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When Appliances Revolt

Posted by michael on from the i'm-goodlife dept.

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."

1 of 531 comments (clear)

  1. Why Windows? by este · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Perhaps it's more convenient to use a pre-defined OS to power the computer components in the BMW, but one would think a tailored OS (or well-compiled linux kernel...*cough*...) would not only be more stable, but offer better performance in the long term.

    Besides, how long will it be until we have viruses affecting cars? Eventually a large movement will inernet access in one form or another into the majority of new vehicles. Using a proprietary OS would make it much harder for a single, easy to write virus to be unleashed. If there's a widespread use of the same OS, what's to stop spread?

    Perhaps closed-source has -some- good points?

    --
    [este]