IRC log for #brlcad on 20080325

00:32.45 brlcad giving we're probably only going to accept no more than 4 students, maybe as low as 2, it's a good idea to impress ;)
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04:17.26 brlcad mmm, annotations and parametrics will be really cool
04:17.37 brlcad even believes that guy might actually be able to implement it
04:22.26 yukonbob waves in -- feels it's been interesting chatter in here last couple days
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05:19.31 hippieindamakin8 so how many applications have u recieved so far ?
05:53.06 *** join/#brlcad Z80-Boy (n=clock@217-162-109-63.dclient.hispeed.ch)
06:00.39 brlcad hippieindamakin8: worry about yours :)
06:02.31 brlcad I don't know if you participated last year, but your chances are considerably higher the earlier you get it in .. and chances tend to be much higher with orgs that take on fewer students (like us!) if the applications are focused
06:07.33 Z80-Boy brlcad: I may need to use BRL-CAD to model a monitor, wall holder, a cabinet and a room corner because I want to make a custom wall holder for a monitor
06:08.12 Z80-Boy brlcad: also, althought it might sound funny in the company of gadgets like the Hubble Telescope, Ronja has been published on a IEEE conference.
06:09.15 brlcad cool, which one?
06:09.32 Z80-Boy TENCON 2006
06:09.40 Z80-Boy Do you want to know the ISBN? :]
06:10.00 Z80-Boy finds it funny that a design like Ronja has an ISBN
06:10.24 brlcad in india?
06:10.28 brlcad ooh, 2006
06:10.33 Z80-Boy Asia
06:10.37 Z80-Boy I don't know where exactly
06:10.59 brlcad hong kong
06:11.19 brlcad http://www.ieee.org.hk/tencon2006/
06:11.44 brlcad so did you publish something, or one of your users?
06:12.46 Z80-Boy One of the users did some modification - replace the LED with a laser diode - and wrote an article about it. Because I designed virtually the whole device, he put me there as a co-author
06:12.51 Z80-Boy http://ronja.twibright.com/web.php
06:12.58 Z80-Boy there's a link to abstract and full text
06:13.14 Z80-Boy He put me there as "Karel Kulhavy, Twibright Laboratories, Prague, Czech Republic" ;-)
06:16.36 Z80-Boy Someone else wrote a thesis about underwater Ronja: "the future tactical ocean environment will be increasingly complicated. In addition to traditional communication links there will be a proliferation of unmanned vehicles..."
06:17.19 Z80-Boy Apparently the idea is to mount Ronja on some kind of combat submarines?
06:17.34 Z80-Boy They should make sure they are big enough not to sink under the weight of Ronja :]
06:18.26 brlcad light-based transmission would not be my first thought for underwater comms
06:19.58 Z80-Boy you could communicate with torpedoes
06:20.06 Z80-Boy send the "we don't like you" message/
06:20.36 Z80-Boy submarines use like 20kHz to connect with the land, don't they?
06:47.00 brlcad dunnos
06:53.05 cosurgi brlcad: good morning, I see that you are compiling :-)
06:53.14 brlcad :)
06:53.17 cosurgi looks through backlog
06:53.26 brlcad and now going to bed :)
06:53.32 cosurgi (it's 7:50 here)
06:53.54 Z80-Boy is listening to 7 years and 50 days from groove coverage
06:54.10 brlcad -5 here
06:59.31 cosurgi heh :) (still reading - not easy with 2y daughter sitting at keyboard ;)
06:59.40 cosurgi is compilation succesfull?
08:03.17 *** join/#brlcad clock_ (n=clock@zux221-122-143.adsl.green.ch)
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09:43.35 F-fisher hello
09:43.47 F-fisher is there smeone here ??
09:44.26 F-fisher no, i'm alone
09:58.38 *** part/#brlcad jdoliner (n=jdoliner@cpe-24-59-109-153.twcny.res.rr.com)
10:06.48 *** join/#brlcad nmh_2Grajw (n=nmh@gw.nomh.org)
10:11.58 nmh_2Grajw hi, I was hoping someone could point out how to get the brlcad install process to provide libblt2.4.so (in addition to libblt2.4.a). I am installing from source.
10:29.46 cosurgi nmh_2Grajw: debian?
10:30.02 nmh_2Grajw consurgi: macos 10.4
10:30.13 cosurgi I tried this:
10:31.17 cosurgi svn checkout https://brlcad.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/brlcad/brlcad/trunk brlcad ; cd brlcad ; sh autogen.sh ; ./configure --enable-all --enable-optimized ; make LDFLAGS="-L/home/janek/20-Programowanie/10-cpp/51-Brlcad/brlcad/src/other/tcl/unix -ltcl8.5 -L/home/janek/20-Programowanie/10-cpp/51-Brlcad/brlcad/src/other/tk/unix -ltk8.5"
10:31.48 cosurgi but it was on debian. Then I stumbled on some debian-related error, and brlcad is now looking into it.
10:32.13 cosurgi but it's night in US now, so he is sleeping ;)
10:33.11 nmh_2Grajw consurgi: well, this seems better than what I have right now. Would you mind telling me what error you hit?
10:34.41 cosurgi sth libtool related: libtool: link: cannot find the library `../../src/libfft/libfft.la' or unhandled argument `../../src/libfft/libfft.la', /home/janek/20-Programowanie/10-cpp/51-Brlcad/brlcad/src/conv/.libs/lt-asc2g: error while loading shared libraries: librt.so.19: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
10:36.35 nmh_2Grajw consurgi: I will just hope to not see that myself. Thanks for the suggestion
10:37.18 cosurgi he said that libtool on debian is broken :)
10:38.01 cosurgi now I must do some work, but later I will either install libtool from source, or hope that brlcad will fins a fix for this :)
10:38.27 nmh_2Grajw consurgi: have fun with your work
10:40.06 cosurgi heh, thanks :>
11:20.23 starseeker Z80-Boy: The Ronja screenshot would be a good one to add to the Gallery: http://images.twibright.com/images/ronja/promotion/screenshots/brl-cad.png
11:21.01 clock_ starseeker: yes
11:22.57 clock_ cosurgi: and I cannot start mged now - it hangs :)
11:39.33 starseeker clock_: What's the url for checking out from the ronja src tree?
