Tux is displeased with your shenanigans.
It was a slow day at the track, but two contenders in the 5th race at Let's See What We Can Fuck with Next Park have made for at least an interesting sideshow.
Novell Stables, owner of SuSE Linux, a 15 year-old filly with a strong German lineage, has lately taken to introducing new training methods to its handlers without telling them about it. This naturally has made for some very interesting sessions in which SuSE's riders wonder why she suddenly starts running at breakneck speed for seemingly no reason even though no one has even put on the saddle, much less mounted and applied a starter's whip.
Not to be outdone, Red Hat, owner of the venerable Fedora mare, was feeling a little left out of all the newness and decided to shake things up a bit at their own headquarters. They announced for this race that rather than hire a trained jockey, they would instead find a little girl named Daisy who once said she wanted a pony for Christmas and hoist her up onto the back of the giant, hand her the reins, and slap the horse in the ass to see what would happen.
Novell is calling its innovative techniques "Automatic Updates," which is short for letting the horse train itself. The theory is that riders of SuSE don't really like having to be involved in any of the training, and actual trainers are just too gosh darn expensive. So, to compensate, SuSE now has a little device attached to her brain that occasionally forces the horse to go wandering around the wilderness looking for whatever the device tells it to find that day. This usually involves something edible, and the horse will gobble it down despite otherwise being on a strict, healthy diet. These finds tend to be fatty and are potentially poisonous. No one really knows for sure, though, unless the horse dies in the middle of the race.
Red Hat on the other hand just likes watching little kids ride horsies, and they're calling their proposal non-privileged jockey elevation. The plan is that after Daisy takes her turn -- which is expected to end at the first quarter mile when Daisy flies off the back of the horse and lands head first on a railing, breaking her little neck -- a little boy named Bobby who once saw a horse in a picture book his gampa gave him will try next after being dropped on the horse's back mid-race. Seasoned race veterans see a few problems with the plan but nonetheless stocked up on beer and Cheez-It snacks to watch the fun. All Red Hat would say when questioned what would come next after Bobby loses both legs and is permanently disfigured after being thrown at the second turn was that they'd trust in the SE/Linux gods.
At the starting gate, both Novell and Red Hat however got into an argument, pulled out shotguns and blasted each other. SuSE and Fedora ate grass. Meanwhile, the heretofore forgotten former arch-nemesis of both stables, Microsoft Windoze, though crippled and fat and ugly and covered in full plate armor provided by sister stables RIAA and MPAA, started on time and won the race by ... well, the entire length of the track.
Oh, and while I'm at it, I should mention these news items. The OpenSuSE Project has recently started installing and starting by default system processes with root permissions that check for updates to various software packages and install them without so much as informing the user it is taking place, much less asking permission.
Fedora 12, on the other hand, introduced the concept of allowing users working without administrative privileges to install software system-wide. Any software, any time, without a security check.
Script kiddies across the world are rejoicing at the news.
Meanwhile, FREAKIN' WINDOWS has better security than this.