Posting as a BBIQ competitior (Technical Supervisor)
The parent post was a bit of a troll, I'm trying to figure out how it got modded so high (probably the conspiracy theory/corporate greed factor). Don't mean to shout too loud, but this needs emphasized - Battlebots IQ _HAS NEVER SHOWN ON TELEVISION_, so how can it be about ratings?!? Same with making money - BBIQ was done at a MAJOR loss, just to try to get the program started in a few schools.
Oh, and gracious professionalism? I never hearf of a case of a team being non-cooperative at BBIQ (not the case with FIRST, from what I hear). Everybody was loaning knowledge, manpower, tools, and parts, even if it was for the team they were about to fight against!
What relevance is it that FIRST is headed by the guy who made the Segway? One of the reasons many FIRST people hate Battlebots is that he is VERY opinionated, and he preaches his opinions at every FIRST competition. It was nice of him to start the whole thing, but he is part of the problem in this case, not the solution.
Take a look at the page source on one of the pages with a clock picture on it - The web programmer who put the site together was having a little fun (The joke changes every time the page reloads):)
Just invite them to a conference in Russia and have Russian Police meet them there. If the evil side of things can work for Adobe, I'm sure we can make the good side of things work for us:)
Western Ohio Road Runner Cable...
on
Code Redux
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· Score: 1
...was down most of yesterday, and has been having a lot of slowdowns the past few days. Also, the email server went down at the same time yesterday morning; The pop server came back up yesterday evening, though SMTP just came up a couple hours ago. They distributed an email yesterday (pop was up, so we could receive) saying they had Code Red running rampant in our block of IPs and warning eveyone with NT and 2000 to fix their systems.
Re:"Impossible to drive" says the article
on
BYO Battlebot
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· Score: 1
There are a few builders who use RC Car style controllers, typically to good effect. The best controllers for Battlebots tend to be custom ones - They are becoming increasingly common(Including Battlebots that use computer joysticks for control:) The main reason for the Aircraft style radios being so common is all the extra features - I can't think of an wheel-style radios that have the programmability of a Futaba 8-series aircraft radio, nor that have so many channels (Several robots actually use all the channels on the 8 and 9 series radios).
IMHO, as a bot builder myself (I competed in the May competition), the main enemy for bad driving is lack of practice. I ran so close on construction time that I only had about 10 minutes to practice driving before the competition; After that, I had to box it up to ship it. Some people drive for the first time in the box:) Another problem is spatial orientation - It's sometimes hard to aim weapons when you're not looking from directly behind the bot. Someone at the most recent competition tried putting a VR camera in the nose of a bot to drive that way. They recorded the feed from it; There might be some exciting shots of the camera charging at and coming very close to a spike:)
p.s. To those of you who are talking about "Why isn't it autonomous" - There used to be an autonomous element in the competition. It fizzled out after a couple years because no one could program an AI good enough to do any damage. Actually, most of the autonomous matches involved the bots bumping into the corners for 3 minutes trying to find each other:). If you think about the complecxities - Image recognition; Trying to navigate in relation to the edge of the box and the hazards AND the opponant who is trying to outmanuver you; What happens when it sustains damage to a critical sensor; computers being fragile enough that the average battlebot fight would absolutely demolish one; and the very writing of the code to process it all; It just seems to be a bit much, and it has proven to be so in the past. Look at humans driving - we have the best computer in the world in our head, and most of us can't do it very well:). It's a cool idea, but it seems the time hasn't come for it... yet.
>(I'm going to ignore the aliens.)
- SPOILER -
I think they're actually a race of super-advanced Mechas - playing on the line earlier in the movie where the one Mecha says (and this quote isn't exact) "When they are gone, all that will be left is us" - When the Ice Age came, it wiped out all the humans and the robots survived.
He sells items very close to klein bottles.
[Note - To understand explaination, please take a look at http://www.geom.umn.edu/zoo/toptype/klein/standard/stills.html. It gives a good view of a klein bottle's general shape]
The difference is that there is a hole in the glass klein bottles where the handle part reaches the body part of the bottle. In a true klein bottle, not such hole exists, and this is the reason a true klein bottle is impossible - The handle and the body of the bodle must intersect but not touch each other, meaning that a true klein bottle must enter a fourth dimension in order to correctly form this section of the bottle.
If I remember right (It's been few years since I worked on this), for higher rates of speed it's impossible to use a coilgun. Reason? It's less efficient. The coilgun might impart energy to the projectile better, but the coilgun wastes more energy getting to the projectile. As a result, at higher speeds, a coilgun will basically melt itself.
