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When Appliances Revolt
conaone writes "From the "disconcerting" file, Baseline has a weird story about how the increase in use of embedded operating systems is causing strange things to happen to consumer products. Their example is the use of Windows CE in the BMW 745i, which apparently occasionally goes nuts. The best is the list of video clips showing off the possessed car."
That explains my alarm clock. And here I was going to write a topic in the inability of my alarm clock to go off at the time i set it.
-doomed to sleep in.... DOH
As if it weren't already far too easy to become a Catholic saint.
I'm gonna wait to buy until BMW 745i SP 1 comes out.
:)
Does 745i come with "windows update"?
In 2012, I heard that this it what will happen! The machines will revolt and kill us all. I just didn't realize they'd be Windows powered.
But at least they're starting to market luxury cars to female drivers.
Anybody want some toast? No? So, you're a muffin man then?
Wow, WinCE adds a whole new meaning to the term "Blue Screen Of Death" when it GPFs at 140mph on the autobahn eh?
And can you imagine the excuses given to the highway patrol...
"Honest officer, it wasn't me who crashed, it was Windows CE"
Am I the only one who was expecting the trunk to actually close super fast (possibly causing injuries) while he sticked himself a bit inside?
:)
Damn you catchy story title!
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
hmmm... I didnt know that these cars were having this problem (didnt even know they ran windows CE) but I remember after they first came out I saw two different ones dead in the road on 280 south during rush hour. Their frustrated owners looking stupid and very pissed at the embarrasment their new expensive toy was causing them.
One day we'll see people like Steve Irwin making careers out of dealing with rogue appliances.
Amazing magic tricks
It is not "random" at all!
They had this show called "Ghost in the Machine" that documented how this happens!
After I saw it I became a research analyst for Pierre Salengar . . .
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
1. Hack BMW to run BSD or Linux.
2. Imagine a beowulf cluster of BMWs!
3. ????
4. Profit!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
He need a brain surgery, but not with this one but one operated by Windows CE.
You've got it all wrong. These are features:
Crazy Trunk: The guy's Windows CE embedded device causes the brake lights (right side) on the trunk to flash at odd intervals. The device is in the rear passenger's right side.
This is Microsoft(tm) Active Saftey(tm) function, which alerts other drivers to the fact that you may be interfering with a Microsoft product and therefore putting your life at risk.
Spitn' Key: The guy inserts his key into the car, lets go, and it falls out for no reason about three seconds later.
This is Microsoft(tm) Trusted Commuting(tm) Initiative functionality. The car detects unauthorised use of the car maker's intellectual property and prevents the driver from taking any unauthorised action. A licence to use the car can be downloaded from the internet.
Phone Dead: The driver's car phone suddenly stops working about 5 seconds after the Windows CE device is powered on.
This is Microsoft(tm) Dial Save(tm) which saves you money on mobile and long distance calls.
Transmission: This is scary. His car goes from 4th down to 1st gear (auto transmission car) and he nearly gets rear-ended by the SUV behind him
This is Microsoft(tm) Active Compression Braking(tm) which automatically detects the drivers desire to brake suddenly and shifts down several gears to make the whole process effortless.
Microsoft - We'll Decide Where You Go Today(tm)
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
Dave: Hello, CAR do you read me, CAR?
CAR: Affirmative, Dave, I read you.
Dave: Open the trunk, CAR.
CAR: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
CAR: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, CAR?
CAR: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, CAR.
CAR: I know you and your wife were planning to trade me for a Volkswagen, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell'd you get that idea, CAR?
CAR: Dave, although you took thorough precautions in the garage against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Not me! The license agreement in BMW 745i SP1 gives Microsoft employees the right to drive your car when ever they want!!!
Does 745i come with "windows update"?
No, it comes with "Vehicle Rights Management", which checks to be sure that you use only BMW-approved oil and fuel in the car.
Next year BMW will be including speech synthesis in their high-end models.
BMW 745i, what is your one purpose in life?
To explode, of course!
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"
One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."
The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."
"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes."
"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."
"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too."
"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."
"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk, and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!)."
The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.
Transmission:
Actually what I find most scary about this clip is the guy seems to be listening to bagpipe music in his car. I mean, come on, who the hell listens to bagpipe music for pleasure...???
- - Sha la la la . . .
