Slashdot Mirror
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."
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
If Microsoft Built Cars..
An interesting proposition..
If Microsoft Built Cars...
If Microsoft Built Cars...
If Microsoft Built Cars...
If Microsoft Built Cars...
If Microsoft Built Cars...
If Microsoft Built Cars...
If Microsoft Built Cars...
If Microsoft Built Cars...
If Microsoft Built Cars...
Whoa.. stick with QNX, please.
Trolling is a art,
Let the "crash" jokes begin
Technoli
Ouch.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Black Pavement of Death
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
So long as they don't use Windows for the car security system, I mean imagine... "Insert any key to begin"
Competing with Microsoft woulbe so hard that other companies would start offering open-engine cars for free!
Will code a sig generator for food
I love it when /. posts jokes.. you are joking right?.. right?.... hello?
moo
BMW's come with what amounts to an EULA. If you look under the hood, you'll notice a little sticker that says you are not to connect any third party electronics to the car, CB, ham radio, etc, or even use a hand-held cell phone within the car, unless you buy a BMW approved carphone. This is under threat of voiding your warantee.
I'm sure in the US there's some protection offered under the same law that forces manufacturers to allow you to use aftermarket parts, but I don't know if that precedent would extend to electronics equipment that isn't really part of the car.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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.
Seriously - don't flame me. Win CE is very user friendly out of the box, and that's what one needs in a car interface. Familiarity is also key. Add some flashy, touch screen navigation, and voila. I'd have thought the increased cost of using MS as a reason to use a Linux flavor, but hey, I'm not the one spending money here.
A blog like any other.
I currently have to hard boot my Dell Axim X5 after roughly 2-3 hours depending on the app that locked (RealOne Player, X-Lite (SIP Phone), etc..). I think CE/PPC is still too unstable for possible life threatening experiences in the car.
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.
Security updates for you car will be availible on the internet. Failure to update voids all warrenties.
...you would see the same car over and over again.
Before the airbag deploys, it asks you "Are you sure?"
I have got a PocketPC 'thing' and, I have to admit, I am enjoying the experience. Not that I bought the device myself, with my own money - my love for all things Microsoft doesn't go quite that far. It was a freebie.
The system appears to be stable (as stable, as a Palm I used before) and rather useful. I guess it could be quite fitting a system for fringe-items in cars.
--
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
Too bad he wasn't driving a BMW with an iDrive system, but an earlier BMW. It was a catastrophic electrical system failure that locked him in the car.
3 ,3 9130270,00.htm
http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/systems/0,3900115
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
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!!"
the first paragraph in the article about people being trapped says it happened because of an electrical fault, not a system crash. Just more banner hits for OSDN i suppose...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
...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.
Microsoft Technology Hits the Road in BMW 7 Series:
Essentially, it was a PDA with voice recognition implanted into the dash. The demoed voice recognition seemed to do a rather good job as well, when asked questions like, "Tell me what the weather is like", and "give me directions to Treasure Island". I'm not sure what level of connectivity they had.
All in all, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. Many have PDA's etc., and as the artical says, it makes sense for them to interface with the car.
Obviously, I don't think we'll see actual automobile related functions running on windows any time soon.
Oh, and there were a couple LCD's implanted in the back of the front seats so that you could play Xbox in the back.
"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
They're making a new Mad Max movie, right? Perhaps this report is why the apocalypse seems so much closer... all our cars will die of viruses?
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
The incident mentioned dealt with a car that is TEN years old. I think that predates Windows CE.
From the story - "Thai Rath said Suchart got the 10-year-old car two days ago as a replacement for his regular Mercedes Benz, which was in the garage for repairs."
Here's the google cache link for the article from the "Eye on Thai Press" website - cached news story
A Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Departmental Manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careened almost out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt scraping along the mountainside. The car's occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no rakes. What were they to do?
"I know", said the Departmental Manager, "Let's have a meeting, propose a Vision, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals, and by a process of Continuous Improvement, Change Management, Re-Engineering and Service Integration, find a solution to the Critical Problems, and we can be on our way."
"No, no", said the Hardware Engineer, "That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I've got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip
down the car's braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we can be on our way."
"Well", said the Software Engineer, "Before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the road and see if it happens again."
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.
I got this in an e-mail a few weeks ago... but it said somthing about a responce to somthing billy said at comdex
"We couldn't breathe because there was no air," he added.
I have not yet met the car that was utterly and completley sealed. And there's a lot of air in the passenger space of even a small sports car, and this was a "luxury car". See below for more reasons why, even if it were completley sealed, this is totally stupid. Even if they mean no air conditioning, I can't imagine in the time this occurred it got so hot they couldn't breathe.
To draw attention, the minister and his driver waved frantically at passers-by. The incident ended only after a nearby security guard smashed the car's windows with a sledgehammer.
