Re: [Flightgear-devel] Proposed new set of splash screens

[Dale J. Chatham]

One of the better ways of handling this kind of thing is to have central 
"system" directories with users able to put their own data in their home 
directories. A search path isn't a bad thing, as is the ability to set 
directories in environment variables.

Having only one directory in which to store everything is kinda old-style.



On 02/25/2010 09:12 AM, Martin Spott wrote:
> Tim Moore wrote:
>
>
>> Do you want 100s of people to be involved with FlightGear development, or
>> tens of thousands?
>>
>> I think the individual hangars are great, no matter what their license. I
>> hope FlightGear better supports multiple data directories in the future. A
>> single data directory, with a centeral repository, just doesn't scale.
>>  
> Other OpenSource projects are pretty successful wrt. maintaining a
> continuously growing amount of data and it's obvious that the
> FlightGear projects is, well, a little bit different in this respect.
> Nevertheless I don't think that the projects traditional policies
> should be changed just because "our" server/repository infrastructure
> didn't manage to keep up with the projects success.
>
> To my opinion we should aim at having as many people involved as
> possible - and if the current way of managing the repository doesn't
> scale, then it's time to have a repository which is suitable to meet
> the requirements of the job.
> Running and maintaining a large, growing repository is not a technical
> issue, "we" are just facing issues due to some tiny but relevant
> details about how things are being organized here. The old story 
>
> Cheers,
>   Martin.
>


-- 
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think 
the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but 
leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed 
in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, 
the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the 
contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and 
became richer.”

– Ben Franklin


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] configuration snafu

[Dale J. Chatham]

I'm assuming a UNIX/Linux system.

Does configure run clean? Look for libraries that it cannot find.

If that's the problem, and if you're on a linux system, you'll need to 
tell configure where to find the libraries.

I usually run:

./configure --help > do.it

Add comments before every line, then at the top put

./configure

along with whatever flags configure needs.

Hope that's helpful.

ln is the linker and it is looking for the entry points to a library for 
a function used in the code.

Curtis Olson wrote:
> How about
>
> ./configure --prefix=$parent
>
> Curt.
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 4:46 PM, John Denker  > wrote:
>
> On 02/05/2010 03:17 PM, Curtis Olson wrote:
>
> > Do you have details of the configure or make error you are
> seeing posted
> > somewhere?
>
> Yes. Please take a look at
> http://www.av8n.com/fly/fgfs/htm/bug-list.htm#bug-64bit
>
> As it says there:
>
> make[1]: Entering directory `/mnt/games/orig/fgs/tests'
> g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I../src/Include -I/games/orig/usr/include
> -I/usr/local/include -g -O2 -I/games/orig/usr -D_REENTRANT -MT
> est-epsilon.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/est-epsilon.Tpo -c -o
> est-epsilon.o est-epsilon.cxx
> mv -f .deps/est-epsilon.Tpo .deps/est-epsilon.Po
> g++ -g -O2 -I/games/orig/usr -D_REENTRANT -L/games/orig/usr/lib
> -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/usr/local/lib -o est-epsilon est-epsilon.o
> -lglut -lGLU -lGL -lXmu -lXt -lSM -lICE -lXi -lXext -lX11 -lrt
> -ldl -lm -losgFX -lglut -lGLU -lGL -lXmu -lXt -lSM -lICE -lXi
> -lXext -lX11 -lrt -ldl -lm
> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -losgFX
> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
>
> The problem is not confined to the tests/ directory.
> If I let the make continue, there will be numerous errors.
> Basically every "ld" step fails.
>
> Additional root-cause analysis can be found on the
> aforementioned web page.
>
> If you need more details than that, please let me know.
>
> 
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>
>
>
> -- 
> Curtis Olson: http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/ 
> 
> 
>
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>   


-- 
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think 
the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but 
leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed 
in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, 
the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the 
contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and 
became richer.”

– Ben Franklin


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Money and Contributions

[Dale J. Chatham]

Not sure why you don't trust the FSF. It has changed a lot since the 
beginnings and Mr. Stallman's views very clearly do not drive it.

I had a run-in with Mr. Stall in 1986. I had called because I couldn't 
believe that I was required to dump anything I wrote in gnu C under his 
license. We argued for a while after which he threatened to sue for 
copyright breach if I didn't comply. The law allowed him to collect 
double damages, which would have been the price of C/C++ at the time or 
zero bucks.

The license is very different now and basically allows you to keep 
anything you write with it. It was that change in the GPL to which I 
believe he can attribute the success of FSF.

You're right, he's not a very nice person, but the FSF is bound as much 
by the GPL as we are.


Victhor Foster wrote:
> I don't trust the FSF. I don't think Mr. Stallman is a nice person.
> (I hear all the time he doesn't take baths :P)
>
>   
-- 
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think 
the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but 
leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed 
in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, 
the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the 
contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and 
became richer.”