11:39.47 clock_ starseeker: not possible at the moment
11:39.53 starseeker Ah
11:39.55 clock_ Is there a way how to display SVN on HTTP?
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12:39.48 ``Erik lock: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines
12:39.53 ``Erik s/^/c/
12:40.28 ``Erik /t lurk, damnit.
13:11.57 clock_ oh yes
13:12.13 clock_ pumping tons of AC into the earth so that submarines can catch a tiny fraction of that
13:12.57 clock_ Sime ELF communication with submarines: if the submarines stop seeing the 50Hz and 60Hz signals, they know the end of civilization has just passed.
13:13.01 clock_ Sime -> Simple
13:46.39 brlcad added screenshot
13:47.40 clock_ brlcad: my screenshot?
13:47.53 brlcad yes
13:47.59 clock_ jumps around
13:49.24 brlcad http://brlcad.org/gallery/s/screenshots/
13:52.01 clock_ cassini, interesting
13:52.41 clock_ did they actually use BRL-CAD on Hubble and Cassinin development?
13:52.50 brlcad hubble, yes
13:52.52 brlcad cassini, no
13:53.06 clock_ Who did Hubble? ESA? NASA?
13:53.19 brlcad hubble involved lots of people
13:53.34 brlcad stsi, nasa
13:53.38 clock_ what did they use BRL-CAD for?
13:54.03 clock_ Cassini is European isn't it?
13:54.28 brlcad visualizations, optics
13:55.03 clock_ I guess they surely had some good pseudoreason why waste money on expensive commercial modeller, when USA have developed a free one from their state budget
13:55.05 brlcad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens says it was joint
13:55.27 brlcad oh, they still spend on the expensive
13:55.31 clock_ Designed in a THC epiphany?
13:55.43 clock_ ("it was joint")
13:56.18 clock_ So they actually raytraced the optics in the Hubble with BRL-CAD?
13:56.56 brlcad we had nothing to do with that mirror ;)
13:57.10 clock_ they used the wrong material code?
13:57.17 clock_ assumed air instead of vacuum?
13:57.36 brlcad no
13:57.53 brlcad the first mirror in hubble had a flaw, out of focus due to manufacturing flaw
13:57.59 clock_ oh for a mirror it doesn't actually matter
13:58.19 clock_ they didn't try to focus a desk lamp on a wall first before sending it into the sky?
13:58.31 clock_ that's how I asses lens quality
13:59.21 brlcad "they" involved thousands of people, dozens of major companies, several governments
13:59.34 clock_ oh companies and government, they always screw things up
13:59.43 clock_ if it were made by enthusiasts in garage, it would surely work fine
14:00.45 brlcad I'd already added a ronja rendering to the renderings section: http://brlcad.org/gallery/s/renderings/
14:02.31 clock_ jumps around
14:02.38 clock_ the hubble looks a bit like an oversize Ronja
14:02.45 clock_ I am sure it would have a good range
14:03.07 clock_ One night I
14:03.22 clock_ ll climb up the sky with a ladder and unscrew secretly their mirror and put it into my Ronja
14:04.26 clock_ We should beam the Ronja instructions into the deep space
14:04.45 clock_ then all aliens will build it to download pr0n and we can easily detect them as planets shining in red
14:06.56 clock_ brlcad: can BRL-CAD simulate also Fresnel lens if I use the equation to produce lots of truncated general cones?
14:18.39 brlcad no reason why not, but wouldn't use tgcs
14:19.03 clock_ which ones then to make those grooves?
14:19.22 ``Erik <-- flips css off
14:32.58 *** join/#brlcad cad66 (n=6161d635@bz.bzflag.bz)
14:33.14 brlcad hello cad66
14:33.19 brlcad bye bye cad66
14:34.45 brlcad clock_: a fresnel lens is just a bunch of layered paraloids with sections cut away
14:35.12 clock_ brlcad: should I model it like that?
14:35.17 brlcad so i'd think you'd want to use layers of ELLs or EPAs
14:35.47 clock_ brlcad: do you think they use paraboloids when they manufacture? Or cones?
14:36.00 clock_ An ideal Fresnel should have paraboloids of course
14:36.10 brlcad I think they just mill it out of a single sheet of glass
14:37.43 brlcad getting the prism cuts is the hard part
14:38.08 brlcad at least for a lens
14:51.15 cosurgi I asked debian dev about licese problems, summarizing: brlcad licenses BSD+LGPL+public_comain indeed conflicts with GPL used in QT.
14:51.26 clock_ AFAIK they make a precision mold and they mold it from PMMA.
14:51.50 clock_ cosurgi: do they really?
14:51.51 cosurgi brlcad: but, it is OK to communicate through a socket between a GPLed GUI frontend and brlcad.
14:54.17 cosurgi his reasoning is that GUI frontend is just a client code and it can talk with anything which uses a certain socket communication API. It doesn't matter that it talks with brlcad. Also it's not a problem that the API is defined by brlcad, because BSD license is less restrictive.
14:54.31 cosurgi if it was other way round: brlcad using QT - it's a conflict.
14:54.51 cosurgi But the frontend GUI (eg. QT) is using brlcad - no conflict
14:55.11 cosurgi so we have here a conflict only in one direction.
14:55.46 cosurgi which is good for us :)
14:56.59 cosurgi So we would have licence conflict if such GUI frontend used direct library calls. But if we talk through socket we are safe.
14:57.15 cosurgi I was relieved to hear that :)
14:58.39 cosurgi anyway, I'm on my regular work now. I'll get back to compiling brlcad in the evening.
