to -1, while the repost-buster whore get all the karma points.
so in essnense, this guy should be modded down too, you dumb ass fuckers.
Whoever modded Mentifex (Arthur Murray) up as +1 Informitive should be smacked. Arthur's so famous as a crackpot poster that he is in fact the reason why comp.ai is now moderated.
When I first heard of this Grand Challenge I was estatic. I thought I could "compete with the big boys". Ever since that day I have been working steadfastly on my robot - integrating computing power with grid technologies, beefing up off-the-shelf sonar gear (fish-finders!) for horizontal and non-water use, experimenting with vision-processing software, developing a custom "behavior stack" using subsumption and goal-based directives - and integrating the whole mess into a cohesive package. But God Love 'Em, DARPA screws it up again - someone like me, who can do for a dollar what the "good ol'e boy" defense establishment can't do for fifteen times that price, is totally out of the competition.
Oh, well. Guess I'll just "redeploy", and use all of my "off hours" working overtime at my day job so that I can afford to pay the ever-increasing taxes - billions and billions of defecit-spending-dollars, paid to the military establishment that I was so determined to underbid... (sigh)
My friend's team made it and they have NO sponsors (or none at the time they got accepted) and are just a few guys working out of someones garage. They got in because they had a good plan and had already made solid progress on their vehicle.
Perhaps this complaining from the small teams is just a case of sour grapes? Perhaps they didn't have a solid plan or any sort of progress and really had no chance to win?
That isn't a flame, I honestly don't know. I just know that there is at least 1 unfunded (well, personnally funded) team that made it in.
-David
There. Now go play some cool javascript games!
I'm sure there's some sort of hilarious parallel that can be drawn between this contest and the Terminator movies, but my brain's dead. Anybody want to take a stab at it?
The Human Cow - bringing you scrumtrelescence since 1995
I for one welcome our new International Robot Racing Federation masters.
I have misplaced my pants.
Burt Rutan isn't the equivalent of Orville and Wilbur. He is more akin to Langley for the monied-man rather than for the government. If you look at the X-Prize competition you'll see more money spent on Rutan's vehicle than all the others combined.
Seastead this.
This post was copied from one back in October.
"the man with the pla" is a common troll.
guess you finally burned your karma off, eh?
Here's an agency with way too much money and time on its hands.
Reminds me of a game that I'd gotten for my Apple IIc (one of the last games I'd ever found for the box) Omega granted, I was 11 at the time, and similarly could only make the tank go straight and in circles ;)
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
They were banned from using it. This was recent.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that my tax money paid for Perceptor, and it is treated as the private property of a bunch of parasites who use it just to get the same non-performing research grants again and again. ALL the teams should be able to use Perceptor, that software is the property of the people.
I am the author of the original post, which some bozo has copied and reprinted under another name.
John Nagle
Or did you mean the WWE?
Self Serving Sig: Hosting Comparison
And we all realize that shit like this fucks over moderators when it comes up for meta-modding.
"Why was this (apparently) well written and informative post modded down? Unfair!" And the moderator then looses karma.
Its one of the reasons I stopped modding. I was one of the original 400 or whatever moderators, and I hardly ever do it now when I have the points.
I envision a cluster of wirelessly networked systems which will share computing time with one another when they have cycles to spare, working together to carry out such a project. The sum of the data from stress analyses, efficiency plans, and so on would be combined to carry out tasks as rapidly as possible. Ultimately, people will be able to focus on management tasks rather than laboring. Having someone hack into a Caterpiller D9 bulldozer and go on a rampage brings a whole new meaning to "wardriving." ;)
Sure the government has spend $400 on a hammer. You would too, if you needed to use a hammer in a room filled with an explosive mixture, which was the case. There are some alloys that do not spark, your dirt cheap $20 hardware store hammer is not one, and is not something that anyone in their right mind would allow near someplace where explosive mixtures are common.
