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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."
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!!"
"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
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
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
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.