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]

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

Re:

[SilentChris]

Bet they tried to drive it wirelessly.

Re:Of course it crashed..

[BosstonesOwn]

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]

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

One horrible joke deserves another!

Re:

[plover]

It's Vista. ALL the pedals are brake pedals.

Re:Of course it crashed..

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Hate to spoil an almost funny joke

[MikShapi]

... but linux had the "Screaming accept..." bit pretty much since birth.

We call it sudo, and some of us actually consider it a good thing.

Re:

[toleraen]

I almost hate to do this on /., but I feel it's appropriate. [google.com]

Re:Of course it crashed..

[vmxeo]

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]

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

Re:Of course it crashed..

[Eccles]

At least the firewall seems to have done its job.

Re:Of course it crashed..

[cafucu]

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

Re:

[tolan-b]

How the hell is that flamebait?

Re:Of course it crashed..

[superpulpsicle]

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

Re:

[Himring]

you misspelled "noob."

Re:

[mnmn]

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

Re:

[Herby Sagues]

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:

[Raistlin77]

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 dunno how deep your pockets go, but mine are pretty shallow. Shallow-pocketed sponsors are not worth much to any sport.

Re:

[red_one]

See A1 GP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1_Grand_Prix [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Why? Borders are an artificial invention of the industrial era.

Do you always just make up your facts from scratch, or is this a special occasion? Either that, or you are SERIOUSLY misinformed as to the timing and duration of the industrial era...

Re:

[LuckyGuess]

England 1740, industrial starts. Could we say ends 1985 for the UK. Now consider the birth of modern France (1795), Germany(1860), Italy (1870), USA (picking the Civil War 1865). They seem to coincide quite well. And you don't have shout to show how clever you are.

Re:

[Shinmizu]

My favorite industrial era border is that one the Romans build in England.

Re:

[zippthorne]

I'm sure its developers will be interested in avoiding examination of the core dump.

Re:

[blackicye]

They ignored my warnings that the driver was tainted. :P

The Blue Car of Death

[Just Some Guy]

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

Re:

[lib3rtarian]

if only they hadn't had all those open windows! Someone should have told the driver to restart the engine and close all those windows!

Well, you have to admit...

[jd]

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

Anyone done a ksymoops?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

That will tell you why it crashed.

Re:

[Tribbin]

I'm sure it was a user error.

Visual data?

[Swizec]

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:

[__aaclcg7560]

Yes, inquiring minds want to know. I think it was a Lone Gunman hired by Microsoft who splattered Tux on the roadway.

Re:Visual data?

[canUbeleiveIT]

Video of crash [youtube.com]

Re:Visual data?

[bl8n8r]

looks to me like the SCO car shoved him.

No...

[Zatchmort]

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

Re:

[rapidweather]

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]

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]

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.

Re:

[Skynyrd]

I understand where you're coming from, but I think you're on the wrong path.

It isn't about convincing folks that Brand A soap is better than Brand B. It's about exposure. If you watch a race (or any other sponsored event) you'll see the name over and over again. Next time you're at the store, there might be a bit of recognition for that product. Also (especially in NASCAR) there are people who are such fans of a certain driver that they'll buy the product on the side of his car. Strange but true.

The reason was obvious

[Billosaur]

The penguin couldn't see over the dashboard.

Oblig pengion joke

[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

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously he couldn't see through his.

Let a bot moderate this one

[Sciros]

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:

[__aaclcg7560]

Only if the bot is running Linux. :P

Re:

[Sparr0]

Since I browse with Funny=-3, that would definitely weed out the garbage pretty fast.

Re:

[nelsonal]

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

to paraphrase John Glen

[phrostie]

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

now we know how Bill Gates feels

Good Publicity

[statusbar]

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

--jeffk++

Re:Good Publicity

[drinkypoo]

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]

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."

Re:

[commodoresloat]

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."

Erm... and in what way would this solve the problem of having crappy articles posted to slashdot?

Re:

[StringBlade]

Agreed. Aside from winning, crashing is the only other reason people would become aware of the Linux car. There were two "favorable" outcomes in terms of publicity and we got one of them, because there's no such thing as bad publicity.

After all, you can't spell "infamous" without "famous"!

It also provides a potential launchpad for new funding next year. Lots of people like to root for the underdog, and you can't be much more of an underdog than crashing and coming in dead last. Next time around people w

Re:

[Ohreally_factor]

Maybe next year they won't use an ATI card to power the dash display.

A driver problem, for sure

[Stringer Bell]

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

On the other hand...

[Cyko_01]

...this proves that no matter how bad your drivers are linux will always keep you on your feet

Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor driver support as usual.

Re:

[xs650]

Yes, but it's not the Linux community's fault that someone else didn't supply good a good driver.

ouch

[nuzak]

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]

It's actually Will Turner's Locker now.

Not "Will Turner's Locker"...

[ClayJar]

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]

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

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

  -l

Re:

[jinxidoru]

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

I surrendered $8 and three hours of my life to him. Oh, what I would give to have it back.

Calm down

[John.P.Jones]

Everyone, try not to Panic!

Who's panicking?