If you are going to use a hammer regularly though, the $20 Home Depot hammer is a wate of money, and you will harm your joints by using it. Get a real hammer, and your joints will thank you (or at least not complain as much) years latter. I spent $70 on my hammer (titanimun), and regret not getting the $100 one. I used it every day for a while though. It took me less than a month before I couldn't deal with the poor balance and vibration of the Home Depot hammer, the Craftsman replacement was much better, but still not up to the one I replaced it with.
That said, it seems I metamod far more than I moderate (I rarely get mod points anymore), so presumably most other metamods aren't so careful.
Who chooses metamods again?
eom
Association for Computing Machinery on Mentifex artificial intelligence
Ben Goertzel, Ph.D., on Mentifex artificial intelligence
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network: Mentifex AI mind.txt gameplan
Free Software Donation Directory: Mentifex AI Project
Nanomagazine interviews Mentifex on independent AI scholarship
Redpaper archive of Mentifex documents on artificial intelligence
AI has been solved.
Agents Portal selling Mentifex AI4U textbook of artificial intelligence
GameDev.net selling Mentifex AI4U textbook of artificial intelligence
GreatMindsWorking selling Mentifex AI4U: Mind-1.1 Programmer's Manual
SourceForge Mentifex Donations Page
I'm curious --- why is it a big issue to have government funidng? Presumably the problem is the combination of government funding + proprietary? Off-hand, I would think that DARPA would like to see government-funded work used in the competition, because it would confirm that the work they were funding was good. On the other hand, there's always the danger that it would confirm that the work was no good, but they should be willing to face that too.
After all, the mission of DARPA is to support good research and development for the US government (and specifically the DoD). Its mission is not to sponsor fair competitions. Competitions may be a means to their end, but aren't the end itself. If their objectives are furthered by an unfair competition (as long as they aren't doing anything otherwise illegal or unethical), who cares?
Can you comment on this?
Care to let us know more about this competition? I'd love to see a website...
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
Note: The most up-to-date info is in my /. journal, so I suggest that you start there.
:)
:) Have a nice day.
Our team's website
I am afraid that it is rather lacking on updates and was done very poorly. I need to get it up-to-date and looking better. It was put online very quickly by request of a sponsor. I promise that I will update it and put new pictures up, since the pictures our framegrabber can now take really puts the one on the front page to shame. I also plan to upload the source code to our vision and navigation systems as well as a technical overview of the robot itself. Perhaps a trouble shooting guide would help as well to let aspiring engineers learn from our mistakes. Very funny stories, those are.
Having trouble finding significant support within our university, our robotics team is slowly weaning itself away from the university and competitive mode, and are developing into a more independent group, especially since I graduated and our two other members will shortly as well. We do not receive large funding from the university, and faced with having to pay for our "toys" out-of-pocket while working within university policy, we will likely eventually take this project in new directions.
The IGVC website
This is one of the competitions that we compete in. It is more driven by the Department of Defense and the automotive industry, and is more lenient in its acceptance of participants than the DARPA one is. Our university, however, competes in various robotics competitions. Some are for autonomous robots (such as firefighting robots and military-grade mobile ones) and others for general robots that can perform different tasks. Heck, we even have (or had, rather) a battlebots team.
I have put a small article in my slashdot journal and will be posting news from time to time there. I will also be more than happy to answer any questions that you might have. (I enabled comments) I have added pictures to the journal so I really suggest that you start there.
Hope that helps.
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
A little bit too much of a rosy scenario - some techs create more jobs than they destroy, some don't.
Nah...u de-drunkedness to oh-woe-where-this-world-is-going-drunkedness ;)
I just succumbed from raging-lunatic-with-better-than-all-of-thou-attit
Bot Assisted Blogging
This was demonstrated over a hundred years ago by Samuel Pierpont Langley. He had everything: the education, the money, the resources and he used them all to try to create a flying machine - only to be beaten by two bicycle makers.
My opinion? See above.