15:03.52 brlcad cosurgi: they dont' conflict in the sense that it would just require that the front-end be gpl :)
15:04.11 brlcad ah, which you later say
15:04.18 brlcad should read all before commenting
15:05.01 brlcad fwiw, the sources are almost all LGPL, not BSD -- the BSD portions are the build system, documentation, and data files
15:06.00 brlcad ahh, and it looks like laptop lid has closed, or ip changed
15:06.52 brlcad I was able to reproduce the failure as expected with no problem (and was just now going to dig into a workaround) :)
15:13.11 cosurgi brlcad: yeah my IP changed. sorry for that
15:13.28 cosurgi brlcad: did you use screen? do you have my current IP ?
15:13.50 cosurgi 77.253.129.137
15:14.21 cosurgi brlcad: I have no influence on my ISP behaviour. That's why I'm using dyndns
15:15.30 cosurgi brlcad: if you find a workaround I will be grateful :)
15:18.40 cosurgi absurd.kozicki.pl or absurd.homelinux.net should work for you.
15:22.56 brlcad ah, cool
15:23.23 brlcad i'm in
15:24.15 cosurgi great. but I must leave now for aprox 1h. Get kid from kindergarten :-)~
15:24.35 cosurgi see you later :)
15:26.01 brlcad cya!
15:27.24 brlcad ahh, running screen inside of screen is .. challenging
15:58.24 ``Erik nah it ain't
15:58.29 ``Erik I do it all the time :D
15:59.39 ``Erik http://pastebin.bzflag.bz/d790904dd <-- makes it trivial
16:02.00 brlcad how do you handle things like ctrl-a a, ctrl-a e
16:02.24 brlcad ctrl-a d even
16:03.42 ``Erik ^a a d
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16:40.01 cosurgi brlcad: ok, I'm back
16:40.59 cosurgi if there's anything I can help with, shoot.
16:42.08 brlcad cosurgi: no problems, I'm just (slowly) debugging libtool while context-switching with 4 other things
16:42.14 brlcad making progress little by little though :)
16:42.23 cosurgi sure, I'm very grateful
16:43.12 cosurgi making my mind on how great a CAD GUI inside yade would be :) Of course first written as a separate app, but easily embeddable inside yade.
16:43.37 brlcad heh
16:49.42 *** join/#brlcad rcampos (n=rafaelca@micro85.comp.ufscar.br)
16:52.28 brlcad hello rcampos
16:53.19 rcampos Hi there.
17:05.26 *** join/#brlcad rcampos (n=rafaelca@200.18.97.86)
17:05.36 rcampos hi there.
17:06.25 brlcad heh, hello again
17:06.56 brlcad rcampos: did you have a question, or just stopping by to check out the hot babes? :)
17:07.27 alex_joni brlcad: forgot rendered in the description :)
17:08.04 rcampos I do have a question... just ran into some tech problems
17:08.09 rcampos oops... again...
17:08.24 rcampos very sorry! i'll try reconnecting
17:09.40 brlcad alex_joni: what description?
17:11.54 alex_joni hot babes..
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17:16.32 rcampos here i am again. everything should be fine this time.
17:17.32 cosurgi brlcad: do you have dimiensioning lines in brlcad?
17:18.28 brlcad nope
17:19.16 brlcad nothing fundamentally limiting there, though -- mostly just the user interface
17:20.07 cosurgi brlcad: what's the difficulty in adding them, say.. on scale 0..10 ?
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17:20.27 brlcad it really depends how and where they are added
17:20.46 *** part/#brlcad micges (n=michu@public-gprs39842.centertel.pl)
17:21.23 brlcad also referring to dimensions on a 2D or 3D view (or both)?
17:21.28 cosurgi on which side they should be added: brlcad, or GUI frontend (unlikely for me?)
17:22.57 brlcad well, on the gui if you just want them as a visual means for inputting values .. that's almost entirely just a UI detail to pull out lines, see the dimensions, type in some new values
17:23.08 brlcad but then to make them persist, you have to have some sort of annotation support
17:23.24 brlcad (hence the gsoc item for annotations) .. and that goes into the backend with the geometry
17:24.01 brlcad on the backend, I think adding those would actually be pretty darn easy
17:24.01 cosurgi both, I think. A dimension line should have at least: two points and a Local Coordinate System. The dimension line goes along X axis of local coordinate system from point A to point B. It also can have: a third point - the dimension line goes through this point. And other less important attributes - like font, font size, etc.
17:24.27 brlcad probably a couple weeks at best to add the support on the backend as it's *really* similar to the way sketches are implemented now
17:25.03 cosurgi ok, so good to hear this.
17:25.42 brlcad the UI side of things would be more work to do anything more than display them -- add a couple more weeks if you wanted to click and drag on them, type in values
17:26.10 brlcad that is really where it's probably better to just plan for it in the new UI
17:26.55 cosurgi ok. Don't worry about UI now :-) I'm asking to make sure that there's place for them inside brlcad.
17:27.19 brlcad yeah
17:27.31 brlcad technically you can do it now through a really horrible hack
17:28.04 cosurgi I cannot tell how far I will go (impossible) with frontend. But my motivation is to have an AutoCAD replacement on linux. So my focus is mostly on replicating AutoCAD's interface.
17:28.40 brlcad one of the users actually implemented annotations as 3D geometry, completely tcl scripted hack but end result was pretty impressive
17:28.54 cosurgi ok :)
17:29.07 brlcad it would auto-label all objects being displayed
17:29.32 cosurgi Also I don't know how slow I can be due to my time limitations. If anyone springs up in GSoC to do that - it would be great for me :)
17:29.34 brlcad the way he did it though is the sort that makes you snort your milk if you're not expecting it :)
17:29.46 cosurgi heheh :)
17:30.17 brlcad he actually creates the fonts as 3D geometry, positioning them in the scene according to the given view
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17:30.43 brlcad so you have all these tiny little polygons spelling out names and labels with lines leading from the labels to the objects
17:30.46 brlcad pretty funny
17:30.53 cosurgi I see :-)
17:31.16 brlcad all done as an mged tcl procedure too ... which is just bizzare :)
17:32.02 brlcad no worries about the time, i'm a very patient guy -- some things in open source happen *very* slowly :)
17:33.19 rcampos this is a great window for my question. i'm interested in proposing the GI renderer development for the GSoC, but I'm not that confident about the timeframe.