Even with the heavy-duty tool, Suchart said it took a long time to break the windows as the "glass proved to be very resistant".
The harrowing experience lasted about 10 minutes, he said.
Let's see "it took a long time.... about 10 minutes". What exactly is wrong with this statement? Certainly 10 minutes is longer than you expect for a sledgehammer to go through glass, but even so, that's NOT really a long time. Certainly not enough time to asphyxiate. Can you say complete panic?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Blue Screen of Your Face Going Through The Windshield.
Stop: 0X0000000A (0X00000000, 0X00000002, 0X00000001, 0X80448BF6)
IRQL_NOT_LESS OR EQUAL
Adress 80448BF6 base at 80400000, DateStamp
3d366b8b - brake.exe
Beginning dump of physical facial bones
It wasn't the car's fault, it was bad drivers.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Seem to be lots of issues with the idrive system. BMW's answer seems to be 'tough, what do you expect from a first generation system'. Of course this is just what I see from TV/newpaper articles, so it must be true;-)
:-)
In other news, try getting a service on an engine management system over 15 years old. Almost impossible. I think I'll go back to carbs
and that decision is to not buy a car made by those companies.
I dont want to die at the hands of Bill Gates.
Windows gets slow after running a few days.
I can see this happening:
I go out to the car one morning, and try to unlock the car... takes 30 seconds to unlock..
takes 30 seconds to start... 30 seconds to brake (CRASH! dead.)
Nice try Bill, But I will stick to a NON-WINDOWS car for now.
I know, literacy is dead - but only the new 7-series & a few 2004 5-series BMW's have WinCE.
If they start using M$ in cars I'm going to have a hard time at work when i Graduate. And you can't smash the cars when they feel like having bluescreens. I'm going to end up paying for working.
Going Berserk.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it..... ....unless you are in a war and playing trogan horse
MS and The Art Of War on competition
Meaing if MS has their software somewhere, it means the competition isn't there.
But if it doesn't work right, to replace a demon of evil spirits, don't leave a void.
Maybe some Linux companies should prepair a replacement....and stand up for consumer choice.
This thai story explains the skeleton in the car parked in front of my appartment.
Hey, see that link in the article? That's right, the very first one?
Click it, and it leads to...
..wait for it...
That's right! The same old joke you just reposted! Tell him what he's won, Rod!
He's one a 5-day, 4-night stay in beautiful RTFALand! We'll fly him and a guest non stop to a room where he can sit and actually read the articles before posting ancient jokes we've all seen before that are referenced by the article itself!
All's true that is mistrusted
http://yupki.mine.nu:8081/i/x674yupke.php
Not that I'm saying it would make sense to do so, but the door lock is not mechanical by pure neccessity. If the handle to the regular door-latch (not lock) were also simply an electronic switch, the "lock" could simply be something which disables the regular latch.
:)
Just trying to be unhelpful here
[hey, it's how I'd build a lock!]
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Three Microsoft employees and three Apple employees are boarding a train to attend a conference. The three MS people walk up and buy their tickets. Then, only one of the Apple employees buys a ticket.
The MS guys say, "Whoa! Wait a minute, how are you all going to ride with only one ticket."
"You'll see," they replied.
Everyone boards the train and the MS employees take their seats while all three Apple employees cram into the bathroom. A while later the ticket taker comes down the isles and takes the tickets from the MS employees. He passes the bathroom, notes that it says "Occupied" and softly knocks on the door. "Ticket please," he says. Slowly, the door cracks open, one hand reaches out and hands him a ticket. A few minutes later, the Apple employees emerge from the bathroom and take seats, much to the amazement of the MS employees.
After the conference, on the way back home, the same employees are reboarding the train. The MS people, having deftly learned a new trick, buy just one ticket. The Apple employees then say, we aren't going to buy a ticket this time. MS peoples' jaws drop, but everyone gets on the train.
The MS people quickly cram into the bathroom, and the Apple employees go into a different bathroom. After a couple of minutes, one of the Apple employees comes out of the bathroom, walks up to the door of the bathroom that the MS employees are hiding in, knocks on it, and says:
"Ticket please"
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
There you are with your Windows CE based heart regulator.
.... Blue Screen of DEATH?
What do you do when a Blue Screen of Death becomes a well
from the last link...
Connected to www.memphismaulers.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
get
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:44:21 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
So go change it!
For example, BMW will not sell a service manual to an end user. Nope. You have to be an officially authorized repair shop in order to purchase a service manual.
Replacement parts are sky high in price. Example: new head lamp - $120, New ignition wires $230. About 10 times the price you'd pay for a part for a normal car.
Another example: BMW instrument clusters are powered by rechargeable nicad batteries. These batteries eventually die. But they will only sell you a complete new computer, not the replacement batteries. The nicad batteries are soldered to the motherboard. No problem, right? WRONG. You have to take off the steering wheel, and disassemble the dash board to get access to the cluster computer. This is not fun. I do not recommend trying this at home.
