Random Thoughts

It took a while but it’s finally here. A rewrite of “If Operating Systems Were Airlines“, but this time with version control systems (duh):

Git Airlines: The “there’s more than one way to do it” airline, Git flies the world’s largest and fastest airplanes. Git Airlines was founded by some priests who were flying for free on Bitkeeper Airlines and survived the fall after the Great Purge. Git airplanes start as spartan, empty cabins, with no carpeting, chairs, or piloting controls. At the departure gate, each passenger is handed a bag containing 173 standard airplane components, accompanied by a 4×5″ sheet of information on the theory of flight, written in 1950. Once onboard, the passengers use these components to finish out the airplane for flight: installing chairs, rudder controls, etc. Every flight results in a plane assembled in a different way, and passengers on each flight believe they are flying the world’s best airplane. Arguments in the terminal after a flight are common, as passengers from different flights debate the merits of their particular design.

Despite all this, Git planes turn out to be safe, and Git passengers believe they get to their destinations in half the time it takes any other passengers, though sometimes they secretly wonder if the Mercurial flight got there faster. Occasionally, passengers on Git airlines build an airplane that appears to go into a tailspin. When that happens, they simply assemble a tool that lets them go back in time and change history so that it doesn’t crash, although it is rumored that if you are a member of the public watching this happen from the ground, it will lead to seizures.

Git airlines takes special pride in the one piece that passengers don’t have to assemble: the plumbing. Every Git lavatory is equipped with state-of-the-art never-fail plumbing, and the best porcelain washroom fixtures money can buy. None of these cheap plastic toilets like you get on every other airline. Here, we have fine porcelain fixtures.

During a flight, after passengers use the lavatory, they frequently get into arguments with each other about which style of porcelain toilet is the best. These arguments are only resolved by the Zen-like Git Priests, who insist that only inferior passengers need to use a toilet while in the air.

Funny stuff!

Torrentfreak posts that dutch University INHOLLAND now uses bittorrent to distribute software updates to its desktop computers:

According to an article in the weekly Dutch magazine Automatiserings Gids, the Dutch university INHOLLAND uses BitTorrent as a network management tool to distribute software to 6500 desktop computers in 16 different locations throughout the Netherlands. Instead of distributing software updates and images from several centralized servers, INHOLAND now utilities the efficiency of BitTorrent, and uses all the computers in the network to help distribute the files.

Before they decided to use BitTorrent, more than 20 servers were needed to distribute 25.6 TBs of data to the desktops, and even then it could take up to 4 days to update them all. Now, with BitTorrent, this process has speeded up significantly, and all computers are updated with the latest software in less than 4 hours. The data doesn’t have to be distributed from one location, since all the workstations connected to the network actively help in the distribution.

Finally, the “mainstream” is coming to it’s senses and is seeing that bittorrent can save them time, bandwidth & therefore money. It’s still a shame though that it takes them this long to accept & use something so obviously useful.

While not as cool as the black on black version, this is still finger lickingly beautiful:

The official name of the highly exclusive Bugatti Veyron “Fbg par Hermès” refers to the historic Hermès headquarters on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, in the heart of Paris’s eighth arrondissement: the “Fbg” appellation evokes the house’s “faubourg” address.

With the Bugatti Veyron Fbg par Hermès, the exacting standards of Émile Hermès and Ettore Bugatti come together for the first time, in a exceptional collaboration: the culmination of their extreme attention to aesthetic and technological quality and performance. Gabriele Pezzini has reinterpreted Bugatti’s traditional two-tone carriage work, fostering a fluid, harmonious transition between the car’s exterior and interior design. The colour of the hood extends to the interior of the cockpit, and re-emerges behind, at the level of the rear wing.

As a tribute to the celebrated 1924 Bugatti Type 35, undoubtedly the most famous of all time, thanks to its many successes on the racetrack, the new Bugatti Veyron Fbg par Hermès features eight-spoked wheels in polished aluminium, central butterfly wheel locks branded with the letter H, and air vents around the rims repro¬ducing the characteristic appearance of Hermès saddle-stitching. The horseshoe radiator grille, and the lateral ventilation grilles flanking it, are made from lightweight alloys with a design of interlocking H’s evoking the Hermès “signature”.

