IT Olympics

Darrell Estabrook wrote to us about IT Olympics, a satirical look at what the Olympics would be like in the IT world. Pretty amusing - and timely, although listening to some of the Olympic announcers is comical in its own right. [Update by nik] I've s/com/org/ in the URL. And on a related theme, the Usenet Olympics are always worth a laugh, ditto the Spam Olympics.

Comments

Re:Where's the beef?

[Overt Coward]

Absolutely... let's see, what could real events be...

• Web Server Configuration: Starting with an x86 box with an empty hard drive, contestants attempt to turn it into a web server that serves up (committee-provided) dynamic web pages. Installation and configuration would have to be done within a specified time limit (could have "sprint" and "marathon" versions); the winner will be the one whose machine handles the most hits without drops or crashes. Allowed equipment: CDs of "stock" OS, applications, and development tools (including source, if desired).

• Web Server Configuration (Matched Sprint): Same as above, but head-to-head competition to be the first to handle a predefined traffic load.

• (Replace "Web-server" with firewall or DB server, again time limits or matched sprints to be measured against server metrics.)

• Legacy code challenge: contestants will be given a program with little, no, or possibly contradictory documentation and will need to be the first to modify the program to either add a new feature or to fix an existing bug (event variations).

• (Any ideas, folks?)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Any competitor not testing positive for caffeine will be immediately disqualified.

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My Favorite

[Tower]

"The DLL Recognition event was
canceled due to a GPF in the
scoring server"

Whoo-hoo!
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Re:Where's the beef?

[Tower]

Lone Sysadmin: You are given a Sun E450 (Solaris/ 100BaseT), an IBM RS/6k (AIX / Tokenring), an x86 (Linux / ATM), another x86 (Win2k / 10BaseT), and two C-64s (Ge/OS and CP/M / serial and joyport links). Make a usable network, with failover file, application and print sharing, basic webserver (CGI/PHP/ASP/LMNOP). Network will be stress tested by 15 guys named B!FF, who have the phone # to the server room. Hubs, switches, routers and cabling are in a box in the corner. There is a case of Mt. Dew under your desk, along with a registered copy of QuakeIIIA and UT.
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Any bets?

[interiot]

My bet is that they get 36 hours before being served a notice from the IOC.

Slashdot: 7/14/2000 - Olympic Committee Cracks Down On Domain Owners

Not to be the devil's sidekick. Just that any organization that can change US laws to gain exclusive use of a particular word in trademarks seems very evil. And given their past track record, they'll surely go after this one, right or wrong.
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Re:Any bets?

[Steve B]

Another item from the I Swear I Am Not Making This Up department: Wizards of the Coast had to change the Legend of the Five Rings collectible card game logo -- it seems that the USOC owns any logo having five interlocking rings.
/.

Wrong link

[Tairan]

ITOlympics.com is a placeholder for someone's Cobalt. Try www.itolympics.org

Event One: The Server Press

[zlite]

Tougher than it sounds, if this site's performance after being /.ed is anything to go on.

Are these the coolest errors ever, or what?

[askheaves]

They may not be able to handle the traffic, but you gotta love those error messages:

HTTP Error 02931
Cannot complete requested action. There must be
some reason, but who knows why.
Please try again

HTTP Error 834
This is the error that broke our servers
back. We will now have to go back and
reboot everything.
(Thanks a lot)

HTTP Erro
Microsoftie OLE DB Provider for ODBC
Drivers error "80040e30"
[Microsoftie][ODBC SQEL Server
Driver][SQEL Server]What do you mean
"hyperlink"?

/article.asp, line 19

Unknown
An unknowing error has unknowlingly
been accessed. Please go back and try
again.

Re:Are these the coolest errors ever, or what?

[Blondito]

dude these guys (the ones that are hosting itolympics.COM) have a 500k link , I work for the company that provides their bandwidth and they are erroring big time :-)

The most watched event of course would be...

[Anonymous Coward]

the boiling of hot grits and then pouring them down ones pants event. This has captivated people for many weeks now and it will be the most respected of the events.

Thank You.

NBC's coverage sucks!

[Ledfoot]

I was part of the group that did the Results (scorekeeping and data distribution) systems for the Atlanta Olympics. One of the cool parts of that job was that during the games we got to sit up in the commnetator booths and watch the live raw TV feed that NBC and the other stations then use to make their broadcasts from. There was ZERO of Bob Costas' droning on about each athelete's triumph over advercity crap. I could watch ANY sport I wanted, ALL of them, with no BS commnetary. Now THAT's the way it should be!

You'd think with having tape delayed play back we could get more events shown? And yeah, we probably could, if they didn't waste more than half the air time playing up the "human interest" stories of the atheletes!

Oh well, I'm not watching much of them this time around. Seems rather boring. Live and in person was SOOO much better (except for the preliminary rounds of platform diving... 40+ divers getting 5 dives each with 3 minutes between each. Made for a LONG night)

What about...?

[zpengo]

There should be a document formatting event, with varying levels: vi, emacs, pico....