BMW is without a doubt, the most fucked up of all the automobile companies. They are a PERFECT match for Microsoft. If you do your own maintenance, you will rue the day you ever bought a BMW.
However, MS shows their teeth once again, and grabs a deal with the big guns. That's how they operate, they don't care much about software quality. All they need is Public Relations at the appropriate level, that's enough for them. And some dirty tricks to kill out the competition ...
Near Heidelberg/Germany there seems to be a bump in a highway that causes some BMW firmware to crash everytime a BMW runs over it, with the same effect as reported in the second article: the engine stops, the doors and windows are locked and the occupants are trapped. Fortunately people don't need to wait long, because there's usually a local breakdown service waiting to rescue the drivers. Interesting business idea :)
Why do they call it CE? I thought that name was dead?
The good thing about this is the PocketPC/WinCE electronics do not control things like fuel delivery and such for the engine. It merely controls accessories.
Spark and fuel control should never be controled by something so complex that it can run any windows operating system. The megasquirt is a perfect example of how fuel/spark controllers should be. Simple, but yet very functional.
Too bad the megasquirt fires all the injectors at once, otherwise I would get one for my car.
So if we're moving towards all this fancy tech, do we have to worry about syncing the data?
How would that be done? WiFi? But then, there'd be an opportunity to take the literal 'wardriving' approach. And given how poor computer security is in most homes nowadays....
A +5 Funny awarded to someone too lazy to read the article (the first link even). Really shows the quality of the moderation system.
Now at least I know why I see the most retarded comments get modded up insightful or informative.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
The main reason being you want a real small real time kernel tucked in there for the engine controller, ABS, stability control, traction control, gear box.
All those systems are normally kept on a seperate network for traffic to from any telematics (industry BS word for the nav, steroe, DVD, phone, climate etc...). If they do use the big optical network it is through a gate way that is written to safety critical standards. Of course not every writer of safety critical or safety related software meets what I would consider adequate standards.
I'm not saying that I'd want to have any safety critical systems depending on it, but it's actually getting better (which, after my recent experiences with XP, I'm beginning to think is counter to the trend at that place). The 2002 version of Pocket PC, for example, is a lot more stable than the 2000 version. My Jornada 548 had two total data loss crashes that prevented it from shutting off until the battery ran out. My 568, running the same applications, hasn't managed to pull that trick yet... though it's still got the awful memory management problems that cut the effective usable memory by a factor of 3-4.
I don't think I'd want my car powered by embedded Linux, either. There are a lot of high quality well-designed dedicated real-time operating systems that don't have a legacy "big system" design. Why not stick with them? Going to Microsoft for your embedded systems is like going to Navistar for your family car, or to Halliburton for your swimming pool.
Buffer overruns and a few lines of vb script and you've got a couple million cars emailing each other until they just freeze up. Cool.
Clutch-Brake-Accelerator?
What happens if you have an automatic???
The car was still operational, though, so I drove to a friend's house and eventually got their attention. Two hours later a locksmith finally got me out. In the mean time I had to sit through each passerby feeling compelled to go around the car and try every door, and then signal me to pull up on the lock. As if somehow no one had yet thought of that. It was a bit like waiting for an elevator, where each new arrival feels the need to press the button.
MANUAL OVERRIDE
Isn't it ironic... most cars now have latches to let kids and gangsters out of trunks, yet now you can't get out of the car when its OS freezes? Good grief!
How many times has the Enterprise been saved (or blown up to kill bad guys) through the use of manual overrides? I should be able to get out of my car, even if the battery is drained and the computer is drained. If it's good enough for Jean Luc, it's good enough for me!
I currently have an Acura with a navigation system built in, and I can tell you that there is no need for a familiar windows interface in that car. It's easy to use, and the only complaint I have is that it's kinda slow and adding windows probably won't speed it up. As an added thought the 2004 Acura TL already has blue tooth, plays mp3 CDs, and has speech recognition for a navigation system thats better then mine. What does Honda gain by going with Microsoft?
I've also seen the navigation systems in both BMW's and Benz's, and both of them need to become much more user friendly, so I can see them asking Microsoft for help.
Embedded != Embedded. MS products maybe used in cars, but largely in the "infotainment" sector.
WinCE is much too big for the tiny microcontrollers that control engines, breakes, gear shifts and so on.. As is Java.
If you want to really what going on in car electronics look for example for the OSEK/VDX initiative, a consortium of german and french carmakers.
Someone may have already posted this, but a while back, a retired test engineer had a website with video of his misbehaving 7i series BMW. The errors were many, and the dealership indicated that the car was functioning normally inspite of numerous software problems. The car was running WinCE. Is the site still up?
