rezuth
January 21st, 2006, 06:44 AM
if
Linux was a car:
1) It would come as a kit along with a copy of CAR
HOWTO which would be six
months out of date.
2) You would also get
three steering wheels and five headlights as part of the
standard
installation then be expected to pick which ones you wanted to use.
There
would be constant flame wars between the users of leather steering
wheels
and the users of the plastic variety.
3) Due to its
excessive size the car would not fit into a standard car parking
bay and
it would be up to the new owner to trim bits off until it could
fit.
4) The car would not use a standard radio wiring harness unless
you patched the
engine compartment using WIRING.TAR.GZ which would only be
available by
download from the manufacturers website.
5) Support
for the linux car would be available from either the car
manufacturer
(after taking out a maintenance contract and paying a fee) or by
logging
onto alt.linux.car.problems where every request for assistance would
be
met with 'RTFM !! V4||C3D l3e+$peA| i$ whEn J00 +4lK L1K3 t|-|15.
t0
u||d3r$+@||D jOo |/|u5+ be lEET. 1f J00 4r3 NO+ lEe+ jOO
C@||N0T 5p3A| 0r
ReAd +|-|I5
6) Adding accessories to the car
would be a nightmare. For example you could
not add a pair of foglights on
the front unless you had the following
'libraries' installed in your
car.
bumper.lib.1_6_483865
electrics.lib_3_RH_9_35
controls.lib.
14_6_99
If an attempt to run your foglights without these libraries
were to be made (or
the libraries were a different version) your foglights
MIGHT work but if they
didn't there would be no support as the maintainer
of electrics.lib_3_RH_9_35
can no longer be found.
7) You could
only use your car with a trailer if you rebuilt the engine, this
time with
support for your model of trailer.
8 ) Your car would be of doubtful
heritage. Parts of the design would be claimed
by Novell, other sections
would be (C) The Open Linux Group and SCO will lay
claim to the whole
concept and demand $699 for continued use. One guy in
Finland would claim
that he designed the whole thing and Richard Stallman would
claim that
your car is really called GNU Car.
9) Your car would take over five
minutes to start. Faster starting methods
would be available but be more
unreliable, for example the brakes might not
work after you
start.
10) There would be no warning lights on the car dashboard. All
warnings
concerning oil, water, lighting and general failures would be
written to
the /var/log/ directory where the driver and passenger
can
read them when they pull over and park.
11) Additional storage
could be achieved by using a roofrack, but the roofrack
would be invisible
until the driver issued the command
'mount -t /dev/roofrack /roof'.
There would be problems
unless the driver used the command 'umount
/roof' before
unscrewing the roofrack. Not all roofracks would work and
some would just come
back with the message 'roofrack is not a roof
device' when issued with the
mount command (and still remain
invisible).
/////////////////
M: Hey Pete, Can you help me
put a radio in my Debian?
P: You're an Idiot, RTFM!
M: I
need more help than that.
P: You're an idiot! I did a Google
search. It's in the page
referenced by the footnote in the 37th hit. If I
could find
it, so can you.
GS: (good Samaritan) You need to rebuild
the engine to add a
radio.
M: Rebuild the engine?
P: You're an idiot!
GS: There's a how-to. It's written for a
"Hat", but it's
mostly correct except that engine is in the rear.
It's
translated from German, but they did a pretty good job.
It'll
tell you to hook the radio to the red and black wires, but
since
you've got a Debian, there won't be any red and black
wires. And you
still need to write the radio driver. Don't
forget to regrind the
camshaft. If you don't, you'll get an
error message that you don't have
permission to change the
tire pressure, but it's the camshaft. You'll
need a lot of
tools, but you can get them for free. Most of them come
with
instructions... about 900 pages in all. Read 'em all
carefully
and understand 'em before you start. Should be able to
figure
it all out in a couple of months.
[MUCH LATER...]
M:
Hey Pete, I didn't get all the stuff I needed to rebuild my
engine. Can I
borrow your Drake again?
P: The wife has the Drake, but you can
borrow the Hat.
M: This is different. Where's the steering wheel?
P: That dashboard was really using a lot of gas. This has what
is
called a CLI. Just type CTRL-L to go left and CTRL-R to
go
right.
M: What about the gas and brakes?
P: That's
all combined into a single speed number. Just type
ps | grep speed. The
headings are in Klingon, but the third
number is the one you want. Just
divide by the speed of light
to get meters/second. You'll have to parse
it out, calculate
the new speed and use the nice function to change the
priority
of the process. That changes the speed. If you had just
read
the manpage, I wouldn't have had to tell you all that.
M:
Which manpage?....never mind... What if I need to stop in a
hurry?
P: Gotcha covered. There's a script for panic stops. Just
type
PanicStop-3.8.63278665-HAT when=now. It will ask you for
a
password. Enter the password and hang on cause you're gonna
stop
real quick. I'm really proud of the deceleration
optimization routine. Be
careful typing, it's case sensitive.
If it gives you a cryptic error
message and doesn't stop, it's
probably because you forgot to add
yourself to the brakes
group. It's all in the manpage.
M: Which
manpage?....never mind...
[MUCH, MUCH LATER....]
M: I wish I
hadn't sold my Gates. At least I could drive it to
town and pick up
Granny....