The biggest coilgun advantage, in my view, is that it doesn't harm what it fires. It's a necessity that the 2 rails on a railgun touch the projectile (a big source of the wasted RG energy), causing it to melt and possibly to weld itself to the rails. On the other hand, coilguns can be set up without the parts having to be in contact with each other.
Another such drive is in existance at http://www.x86systems.com/thumbdrive.htm. The page shows up to 128mb drives, though I've seen this particular kind sild with up to 256mb. Another nice feature of these is that for just a little more cash, you can get a secure version that needs a password to get access to.
I remember that one. The show's producers did some research, and found two guys who were identical twins that were seperated at birth. It was really creepy - the two guys were about the same weight (slightly overweight) so probably had around the same level of physical activity, had the same hairstyle, wore the same kind of clothes, even used the same kind of very obscure imported brand toothpaste! From how things look in these studies, the argument that they will be extreamely different just because they aren't raised in identical ways is rubbish - there does seem to be a sort of genetic predisposition to some of this stuff, so the clone could indeed be very, very similar.
While not texture based, there is one game I know of that offers free play in exchange for looking at ads in-game. ARC (arc.won.net) has a system where it drops you in the game, and it displays a banner in the bottom left corner. In exchange for clicking on said banner, it gets removed while you're playing, though it redisplays in the pause between getting killed and getting respawned.
Just to be a little more exact, it would take 5 states to win the popular vote, and a minimum of 15 to win the electoral. Basically, no one would bother campaigning in any but the largest 6-7 states were the electoral abolished.
Another thing I havn't seen mentioned is the problem of changing it. That would require an ammendment to the constitution, and if a precedent for changes was set, you'd never know what else they may try to change (thinking first two amendments...).
The absentee ballots will more than likely be in Bush's favor. I mean, Dole was an increadably weak candidate, and still got 56% of the Florida absentee ballots due to the military not wanting to elect someone (Clinton) who would actively downsize them. Bush will almost certainly get a higher percentage, since he is a much stronger candidate than Dole, and Gore holds the same positions as Clonton on reducing the military.
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't going on Comedy Central - BBIQ is a seperate program that hasn't gone on TV, and is being done at a loss at the moment.
Posting as a BBIQ competitior (Technical Supervisor)
The parent post was a bit of a troll, I'm trying to figure out how it got modded so high (probably the conspiracy theory/corporate greed factor). Don't mean to shout too loud, but this needs emphasized - Battlebots IQ _HAS NEVER SHOWN ON TELEVISION_, so how can it be about ratings?!? Same with making money - BBIQ was done at a MAJOR loss, just to try to get the program started in a few schools.
Oh, and gracious professionalism? I never hearf of a case of a team being non-cooperative at BBIQ (not the case with FIRST, from what I hear). Everybody was loaning knowledge, manpower, tools, and parts, even if it was for the team they were about to fight against!
What relevance is it that FIRST is headed by the guy who made the Segway? One of the reasons many FIRST people hate Battlebots is that he is VERY opinionated, and he preaches his opinions at every FIRST competition. It was nice of him to start the whole thing, but he is part of the problem in this case, not the solution.
Calm down - he was being sarcastic :)
It was a joke - I know it'll never happen
Take a look at the page source on one of the pages with a clock picture on it - The web programmer who put the site together was having a little fun (The joke changes every time the page reloads) :)
Just invite them to a conference in Russia and have Russian Police meet them there. If the evil side of things can work for Adobe, I'm sure we can make the good side of things work for us :)
...was down most of yesterday, and has been having a lot of slowdowns the past few days. Also, the email server went down at the same time yesterday morning; The pop server came back up yesterday evening, though SMTP just came up a couple hours ago. They distributed an email yesterday (pop was up, so we could receive) saying they had Code Red running rampant in our block of IPs and warning eveyone with NT and 2000 to fix their systems.
There are a few builders who use RC Car style controllers, typically to good effect. The best controllers for Battlebots tend to be custom ones - They are becoming increasingly common(Including Battlebots that use computer joysticks for control :) The main reason for the Aircraft style radios being so common is all the extra features - I can't think of an wheel-style radios that have the programmability of a Futaba 8-series aircraft radio, nor that have so many channels (Several robots actually use all the channels on the 8 and 9 series radios).