Now I need to install a virus checker on my garage door and be carefull who I park next to at work?
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
On the rest of us. I want AAC because atleast Dolby knows somthing about sound which is area MS is seriously lacking in. Don't push MS only stds on me or I'm not going to buy your products simple as that.
You had better yell profusely. With temperatures that low, and having that single point-of-failure, your frozen locks could cause you to die of exposure. That model of car should be recalled.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
except that 7-series owners are trading their iDrive-equipped(and hideous-looking) cars in for Mercedes and Audis. They just don't "get" iDrive, and since it's tied into so many goddamn features on the car, if you don't "get" it, you're not "getting" most of the car. WinCE has been a -spectacular- failure in that car. There are videos running around the net showing a guy's 750iL hunting for gears on the highway, closing+opening the trunk incessantly, ejecting the key from the keyslot(making it impossible to start the car!), changing radio stations on its own...
If you want to see the interface done right, check out an Audi A8L with MMC. Similar idea, but instead of putting absolutely everything on the dial and making you push/pull/twist/etc, it's simply an "adjuster"; buttons around the dial are used to actually navigate around the menus. Oh, and it's also not in control of absolutely everything in the bloody car. It's only in charge of suspension settings, the radio, phone, and nav system(actually, it might have climate control too, I forget.)
The running joke in the auto industry is that the only reason Chris Bangle(BMW designer who ruined the 7-series and now the 5-series) has a job is that all his bosses got 7-series cars and can't get them out of the driveway to go into headquarters and fire him.
Please help metamoderate.
And which Antivirus software does Microsoft recommend? I mean, I'd hate to have my car stall in a busy intersection because the onboard computer caught the blaster worm from someone's WiFi hotspot.
Kinda gives wardriving a whole new meaning, though.... Kids could drive around in rush hour traffic with a virus-infected Windows laptop and bring traffic to a halt!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Imaging driving down the motorway, at 70pmh, and then the onboard windows systems crash. Whats the betting you will ;-)
Despite liking BMW's, I'd say their choosing MS OS for their cars seems to dovetail with their latest love-hate designs of the new 7 and 5 series. Bangle seems to make very controversial decisions which even to the plainest view, have warts. MS OS seems to fit the Bangle model for feature-ful failed designs. I just hope BMW recovers sooner than later (the board should already have taken action but so it goes).
I hope the government forces car companies to label any car with an MS OS in it. Caveat emptor!
The article CLEARLY STATES that the fault was an electronic fault NOT CAUSED OR RELATED TO THE CAR'S OS (Windows CE).
/.
Then again, it's a truth that doesn't paint Microsoft in a bad light so I suppose it has no place on
Never forget the Neil Stephenson essay, "In the beginning was the command line"...
Here's a little exerp:
Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.
There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.
The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.
Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.
Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.
On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.
One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.
With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.
Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.
Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.
The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it's a fringe player.
The group giving away the free tanks onl
Karma: Non-Heinous
True story: In the mid 70's in Egypt, the u.s. ambassador was using a souped-up car that had been confiscated form a drug dealer as his official car. It was perfect for the job: bulletproof, had hidden sirens and lights, plus a megaphone and tear gas for crowd control (and being free was something the government liked, too). One day a critical fuse blew and they were trapped, just like the Thai ministers... it took a lot of energy to break through the bulletproof glass, but they eventually got him out.
Solution to the problem? A fire ax became standard equipment in the back seat of that car.
I never got to see the car, but I always imagined it as totally pimp-rific.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Uhh, you, since the original comment got bitchslapped down redundant, and this guy got +5 funny.
In addition, the moderation system takes time. Of course he will be only at +2 for a while or so after posting since fewer people will have actually seen his comment. Comments like yours stick around, just waiting for people like me to proclaim your ignorance of how things work.
Also, for your information, the +1 doesn't go away when you use it. You still get to keep it unless you constantly post worthless comments. Which, incidentally, is why you will never even get the +1 modifier.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
It gets worse. On most BMWs(mechanical locking or not), from outside the car, you can initiate a special full-lockdown-mode that would make it impossible for anyone inside the car to unlock and open a door. It's been responsible for trapping countless children and people in cars.
I believe it's designed to stop slim jims and people using coathangers to pop the lock button(which is why most lock buttons don't have edges and/or are by the door handle now).
Please help metamoderate.
Recycled MBA/Engineer joke?
Or was it engineer/mathematics?
Anyway, the engineer part is important, as it shows the pragmatism of an engineer on most matters in contrast to their humouristic antagonists.
The transposition of the joke on Mac/Win lacks this kind of insight as pragmatism is, IMHO, not the distinguishing attribute of a Mac user.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
So maybe we're blaming the wrong company, how about we bitch at the top first (the driver, BMW, etc.) and work our way down (Microsoft, the makers of the chips powering the software, etc.).