P: You're an idiot!.....
Linux was a car:
1) It would come as a kit along with a copy of CAR
HOWTO which would be six
months out of date.
2) You would also get
three steering wheels and five headlights as part of the
standard
installation then be expected to pick which ones you wanted to use.
There
would be constant flame wars between the users of leather steering
wheels
and the users of the plastic variety.
3) Due to its
excessive size the car would not fit into a standard car parking
bay and
it would be up to the new owner to trim bits off until it could
fit.
4) The car would not use a standard radio wiring harness unless
you patched the
engine compartment using WIRING.TAR.GZ which would only be
available by
download from the manufacturers website.
5) Support
for the linux car would be available from either the car
manufacturer
(after taking out a maintenance contract and paying a fee) or by
logging
onto alt.linux.car.problems where every request for assistance would
be
met with 'RTFM !! V4||C3D l3e+$peA| i$ whEn J00 +4lK L1K3 t|-|15.
t0
u||d3r$+@||D jOo |/|u5+ be lEET. 1f J00 4r3 NO+ lEe+ jOO
C@||N0T 5p3A| 0r
ReAd +|-|I5
6) Adding accessories to the car
would be a nightmare. For example you could
not add a pair of foglights on
the front unless you had the following
'libraries' installed in your
car.
bumper.lib.1_6_483865
electrics.lib_3_RH_9_35
controls.lib.
14_6_99
If an attempt to run your foglights without these libraries
were to be made (or
the libraries were a different version) your foglights
MIGHT work but if they
didn't there would be no support as the maintainer
of electrics.lib_3_RH_9_35
can no longer be found.
7) You could
only use your car with a trailer if you rebuilt the engine, this
time with
support for your model of trailer.
8 ) Your car would be of doubtful
heritage. Parts of the design would be claimed
by Novell, other sections
would be (C) The Open Linux Group and SCO will lay
claim to the whole
concept and demand $699 for continued use. One guy in
Finland would claim
that he designed the whole thing and Richard Stallman would
claim that
your car is really called GNU Car.
9) Your car would take over five
minutes to start. Faster starting methods
would be available but be more
unreliable, for example the brakes might not
work after you
start.
10) There would be no warning lights on the car dashboard. All
warnings
concerning oil, water, lighting and general failures would be
written to
the /var/log/ directory where the driver and passenger
can
read them when they pull over and park.
11) Additional storage
could be achieved by using a roofrack, but the roofrack
would be invisible
until the driver issued the command
'mount -t /dev/roofrack /roof'.
There would be problems
unless the driver used the command 'umount
/roof' before
unscrewing the roofrack. Not all roofracks would work and
some would just come
back with the message 'roofrack is not a roof
device' when issued with the
mount command (and still remain
invisible).
/////////////////
M: Hey Pete, Can you help me
put a radio in my Debian?
P: You're an Idiot, RTFM!
M: I
need more help than that.
P: You're an idiot! I did a Google
search. It's in the page
referenced by the footnote in the 37th hit. If I
could find
it, so can you.
GS: (good Samaritan) You need to rebuild
the engine to add a
radio.
M: Rebuild the engine?
P: You're an idiot!
GS: There's a how-to. It's written for a
"Hat", but it's
mostly correct except that engine is in the rear.
It's
translated from German, but they did a pretty good job.
It'll
tell you to hook the radio to the red and black wires, but
since
you've got a Debian, there won't be any red and black
wires. And you
still need to write the radio driver. Don't
forget to regrind the
camshaft. If you don't, you'll get an
error message that you don't have
permission to change the
tire pressure, but it's the camshaft. You'll
need a lot of
tools, but you can get them for free. Most of them come
with
instructions... about 900 pages in all. Read 'em all
carefully
and understand 'em before you start. Should be able to
figure
it all out in a couple of months.
[MUCH LATER...]
M:
Hey Pete, I didn't get all the stuff I needed to rebuild my
engine. Can I
borrow your Drake again?
P: The wife has the Drake, but you can
borrow the Hat.
M: This is different. Where's the steering wheel?
P: That dashboard was really using a lot of gas. This has what
is
called a CLI. Just type CTRL-L to go left and CTRL-R to
go
right.
M: What about the gas and brakes?
P: That's
all combined into a single speed number. Just type
ps | grep speed. The
headings are in Klingon, but the third
number is the one you want. Just
divide by the speed of light
to get meters/second. You'll have to parse
it out, calculate
the new speed and use the nice function to change the
priority
of the process. That changes the speed. If you had just
read
the manpage, I wouldn't have had to tell you all that.
M:
Which manpage?....never mind... What if I need to stop in a
hurry?
P: Gotcha covered. There's a script for panic stops. Just
type
PanicStop-3.8.63278665-HAT when=now. It will ask you for
a
password. Enter the password and hang on cause you're gonna
stop
real quick. I'm really proud of the deceleration
optimization routine. Be
careful typing, it's case sensitive.
If it gives you a cryptic error
message and doesn't stop, it's
probably because you forgot to add
yourself to the brakes
group. It's all in the manpage.
M: Which
manpage?....never mind...
[MUCH, MUCH LATER....]
M: I wish I
hadn't sold my Gates. At least I could drive it to
town and pick up
Granny....
P: You're an idiot!.....