FolkWolf.Net

Bill Maher getting truly bitter.

Matt Rose — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 16:44:02 -0400

The real menace to American kids | Salon.com

I'm saving this for posterity

Matt Rose — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 11:36:32 -0400

The Wayback machine is unreliable, so I thought I'd repost this so that I could always link to it.

http://web.archive.org/web/20011113013913/http://segfault.org/story.phtml?mode=2&id=38b40d78-087dd360

"What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?" - An Empirical Study

The question on the lips of everyone in the Linux community is, "What if Linus Torvalds (affectionately known to the trade press as 'Linux Torvalds') gets hit by a bus?" Reams of virtual paper have been wasted on idle speculation about the results of what is a fairly simple experiment. We decided it was high time someone actually took the trouble to find out what would happen if Linus Torvalds were to get hit by a bus. Our preliminary findings are printed below; we hope that this study will eventually be published in peer-reviewed Linux publications such as Linux Journal and Slashdot. Well, Linux Journal.

Methodology:

Our sample consisted of 200 Linus Torvaldses separated into a test group of 100 and a control group of 100. 97 members of the test group were hit by buses at speeds ranging from 5 MPH to 70 MPH. The other three test subjects ran into stationary buses on their own power. A different bus was used for each trial so as to ensure that the trials would be independent.

The control group was observed over a period of six months, in which none of the subjects was hit by a bus.

Observations:

Only nine members of the test group survived; two of these were seriously injured. All survivors had been assigned to the lower end of the velocity scale, as can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Survival rate versus bus velocity

No fatalities were reported in the control group. One member choked on a muffin during the second week, but recovered after an application of the Heimlich maneuver. No buses were present during the incident.

Conclusions and Recommendations:

Our study's bottom line: given standard traffic patterns, Linus Torvalds has an 8.9% (plus or minus 1.4%) chance of surviving and fully recovering from a collision with a bus. Due to Torvalds' development skills and acknowledged importance to the Linux community, we hereby recommend that Linus Torvalds be kept out of the path of oncoming buses. Also, his muffin intake should be monitored.

Linux kernel development was not significantly affected by our experiment; however, we attribute this to the large sample size used.

The Future:

We plan to do similar tests to determine the effects of buses on Miguel de Icaza, Larry Wall, and Eric S. Raymond. Our confident prediction is that we will obtain similar results.

Instructions on getting hit by a bus will soon be posted to our project Web site, so that the average developer will be able to gauge his or her importance to the Open Source community.

Posted on Wed 23 Feb 08:45:54 2000 PST
Written by Leonard Richardson <leonardr@segfault.org>

Best dinner ever.

Matt Rose — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:15:09 -0400

Dad was in town friday and saturday, and when dad said, "is there anywhere outside of town you want to go to for dinner", I immediately thought of Tanya's restaurant. We drove up saturday on back roads through the Gatineau Hills, and ended up in Wakefield, with the sun setting over the Gatineau River. Halfway through the appetizer, the moon rose over the hills and the river, beautifully framed by the window of the restaurant. This isn't a restaurant review, so I won't go over what everyone had, but let me just say that the food was outstanding. We all agreed it was one of the best evenings we ever spent in a restaurant.

Best. Rider. Ever.

Matt Rose — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 12:10:00 -0400

And I mean that in both senses.

I've been in a band (never one that could get away with a rider), and I've done sound crew and stage crew stuff since I was a teenager. In that capacity, I saw a lot of riders. None were as funny or as informative as this one.

I've always felt Road Managers lived between a rock and a hard place. Their entire livelihood depends on how someone else "feels" on a particular day. All they can do is have everything set up so that the performer has the best environment possible. Which means they have to be the most demanding motherfuckers. This manager obviously is comfortable with the fact, and has fun with it.

Favourite quotes:

1 X KORG 2000 DIGITAL RACK TUNER. Digital in the sense that it works via an electronically generated number system, not digital because it only works if someone holds it together with their fingers.

For the sidefills, can we have two great big enormous things please, of a type that might be venerated as gods by the inhabitants of Easter Island, capable of reaching volumes that could provide the power for a Monster Truck Rally.

Can I just sat that we like to keep it as clear as possible, especially at the front? My insurance doesn't cover me for allowing Rockstarts to fall off the front of the stage. [ ... ] This way, Iggy can run around in his customary manner, like a crazed running-around-type-thing, and we can all relax in a haze of self-satisfied panic.

NO YAMAHAS and NO BLEEDING DIGITAL or I will chop it into a hundred pieces, and each of those pieces I will chop into a hundred pieces ... so that's like, er ... tenty hundred? Anyway, then I will douse them in petrol and burn them. In accordance wuth local and national guidelines on the burning of bits of shit mixer, of course.

Our camp from space.

Matt Rose — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 19:53:17 -0400

Google Maps has a picture of our burning man camp from space. It's the silvery structure right in the top left corner of the picture, with our big brown tent at an angle right beside it.

This gets real yuks at Developer Conferences

Matt Rose — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 22:04:32 -0400

Q: "Why doesn't C++ have garbage collection?"
A; "Because there would be nothing left."

Interesting

Matt Rose — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 08:40:13 -0400

I had this idea in line at the grocery store yesterday.
PV systems are pretty cheap these days, and pretty simple, except for a few parts. This article talks about the problems that plague existing setups. I don't think they're insurmountable.

Heliotropic: Tanzania

I've been looking for this paper for a while

Matt Rose — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 08:29:07 -0400

I still haven't read it, I'll update when I do

LWN: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Joel Spolsky

Matt Rose — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 08:26:24 -0400

I don't always agree with Joel Spolsky, especially when he's talking about algorithms, but he has a lot of good stuff to say in this article from two years ago.

Salon.com Technology | The Shlemiel way of software

News about Tanzania

Matt Rose — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 04:31:44 -0400

Some news about tanzania, I gotta read the Economist.

bankelele: Kikwete Impresses