17:33.59 rcampos Path tracing is quite tricky, so is a student expected to deliver it finished by the end of the term?
17:36.19 brlcad rcampos: so long as the proposal is detailed in what you're proposing and what you see the deliverables as being, we're completely satisfied
17:37.28 brlcad whether you can finish what you propose is based on your background and experience -- so you could conceivably be a first year student with minimal programming experience, so the timeline should naturally reflect that in how far they expect to get
17:38.18 brlcad the focus is more on attracting new long-term developers, so there's really no problem if you don't "finish", but a really strong desire that you keep working on it and expand your interests into other parts of brl-cad development
17:39.50 brlcad so yeah, don't promise the impossible, be conservative .. and show that you're interested in becoming a long-term contributor ;)
17:41.04 rcampos I see. I'm very interested in rendering, so working with brl-cad in the long-run, specifically on the librt library and the GI module to be added would be great.
17:42.39 brlcad sounds great to me too ;)
17:42.57 brlcad I've wanted to implement that myself for years
17:43.16 rcampos this might sound naive, but there are options in developing a GI renderer, such as the most adequate algorithm (e.g. metro or radiosity).
17:43.37 rcampos Should major choices be made prior to project submission?
17:44.05 ``Erik could be part of the proposal, would help focus the timeline
17:44.05 brlcad yeah, just to show competency, you need to pick one or the other since they're such different approaches
17:44.42 brlcad radiosity usually performs better, but is usually much harder to implement (especially with implicit geometry)
17:44.56 ``Erik hides the path tracer already in there O.o O:-)
17:45.14 brlcad MLT is basically bidirectional path-tracing, a much simpler algorithm, generates gorgeous picutres, but run-times are really long
17:45.45 rcampos Maybe some research on performance tuning the MLT.
17:46.04 brlcad ``Erik: if it were easy to use, a librt one wouldn't have made the list ;)
17:46.16 brlcad if it didn't require facetization, a librt one wouldn't have made the list
17:46.32 ``Erik true, that's an ugly requirement
17:47.00 ``Erik but without a serious CSG optimizer...
17:47.22 brlcad if someone can get one working with librt, and tie is hooked into librt for bots, then it could be a reasonable balance
17:48.15 brlcad it's not like rise was actually fast .. and at the order it took, 2-10x longer really doesn't matter -- you're still going distributed and running for days, so throw 2-10x hardware at it
17:48.27 ``Erik but so many models are built in a fashion that "seems right" to a modeler who doesn't know the actual cost when it comes to intersecting and weaving
17:50.54 rcampos the CSG optimizer seems to be more important at the moment than the GI renderer. am i wrong?
17:51.09 brlcad rcampos: nah, they're both "important"
17:51.14 ``Erik they're just different
17:51.25 ``Erik make it fast or make it pretty...
17:51.42 brlcad you really need to know your stuff to work on the CSG optimizer though -- that's already highly tuned code, and changes would have to be very careful
17:52.02 brlcad propose both ;)
17:52.10 brlcad just not in the same proposal
17:52.24 rcampos hum, i'm not sure. not really familiar with CSG. i am with RT, though.
17:52.28 brlcad and only after doing your preferred first with detail
17:52.45 brlcad csg is easy to learn
17:52.58 brlcad the optimization algorithms for csg can be tricky though
17:53.07 ``Erik it's just the geometric version of boolean logic
17:53.09 brlcad and optimized csg *code* can be even trickier
17:53.19 ``Erik "just" :D
17:53.28 ``Erik like, academic "trivial"
17:54.06 rcampos oh, i'm used to that!
17:54.47 ``Erik dangit, ucw seems to have been mostly abandoned :/ almost 2 years ago
17:55.32 rcampos brlcad: i'm very into RT, but my background supports me better on the GI front. only one well-done proposal. what do you suggest?
17:56.01 cosurgi brlcad: is it possible to do .dxf export ?
17:56.16 brlcad cosurgi: g-dxf
17:56.37 cosurgi oh, so it works right now? great! :)
17:56.41 brlcad that will polygonalize the model since dxf doesn't support implicits
17:57.11 brlcad rcampos: i'm not sure what you're asking
17:57.48 cosurgi yeah, I know. I asked because that would allow people to work in brlcad GUI frontend, then sell their drawings to people who use autocad.
17:57.54 brlcad rcampos: only propose the csg optimization task if you think you could do something there -- all the items on the task list are rather important and would be great to have ..
17:58.14 rcampos brlcad: I really like the CSG optimizer idea, but I'm afraid it might be overwhelming.
17:59.06 brlcad I could give you some references to research papers for it probably in a day or two to give you a better feel, or better yet just search for CSG optimization papers
17:59.24 brlcad otherwise, focus on the GI submission first
17:59.46 brlcad you can always stub in an application for CSG and work on it or decide through next week
18:00.02 brlcad there's a week and a half to review and expand upon the submissions after the 31st
18:00.17 brlcad but you have to submit *something* by the 31st or you're cut out
18:00.42 brlcad mentors will start reviewing and refining next week with the candidates
18:00.57 rcampos brlcad: i'll have a rather detailed proposal on GI by tomorrow evening - should I submit it and alter if needed, or put it up for comments beforehand?
18:01.15 brlcad rcampos: either way works just fine
18:01.40 brlcad if you want, you can share it to the devel mailing list to get more eyes on it beforehand
18:01.56 rcampos great. i'll definitely do that :)
18:03.24 brlcad sooner would definitely be better than later, if last year is any indication it's just going to get busier and busier until the deadline
18:04.41 rcampos yes, and that's not good. i'll have it on the mailing list by tomorrow - it'll give me enough time to review.