[spun]

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?

don't worry

[commodoresloat]

Nobody's panicking. Well, except for that guy over there who calls himself The Colonel...

Yeah but

[thewils]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them...

Re:

[__aaclcg7560]

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

Re:

[kasperd]

You have a point with that beowulf cluster, there is slightly more to it than a simple joke though. What this incident really proves is, that a race car with a penguin painted on the side does not perform as well as a race car designed by a beowulf cluster of linux machines [linuxelectrons.com]. (And this is probably not the only one, it was just the first I found).

Drinking

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame the WINE.

Aswathama hathaha (kunjarah)

[Palmyst]

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]

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

Re:I guess 2007...

[senatorpjt]

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

Port to Indycar...?

[norminator]

They should have used OpenBSD

7th place? pffffft

[burris]

If you're not first, you're last. - Ricky Bobby

Of course it crashed...

[Refelian]

Considering it didn't have windows.

Must have been a BTD

[ClosedSource]

Black Tarmac of Death.

Not Ready

[Imexius]

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

RTFM

[Kenshin]

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]

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]

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.

More obligatory responses

[Captain Spam]

Concatenation of the discussion between my brother and I immediately after we heard about the crash:

At first, it appeared to be a problem with the IndyCar extensions to X, given the user was able to take it down to a console-based tow truck (it wasn't pretty, but it at least got a controlled shutdown). However, further investigation showed it was definitely a hardware issue, as the system couldn't get back on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway network after a full restart of the engine. Most probable cause

Dear Driver

[dvdinslashdot]

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

This was why I didn't like the idea

[rfunches]

of paying so much money for a sponsorship. The driver is not going to get a lot of media attention, and the only way Linux was going to get any television time was if a) the car won (unlikely) or b) the car crashed/engine blew up (very likely). Choice b would yield very little air time, and with drivers like Hornish Jr., Dixon, Castroneves, Kanaan, Wheldon, and Patrick, Moreno would have to get very lucky.

Please, stop raising money for pointless advertisements and sponsorships. Open-source would benefit fr

I said it

[CharlieG]

I did say "backmarker"

Thankfully they use a closed sores driver

[mrraven]

An open sores driver might have gotten a virus after a crash like that...

Who's Joost?

[Chris Pimlott]

Who's Joost?

Re:

[silvwolf]

Website that puts tv shows on the web, or something like that. http://www.joost.com/ [joost.com] I recognized the name, Joost, but couldn't remember what it was until I got home and looked them up.

http://i9.tinypic.com/4qs56ok.jpg [tinypic.com] - that's a picture of the car, driven by Tomas Schekter, getting a new front wing after a small collision. Took em about 30 seconds I think.

I kept my eye out for Roberto Moreno's car, looking for the penguin, but never could spot it. Too bad about him crashing out so early.

Stallman GNU car

[kavehmz]

Just imaginge RMS in a GNU car in the race.
He will forget the race and heads straight toward reporter's station when one of them calls his car, linux car, by mistake.

Linux car crashes first

[thoughtlover]

The irony is surreal...

Re:

[the linux geek]

The team you're looking for is the Pittsburgh Penguins. Detroit is the Red Wings.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

The concept of Linux geeks caring about Nascar is just bewildering.

Does this [indy500.com] look like NASCAR to you?

It would be better if you checked to see if you knew what you were talking about before posting comments.

Re:

[plover]

****whoosh****

That was the commenter's point, going straight over your head.

Does this look like NASCAR to you?

Yes.

Oh, wait, I see the difference now. Indy 500 is "Go fast, turn left, winner drinks Champagne." But NASCAR is "Go fast, turn left, winner drinks Budweiser."

Maybe we should just stick with the lame driver jokes.

Re:

[senatorpjt]

I believe the winner drinks milk.

Re:

[plover]

Shows what I know.

Not NASCAR

[wsanders]

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:

[fiannaFailMan]

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

Indycars is 'Grand Prix' racing? I could be wrong but I thought that label only applied to Formula 1.

Re:

[wsanders]

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]

Re:

[SlowMovingTarget]

But there are no penguins in Detroit.

Exactly! The Detroit Zoo is in Royal Oak.

NSX at Laguna Seca

[spaceyhackerlady]

It does look easy in those video games but the real thing that is missing in those games are the G's and steering effort.

Top Gear [bbc.co.uk] tried a side-by-side comparison a few years ago. Lap Laguna Seca in a Honda NSX on a PlayStation. Then do it for real. Compare. Try not to shit yourself on the Corkscrew. :-)

...laura

Re:

[MooUK]

So in other words they shouldn't even have had the tiny logo?

Re:

[UncleTogie]

Regardless, they did really good considering they only raise $16,000 for the race.

Uh, considering the cost of the car [even just the TIRES] - plus the fact that their goal was $250,000 - and I'm not sure what they accomplished other than a bit of publicity. This being many of the Indy 500's viewers first time even HEARING the word Linux, I'm not it was GOOD publicity...

"Hey, Bubba... I guess that thar Linux crashes worse than Windows does!"

Don't get me wrong, folks, I love open-source...I'm just suggesting that maybe, just maybe, they should've taken their time with the Indy proj