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Penguin Car Earns Indy500 Spot
strredwolf writes "Despite generating over $12K in funds, well short of the $250K goal, the Tux 500 Project was able to secure a spot in the Indy 500 with driver Roberto Moreno piloting the Linux #77 Indy car. He's back in the pack in 31st place (only 5.5 MPH separates 31st place from 1st) but was able to secure it by re-qualifying with an average speed of 220.299 MPH. Will Moreno be able to pilot the penguin-tipped Indy car to victory next week at the 91st Indianapolis 500?"
(I'm coming out of comment retirement to criticize Slashdot, not the community)
:)", the grass roots project wasn't worthy of your sacred pages. There were several times that a story about this project appeared in the firehose, but no story about the project's existance ever made it to the front page.
Slashdot, you should be ashamed of yourself. Doing nothing to help, but claiming the rights after the fact. This was exactly the kind of grass roots project that you would have announced in the past, but choose to purposefully ignore it this time. You had a chance to announce this a long time ago, but according to Rob Malda himself, who said in full "there are so many reasons that this story doesn't interest me
All it would have taken from you is to accept one measley little story about the Tux500 project a few weeks ago and *bam*, it would have had the proper amount of publicity to energize the Linux community and raise enough money to fully sponsor the car. All it took was $1 from each person in just 1% of the community, so it would have worked even with 80% of the community doing their own thing. But since the project didn't get the good publicity it deserved, it only raised half the amount needed just to put a logo on the car. Fortunately the good will of the tux500 team seems to be allowing the logo to still be on the car. I guess they are better people than you.
You know why so many community projects fail? Because the leaders don't believe in them.
Just so the rest of you know for this discussion, I understand that sites like Slashdot are news sites. But IMHO, only half a news site. There have been hundreds of stories here over the years meant to mobilize the community (ie. Blender). I ask, why not this one?
The year of Linux on the racetrack is upon us!
I just wonder how the pitstop will go
apt-get new-tyres
liqbase
That sounds pretty good! Unless the race goes for, like, an hour.
Will Moreno be able to pilot the penguin-tipped Indy car to victory next week at the 91st Indianapolis 500? No they won't. Haven't you seen the latest latest latest news? Because the car is using Linux anywhere whether its on a sticker, under someone's breathe, it should be obvious that the car its owner, its pit crew, and the tires have infringed on MS patents. I thought you knew by now that Microsoft patented Indy 500.
Infiltrated dot Net
no!! you need to compile the new tyres from source then relink them to the car!!
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
if the indy car was actually RUNNING LINUX, someone please correct me if I am wrong. At least have the car's ECU running linux and geeks might take an interest. I personally find no interest in donating money to see tux included in a sea of advertising, what are we talking here, a few stickers? Yes, I know ANY publicity is good publicity and I really am a capitalist at heart, but I need a little more to open my wallet.....
K
But be careful! History learns us that fast race cars don't go too well with the '-Wall' parameter. ;O
it'll probably be because of a faulty driver.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
a valid place story for car analogies!
Monstar L
I know many of us Linux users would like to see it replace Windows as the dominate OS, but frankly, why should we care? We Linux users have a wonderful OS that does everything a big geek like me could want, and far more than Windows can do. Saving Joe Sixpack the $70 he pays Microsoft to buy a machine with Windows pre-loaded isn't a cause I get excited about.
I love making predictions, and here's my prediction for the future of Linux: Linux will never beat Windows in the market place. Instead, a new market will emerge for ultra-cheap computers (as in OLPC). Super-cheap computers with lots of RAM and non-volatile storage will one day cost $100 (in 2007 dollars). When this happens, Microsoft will not be able to compete against free Linux as the dominant OS on these machines. There just isn't enough profit per device to support Microsoft-like company. Instead Linux, or a derivative of GNU/Linux software, will power our new ultra-cheap devices. I think Microsoft understands this low-end disruption threat, and that's why they're so desperate to push Windows CE derivatives. However, the bean counters at Microsoft will always try to kill off unprofitable efforts like Windows CE, as the market, margins, and profit just aren't there compared to selling high-end software for high-end machines.