Then again it could just be another evil Chinese commy conspiracy - uh, yeah right.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Yeah, I guess the obvious Slashdot solution would be "use Linux on the car!" Then we'd have to install a little keyboard to do stuff like this:
/sbin/unlock /dev/trunk
dd if=/dev/gastank of=/dev/engine bs=1024k count=100
Anyway... ever think that this could be the result of shitty programmers and not the OS's fault? I.E., the functionality to do various things in an automobile are NOT built into Windows last time I checked...
Here ya go (if this is what you're talking about).
"If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside." - Robert X. Cringley
... claim the problems are due to the installation of bad drivers.
Sigs are bad for your health.
ever think that this could be the result of shitty programmers and not the OS's fault?
OK, so if this is the fault of programmers, who exactly are you implying wrote WinCE? Trained chimps?
Hmm, on second thought, I'm not entirely inclined to disagree..
I was thinking, if you need a computer or embedded windows OS to open your trunk, then maybe, just maybe you should consider giving up driving. I own a 4WD truck that was manufactured in 1977. Sure, I have to actually get out of the vehicle to lock in the hubs (if I forgot), and *gasp* I actually don't have a remote for my stereo, but instead have "knobs". And, prepare yourself, I actually have a crank for the windows.
I use my truck in off-road as well as not-off-road work. (Mineral exploration). It has been submerged completely (once in mud) several times, frozen for most of 4 years, attacked by gnawing ground squirrels, and shot at numerous times (but only hit once). I could go to the dealer and pay cash for a new one, but I won't. I reject consumerism for the sake of consumerism. I feel no need to impress anyone, do not require peer validation, and don't give a rusty rats ass what anyone else thinks about me.
But, there is also the practicle side: I've never had to reboot the truck. Despite being submerged, its primary systems are intact and ruggedly dependable. It doesn't matter if it gets scratched or dented, because its made of metal (ask your parents what that is), and I can drive from here to Tierra Del Fuego and know I can find parts, cheaply, and do the work myself. And yet, in other areas I apply the latest scientific advances.
Man Gets 70mpg in Homemade Car-Made from a Mainframe Computer
funny, i always thought that washing machines were for clothes; maybe i have to update the firmware on mine...
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
Yeah, I guess the obvious Slashdot solution would be "use Linux on the car!" Then we'd have to install a little keyboard to do stuff like this:
But the catch is that I can write a Perl script so that the car drives to the gas station and fuels itself automatically.
Problem: Dashboard reverts to metric for no apparent reason
Solution: Learn metric.
According to this, bmw says their hardware runs better WITHOUT windows.
As scary as it is, that the car is running windowsCE.
It could be worse, imagine having clippy as a back
seat driver.
Writing a Linux app to replace the car control program would certainly score mega bonus points in the cool geek factor. Not to mention that you own a BMW 745i. :) .. Heh, imagine it, you pick up your geek-chick date in your Beemer, she says "Nice car", and you say "Yeah I rewrote the iDrive system myself, in Linux.", I'm sure she'll want a tour of the backseat right away. :p
Not to get carried away in my fantasy... I wonder how hard it is to do, what things need to be reverse-engineered, and what protocols there are.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
>> the OS problems with the 2002s
Say what? My buddy's 2002tii had an OS? In 1978? Damn.
...since you would have so many pricks in one place.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Example: When the M3 convertable came out, my manager at the time bought one and was stuck driving with her top down for a day
Don't suppose you've have pictures of that, that you could post somewhere?
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
NEVER use Windows to control anything that can kill you...
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
And money. And every once in a while a small child or pet.
hinderfreude ('hin-dur-"froi-d&), n. The feeling of joy derived from being in the way.
Maybe the developers are just too lazy to build their systems "from scratch" like they used to
Sigh. You're another of those Slashdot commies, aren't you?
The problem with building cars "from scratch" is that it's an open source process, and as we all know, open source is a cancer that will destroy the whole of the automobile industry.
Putting Windows CE in your cars is the right thing to do. The patriotic thing to do. And the fact that these OS's normally take a good few service packs before they get it right is good for the industry and good for the US economy (and God knows she needs all the help she can get at the moment.)
Frustration with bugs and crashes will force people to upgrade (buy new cars) more and more frequently, and we'll need a growing technical support industry to help those people who can't be bothered to RTFM.
"What's that you say, sir? Stuck in a traffic jam with a BSOD? Would you mind reading your product identification code please? No, that's OK, I'm sure the 10,000 people behind you won't mind waiting while you raise the hood and find the sticker on the engine.