Linux (Car) Crashes At Indy 500

thanksforthecrabs writes to let us know that the Linux-sponsored Indy 500 car had a rough day at the track this weekend: it was the first car to crash on the track and finished dead last. Joost sponsored a car that came in a respectable seventh.

Of course it crashed..

[Goalie_Ca (584234)]

Oblig: Of course it crashed because of a bad driver.

Re:Of course it crashed..

[vmxeo (173325)]

Turns out the driver crashed due to a race condition [fh-ulm.de], which as most programmers know, should be avoided for the obvious reasons.

Re:Of course it crashed..

[jd (1658)]

I believe it was also in relation to a problem with a Barrier [wikipedia.org].

Re:Of course it crashed..

[Eccles (932)]

At least the firewall seems to have done its job.

Re:Of course it crashed..

[cafucu (918264)]

The car was destined to crash...it was caught in a loop...

Re:Of course it crashed..

[superpulpsicle (533373)]

But is not the loop's fault. The driver was inherited from a parent driver. He's got bugs altogether.

Re:

[mnmn (145599)]

Not a bad driver. Just a closed driver. A driver not having been exposed to enough 'eyeballs'.

Re:

[Herby Sagues (925683)]

Now, seriously, I find this a great idea: why have all sports to be sponsored by corporations? Individual sponsoring could be a good alternative. I don't see the relatioship with Linux though. It would be more like Linux if the community designed the vehicle and even left all the innovations open for the other competitors to benefit from them (as long as they also keep their designs open). But this is not the case. It is a traditional "closed source" car, only that it is sponsored by the public in a more di

Re:Of course it crashed..

[BosstonesOwn (794949)]

That my friend was a horrible joke.

In other news the Windows Vista car was slow off the line, but the car looked good and the driver was heard screaming "accept" as the car lurched forward and stopped every time he used the accelerator.

Re:Of course it crashed..

[toleraen (831634)]

"You are trying to brake to avoid a deadly accident. Cancel or al..."

One horrible joke deserves another!

Re:Of course it crashed..

[by Anonymous Coward]

Actually the Windows car only has one accelerator pedal, which you need to press to get to the brakes.

The Blue Car of Death

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

Moral of the story: Linux doesn't have good uptimes when you run it on unstable hardware.

Well, you have to admit...

[jd (1658)]

...that the suspend operation worked flawlessly and throttling handled by hardware monitoring was handled to perfection.

Visual data?

[Swizec (978239)]

Are there any photos or videos available of the crash? I'm all for linux, but seeing Tux splashed all over the road should be an interesting sight.

Re:Visual data?

[canUbeleiveIT (787307)]

Video of crash [youtube.com]

Re:Visual data?

[bl8n8r (649187)]

looks to me like the SCO car shoved him.

No...

[Zatchmort (1091857)]

That's impossible; everyone knows Linux can't crash. He must have been dual-booting Windows.

Re:

[rapidweather (567364)]

If the car had "won", would everyone want to adopt Linux? No.
Putting your product, name or cause on a racecar is exactly why you don't see a "Windows" racecar.
Every time that car had a mishap, lots of jokes would be forthcoming.

The idea behind putting your name on a racecar is that if the car wins, then that win
is somehow transferred to the product. "If whoever can put a good, winning car out there must have a super product." Back in the days when tobacco companies sponsored racecars, it was supposed to mak

Re:

[Usquebaugh (230216)]

I'm not in marketing but here's my take on it:-

Race car sponsorship is not that easy. It's all about product visibility. I'm a big F1 fan but I have a had time remembering who sponsors who. But I can tell you who the sponsors are, just from repeated exposure. For instance Mclaren just had a 1/2 at Monaco who sponsors Mclaren? But I can tell you who sponsored Lotus in the late 70s and williams in the mid 90s, JPS and Sega respectively.

The Indy 500 is a huge media event, nobody is going to make a big dea

Re:No...

[Splab (574204)]

Well crashing the car did give them maximum exposure imo. I mean, instant youtube, going to flash around all the usual linky sites and even got a short mention on the channels showing it - more exposure than anything ending under top 10 (and not crashing) I think.

The reason was obvious

[Billosaur (927319)]

The penguin couldn't see over the dashboard.

Oblig pengion joke

[by Anonymous Coward]

A penguin walks into an auto repair shop. "There's oil all over the motor and I have to add oil every day," she says. The mechanic says it will take an hour to check out so the penguin leaves.

It's a hot day, and not being an African penguin [wikipedia.org] doesn't like the heat and decides to get an ice cream cone to cool off.

Of course, hot as it is it drips all over her chest. An hour later she goes to check on her car.

"Looks like you blew a seal," the machanic says.

"Oh, no," laughs the penguin, "That's just ice cream."

I blame Windows

[by Anonymous Coward]

Obviously he couldn't see through his.

Let a bot moderate this one

[Sciros (986030)]

Everyone here's gonna post some smartass comment about it all so just have a bot go through and give everyone +5 Funny to save time as well as valuable mod points.

Re:

[nelsonal (549144)]

So all you're going to see in this thread is, "move along, nothing to see here."

to paraphrase John Glen

[phrostie (121428)]

we must be gracious and magnaminous and say, damm i hate it when that happens.

now we know how Bill Gates feels

A driver problem, for sure

[Stringer Bell (989985)]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's hard to find drivers for Linux.

