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If Microsoft Built Cars...
trystanu writes "If Microsoft Built Cars, occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason; you'd
accept this, restart and drive on -- at least that was the joke a few years ago. ZDNET reports that Microsoft has persuaded a number of carmakers to use its slimmed-down Windows CE operating system to power a variety of in-car electronics, from navigation systems to music players to information devices. BMW, in particular, has gravitated to Microsoft systems, although the company has announced wins with Honda, Volvo and others as well. Perhaps the recent trapping of Thai dignitaries inside a BMW should be a warning to us all."
So... what are the chances of DRM following us to our (future) cars after it's rolled out? More specifically, the playing of mp3 cds.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
It will just make it that much easier to decide which manufacturers I'd consider the next time I buy a car, since there will a few that will immediately excluded.
Reading that story from Singapore puzzles me. Does it strike anyone here as silly to have car locks that are controlled entirely electronically? I mean, power locks are great, don't get me wrong. But since they are by necessity mechanical anyway, so doesn't it make sense to provide a manual, mechanical means to lock and unlock them? Doing otherwise just seems like you're placing unnecessary trust in imperfect electronics.
Quite frankly this concerns me.. all joking aside, Microsoft has yet to prove itself in the reliability stakes. Plain and simple.
Their handheld / 'CE' operating systems are no different, and quite simply I wouldn't knowingly buy a car where the majority of its tricks and gizmo's were Microsoft powered.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
...from navigation systems to music players to information devices...
Personally, I think it's no big deal. Just remember these are all non-critical components.
I'd start to worry if they operated the controllers for engine/fuel/drive-by-wire systems. etc.
"Perhaps the recent trapping of Thai dignitaries inside a BMW should be a warning to us all."
Did you actually read the article????
It starts with this paragraph
BMW has told CNETAsia that an electronic fault caused the problem, rather than a system crash of the car's Windows-based central computer, as other reports have speculated.
and ends with
But when contacted by CNETAsia, a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand said the car at fault was a 10-year old BMW 520i that had suffered a simple electronic failure.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Not trying to troll here, but Microsoft is a company that I simply do not trust. I don't trust them with maintaining my privacy, nor do I trust that they have my best interests in mind. And that's only for computer usage. Why would I trust that their system will always "do the right thing" when I'm in a real-world scenario, driving down the highway at 50 mph? True, I have no idea what role Windows CE (or whatever is used) would actually play while the car is in use, but it's an important question to answer. For myself, you can damn well be sure that I would take some serious convincing before I would entertain the possibility of spending a huge sum of money on a rolling, engine-powered WIndows machine. And even if I'm convinced, who's to say that there aren't serious problems with the design of Windows CE and how it interacts with the rest of the car. Even if it's only used to control the car stereo, I'd rather not have it there. I'll just stick with a nice Toyota or Volkswagen, or frankly any other manufacturer that avoids the use of a Microsoft prodcut as a systems controller.
Ironically, 50,000 people die every year from Automobile accidents and no one looks to blame Ford or GM for these deaths.
It's probably not too far off to say 99.9% of Windows crashing problems are due to operator error from installing bad drivers (from other manufacterers), installing bad hardware, installing crappy software.
If GM made Windows, it would not be upgradable, it would run 1950's technology, it would cost $20000 every 5 years, and it would STILL CRASH!
Not a Microsocks fan, but it's funny how narrowminded some can be...
torved
I came to Athens and no one knew me. - Democritus
You have to remember this was in Thailand, where if you're driving with windows up you by necessity need air conditioning. The passenger compartment starts cooking VERY quickly under a hot sun on a humid day, so even in the few minutes they were trapped in there it would have gotten very uncomfortable. Remember also they probably would have been in shirt, suits and ties, not shorts and T-shirt.
And what's wrong with the 10 minute figure? It didn't take 10 minutes to smash through the glass, it took ten minutes to attract someone without using a horn, who then notified a security guard, who then had to find a sledgehammer. I'm sure few have them strapped to their belts as standard equipment.
Every year here we have cases of babies locked inside cars on a hot summer day while the parent runs inside for some quick errands. In many cases these babies end up in the hospital, after not much more than 10 minutes of being in such conditions.
...Microsoft didn't design the iDrive system, they only provided the underlying OS. That's like blaming Linus for a shitty UI design from KDE or Gnome. As for its stability, stop comparing a desktop based Windows OS to what would be placed in ar computer systems (presumably CE or XP Embedded). I'm always amazed when the OSS community whines about all the FUD put out by companies like Microsoft or SCO yet they turn around and generate the same, if not more, amount of bullshit FUD in return.
When it becomes obvious that tires are shredding and rolling over, people do. When it becomes obvious that cars are exploding upon a slight rear collision, people do. When cars that are supposed to protect their drivers in a collision instead drive the steering column through their chest, people do.
