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Volvo's "Safety Car" Runs Windows 98
An anonymous submitter writes "MSNBC is carrying a report on Volvo's new "Safety Car." It sounds pretty cool, too, until you get to the part that mentions it runs Windows 98 as its operating system. Yikes! Be sure to reboot your car frequently to avoid crashes."
Just posting early to pre-empt the inevitable flood of said jokes...
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
It would be much better suited to embedded development.
/real/ embedded OS.
OTOH, since it's a concept car and meant for the market, they may have just kludged something together with commodity PC parts for one or more of those 5 computers on that car, and it may have just been easier to have it running Win98, since it is only a concept car, so they don't need to worry as much about using a
What makes you think it would have been any less capable at it than Windows 98? Actually, I'm really surprised that they chose Win98. I would have expected a realtime-ready OS for a job like this. In fact, DOS would have probably been a better choice in this case than any of the Windows versions or normal Linux distributions.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
No certified safety-critical version of any Microsoft operating system exists. The $40 Billion in Microsoft's bank account is not enough money to get the documentation, testing, and reviews done for Windows 98. The WinCE core, with no GUI or Apps, might be certifiable in our lifetimes, but they can expect to be required to change about half of the lines of code, goven that no safety or testability measures were considered in its original production.
A false sense of safety is counter to safety.
I wouldn't ride in this thing. I wouldn't even stand on the side of any road I knew it to be driving on.
--Blair
Of all the MS operating systems, I'd prefer 98 over anything else MS puts on the market.
1. The code is the oldest, hence the most thoroughly checked / seen code on the market from MS. Undocumented bugs for 98 itself are likely few and far between by now. By choosing XP or 2k, you're asking, no, begging to run into a "damn, Nobody saw that coming" bug.
2. The biggest problem MS faces, security, is pretty much non existant for this implimentation. Who is going to hack a volvo? Not only from the sense of there being no means, motive, or opportunity, who the hell would want to 'hack' a volvo? how anti-l33t can you get?
3. Pre-existing support. Granted, a sizable portion of this car was done as a hack together job, there are more than a few components that are likely off the shelf product. Since the products re unusual or out of the way items, I doubt the companies providing them put much, if any, though into linux/bsd/mac support
4. It's a demo car. the idea is to show that the technology exists today. It's easier to make the comparison "it runs on the same operating system your home computer does" than it is to say "we wrote specialized drivers and compiled s specific kernal for a SuSE installation based around the 2.4 kernal. The first reponse makes joe carbuyer go "ooooh" the second makes him say "huh?"
I'm all for the bashing of microsoft at every given opportunity, but for once there's no point in reinventing the wheel when you can chisel down the octogon you've got lying around. Besides, a production run would DEFINATLY run an true embedded system.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
After all, it's a part of the OS and cannot be removed, right?
To all of you who whine about Windows 98 in this case:
Give me a damn break. Volvo is - like all other really large car companies - a very clever crowd and I am absolutely sure that if Windows 98 ever crashed on this car, they'd switch to another OS. If they use Windows 98, they must have a good reason. I doubt they'd pay a few bucks less just to get a cheaper OS when it comes to this kind of money, and reputation..
Windows 98 is OK if you don't install 500 programs on it. Maybe they don't do that on the Volvo car. Maybe you can't even modify Windows 98 on it. Maybe the OS does not even handle any tasks that the car requires.