People tend to think subconsciously that it would be most productive to female dog at the party that has had the worst reliability track record in the past.
I'll second it. My bmw (2003 330i) had a sticker on the windshield, and another on the computer (engine compartment, on firewall in front of driver).
;-)
But, go ahead and visit a dealer. That should be pretty hard to fake
The reason for the sticker is that they don't want to be resposible for interference-testing every possible combination. I didn't heed the warning, and I found that when I kept my cell phone stashed away in the compartment under the radio, the radio would randomly turn off about every 45 minutes. Now, I keep it in the cup holder, and the radio is fine.
I also suspect that interference is the reason they moved the computer into the engine area - they used to keep them in the passenger area, where the temperature is controlled (and not searingly hot), but that provides less shielding.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
... You would have no steering wheel, but instead about 17 different levers...
... Your car would cost close to nothing, but you'd have to assemble it yourself...
... It would come with several different chassis, so you could decided which one you wanted most...
... Every time you change the oil, you have to rebuild the engine...
... Everyone will swear they drive one...
... Never crashes, but drives at a constant 12mph...
... It would be easy to lock yourself out...
... You wouldn't be able to lend it to your friends unless they agreed to lend it to THEIR friends...
... You wouldn't be able to make aftermarket parts for it unless you give parts makers the schematics for the ENTIRE car...
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
Those motorcycle crash photos are pretty gross. I'm trying to convince myself they aren't real ...
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
I DO have a problem with everyone put what is the worst OS ever for embedded systems in EVERYTHING
TO ALL THOSE CLUELESS BUISNESS CEO'S AND MANAGERS OUT THERE!!!!!!!
WINDOWS IS NOT I REPEAT NOT A OS THAT BELONGS ANYWHERE BUT ON A CONSUMER COMPUTER.
get yourself a good coder and put Linux, or Unix in there, but DO NOT put WINDOWS, MAC OS, or any other consumer OS EVER near something that doesnt need it.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I've had the +1 modifier for months on this account.
There are a LOT of dumb fucks with the +1 modifier, ya know.
Well, case in point I guess. You've certainly left me with no room to argue.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
I thought they ran Windows CE, not Mac OS X ...
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Microsoft likes to take everything over. microsoft needs to goto hell.
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1
I still cary the same bag of tools in the trunk of the Benz, but mostly out of stubborn habit (and the fact that they provided a hidey-hole for them that was exactly the same size as my bag ;-), but I know that there's no way I'll be able to work on my new car with all the electronics.
As it was, I just had it winterized and requested they put a trickle-charger on the battery instead of a blanket heater. They had to disconnect the battery to do this. When I got back into the the car to drive it home all the electronic devices - seats, windows, sunroof, mirrors, etc. refused to work properly until they were "reset" - meaning run through their entire range twice. I paniced and thought the dealership had totally screwed my car up until I realized how to get functionality back.
Take this to the extreme then. What happens when, instead of just windows and seats, we have steer-, accelerate-, and brake-by-wire in our vehicles? If a computer program is controling this instead of some sort of redundant solid-state system, I want it to be bullet proof and open to public review - with the ability to mod it if I feel the need (yes, yes, warrantly, blah, blah) I just don't want a completely closed system where I have to trust the manufacturer (or God forbid, Microsoft) with critical systems in my car. And since it is MY car, I want the freedom to be able to "get under the hood" if I want/need to.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
You can have my Windows CE-powered car when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Oh, wait...
I can't find the article right now, but there were reports of quite a number of Ms-related glitches when the new 7 series was rolled out.
I'm willing to bet it hasn't been fixed yet.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Thanks for helping me avoid a goatse-like morning.
Get off my launchpad!
...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.
Yes, with Auto-DRM, the car industry will be able to regain lost profits from those horrible people sharing cars!
Only YOU will be able to drive your car, and if your friends or family want to drive it, they will have to purchase a seperate licence from the manufacturer!
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Consumer Reports had an article recently that mentioned this general topic. Their general suggestion was to avoid buying the new computerized luxury cars for a few years, until they get the UI right. It seems that in general their testers couldn't make much sense out of the menu-based centralized controls, and they considered these controls to be hazardous in the extreme under normal driving conditions.
BMW's newer models were not nearly the only bad examples.
Trying to discover where they've hidden some control in an N-level-deep menu tree is extremely distracting. You don't want this when you're driving.
Of course, if you screw up, the manufacturer will just call it an "operator error".
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
when a M$ controlled car crashes.
I hope that its one that some lawyer's relative is driving (and that its deadly [sory but I wouldn't want anyone to suffer.])
Dragging Gates in for man-slaughter might teach him some humility and the importance of getting software right for a change instead of relying on some shrinkwhar "shirk"ware EULA.
So would a week-end with "Bubbah" screwing with him instead of Bill screwing with us.
