DTrace and the Palisades Interstate Parkway

In general, I don’t believe in drawing attention to bugs in the software of others: any significant body of software is likely to have bugs, and I think one can too easily draw overly broad inferences by looking at software through the lens of its defects (a pathology that I have previously discussed at some length). However — and as you might imagine from the preamble — I’m about to make an exception to that gentlemanly rule…

I, along with zillions of others, read the breathless hype about the new would-be Google slayer, cuil. When a new search engine pops up, my egotistical reflex is to first search for “dtrace”, and the results of searching for “dtrace” on cuil were very, um, interesting. The search results themselves were fine; more creative were the images that cuil decided to associate with them. If you look at that screenshot, you will be able to find an image of a quilt, a strip mall, what could pass for a program from an August Wilson play, and — strangest of all — a sign that reads “Welcome to Palisades Interstate Parkway“. I can’t say for certain that I’ve never travelled on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, but with all deference to that 38.25-mile stretch of tarmac, I do believe that I can say that it played no role in DTrace — or DTrace in it. Indeed, I can say with absolute confidence that searching for “palisades interstate parkway dtrace” will, in short order, yield only this blog entry — provided, that is, that one doesn’t perform said search on cuil… 😉