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Grand Challenge Videos Posted

awtbfb writes "For those readers not fortunate enough to watch the satellite feed on the day of the race, videos of the Grand Challenge have been quietly posted on the race site. These include official AVI and DVD compilations and unedited clips in Quicktime MP4. The compilations also include some footage from the chase helicopters. Feel free to yell 'No! Turn right! Your other right!' as you watch these."

36 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Gotta by AnonymousCowheart · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Gotta love DARPA. They brought us stealth technology, GPS, and ofcourse the Internet! It's good to see them promote some technology within the country. Seems like since the 80's (?) everything with a plug or batteries has come from elsewhere

    1. Re:Gotta by prat393 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because the link doesn't point to a list, it points to a site that uses browser exploits to annoy and forkbomb the user's system.

  2. server suicide by Space · · Score: 2, Insightful

    um 1.4GB for the dvd quality version. Can anyone say server suicide and bandwidth bill from hell

    --
    I Don't Work Here
    1. Re:server suicide by way2trivial · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm helping do my part!
      course windows sez it's 1.21 gigabytes to download.. and I'll have it in 6 hours.

      --
      every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
    2. Re:server suicide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      DARPA - 204 actuall employees, $2.8 billion/year operating budget. With a 'B'.
      They can probably afford the bandwidth bill.
      (hell, do they have to pay for bandwidth? or do they get the "we invented the damned thing" discount?)

    3. Re:server suicide by LostCluster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      um 1.4GB for the dvd quality version. Can anyone say server suicide and bandwidth bill from hell

      Worst part is... we all have to pay for that bandwidth bill from hell among other things on the 15th of this month. :)

  3. teams by AnonymousCowheart · · Score: 4, Informative

    TechTV has a summary of all the teams, as well as some streaming video.

    1. Re:teams by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      TechTV also did a good piece on The Screen Savers showing most of the more interesting wipeouts. That episode is schedule to rerun Monday at 8AM and 12 Noon ET.

  4. Boing Boing's videos by morcheeba · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't forget these edited video excerpts hosted at tamu -- good stuff. 9 or 31 MB, 19 minutes. Annoying beep tone at the beginning, but it doesn't last too long (just longer than you'd want)

  5. One thing you can't outrun... by rasafras · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...is the slashdot effect.

  6. I just realized,! by way2trivial · · Score: 4, Funny
    thanks to Daylight Savings time, I'll have it in FIVE HOURS!

    WOW, what a sales pitch, what does daylight savings do? it keeps your kids from standing around in the AM dark, and SPEEDS UP YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION..

    sounds like something netzero would use....

    --
    every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
    1. Re:I just realized,! by LostCluster · · Score: 3, Funny

      Actually, you're not going to get anything transfered between 2:00:00am and 2:59:59am tonight. Those times all aren't gonna happen because we're springing forward... you can have the extra hour in October.

  7. 1.4GB and no BitTorrent? by Saeger · · Score: 3, Insightful
    We're about to slashdot a 1.4 GB DVD video.

    Instead of wasting my tax dollars on terabyte upon terabyte of bandwidth, they should have used BitTorrent to distribute these files; that's what it's designed for! Then, the money they save on bandwidth (by shifting it to my normally UNUSED and "unlimited" bandwidth) can be used more productively.

    And don't give me the line about bittorrent being "hard" to setup, because 1) it's not, and 2) the type of people downloading these videos are slightly more technically inclined than Joe Average anyway.

    --

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
    1. Re:1.4GB and no BitTorrent? by Ironsides · · Score: 2, Informative

      a) some campuses are blocking slashdot.
      b) the DoD has an OC-3 at the least. They don't pay by the gig or tera.

      --
      Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
  8. AGV capabilities by corngrower · · Score: 5, Informative

    Daimler Chrysler has an active research program in the area of AGVs. These things are further a long than most people realize. There's a pdf article about the state of this research here

  9. My computer... by mixtape5 · · Score: 2, Funny

    doesn't even have 1.4 GB of memory. Isn't that sad? Guess i'm goona have to sit out this one!

    --
    WoW: Scheod 70 orc warlock on Shadowmoon
  10. Mirror by paulproteus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Slashdotting in progress.

    Use my mirror. Some files aren't fully downloaded, but will be in about ten minutes. I'm posting this now because Slashdotting is in progress.

    I'm mirroring:

    --
    |/usr/games/fortune
    1. Re:Mirror by dj245 · · Score: 5, Funny
      We are truly sorry. The people responsible for attempting to unslashdot the slashdotted story have been slashdotted. They then attempted to unslashdot themselves by posting another mirror, but alas, the attempt to unslashdot the first attempt at unslashdotting the slashdotted story was also slashdotted.

      Hopefully soon they will be sacked.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  11. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  12. Slashdot torrent tracker? by Z-MaxX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Has anyone ever given thought to setting up a BitTorrent tracker for /.? Then whenever a story referencing large downloads is posted, (say, anything >10MB, perhaps) either Slashdot editors can actually seed the torrent, or just some /.er out there with something fatter than my POS 21.6Kbps modem connection.

    --
    Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
    1. Re:Slashdot torrent tracker? by Joel+Carr · · Score: 3, Informative

      Although not quite the same thing, a project does exist with a similar goal. It's called 'P2P Bridge'. Check out the project page:
      http://p2pbridge.sourceforge.net/

      ---

      --
      Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
    2. Re:Slashdot torrent tracker? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      from http://f.scarywater.net :

      These are .torrents for files linked to by Slashdot. The purpose is to lighten the load on the servers.
      These are free of charge publically available files, mirrored on the BitTorrent system. Their respective sources are linked.


      so as you can see, not only has someone thought about it, they've also done it.