18:04.59 brlcad sounds like a plan
18:05.15 brlcad welcome to toss it up into a page on the wiki if you like
18:06.16 rcampos another great idea. is doing both redundant?! maybe having a link on the email to the list should suffice, then.
18:08.16 brlcad nah, it's not redundant
18:08.27 brlcad some folks won't click a link, some will -- its up to you
18:08.48 rcampos noted!
18:09.36 rcampos thanks a lot for the help so far :)
18:09.41 ``Erik but if you attach a .doc or .ppt, we'll take turns smackin' ya :D
18:10.57 rcampos hehe, i would'nt do that, rest assured!
18:22.37 cosurgi whoopps, my backup box just got oops
18:23.56 cosurgi brlcad: did you get a message on screen, too? :)
18:28.55 brlcad cosurgi: yup
18:31.47 cosurgi It's 7y old. I figured I still can use it for something. I've put into it raid5 3*500GB=1000GB and makes backups twice per day from cron with rsnapshot. I oopses when CPU overheats, so I'm uninstalling distcc from it, now :)
18:32.08 cosurgi s/I oopses/It oopses/
18:35.39 ``Erik hrm, I think my primary server at home is 9 years old
18:36.06 ``Erik need to buy a fan for the 8 yr old one O.o
18:37.40 cosurgi heh, I gave my box which would deserve such title, to my friend. (the debian dev I was talking about earlier). It's his primary server now and is is 9y old. Still kicks butt :)
18:38.27 cosurgi dual PIII, 600MHz
18:39.15 ``Erik I had a dual p133 with scsi long ago, screamed for compiling (sucked for raytracing)
18:41.34 cosurgi :^)
18:43.14 ``Erik make a nice coffee table, too
18:43.41 yukonbob waves in
18:44.26 ``Erik looked like http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/labyrin/maniki/maniiki01/dsc0079.jpg but far more abused
18:49.17 MinuteElectron my home server is 98!
18:57.38 ``Erik from '98, or running 98? O.o :> *duck* *run*
18:58.40 yukonbob or from 1910? (a difference engine?)
18:58.55 brlcad has fun showing the tcl guys why their regex imlementation sucks
18:59.17 ``Erik heh
18:59.17 ``Erik uhm
18:59.24 yukonbob regex was just reworked w/ some help from postres, apparently
18:59.26 brlcad interesting little test pattern.. ((a{%d}){%d}){%d} ...
18:59.37 yukonbob *postgres
18:59.45 ``Erik I saw a report where tcl's regex smoked perls a while back
19:00.08 brlcad with that little pattern, you end up blowing the stack quickly the way tcl implements it
19:00.16 brlcad or running out of memory
19:00.23 yukonbob I wish there was an emitcon for my face for that comment, ``Erik
19:00.25 ``Erik (by pushing perl into a degredate case where it basically had to backtrack every single time)
19:00.57 brlcad yukonbob: try this in your tclsh: set i 40
19:00.59 brlcad then: regexp [subst ((a{$i}){$i}){$i}] x
19:01.02 yukonbob ``Erik: was this a single weird case, or a common pattern
19:01.10 brlcad it should dies somewhere between 20 and 40
19:01.33 brlcad I thought that was pretty odd .. so I wrote a little test program
19:01.33 yukonbob brlcad: what version of tcl are you running?
19:01.42 brlcad 8.5 latest
19:01.45 yukonbob nods
19:01.57 ``Erik it was a common case pushed to the extreme
19:02.00 brlcad like I said, this was debugging with the tcl guys just a lil while ago
19:02.05 ``Erik something like a 4k character pattern
19:02.13 yukonbob ``Erik: interesting -- I honestly wouldn't have expected that...
19:02.27 ``Erik 'cept perl got too slow to wait for at 10 characters or something
19:02.33 brlcad quite a drastic difference -- gnu's is an utter pig (takes minutes just to compile) but seems to not run out of memory here until somewhere 200+ -- bsd seems to just hit a hard-coded uchar limit but is nearly instant even at 255 -- tcl's dies around 36 here
19:02.59 brlcad you can see the diff between bsd's and gnu's right off the bat if you compile http://brlcad.org/tmp/regtest.c against both libs
19:03.02 yukonbob tcl regex == Henry Spencer
19:03.25 brlcad spencer did the old bsd one too
19:03.43 brlcad so maybe it's just been broken since :)
19:03.48 brlcad s/broken/optimized/
19:04.06 ``Erik http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html
19:05.21 ``Erik of course, you always have the jwz quote to go along with that...
19:05.36 brlcad this must be a different sample pattern for ((a{%d}){%d}){%d}
19:05.46 brlcad because tcl and gnu both are epic fail
19:05.55 ``Erik Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. --- jwz comp.lang.emacs
19:06.09 brlcad tcl at least dies gracefully, gnu's starts to take down the machine and seems to inf loop
19:06.29 brlcad bsd's doesn't seem to have any problem
19:06.43 ``Erik mebbe try an old tcl (like 8.0?) to see if tcl screwed up their fugly cases to a slight boost in trivial cases?
19:06.55 ``Erik up until 256 characters? :D
19:07.06 brlcad interesting that you can see a distinct difference between the bsd on mac os x and the bsd we ship (about 1sec to compile 256 with osx, about .1 sec with old bsd)
19:07.16 brlcad it's not characters
19:07.18 yukonbob core-dumped on your test, br
19:07.22 yukonbob *brlcad
19:07.55 brlcad yukonbob: tclsh did?