If you think this idea is crazy, have you heard about the iPhone? It may not run Linux proper, but it's clearly in the GNU/open-source camp. Operating systems are mature technology, no longer worth much money. Apple showed great insight in dumping their own, and running with the free stuff. This gives them a huge advantage over Microsoft in the future battle for smart consumer devices. Others will follow Apple's lead, and dump Windows for GNU/Linux as the super low-cost PC/personal-computing-device market emerges. In the end, GNU/Linux will prevail, but never on the traditional high-end desktop that Joe Sixpack buys for web surfing, games, and porn.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Dang! I thought "penguin-tipped" meant a big ol' fiberglass penguin head on the car's nose.
Better yet would be a something like the 3-foot tall chicken on top of our local Broasted Chicken!! delivery car.
"Despite generating over $12K in funds, well short of the $250K goal, the Tux 500 Project was able to secure a spot in the Indy 500"
... the Tux 500 Project was able to secure a spot in the Indy 500? Did generating over $12K hinder them somehow?
Hang on. Despite generating over $12K in funds
Do you mean that despite not getting anywhere near the $250k goal they still managed to secure a spot? If so, why not say something along those lines rather than the confusing babble presented?
I'm not being a grammar Nazi here - the grammar looks fine to me (and mine isn't the best) - but it's just that it makes no sense and you have read the line 5 times to work out what it is trying to say. Could we have some, y'know, editor type stuff going on here?
The "only 5.5 MPH" difference huge. That's about 4 seconds a lap which means that over a 500 mile race on a 2.5 mile track, the 1st place car will lap the 31st place car 5 times. When you factor in driver ability, strategy and pitstops, the difference will be much greater. The top 3 cars in the race will probably be within .25 second of each other after 500 miles.
In general, the cars are much slower now than they used to be. The 225.817MPH of the 1st place car would have been very far back in the grid compared with the 240 MPH+ of 10 or 15 years ago. I wish him luck.
Or one of the other sites which are part of the OSDN empire.
/. would gladly have pimped the story for ya!
/. game.
Then
That'll teach you. Next time, learn how to play the
I for one wrote a little note asking if it was worth it to give money to this project. I did give them some money, and as a fan of racing (car and motorcycle and cycling), am exited to watch the race and root for the #77 car. Not only they are one of the under dogs out there (they even lost the first driver in a crash in the qualifying rounds) but a lot of the linux community was against them in a bad way, apparently even /., so more of an under dog IMHO. The new driver is a seasoned driver that has always been a "replacement" driver, but he is no doubt a good driver (better than the original in my opinion), also driving a formula one car, he even has won a few races in the champ car and the formula 3000 leagues. He also was running as of sunday morning practice in 13 place. I hope he does well, and just by being in the race it has proved that projects like this deserve the attention of the community, advertising anything in any media is very expensive and this is a good conduit to reach average people, or do we don't want to see Linux advertised at all?.
It is clear that the submitter is not familiar with racing. 5.5MPH in a race is a HUGE gap, it is a 500 mile race on a 2 mile track. IF he stays at a constant 5.5 MPH behind the leader, he will be give or take 8 laps back at the end of the race. Unfortunately the more likely scenario is that he will lose speed throughout the race.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Indycar is running entirely ethanol this year.
Here he comes, here comes TuxRacer - he's a demon on wheels
He's a demon and he's gonna be chasin' after redmond.
He's gainin' on bill so he better look alive.
He's busy revvin' up a powerful Mach 5.
And when the odds are against him
And there's dangerous work to do
You bet your life Tux Racer will see it through.
Go tux Racer! Go tux Racer! Go tux Racer, Go!
