IT Joke of the Day

Obviously this is the kind of joke only for IT people, particularly the Linux people. It’s a case of a post sent to the wrong mailing list which quickly developed into a series of hilarious follow-ups. I myself had a good laugh when I sifted through the email I received from the list this morning. Someone posted to the Fedora mailing list about the worsening mileage he was getting on his Toyota Prius. He realized quite immediately his mistake. But other funny people on the list followed-up with serious-sounding Linux advice.

Upgrade the kernel of the Prius.

Use one of the kernel performance measurement tools.

Upgrade the prius_mileage package (yum update prius_mileage).

Someday, the Toyota Prius might really run Linux. Cars, after all, have got onboard computers at least in the form of Engine Control Units which are getting pretty common these days. Particularly on high-end luxury cars, these onboard computers are also getting rather complex, controlling and monitoring a lot more things than just engine operation.

It wouldn’t be too long before cars start malfunctioning due to buggy software.

Oops. Actually some cars are already malfunctioning due to buggy software.

Not the least of which is, coincidentally on the same day, news of the massive recall of various models of Toyota vehicles in the US, including the Prius. It doesn’t sound like a software bug though, even though software could perhaps fix the problem.