I want a Veyron so bad. Too bad I can’t afford one

The stuff that they’re building in Dubai never ceases to amaze me. Here’s the lowdown on two of the latest projects:

The people behind this stunning looking structure are the Dutch firm Royal Haskoning , and they are not just in the business of developing a fantastic looking building they also have a use for it too. To quote from their website (there is no way I could describe it better):

“Our design is radically different, it revolves around a huge void, providing a dramatic and totally original profile. It consists of 2 different parallel rotating structures. On one side is the fast rotating structure, which has a full rotation cycle of 30 minutes. It contains of 36 classic viewing capsules, which are projecting from the side of the Wheel, allowing for maximum panorama.

This gleaming hunk of urban development is about to rise on an artificial, perfectly square island off the coast of Dubai. Engineers in the coastal country are already adept at building islands — Dubai possesses three artificial island developments, including one made of house-sized islets that form the shape of all the continents of the world. With this new development, architect Rem Koolhaas will design an entire city that reflects his futurist philosophy about the “generic city.” That glowing ball you see will be a city unto itself.

Just stunning….

Yeah, this is a REAL good idea….

Boingboing writes about Rufus Terrill from Atlanta, who has apparently built his own robot to “battle drug dealers”:

Late at night several times a week, Terrill powers up the 4-foot-tall, 300 pound device and reaches for a remote control packed with two joysticks and various knobs and switches. Standing on a nearby corner, he maneuvers the machine down the block, often to a daycare center where it accosts what Terrill says are drug dealers, vagrants and others who shouldn’t be there.

He flashes the robot’s spotlight and grabs a walkie-talkie, which he uses to boom his disembodied voice over the robot’s sound system.

“I tell them they are trespassing, it’s private property, and they have to leave,” he said. “They throw bottles and cans at it. That’s when I shoot the water cannon. They just scatter like roaches.”

Don’t know what to say about this one. Just that this is something only an American could come up with. Read article for pics & movie.

Some people are just sick in the head when it comes to humor. There are certain things you just don’t do, certain limits you don’t traverse.

Here some parents thought it would be a fun joke to give their kid an XBOX 360 for christmas. The only catch being that the box the kid is given is empty save for some winter clothes. A cruel joke indeed. See for yourself:

Yet more controversy from Abu Ghraib. Photo’s hosted at Wired.

There are truly no words for this. I hope flights of devils wing these worthless piles of excrement & organs to their slow, tormented & inevitable deaths.

As programmers most of us have been there at one time or another (more often than not if your life really sucks). That once beautiful (or always but ugly) piece of software that becomes an ugly dilapidated bitch. The kind of code you don’t wish on your worst enemy. The code so ugly you want to gouge your eyes out after seeing it, preferably after skull fucking it into utter annihilation.

Well, enough ranting my readers (all 8 of you that visit my site daily at the moment). The good news is that Software Creation Mystery has written an article about just this phenomena:

There are hundred objective reasons why it could happen – complex technology, changing customer needs, management pressure, time to market and many more. But some teams still deliver a good system under these conditions. And some teams cannot deliver even in the most favorable conditions. Why?

Degradation of the system starts in the people heads and there are three main reasons:

1. Incomprehension – developers don’t understand the purpose, ideas, design or technology behind the system
2. Inarticulateness – developers unable to express ideas through clear and effective architecture, design and code
3. Inconsistency – developers cannot act consistently or don’t care about the system

Cracked has created a list of 9 weird (or wonderful if you will) theme parks that quite frankly just give me the heeby jeebies:

China, determined to reinforce stereotypes of producing nothing but cheap knock offs, is the location for a completely bootleg theme park. Shijingshan Amusement Park has a lot of familiar faces, although park officials refer to them in not so familiar ways.

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Those who aren’t idiots might notice that the cat has rather large, round ears, or the fact that it’s a blatant copy of Minnie Mouse. Other characters can be seen throughout the park including a goofy dog, a peasant girl turned princess in glass slippers and a sleeping beauty. Disney bosses have issued numerous copyright infringement lawsuits and recently park workers destroyed the sleeping beauty statues with sledgehammers, and gave no official reason as to why.

Sometimes one asks oneself, how stupid can social network sites get?

Well behold, some dude has connected his plant to twitter so he can be warned when it needs watering. Although I might dislike networking sites, this is nontheless a pretty cool hack.

Hey, at least it’s not as lame as certain other profiles on a certain other networking site….