The properties that you listed reminded me of the Nix package manager http://nixos.org/nix/ and NixOS that uses it. I came across it originally while looking into package managers that would allow rollbacks or at least make it easy for multiple installed versions of a package.
OTOH Hersheys chocolate syrup made in India (by Godrej) tastes better than the imported US version. Don't know why, iirc the main difference in ingredients was invert sugar in the Indian version and hfcs in the US version, or maybe it's the quality of the other ingredients.
One Christmas we had some Hershey's Kisses from both the US and Canada. Both tasted different. It's been a while, so I don't remember which I preferred or what the taste difference was (i.e. if one was sweeter than the other).
Similar story with Sony patenting brain interface[1] . Funny thing was after watching the Matrix the first time, me and a friend were debating why people would want to insert something directly into the skull and mess around with neurons possibly. I suggested using sound waves to trigger nerve signals, he laughed at silly idea and it was forgotten . A year later saw the Sony patent on slashdot and for a few minutes i really did think they had done some work on this, till i realized they had just called 'Dibs' on the idea.
ansible has very readable concise YAML syntax[1]. Plus, no bootstrapping required (its optional, haven't tried it though) and works off ssh by default (also has a 0mq mode).