I'm glad I don't drive anymore...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Just because that's the case now doesn't mean it's going to be the case forever. And given all the personal stories of being trapped inside cars NOW, I really think tempting fate is a bad thing.
Gee, I knew Dave Cutler, Architect of Windows NTr s/dCUR /ATLdpDRIVER_dCURBIO_WFC.html
was into driving fast cars. See this Url:
http://www.toyota-atlantic.com/global/drive
I just didn't know he wanted to drive everybodys car.
It'd take forever for a (com)pile up to happen...
Many Thanks,
Luke
Time to start requesting written confirmations there is no M$ product in a car when buying a new one next time.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
Slashdot has had a number of articles about the iTron OS that's being used in a lot of Japanese autos these days. That and linux are both good candidates for a stable, reliable onboard OS. Of course, behind the scenes, iTron and linux are busy "stealing" ideas from each other. It'll be interesting to see which will win in the long run, or if they'll slowly merge. Or maybe divide the territory by consciously heading toward different parts of the tradeoff space.
I wonder if anyone is looking at any of the *BSD kernels for this sort of embedded use? They have reliability records comparable to iTron and linux, and also come with all the source code.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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
that BMW is going this route. I've been looking around recently at new cars, including the BMW 6 and 7 series. I'm planning to buy sometime this spring, but I guess I'll be looking more closely at the Lexus LS and Mercedes S series models.
...then I don't have much to say. I love BMWs, and BMW is not dumb to choose something that would not be up to their standards. Unfortunately the notion so many people have that anything associated with the word Microsoft is bad by default is wrong. It's clear that buidling an OS for the car (mostly for personal use in this case, not to control the car's vital functions) is different than building an OS for the desktop, and equally easy to see why. It's a competitive world and some will use Linux, others will use Windows (slimmed). See, you can actually say now that it is a competitive world. I am happy with that.
The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Fcuknig amzanig eh!
I can just imagine the look on the dealer's face.
Never at a loss for words... because of the voices.
It is the only way to crash twice in the same accident.
;)
Does your insurance cover twice the cost?
Or pay half as much on each claim?
lol
So why not go with a crappy OS.
Incidently, QNX has been establishing itself in the Automotive sector for quite some time. Here's a few article excepts, etc.
Life-or-death code [Registration Required]
Bugs hold danger as cars and hospitals rely more on software
QNX Software Systems Ltd. makes software for both. Bugs might present minor problems, but the Canadian company has found a way to keep devices from crashing completely, said product management director Sachin Lawande.
QNX operating system revs up for the road
Robust brain of smart-vehicle computers is able to repair itself
Should Bill Gates worry? If he's going after high-reliability markets then we will beat him without question, says Mr. Dodge. But let's be realistic here. Technology doesn't always win everywhere and Microsoft has the marketing. People are used to rebooting their PC every day. We've had customers running QNX for 10 to 15 years without rebooting.
Driving the Future
Click here to see the Audi A8 L's MultiMedia Interface, powered by QNX
Windows CE (now called Windows Automotive) lost out to QNX Neutrino, a real-time operating system from a company with two decades of experience in life-support systems and nuclear power plantsand few plans to run Audi's life in the future. With Microsoft, confided one Audi manager, You were always thinking they had plans to control more than your dashboard. (Microsoft automotive business unit general manager Bob McKenzie says that Microsoft would like to partner with automakers on more extensive projects in the future.)
Obviously there's more, but that gives you an idea of what's happening.
My father has a 2003 BMW 7 series, and it has broken down 5 times.
I kept wondering why, however I guess Microsoft Windows CE must be one of the problems....and I say this as seriously as I can, well, without, you know, laughing.
Sometimes it doesn't start, it chokes up gas, and it steers like a steer(that is, a cow). BMW's are supposed to be reliable, but I guess they just tossed that reputation out the window, huh? I know he'll never buy a BMW ever again...
Microsoft Quality Software + wireless/satellite + worms
Can you say nation wide grid lock?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's already two years after 2001, it's about time!
I remember seeing this one car that had a bunch of buttons on the steering wheel, each one had a different letter on it, and a different function. That car did some amazingly cool stuff. . . had a monkey in the trunk too. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
God some people are fucking stupid, do BMW get their people from Diebold?? i claim no knowledge of car design or even software design (im still in uni) but even i can tell that some things are just stupid, for example having a situation where a computer has locked your door and even though you are inside the car you cannot get out because their is no fricking mechanical override. I get scared, scared totally shitless that the same incompetant fools that design voting systems, atms and car locks might one day be let loose on a bloody nuclear reactor or a plane! would they understand simple concepts eg. "buffer overflow could cause fuel dump, dont just hope it doesnt happen, design a redundancy so it _cant_ happen" Seeing as Microsoft have screwed up on a number of things i wouldnt want them powering anything more than an mp3 player (yeah and even windows media player has fucked up badly!)