19:07.55 yukonbob yup
19:07.55 yukonbob 8.4.16
19:07.55 brlcad heh, well at least 8.5 is better in that regard
19:08.12 brlcad it should say "couldn't compile regular expression pattern: nfa has too many states"
19:08.22 ``Erik um, which "old bsd"? there're a couple fbsd 8 boxes floating around
19:08.34 brlcad src/other/libregex
19:08.44 ``Erik tcl and bsd shouldn't be using nfa's
19:09.10 ``Erik should be a big fugly dfa with a list of state pointers
19:09.20 ``Erik iirc
19:09.39 ``Erik tcl, anyways... I'm guessing about bsd
19:10.09 brlcad like he said, 8.5's regex was modified
19:10.13 ``Erik does the mac one want to work in unicode? or do you see a lot of system activity (microkernel abuse)
19:11.02 brlcad wth are you talking about? :) .. you've not compiled that regtest.c /me thinks
19:11.19 ``Erik no?
19:11.24 brlcad it's nearly instant on bsd (both old and new) to compile the expression
19:11.47 brlcad we're talking about just compiling the expression, running it on nothing
19:12.08 brlcad the expression is very "brief", but expands nasty state-wise
19:12.18 yukonbob my 8.4 dies SIGSEGV SIG_DFL
19:12.35 brlcad e.g. try running this: egrep '((a{255}){255}){255}'
19:12.46 ``Erik are you talking about the bsd impl on a mac, or the bsd impl on bsd?
19:12.49 brlcad that will use gnu's regex lib .. should run out of memory
19:13.05 brlcad they're not much different iirc
19:13.17 brlcad but was referring to on a mac and our old bsd impl
19:13.39 ``Erik ah
19:13.51 ``Erik thought you were mixing os's, as well
19:14.28 *** join/#brlcad jdoliner (n=jdoliner@cpe-24-59-109-153.twcny.res.rr.com)
19:14.29 ``Erik huh, that stopped at 4 gigs for me
19:14.46 ``Erik still burning cpu, but not eating any more memory
19:14.51 brlcad there, just ran it on .bz too .. slow, but it completes to 255 with no problem before hitting the uchar limit
19:16.17 brlcad i'm believe gnu's just get stuck in an inf loop, or it's just got some N^3'd time going on -- it's been compiling here for a half hour at 200
19:17.07 brlcad to run the test, just gcc regtest.c && ./a.out 200
19:17.45 jdoliner is anyone here a possible mentor of a project on CSG evaluation of BREP objects.
19:17.53 brlcad hugs jdoliner
19:18.05 ``Erik :o
19:18.32 brlcad jdoliner: heh, yes -- there are several mentors here (and on the mailing list)
19:18.46 *** join/#brlcad rafaelcampos (n=rafaelca@200.18.97.175)
19:18.52 jdoliner great
19:19.56 brlcad we do more communal mentoring, so just speak up -- you might have to hit up both irc and ml to get a response sometimes, but the mentor's role is mainly to make sure you're on track and for evaluating you
19:20.10 brlcad jdoliner: what's your background?
19:20.47 jdoliner Well I'm presently a mathematics major at The University of Chicago
19:21.38 jdoliner I've also had formal education in both Scheme and C at Uchicago
19:22.17 jdoliner And I spent the summer working at Fermi Lab where I had to do some coding in Fortran on a simulation project
19:22.24 yukonbob reads backtrace on #tcl
19:23.55 jdoliner Also I have experience in computer art so I've worked with both B-Rep and CSG before
19:24.32 brlcad on a coding level or at an application level?
19:25.13 ``Erik looks around
19:25.31 ``Erik you can't escape us, brlcad, you're becoming surrounded by coders who like sexy curvy languages
19:26.13 brlcad i was just going to say that I'll try not to hold the fortran and scheme against him :)
19:26.40 jdoliner Largely on application level the closest I've gotten with them in coding is with Pov-ray
19:26.41 ``Erik each has their benefit... scheme teaches you how to really program, and floortrash teaches you how to put up with bull
19:26.45 ``Erik *cough* O:-)
19:26.52 brlcad j/k, I actually do like lisp, never really gotten into scheme .. just fails on a practical level for me
19:27.08 brlcad much like how I like smalltalk, but not practical :)
19:27.18 jdoliner yeah the physicist are so outdated
19:27.30 ``Erik I d'no, depends on the impl, unfortunately :( gauche is a nice pragmatic scheme
19:27.50 jdoliner I think when the program had originally been written Fortran was new
19:27.54 ``Erik hooks to gtk, opengl, various rdbms's, good unix extensions, etc
19:28.01 brlcad jdoliner: hm, then how strong is your math background with respect to spline surfaces and manifold geometry? :-)
19:28.10 brlcad doing CSG of BREP is a bit tricky
19:28.27 brlcad i mean it actually shouldn't be more than probably a few hundred lines of code.. but it's dense stuff to sort out
19:28.47 ``Erik classroom scheme would like C without libraries or functions, so a lot of people have a lame view of the language
19:28.52 ``Erik would be like
19:30.05 ``Erik shouldn've eaten today, is feelin' awful goofy
19:30.15 brlcad jdoliner: see if you can do some searches for CSG evaluation of BREP papers -- that really is a hot topic feature, but there's no sugar coating that it's trivial -- you'll need to instill some confidence that you can implement a given algorithm for doing the coding needed
19:30.56 brlcad ignores the language banter :P
19:30.56 jdoliner K
19:32.35 ``Erik brlcad: just a slew of nurbs in a complex csg (no other primitives), and evaluate it to the minimal 'union only' patch set?
19:32.51 brlcad yes
19:33.22 brlcad basically performing splinesurface-on-splinesurface trimmings per the csg operations
19:33.51 brlcad hell, I bet we actually already implement a full-blown algorithm that would work just fine in the nmg sources
19:33.55 brlcad but it's in the nmg sources...