    3. Re:Slashdot torrent tracker? by ganhawk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Thanks for the interest in the project. P2P Bridge is designed so that you dont have to set up a tracker. The network itself acts as a tracker and it can also work with small files (web pages). You just have to start a proxy server on your machine which will find and communicate with other proxys near you.
      I could not work on this for the past few months as I was busy with something else. But I should be able to start again soon and complete it.

      --
      Python script to convert photos into "artsy" portraits: http://p2pbridge.sf.net/pyPortrait/
  13. Re:DoD /.ed? by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Funny

    Slashdot will be shutdown tomorrow for this terrorist act...

  14. Re:Go red team! by HepCatA · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Very carefully.
    Of course, not having a driver helps.

    From what one of the Red Team guys told us afterwards, they were one meter to the left of whatever the GPS signal said. So naturally it hit EVERY obstacle on the way up there. The funny thing is that they couldn't decide if was because of them crashing it or if the GPS signal was screwed (I'll go for the crashing story).

    Then it fell into a ditch well outside of the town of Dagget (a great vacation spot if you plan on killing yourself), where I was WAITING, with a tiny little radio. Apparently it freaked out because it was stuck, and it started going back and forth. It kept doing that until the tires literally caught on fire. I think they blew up some bearings or gears or something else related to the axles/differentials. We were 21 miles out on the "race course", so you can imagine my despair of it not getting there...

    I was hoping they would come over by me. Right before my position they were supposed to go off the highway (they would have been on Route 66 at this point) and then they would have gone under a concrete railway underpass.

    A few things people were wondering:
    1. Would they make it that far? No.
    2. IF they got there, will going under this railway underpass, lined with concrete and who-knows-what kind of metal, would the signal get lost?
    3. Do you thing a freight train running over over that bridge every 10 minutes might screw something up?
    4. If they got it past the underpass, will it hit that pretty natural gas meter station directly after that or will it turn right like it's supposed to!

    Oh, well. I had fun anyway...

    Next year they plan on having it again. And the prize is supposed to be 2 million dollars.

  15. Since the site is down: by odano · · Score: 5, Funny

    Since the site is down, I'll give a quick recap:

    They all lost.

  16. Umm...I'm a little confused by kidgenius · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I see video names like this:
    Red Team 10:30 AM (Shot from the Start Line)
    Red Team 10:30 AM (Shot from the Finish Line

    How in the heck do you get shots from the finish line if no one finished??

  17. Dashwerks' DashPC helped this project... by bergeron76 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For the record, the CMU team was assisted by the Dashwerks DashPC project ([ironically] seen earlier today here on Slashdot.

    Dashwerks has provided advice, notes, and exclusive IP to [at least one] member of the CMU DARPA team members for the past year or so.

    It's very fulfilling to see underdog project(s) such as these in the spotlight and taking a lead position in their respective industries.

    --
    Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
  18. Is there anyway to make a bittorrent for webpages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This would be real nice because then pages wouldn't be slashdot'd so much. The more people downloading it, the more availible it is.

    Maybe a Mozilla pluggin.

  19. Next DARPA Challenge by modder · · Score: 3, Funny

    Create a web server in the California desert which handles high amounts of web traffic.

  20. Motorcycle videos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are some good videos of the motorcycle entry here.

  21. BitTorrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    GC BitTorrent Hope this works...

  22. Anyone got a pigeon handy ? by Zaphus · · Score: 2, Funny

    Can someone please send a pigeon over to DARPA to pick up a copy of the DVD image and bring it back ? Then we can get on with torrenting it.

    On the other hand - it's going to take me 35 hours to download @ 10kb/sec, but thats still faster than flying in a 767 from here (Melbourne, Australia) to DARPA and back!

  23. how disapointing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    maybe this was the "lowlights" video, but really, what a waste of time.

    some cars follow gps. badly.

    although a motorbike did fall over. that was great.

    My real complaint is about the terrible comentator. Yes mate, i'm sure "those folks in the middle east" would drop their weapons and flee when a 5mph car making a loud beeping noise drives towards them then falls into a ditch.

    pathetic.

  24. Re:Go red team! by murmurr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Exactly. And they weren't supposed to rely only upon GPS because it might be intermittent, but because DARPA gave them only *waypoints*, locations they were required to pass close to, as opposed to a complete route! The waypoints were only supposed to be numerous enough to plot a general path across the desert, but not NEARLY enough to guide every foot of the vehicles' travel. The vehicle's sensors need to be good enough that a clear path can be computed. What if there's 300 meters of lazily winding road, with a big pile of rocks on one side, and a dropoff on the other, between where you and the next waypoint? So you have to wonder what the Red Team member meant by "we were within one meter of GPS". At best, it's a red herring. At worst, he didn't know what he was talking about.

  25. Re:GPS at fault for many of these failures by Animats · · Score: 2, Informative
    Everybody serious already has 15cm accurate GPS with an INS to get past GPS outages. That was required, because you have to stay within the allowed boundary widths, which can be as narrow as 10'. If your vehicle is 6' wide, you're allowed +- 2' deviation from the centerline.

    CMU is using an Applanix GPS. We're using a Novatel; the Applanix didn't meet the temperature spec.