It's pretty obvious that, for example, when the Windows installer crashes, or a fresh copy of IIS has to be rebooted every 2 weeks despite serving only static HTML, that Windows is somehow at fault. Not only is Windows instability legendary, it is also well documented. Hardware cannot be the issue, because that hardware could be running another OS and have years of uptime. Drivers should not be the issue for the same reason. If the drivers are both put out by the same company, they should have the same level of overall quality.
GM has made an OS... Its cars have been running on microcontrollers for years. They run on the smallest of processors, they can be upgraded for about $100 by replacing a ROM, and they never crash. If you had meant what a horrible mess it would be for GM to attempt to create a desktop operating system, then yes, I agree with you. However, that should extend to any company attempting to do something significant in a field that they don't have experience in.
If Microsoft decided to do this properly by hiring the best kernel developers and experienced automotive programmers, and creating a real-time OS from scratch, people might be persuaded that this was a good idea. But they're not. They're taking an OS made for convincing a printer to communicate with a text processor, and trying to force it into making an antilock braking system communicate with a real-time traction control system.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather use an OS specifically designed for reliability if I'm going to spend two hours a day inside something that kills 50,000 people per year.
The ______ Agenda
Win CE is very user friendly out of the box, and that's what one needs in a car interface.
For what? What need is there for a computerized interface to the locking mechanism. Or the fuel system?, or any engine functions?
Familiarity is also key.
Familiarity? I turn the key, the door unlocks (or locks). I turn the key, the engine starts (stops). That's familiar. Any computer involved in these functions need not have a "user" interface, GUI or other.
Add some flashy, touch screen navigation,
OK, fine GUI is nice for this, but that's not something I'll be happy giving up reliable performance and working doors for. Why does it have to be full fledged, or based on sometghing I've used before? All I need is a place to enter my destination (I'm assuming it has a GPS) and the ability to retrieve and show a map, estimate travel time, fuel consumption, suggest directions, etc. Manny OS can do this, and I'm sure that WinCE is fine for this, but the OS of such a system is hardly a selling point to the consumer, brand loyalty has no effect when it all relys on how it looks and other embedded systems are perfectly capable of appearing the same or better. Why should navigation be conected to the other functions in any way other than knowing how much fuel is in the tank and at what rate is it being consumed?
The entire conept seems to be a poorly thought out scheme to sell product without concern for actual need, reliability and efficiency of design. Sometimes the separation of functions and the subsequent duplication duplication of effort is a good thing, especially when the issue is the reliability of essential functions (such as engine operation and being able to get out of the car) in the case of failure of non-essential functions (Oh no, my navigation system's on the fritz! Honey, would you please get the map from the glove compartment?).
Read, L
9/11 was caused by poor airline security and lax regulation and oversight.
NO. NO NO NO NO!!!!. The terrorists took over using friggin' BOX KNIVES! I, for one, do NOT want to see the level of paranoid security that would be required to prevent someone from carrying a tiny razor-blade sized knife on board. The best weapon the terrorists had was deceit. They had the passengers convinced that all that was going to happen was that the plane was going to be forced to land somewhere and then negotiations would begin for hostage release. Under those expectations, the risk of being stabbed with the knives wasn't worth engaging in any heroics. In the one case where the news was already out, and the element of deceit was lost, the passengers did decide to overpower the terrorists' wimpy arsenel of box knifes. The same thing would likely have happened on the other three flights if they too had known what was going to happen if they sat still.
Don't blame airline security. Blame excessive optimism on the part of the passengers.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
In modern vehicles, the warning lamps are not hardwired. They are controlled by the embedded software in the instrument panel (IP). If the IP has not received a message from the ABS module within, say, 1 second, it will turn on EVERY brake-related lamp immediately (red "BRAKE" lamp, yellow "ABS" lamp, traction/stability control warning lamp, etc.)
Even in older vehicles that had hard-wired lamps, the lamp was grounded through the ABS controller. In this way, if the ABS micro ever went down, the lamp would illuminate by default.
There is no comparison between desktop computers which have millions of different possible configurations of input/output devices and storage mediums and protocols, and an embedded system such as a driver's seat module or a climate -control module, that performs a pre-determined (and thus EMBEDDED) function, while listening to the exact same sensorics in EVERY VEHICLE.
I can shut down my Windows machine and install a new sound card or completely replace the RAM, and likely it will re-boot and attempt to figure out what I've done. It may or may not re-configure everything correctly. Your car will not be happy with similar changes because all of this code doesn't exist. If a wheel speed sensor doesn't look electrically identical to the sensor that the system was designed for, the ABS module will set a DTC, disable ABS function, and throw a warning lamp.
Linux is remarkably stable because the user is responsible for configuring everything. Don't want support for sound cards other than what's installed in your box? Don't compile or load those modules. Don't need USB support? Re-compile the kernel and don't include it. You can make all the choices.
By the way, the supplier responsible for the module writes their own software.
I am a vehicle development engineer working on automotive embedded systems.