He's off and flyin' as he guns the car around the track
He's jammin' down the pedal like he's never comin' back
Adventure's waitin' just ahead.
Go Tux Racer! Go Tux Racer! Go Tux Racer, Go!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
After a quick google search to check your claim, I stand corrected... Mod parent up!
Nascar is WWF on wheels(staged) Indy is a bunch of guys making boring left turns F1 doesn't have enough passing and too much depends upon the speed of the pit crew as opposed to driver skills. MotoGP has no pit stops and lots of passing. Every turn is a game of chicken and the bikes are close to what's available on the street.
"Ethanol simply moves the pollution from one producer to another."
Haven't you learned that in the US all that matters is the illusion that we are doing the right thing, no matter what the truth is...
And, coincidentally...so is the audience....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Speaking as someone who grew up in Indy and who is still heavily involved in motorsports, you really don't know what you're talking about.
1. The Indianapolis is the biggest annual sporting event. Period. More people attend, and more people watch on TV worldwide then any other event. If you wanted to get the message about linux out there, this would be the place to do it.
The Indy 500 used to be billed as the biggest single-day sporting event in the world, and pole-day qualifying used to be number 2. This was always claimed by comparing their attendance figures. Even though other single-day sporting events are far more popular, none of them have as many people in attendance. Unfortunately, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway doesn't actually release attendance figures. Neither have they actually released their actual seating capacity. When Indy was making these claims, people were publicly estimating attendance of 400,000, or even 500,000 people. A couple of years ago, the Indianapolis Star actually counted the seats, then estimated how much infield space their was, along with an estimate of the number of track workers, team members, concession stand workers, etc, and came up with an estimated maximum attendance of about 260,000. Unfortunately, attendance has fallen dramatically since 1995, and a realistic estimate would be more like 200,000 people.
As to whether it was, or still is, the world's largest single day sporting event is open to interpretation. These days, the Brickyard 400 (also held at the speedway) draws more people. Whereas you used to have to get on a multi-year waiting list to get tickets to the Indy 500 because the race would sell out the day after the previous year's race, nowdays you can purchase tickets directly from the Speedway ticket office just a couple weeks before race day. Or you can wait until race day and buy them at a discount from scalpers outside the track. For that matter, it's entirely possible that the Daytona 500 has more fans in attendance. Of course, if you include television audience in addition to fans actually in attendance, the Indy 500 doesn't even come close to the Superbowl, which in turn pales in comparison to several international events, including the World Cup final.
2. This year all Indy cars run on Ethanol 85. While this isn't solar, it's far better then the traditional Gas of the past (hell I believe NASCAR is just now *thinking* about phasing out leaded gas).
Actually, they run on pure Ethanol, not an E85 blend. This is the first year that they have run on Ethanol. It has been decades since Indy-style cars have actually run on "traditional gas of the past." Before they used Ethanol, they were running on Methanol. Methanol is considered to be much safer than gasoline because it has a much higher flashpoint, which makes it easier to transport and store. Unfortunately, it also burns with an invisible (to the human eye) flame, but they've been able to cope. The reason that the IRL has switched to Ethanol this year is 100% related to sponsorship.
3. The engineering involved in these cars is amazing, not only as far as engine development (Honda had relatively little time to develop these engines to run on Ethanol 85, and have done so admirably). Also, the engines themselves are interesting in that they are normally aspirated (i.e. no Turbo, so SuperCharger just incredibly engineered 8Cyl Engines That can drive none stop at high speeds for ling distances. FWIW Honda wasn't picked to be the only engine supplier for indy cars, they got that way through attrition. The last year there were multiple engine manufacturers Honda so blew away Chevy that it just didn't make sense for them to continue.
It honestly didn't take much effort to convert the engines from Methanol to Ethanol. One alcohol burns largely like the next. And to think of the Honda IRL engine as high-tech is like calling the typewriter state of the art. The Honda Formula 1 engine is far more interesting. Both