SoftwareWars

Overview

First Sentences

Given the technology that's already available, we should have cars that safely drive us around while we lounge in the back and sip champagne. All we need is a video camera on a swivel on the roof, plugged into a PC, right? Yes, we have the necessary hardware, but we don't have robot-driven cars because we don't have the software. This book explains how we can build better software and get our own hi-tech chauffeur.

Translation

Here is a test document to time how long it will take to translate, and give an idea of some wording: File:TranslationTest2.odt

These are the languages that are lined up for translation right now: French, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian

Trying Linux

There are several ways to go about this:

• Boot to a Linux "Live CD" which runs Linux off the CD-ROM. It takes a while to load code the first time, but it runs at full speed once it is in memory. However, booting to a CD-ROM is a hassle, so I don't recommend it.
• Inside a virtual machine

Install VirtualBox binaries [1]

Download Ubuntu "Alternate" CD ISO file. (It is a text mode installer which is faster and more reliable and more powerful) I386: [2], AMD64: [3]

Create a Virtual Machine inside VirtualBox (1 gig RAM, 10 Gig partition is plenty. Allocating all space up front is faster because if your virtual partition gets fragmented, it will run very slowly.)

Mount the ISO file to the virtual machine

Boot Virtual machine.

Go through setup process

• Dual boot

• Wipe the disk!