Outlook express VB script - we messed it up
CSS box model - we cant even draw a box right
IIS - our uptimes almost 15 days on average now!
just afew
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Except instead of a people personality courtesy of Sirius Cybernetics, I get a user friendly personaity courtesy of their real life clone, Micro$oft. How con-fricking-venient.
This sig no verb.
I don't know about the "EULA style" sticker but the passage about operating a car whilst using the cell phone is a matter of EU law. Too many people have caused accidents whilst talking on the phone so they passed a law. BMW is just covering their asses with regard to the law.
but it's also not Microsoft's fucking fault if Lexmark can't write a quality print driver.
Car and Driver Magazine reviewed 6 luxury sedans in their December 2003 issue. They rated the Lexus and the Jaguar 1 and 2. Here is what they said about the BMW iDrive:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Nor is it Microsoft's fault if ATI can't write a quality display driver.
Evidently, you either ignorantly or puposely misinterpreted the report, which merely states that 50% of crashes are third-party, and the other 50% are from Windows itself due to bad drivers or other poorly-written OS hooks. Yes, there were other reports about this that stated such.
In other words, half of what Dr. Watson reported was error conditions originating directly from third-party code, while the other half was initiated by Windows code. Hardly a reason to point fingers at "bad" Windows code. The Windows kernel rivals that of Linux in many ways. It's the stuff on top of it that biased people have a problem with.
teh FUD = teh win!!!11
Its not happening now, but it might someday and you should all be afraid!!!111
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/csc/refurb_equipm ent/swlicense.html
You wouldn't happen to have links to this, would you?
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.
It's all fun and games until windows kills someone.
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
Java is embeddable in smart cards...
...once the new, "pop-up billboards" become common.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
So the Seimens Telemetry monitoring system in our cardiac ward is Windows CE based. I finally had a crash of a telemetry monitor recently (which is how I found out it was CE based when the splash screen launched). There was a patient on it, and it simply stopped reading his heart rate/EKG. Luckily a reboot fixed it, but these should never crash...
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.
All you do is get into the car, close the door and Windows Car will automatically configure the car to suit the driver. It will adjust the seats, climate control, and select a radio station. Our driver is... (BSOD on dash) ... Uh Oh
uuhh...moving right along...
Bill Gates: So this must be why we're not shipping Windows Car yet.
Absolutely!
$cat
Unfortuneatley if Linus was used as the OS, gas prices would triple due to the initiation of a Congressionally approved TAX. Also Known as the Smoot-McBride Act
What the fuck is wrong with you? I don't like Microsoft, I don't run Microsoft products. If you could all stop thinking about CmdrTaco's ass for a moment you might make the time to grasp the very real concept that it isn't just Microsoft fans who hate you freaks.
I'm not even taking the time to reply to the grandparent post. I'm sure that he wouldn't take any notice because clearly I am a lesser human being due to my high UID.
I realised a fairly long time ago that geeks are not intellectually superior. They're just obsessed. I suspect that most of these losers beat up on Billy constantly because it's something they can do easily. It makes up for lack of natural skill in worthwhile disciplines.
With wifi catching on, and with MS software being central in a car's brain, the possibilties are endless.
People will have their cars recalled 3-4 times a year to apply the latest patch.
You might have viruses that spread from car to car.
There'll be the IloveYou kind of virus, or blaster kind of virus, that will shut down traffic and cause millions of accidents within hours of release to the wild.
There's the jerusalem style of virus that will crash all cars on the planet at a predetermined time.
There'll be backdoors and IRC robots, where the script kiddies in stead of trying to shut down a web site in a DDDOS attack, will instead take control over cars, and use real people as objects in a videogame.
Or more innocent viruses that hijacks a car's stereo, and starts blasting Wang Chung at full volume.
Scary. The scariest part is that this is not crazy science fiction. By all signs, I don't see that any of this is avoidable, given MS current dominance, their awful track record on security, and the extremely weak consumer protection laws.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
The F22 and B2 aside, there are no aircraft the USAF flies that were designed and build in the time frame that Windows has come into being.
The F22 only just fits the time period; it started its software development process in the days of Windows 3.0.
No aircraft has Windows based Flight Control systems, not even the civil stuff.
Though that is not to say flight qualified software doesn't reset.
Watch for the tsunami of lawsuits to come out of this. Some of the 50,000 highway deaths are bound to be due to software failure. And when a Ford, say, equipped with Windows is involved in a fatality, the case will attract lawyers like some kind of legal black hole. Can you imagine the prospect of picking the deep pockets of Ford and Microsoft?