19:34.47 ``Erik 'would work just fine', what, after throwing it all away and starting over? :D
19:35.07 brlcad jdoliner: another very similar but a hell of a lot more straight-forward is to propose implementing/updating all our existing primitives with a describe-me-as-a-brep function
19:35.44 brlcad we have about 30 primitives that you'd have to work on, about a third of those are already "done" but using the wrong data structures
19:35.47 ``Erik bot, dsp, and metaball might be challenging for that one
19:36.11 brlcad point-sample, turn into patches
19:36.32 brlcad bot and dsp should be trivial
19:36.46 brlcad each bot face is a brep face
19:36.53 brlcad it already *is* in brep form
19:37.32 ``Erik but what it's supposed to be smoothed? like a tesselated sphere.... 1k nurbs when it should be 4?
19:38.01 brlcad the meatball would be a little more tricky
19:38.04 ``Erik <-- was thinking dsp and bot would need curve fitting
19:38.16 brlcad no, bot is what it is -- those are the faces
19:38.52 brlcad dsp would probably be five faces for the sides and bottom, and then at least one if not many sub-pieces for the surface
19:39.17 brlcad dsp has two modes, one is flat-faced -- those would be direct to N flat-faces brep faces
19:39.41 brlcad the smoothed version, though, would be harder -- "should" come across as just one patch with a helluva lot of control points
19:40.19 ``Erik heh, yay for funny stuff on mailing lists
19:40.20 brlcad undoubtedly have to localize, though, as you can have discontinuities in the dsp (zero'd regions)
19:40.24 ``Erik > apache. Well tested, lots of features.
19:40.24 ``Erik well, tested... :)
19:49.25 *** join/#brlcad Z80-Boy (n=clock@77-56-82-60.dclient.hispeed.ch)
20:06.22 brlcad kicks CIA-33
20:06.23 CIA-33 ow
20:09.53 ``Erik annoying, the tclConfig.sh installed in the latest fbsd is broken :/
20:38.04 *** join/#brlcad jgay (n=jgay@fsf/staff/jgay)
20:38.46 jgay brlcad when you get a chance, tell me what you think about http://endsoftpatents.org
20:46.12 ``Erik heh, I originally read that as "ends of patents" O.o
21:32.35 ``Erik wanders home, later kids
22:05.14 brlcad jgay: in what regard?
22:05.33 brlcad it reads like a political rant, but that's because it is
22:05.53 brlcad I've seen that site before iirc, pretty sure
22:15.20 louipc hehe do you think if brl-cad became a real competitor that some companies out there would try suing?
22:15.22 jgay brlcad, cool. It's pretty new. It's supposed to be informative, kind of boring, and simple.
22:17.39 jgay brlcad, I didn't know if anybody in this project had a position on software patents. I am helping to write an amicus brief for an important court case (In re Bilski). There are a lot of patents on CAD and related software. You are likely violating dozens if not hundreds of software patents.
22:17.40 brlcad louipc: not likely
22:18.35 brlcad oh, it's entirely possible, but then if they were to sue, they'd be suing uncle sam .. and uncle sam gets to decide if you're allowed to sue
22:18.52 louipc yep that's what I was thinking
22:18.59 jgay brlcad - not so. More likely they'd sue a company using the software or selling it inside of a distribution.
22:19.16 louipc that might be precedent setting though
22:19.52 jgay remember software has both copyright and patents, but they are very different laws with very different requirements
22:20.12 jgay under copyright law you are safe, under patent law, uncle sam may be safe, but others might not be.
22:20.51 brlcad jgay: as for a position, I'm fairly against software patents but they frankly aren't a day-to-day concern (or an issue that has *ever* really come up with major significance) .. at least to date of course
22:20.51 jgay e.g., TrendMicro is being sued for how they are using ClamAV, a free software package that they did not develop.
22:20.55 louipc depending on what a judge says
22:21.42 jgay brlcad, right, you may not be personally effected, but others in the free software community (and generally programming community) are very much effected on a day to day basis.
22:22.28 brlcad the legal concerns on our end tend to be much more heavily weighted towards issues of information security , the license terms, issues with the GPL, classification levels, FOUO data, and disclosure
22:23.16 jgay brlcad, of course, I understand that. With software patents, however, you needn't ever know of the patents or technology you infringe upon to be found infringing upon the patents.
22:23.30 brlcad i know others are affected, just following the headlines it's clear a lot of the problems brewing
22:24.26 yukonbob BRL-CAD to plaintif -- let me introduce my legal team -- m1 bradley, blackhawk, and stryker.
22:26.15 jgay so, you guys are safe, you can't infringe upon patents, because the government asks you to develop brl-cad
22:26.39 jgay however, the government could be asked to pay damages or costs even when it claims eminent domain over the patents.
22:27.43 brlcad do patents have to defend against prior art as well?
22:27.49 brlcad (software patents)
22:27.54 jgay my question really wasn't about whether or not you guys are personally effected, but whether or not anybody would be interested in signing onto the amicus brief.
22:28.52 jgay brlcad, yes. But, there are about 70 software patents granted per day.
22:29.07 brlcad nods
22:29.36 jgay So, they are relatively safe because of their numbers. To look into prior art for even a fraction of those is a daunting task.
22:30.07 louipc there are some pretty ridiculous patents and any judge with half a brain should just throw them out
22:30.35 jgay louipc, I recommend reading over endsoftpatents.org -- we have done a good job of explaining a whole lot about software patents.
22:31.12 jgay Anyhow, I was trying to an extend an offer that if anybody was interested in taking a stance against software patents, and hopes to see them eliminated, the time would be now.
22:31.29 brlcad jgay: so you are involved directly with endsoftpatents.org
22:31.41 jgay I didn't mean to flood the channel or force it down y'alls throats :-)
22:32.15 brlcad I gathered that you weren't gloria or ben
22:32.16 jgay brlcad, yes. I am the campaigns manager for the free software foundation. We helped launch the ESP campaign, which is a coalition effort.
22:32.26 brlcad got it
22:32.53 jgay It's not limited to free software or user freedom, so it's not an in house thing. But, when it comes to doing my part for the free software community, or campaigning like activities, I step up to the plate.