:) Another problem is spatial orientation - It's sometimes hard to aim weapons when you're not looking from directly behind the bot. Someone at the most recent competition tried putting a VR camera in the nose of a bot to drive that way. They recorded the feed from it; There might be some exciting shots of the camera charging at and coming very close to a spike :)
:). If you think about the complecxities - Image recognition; Trying to navigate in relation to the edge of the box and the hazards AND the opponant who is trying to outmanuver you; What happens when it sustains damage to a critical sensor; computers being fragile enough that the average battlebot fight would absolutely demolish one; and the very writing of the code to process it all; It just seems to be a bit much, and it has proven to be so in the past. Look at humans driving - we have the best computer in the world in our head, and most of us can't do it very well :). It's a cool idea, but it seems the time hasn't come for it... yet.
IMHO, as a bot builder myself (I competed in the May competition), the main enemy for bad driving is lack of practice. I ran so close on construction time that I only had about 10 minutes to practice driving before the competition; After that, I had to box it up to ship it. Some people drive for the first time in the box
p.s. To those of you who are talking about "Why isn't it autonomous" - There used to be an autonomous element in the competition. It fizzled out after a couple years because no one could program an AI good enough to do any damage. Actually, most of the autonomous matches involved the bots bumping into the corners for 3 minutes trying to find each other
>(I'm going to ignore the aliens.) - SPOILER - I think they're actually a race of super-advanced Mechas - playing on the line earlier in the movie where the one Mecha says (and this quote isn't exact) "When they are gone, all that will be left is us" - When the Ice Age came, it wiped out all the humans and the robots survived.
He sells items very close to klein bottles. [Note - To understand explaination, please take a look at http://www.geom.umn.edu/zoo/toptype/klein/standard /stills.html. It gives a good view of a klein bottle's general shape]
The difference is that there is a hole in the glass klein bottles where the handle part reaches the body part of the bottle. In a true klein bottle, not such hole exists, and this is the reason a true klein bottle is impossible - The handle and the body of the bodle must intersect but not touch each other, meaning that a true klein bottle must enter a fourth dimension in order to correctly form this section of the bottle.
If I remember right (It's been few years since I worked on this), for higher rates of speed it's impossible to use a coilgun. Reason? It's less efficient. The coilgun might impart energy to the projectile better, but the coilgun wastes more energy getting to the projectile. As a result, at higher speeds, a coilgun will basically melt itself. The biggest coilgun advantage, in my view, is that it doesn't harm what it fires. It's a necessity that the 2 rails on a railgun touch the projectile (a big source of the wasted RG energy), causing it to melt and possibly to weld itself to the rails. On the other hand, coilguns can be set up without the parts having to be in contact with each other.
Another such drive is in existance at http://www.x86systems.com/thumbdrive.htm. The page shows up to 128mb drives, though I've seen this particular kind sild with up to 256mb. Another nice feature of these is that for just a little more cash, you can get a secure version that needs a password to get access to.
I remember that one. The show's producers did some research, and found two guys who were identical twins that were seperated at birth. It was really creepy - the two guys were about the same weight (slightly overweight) so probably had around the same level of physical activity, had the same hairstyle, wore the same kind of clothes, even used the same kind of very obscure imported brand toothpaste! From how things look in these studies, the argument that they will be extreamely different just because they aren't raised in identical ways is rubbish - there does seem to be a sort of genetic predisposition to some of this stuff, so the clone could indeed be very, very similar.
While not texture based, there is one game I know of that offers free play in exchange for looking at ads in-game. ARC (arc.won.net) has a system where it drops you in the game, and it displays a banner in the bottom left corner. In exchange for clicking on said banner, it gets removed while you're playing, though it redisplays in the pause between getting killed and getting respawned.
Just to be a little more exact, it would take 5 states to win the popular vote, and a minimum of 15 to win the electoral. Basically, no one would bother campaigning in any but the largest 6-7 states were the electoral abolished. Another thing I havn't seen mentioned is the problem of changing it. That would require an ammendment to the constitution, and if a precedent for changes was set, you'd never know what else they may try to change (thinking first two amendments...).
The absentee ballots will more than likely be in Bush's favor. I mean, Dole was an increadably weak candidate, and still got 56% of the Florida absentee ballots due to the military not wanting to elect someone (Clinton) who would actively downsize them. Bush will almost certainly get a higher percentage, since he is a much stronger candidate than Dole, and Gore holds the same positions as Clonton on reducing the military.
Actually, 16,000 people did that there last election. So this many mistakes DO happen.
Would it be possible to simply copy the directory with the dos files and commands in it from a copy of Win98, then run it like a normal program?