Yep

[by Anonymous Coward]

Poor driver support as usual.

ouch

[nuzak (959558)]

That reminds me when Sun Microsystems fielded the only yacht to have ever sunk in the Americas Cup. Sun had this tongue-in-cheek orientation video with a "thrill of victory / agony of defeat" section that showed the video clip of their yacht, with the Sun logo prominently emblazoned on the side, going to Davey Jones' Locker.

Re:ouch

[jinxidoru (743428)]

It's actually Will Turner's Locker now.

Not "Will Turner's Locker"...

[ClayJar (126217)]

He took me to his cabin and he told me his secret. 'I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts' he said. 'My name is Ryan; I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.'

Nobody would surrender (their lives) to Will Turner. ;)

Re:Not "Will Turner's Locker"...

[Loligo (12021)]

>Nobody would surrender (their lives) to Will Turner. ;)

Perhaps not, but lots of teenage girls would gladly give up their booty to him.

  -l

Calm down

[John.P.Jones (601028)]

Everyone, try not to Panic!

Who's panicking?

[spun (1352)]

People are panicking? Why are they panicking, is something wrong? And why say "TRY not to," is it so bad that panic is almost a certainty? FOR GOD'S SAKE, WHAT AREN'T YOU TELLING US?

Yeah but

[thewils (463314)]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them...

Re:

[creimer (824291)]

Burnt rubber in a race condition? Uh, no thanks.

Drinking

[by Anonymous Coward]

I blame the WINE.

Aswathama hathaha (kunjarah)

[Palmyst (1065142)]

Balmer can now "honestly" say that Linux is the first to crash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yudhishtira#Drona.27s _death [wikipedia.org]

I guess 2007...

[MLS100 (1073958)]

...is not the year of Linux on the Racetrack.

Re:I guess 2007...

[senatorpjt (709879)]

Well, this is the first port of the kernel to the indycar platform, there are bound to be bugs to work out.

Of course it crashed...

[Refelian (923767)]

Considering it didn't have windows.

Not Ready

[Imexius (967514)]

Obviously Linux isn't ready for the race-track ;)

RTFM

[Kenshin (43036)]

Well, this is what happens when your pit crew scoffs and tells you to "RTFM" when you pull-in for a pit stop.

I don't get it

[Nebu (566313)]

I'm not sure I understand exactly what this story is about. Can someone maybe post a car analogy for me?

Re:I don't get it

[SeekerDarksteel (896422)]

Imagine a car driving at towards a ramp with a person standing just beyond it. The car flying over that person's head is like the GPP's post flying over yours.

Dear Driver

[dvdinslashdot (1108905)]

Next time try: /etc/init.d/brakes restart and paste results here. Thanx

Re:Good Publicity

[drinkypoo (153816)]

I wouldn't have even heard about this if the car didn't crash!!

There was a slashdot story about it, so you have no reason to complain HERE about not knowing about it.

Actually, there almost wasn't a story here; out of about twenty or twenty-five submissions that I saw cross the firehose on various days, only one was not written by a complete fucking idiot.

Some had the URL only in the submitter's name. Some had no links; some of those had the URL in the text, and some didn't. Most of the rest had stupid pithy comments about linux. Some of them had people whining about how it hadn't appeared on the front page yet.

This is the standard state of affairs. It turns out that slashdot isn't actually a more intelligent group than any other bunch of people who like computers and have web access; probably 90-95% of the story submissions suffer from the same problems. There would be a lot more stories on the slashdot front page if the majority of people who submit them weren't dumbfucks. The sad thing is that a lot of the submitted stories are quite interesting, but a leet-speaking myspacecase would do a better job with the submission. At least kids know how to make links in HTML.

Re:Good Publicity

[forkazoo (138186)]

This is the standard state of affairs. It turns out that slashdot isn't actually a more intelligent group than any other bunch of people who like computers and have web access; probably 90-95% of the story submissions suffer from the same problems. There would be a lot more stories on the slashdot front page if the majority of people who submit them weren't dumbfucks. The sad thing is that a lot of the submitted stories are quite interesting, but a leet-speaking myspacecase would do a better job with the submission. At least kids know how to make links in HTML.

Sadly, yes. I have been spending quite some time in the firehose myself, and it is pretty terrible. IMHO, the firehose needs some additional options besides just a thumbs up/thumbs down.

This submission should be on the front page.
This submission is terrible but the subject should be posted on the front page.
The subject is terrible.
The linked-to article is obviously stupid/hoax/idiotic, but merits some discussion anyway.
This submission is on the same subject as (identify another submission)

This way, the editors could see, "Hey, this block of 20 submissions were all identified by firehosers as being of the same subject, and the subject is considered important, I'll look at a few of the submissions and cobble together something."

Not NASCAR

[wsanders (114993)]

This is Grand Prix racing, not a bunch of hicks with tractors from NASCAR. You know, super expensive cars, handsome drivers with fancy European names like "Dario", silken ascots worn under tight-fitting racing uniforms, sponsorships by barely profitable Internet firms . . .
OMFG! IT'S 1999 AGAIN!

Re:

[wsanders (114993)]

I stand corrected

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One [wikipedia.org]

I had picked the term off the indy500 web site and assumed the Indy class was a subset for F1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indy_Racing_League [wikipedia.org]