22:33.22 brlcad quite noble of you
22:33.30 brlcad that work takes a lot of time and effort
22:33.38 brlcad and is rarely really appreciated directly
22:34.01 brlcad (except by others that have also stepped up to the plate)
22:34.06 jgay thanks -- I enjoy staying in the shadows most of the time :-)
22:35.17 louipc you guys are lobbying for a patent reform bill?
22:36.42 jgay louipc, I don't think we are lobbying, but we are recommending that congress consider reforming the patent system through legislation.
22:37.02 louipc oh
22:37.36 jgay louipc, 501(c)3 organizations are allowed to encourage bills to be passed and influence legislation, but they are not allowed to help political campaigns or put more than some small percentage of their budget each year toward efforts that are considered lobbying.
22:38.42 jgay I think you might also have to justify such actions as being directly related to your mission. Clearly something that we consider to threaten the creation and adoption of free software directly threatens our mission.
22:38.49 louipc ah that second part sucks
22:39.23 louipc so you have to make a profit corporation to be allowed to lobby agressively hah
22:39.39 jgay no, I think it's 501(c)4
22:40.12 jgay So, you don't get a tax break, but you can qualify for grants.
22:41.25 brlcad jgay: has anyone worked on tracking down the various "patent whore" clearing house companies -- or is that akin to chasing down the storm botnet?
22:41.54 brlcad to identify the list of companies that abuse the system the worse that file for the intention of extorting
22:42.05 brlcad s/worse/worst/
22:42.10 jgay brlcad, it's just not worth it -- I mean, if in the legal community you are known as a troll -- how can it get any worse?
22:42.45 jgay So, IBM & Microsoft hold a tremendous number of patents
22:43.13 jgay But, some of the worst patent holders are law companies that exist for the sole purpose of suing people for patent infringement.
22:43.28 brlcad right, it's the latter I'm referring to
22:43.40 brlcad calls them "patent whores"
22:43.43 jgay They collect software patents and sue big companies at critical times. In business it's referred to as "the patent tax," that you expect to pay for being big.
22:44.07 brlcad because it's cheaper to pay than to fight
22:44.21 jgay Right, and because there is a good chance you'll lose.
22:44.33 jgay I mean, most everybody is infringing software patents.
22:44.46 jgay Our list of people on the site are companies like the green bay packers, MLB.com, etc.
22:45.34 jgay You don't have to develop software, you just have to use it to make money, or design a web site to work a certian way, etc.
22:50.08 louipc yeah that's pretty dumb
22:55.30 starseeker rather doubts the patent mess will get straightened out anytime soon - the money and financial incentive to the legal establishment is lined up behind making it more difficult to do anything legally, not less...
22:56.07 louipc damned lawyers
22:57.09 starseeker wonders how many examples in human history there are of legal establishments working to make themselves less of a nuisance
22:58.02 starseeker Ah, well.
23:00.45 starseeker jgay: Out of curiosity, are there websites that attempt to make a concrete case FOR software patents?
23:00.55 jgay starseeker -- not that I know of.
23:01.54 jgay starseeker I've actually tried to find some pro-software patent arguments that were based on facts ... but the only ones I could find rae based on generalization, like, "Patents are important for innovation."
23:02.18 jgay All of the business case studies I've read have not found any link between innovation (even for a single case) and software patents.
23:02.45 jgay but, I'm not as well versed as some. So i don't claim to be a definitive source of all things software patents.
23:02.48 starseeker always comes back to that "promote the progress of science and useful arts" bit...
23:03.18 starseeker If we're going to stop people from doing constructive work, I'd like to be sure we are getting a better return in the end.
23:04.04 starseeker wonders if anyone making laws thinks of it in that fashion any longer...
23:04.08 jgay starseeker - In re Bilski could be very important in helping to decide the fate of software patents. Remember, software is 1) the only thing that can have both a copyright and a patent, and 2) only started being granted in the mid-1980s.
23:05.37 jgay starseeker people don't read bills (readthebill.org), but a lot of us (sunlightfoundation.com, www.leagueoftechvoters.org/, change-congress.org) are doing something to help improve government.
23:06.10 jgay *granted patents
23:07.02 jgay sorry, I wear multiple hats :-) I should leave the room. The purity of hacking and BRL-CAD is being tainted! :-)
23:07.17 starseeker nah, my fault
23:07.41 jgay o well, if it ever bothers anybody let me know -- I don't like being "that guy."
23:07.49 brlcad jgay: it's good discourse
23:08.31 brlcad all for increased awareness
23:08.58 jgay cool, well, on to more pressing matters. If I don't get home and make dinner right now my fiance will kill me!
23:09.00 brlcad though I'm also a champion of being responsive, not preventive .. the ones responding directly do this should be the ones being attacked (i.e. the big corporations that are being sued)
23:09.27 jgay brlcad, yeah, most of the people we have reached out to are companies that have or are being sued.
23:09.48 jgay actually, I've spent two days being passed around coprporate switchboards trying to get connected to the well-isolated legal department
23:10.06 brlcad that's why I was wondering if having a list of the orgs could help .. formulate some sort of reverse class-action lawsuit
23:10.44 jgay brlcad, yeah, as a long term strategy something like that might make sense. But, this Bilski case is actually one of the most important cases we've had re: software patents in a very long time. It could be decisive.
23:11.49 jgay So, our amicus brief is important, because the ruling, and the exact wording of it, is very crucial to many parties, and could have a big impact on the state of software patents.
23:12.29 brlcad well, hopefully it goes well -- when is it filed?
23:12.41 jgay On the ninth
23:12.50 jgay hopefully
23:18.54 jgay ok, goodnight all! must go make dinner :-)
23:50.15 *** join/#brlcad Elperion (n=Bary@p54876D23.dip.t-dialin.net)
23:58.49 *** join/#brlcad hippieindamakin8 (n=hippiein@203.200.95.130)

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