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Subject: 
Re: RIS 2.0 Problems
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Sun, 6 Mar 2005 05:46:28 GMT
Original-From: 
Steve Baker <sjbaker1@AVOIDSPAMairmail.net>
Viewed: 
1522 times
  
John Barnes wrote:

I have no idea who or what the governing body of FLL is.

From their web site (www.usfirst.org):

   "FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is
    a multinational non-profit organization, that aspires to transform
    culture, making science, math, engineering, and technology as cool
    for kids as sports are today.

    FIRST was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway
    Human Transporter."

> I can understand trying
to create a level playing field for FLL events. That makes sense, after all, a
group that can go out and spend large sums of money on lots of motors and
sensors and RCXs buys their way to the win. That's obviously wrong, in my
opinion anyhow.

Yep - agreed.  Particularly because this is a competition for kids.

But since NQC is free and C is one of the more important languages that budding
computer scientists and engineers will need to know, if a team shows a
preference to use it, I think they should be allowed to do so.

Right.

I can understand the 'Pure Lego' rule too - it makes it MUCH simpler to
lay down the rules than to write lots of complicated legalese about what
is allowed and what isn't.

However, so long as what goes into the arena is Pure Lego - it shouldn't
matter how you designed it...and that's all NQC is - it's a tool for
designing the byte-code that goes into the robot.  The Lego software tools
are also just design tools - and the end result is that no matter which
tools you use, what goes into the robot is the exact same byte-code.

More annoying is that the Lego tools only work on the Microsoft operating
system - and this actively discriminates against teams who might use Linux
or some other operanting system on their PC's - that effectively blocks
some teams from entering - which is massively unfair (particularly in
international competition - some non-US countries have schools that use
Linux exclusively).

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjbaker1@airmail.net>    WorkEmail: <sjbaker@link.com>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
            http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
GCS d-- s:+ a+ C++++$ UL+++$ P--- L++++$ E--- W+++ N o+ K? w--- !O M-
V-- PS++ PE- Y-- PGP-- t+ 5 X R+++ tv b++ DI++ D G+ e++ h--(-) r+++ y++++
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: RIS 2.0 Problems
 
(...) That, my friend, hits the nail _SQUARELY_ on the head. This issue could in theory be addressed by them producing a new, completely platform independant development environment (perhaps itself being done in Java, so that it would work (...) (20 years ago, 6-Mar-05, to lugnet.robotics)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: RIS 2.0 Problems
 
(...) I have no idea who or what the governing body of FLL is. I can understand trying to create a level playing field for FLL events. That makes sense, after all, a group that can go out and spend large sums of money on lots of motors and sensors (...) (20 years ago, 6-Mar-05, to lugnet.robotics)

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