– Ben Franklin


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Money and Contributions

[Dale J. Chatham]

Curtis Olson wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Reagan Thomas wrote:
>
> There *is* a "PayPal button" at FlightGear.org:
>
> http://www.flightgear.org/dvd/
>
> Perhaps Curt will explain if there is another means of directly
> contributing funds.
>
> FlightGear is definitely worthy of support. I vow that if I win the
> lottery, I will make a very significant financial contribution.
>
>
> Here are a couple thoughts.
>
> 1. Don't buy lottery tickets ... send the money you would have spent 
> to a worthy charity. Then the money benefits people in real need 
> rather than some lottery organization, probably run by the gov't. If 
> someone out there doesn't agree, take a statistics class (and pay 
> attention.) :-)

The only thing you overlook in your equation is the tax revenue that 
would have to be made up. Those who pay the lottery lower our taxes. Ben 
Franklin said "The only fair form of taxation is the lottery, you can 
decide whether to pay or not."

>
> 2. No one has stepped forward and offered to invest the time and 
> expertise for setting up a true non-profit. I personally do not have 
> the knowledge or experience, nor do I have the time to maintain such 
> an organization, keep records, file taxes, etc. etc. I don't know how 
> much of a time commitment this would be, but for someone who knows 
> nothing about it I think it would be a lot of time just to get up to 
> speed, and when you are dealing with people's money, paying taxes, 
> etc. you don't want to make rookie mistakes.
A non profit must be formed to perform some service deemed useful to the 
community. The only benefit of a non-profit versus a not for profit is 
that those who contribute can write off the donation on their taxes. 
Other than that from the receiver's point of view, no difference between 
a non-profit and just not making a profit.
>
> 3. I don't feel comfortable setting up a "donate to FlightGear" paypal 
> button, but having it go straight to my personal paypal address. It 
> would make more sense to have some separation, but when money is 
> flowing, there are tax implications not to mention accountability to 
> the FlightGear group. That is why I think if we do this, we should do 
> it under some sort of "official" organizational umbrella like a true 
> non-profit.
See the above. There are two choices for where to send the money. A 
corporation or an individual. A corporation protects the individual who 
would otherwise be receiving the money. It does little for the person 
making the donation other than perhaps giving some dubious sense of 
security.
>
> 4. If someone has a substantial chunk of money they would consider 
> donating to the project, then feel free to contact me. Maybe we can 
> work something out ... like purchase some particular developer's time 
> to achieve some key feature that would be hard to achieve with small 
> slices of volunteer time. Or maybe fund a trip for several developers 
> to a conference or show to promote the FlightGear project. But here I 
> would prefer to act as some sort of broker (I don't know if that's the 
> right word) but have the money go straight from source to destination 
> without flowing through my hands.
>
> 5. This leaves a gap for all of those who might be willing to donate 
> small slivers of money ($10?) to FlightGear. We don't have a structure 
> or mechanism to handle that. This doesn't get mentioned very often 
> though. What would we expect to pull in through a donation box? Who 
> would oversee that money and that process and how it is spent? A 
> person or organization would need to report income on their taxes, 
> write off expenses on their taxes, track everything carefully, etc. 
> etc. ... no small task. If a donation box pulls in $50-$100 a year ... 
> that's something, but how hard do you work to create a system to 
> support that. If we would anticipate pulling in $250,000 a year, then 
> that's a different story ... but honestly, I think we'd be closer to 
> $100 year ... and if someone had a bigger chunk to donate, then it 
> might be better to discuss that as a special case.

What do you hope to gain?

>
> These are all just thoughts, it's not necessarily the end of the story 
> ... but it's one thing to say "here's something we should do" versus 
> thinking through all the steps to make that happen. There could be a 
> ton of volunteer time and effort that would have to go in behind the 
> scenes to support and manage all of this. Should we setup a 
> non-profit? Maybe -- but the right person with the right experience in 
> the area needs to come along and be willing to put in the requisite 
> amount of time and effort ... and be willing to commit time and effort 
> going forward year to year. In the context of a volunteer project, 
> anything involving money has to be handled with *extreme* care and 
> thought and wisdom or it will blow up in all our faces.
>
> Regards,
>
> Curt.
> -- 
> Curtis Olson: http://baron.f

Re: [Flightgear-devel] Commercial ads on the web site ....

[Dale J. Chatham]

Any idea how much traffic this site gets?

Martin Spott wrote:
> "Dale J. Chatham" wrote:
>
>   
>> You'll notice that what you object to us under "Marketplace". It's 
>> banner ads used to finance the site.
>> 
>
> Yup, I know about the background, but when I look at this picture, I
> think it's better to have whichever 'cheap' site than this one.
>
>   
>> The alternative is user fees.
>> 
>
> No, this is certainly not the only option,
>
>   Martin.
>   


-- 
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think 
the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but 
leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed 
in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, 
the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the 
contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and 
became richer.”

– Ben Franklin

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms, disarm only those who are neither 
inclined, nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the 
assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to 
prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence 
than an armed man."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1764

"When the people fear the government you have tyranny. When the government 
fears the people you have liberty."
-- Thomas Jefferson

If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater 
than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek 
not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; 
and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Commercial ads on the web site ....

[Dale J. Chatham]

You'll notice that what you object to us under "Marketplace". It's 
banner ads used to finance the site.

The alternative is user fees.

