Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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.
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.