Be irritated all you want, but, unless you want to pay, it's likely just 
the way it's going to be.

Martin Spott wrote:
> Hi folks,
> do you think this is an 'appropriate' way to promote an open source
> flight simulation project ?!?
>
>   http://foxtrot.mgras.net/static/www.flightgear.org.png
>
> I'm pretty much irritated 
>
>   Martin.
>   


-- 
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think 
the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but 
leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed 
in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, 
the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the 
contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and 
became richer.”

– Ben Franklin

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms, disarm only those who are neither 
inclined, nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the 
assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to 
prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence 
than an armed man."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1764

"When the people fear the government you have tyranny. When the government 
fears the people you have liberty."
-- Thomas Jefferson

If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater 
than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek 
not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; 
and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.


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Re: [Flightgear-devel] reversible ILS

[Dale J. Chatham]

Every airport has a "preferred" runway to use. I'd suggest using that 
one regardless. The surface wind goes into the equation to select which 
runway, but it doesn't kick in until crosses a threshold.

Of course, if you can find ATIS information online :)

Alex Perry wrote:
> +1. Reversible approaches should be configured like any other ATC controlled 
> ground system - such as runway lighting.  I have no objections to an 
> automatic selector for which ILS end to enable, but it should be based on 
> surface wind (for example) and not the aircraft position.
>
>
>
> John Denker  wrote:
>
>   
>> Back in the 2nd week of September there was discussion of
>> reversible ILSs.
>>
>> Maybe I missed something, but I thought there was rough
>> consensus around the following ideas:
>>
>> a) FG behavior should be reasonably realistic.  We should 
>> not make artificial assumptions that make approaches
>> unflyable, when better alternatives are readily available.  
>> Conversely, we should not require FG to implement features 
>> that are not available in real life.
>>
>> b) An instrument approach procedure generally contains a 
>> "missed approach segment".  There is a maxim that says 
>> "If you are not prepared for the miss, you are not prepared 
>> for the approach."  The FAA says that half the time, 
>> a practice approach should include flying the missed
>> approach segment.  Real-world pilots take this seriously.
>> Lives are at stake.
>>
>> c) You cannot show up at a real-world airport and expect
>> both ends of a reversible ILS to be active simultaneously.  
>> The physics doesn't permit it.  The signals would interfere.  
>> If runway 11 is active and you would prefer runway 29, 
>> you can ask Tower to reverse the ILS.  They might or might 
>> be able to grant your wish.
>>
>> d) For years, FG has attempted to divine which end of the 
>> reversible ILS the pilot wants to use based on aircraft 
>> position and/or heading.  This is both unrealistic (see 
>> item c) and impossible.  There is no objective way to 
>> determine whether an aircraft is flying the "upwind leg" 
>> for runway 11 or the "downwind leg" for runway 29;  the
>> only difference between the two is the pilot's intentions.
>> You've heard of problems that are so hard that they are
>> classified as NP-complete ... well, this problem is much 
>> worse than that.  It is ESP-complete.
>>
>> e) The current code is even more broken than that.  At
>> some airports, it gets the wrong answer 100% of the time,
>> so that you cannot fly the inbound segments, never mind
>> the missed approach segment.  Bug reports on this issue
>> have been discarded without comment.
>>
>> f) Code to fix all these problems has been available since
>> September.  It uses a "preferred-approach-deg" value
>> in the property tree to decide which end of the ILS to
>> activate.  If you prefer the other end, you can easily
>> change this property.  All segments of the approach are
>> flyable.  Everything is predictable and well behaved.
>>
>> The same words that described the ILS service volume
>> apply here:  This is a significant departure from past
>> FG behavior, but it is not wrong.  It is feature, not
>> a bug.
>>
>> This code was not committed.  It was discarded without
>> comment.
>>
>> ===
>>
>> I was recently told [off list] that there was a
>> "requirement" within FG to permit simultaneous approaches
>> to both ends of a reversible ILS.  This came as a surprise
>> to me.  I do not recall anybody suggesting this, even as 
>> a joke, much less any consensus in this direction.
>>
>> Let's be clear:  We all agree it is important for both
>> ends of the ILS to be available without undue hassle, but 
>> they don't need to be available at the same time.  And
>> "without undue hassle" doesn't mean without any pilot 
>> input at all, especially when the problem is ESP-complete.
>> Most real-world instrument-rated pilots are content to 
>> fly the approach that Tower says is the active approach;  
>> they don't show up at an airport with inflexible pre-
>> conceptions about which approach will be active.
>>
>> I was also informed [off list] that the code to make
>> reversible ILSs usable had been "ignored" because it was 
>> "not good enough".  That is not very informative, not
>> very constructive.  No clarification has been forthcoming 
>> as to what makes it "not good enough".
>>
>> Perhaps some folks on this list would be kind enough
>> to look at the code and make constructive comments.  
>> Take a look at
>>  http://gitorious.org/~jsd/fg/sport-model/commits/sport
>> in particular the item that speaks of "reversible ILS".
>>
>> If there are some requirements that I am not aware of, 
>> requirements that make unflyable approaches preferable 
>> to flyable approaches, please explain.
>>
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