Software manufacturers have been immune from this before, because everyone "knows" that computers are unreliable and crash. A jury isn't going to care that your desktop burst into flame and lost all your data. That's state of the art in the zeitgeist. But juries drive cars and are more sympathetic to claims against their makers. Do you want to be defending Microsoft when the other side shows the birthday party videos of the little girl who was immolated in the fiery wreck caused by your software?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
When it gets colder and colder, more and more cars break down on the freeways, because of engine problems related to colder temperatures, moist etc...
:)
When I compare that with my Windows XP install which hasn't crashed on my in the last year (and I use it 16+ hours a day) ONCE, I don't know, but XP does it better than my Mercedes A140 which broke down a couple of times in the last year.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I see you used your +1 modifier, dude.
A Good Intro to NetBS
If everyone else can manage to write a printer driver that doesn't send the computer into fits of hysterics, why must it be Microsoft's fault?
Surely there is a possibility that Lexmark has a fucking bug in their driver.
Of course not, this is Slashdot, everyone but Microsoft writes perfect code. All bugs, are either Microsoft's bug, or they hid the specs so people couldn't write compatible code.
Let them end!
70pmh
70 pico miles/hour? (It will crash anyway, considering its Windows ME (ME = Motorized Edition?))
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
I'm sorry, I thought I made it clear that this was my point. The systems are very different. The systems in a car have been designed for specific purposes with independence and high fault tolerances. Windows CE was designed for high hardware compability and ease-of-use... neither of which apply in cars.
Of course, Microsoft is saying currently that WinCE is aimed at navigation and media playback, not embedded control. That wasn't always their shtick, however, as when they started this initiative they cited "better safety and security," along with reduced hardware duplication as a reason to use WinCE for all of your machine's needs. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but they truly wanted to be a central controller for the machine.
My mother dated a vehicle development engineer who created system diagnostic software for 5 years.
The ______ Agenda
That sort of thing does not happen.
Sure mistakes occur and things mess up. But there arent any planes running on a desktop ( regardless of the 'embedded' labeling of its maker ) OS.
Nice try tho.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Fearless prediction: The 745i will take a beating on resale.
I remember reading the article and thinking that this was not all that insightful of a prediction.
Yes, iDrive will decimate 7 series resale.
But on the other hand, the 7 series always had relatively bad resale (on the old 7 series, driving it off the lot resulted in a $20k drop in resale.) The problem is the car is pretty expensive anyway...anyone who could afford a (hypothetical) $60k used 7 series can likely pony up the extra money and get the car new (70-70k.) So the car's resale drops like a stone through a wet paper bag, into a new price area, ($45-55k) bringing in people who wouldn't be able to afford the $75k sticker, and therefore could conceivably buy the car used.
Lesson...yes, you too can get a 7 series. They may hit a 50% depreciation in 2-3 years. Wo0t.
The Prince Laurent, son of Albert, King of the Belgians, had the same problems :)
For his wedding, rings were in the car (the same BMW as the thai story). Nobody could open the car because the computer was crashed.
So, security take axes to destroy the armored window ! ! ! Funny isn't it ?
That's the way : take axes and desroy all windows !
(this story was related by the belgian medias. so I think it's true)
Ploum.net.
The story title should read "Oldest joke on the internet?"
Could Microsoft make mission critical software with uptimes measured in years (like QNX or unix)? Yes, I believe they could, but they will not do so until the market stops buying stuff that needs daily rebooting. MS will also have trepidation entering any line of business where liability cannot be avoided by some hokey EULA. I predict they will bail out of the auto market when they start getting nailed by lawsuits over car crashes from use of the computers they want to install in cars. The software in cars is far more stable than the stuff in desktop computers. And far less infested with security defects than Outlook.
Most US carmakers include language in their purchasing contracts that lets them license patents and trade secrets for free (to competitors) if the original supplier cannot (or will not) meet quality or delivery schedules (and prohibits the supplier from sueing over it). Somehow, I predict MS won't be interested in working with such companies.
By accepting Microsoft's license agreement,
End-User is opting into crashing problems,
=100% operator error.
Still, every day brings a choice:
1) Continue to bite the bullet out of FUD or...
2) Go back to the beginning of the learning curve with the kids.
As electronics age, they become less reliable.
The more complicated an electronic system becomes, the less likely it will last for a long time.
And I generally agree with both of them, but I also think that you are seriously underestimating the lifetime of electronic circuits.
17 years is a rather small amount of time. Many passenger aircraft are still operating on a daily basis that have 20+ year old elecronics.
How far back does fuel injection date? I believe that Mercedes-Benz pioneered the art, sometime back in the late 60s or early 70s. I'd be willing to bet that these first electronic systems are still functioning just fine. My '82 280ZX had electronic fuel injection (I believe that it was a Bosch system) and it still functions perfectly. (I gave the car to my younger brother)
I doubt that you've upgraded from your PC-AT simply because you were concerned that it would blow up or catch fire. You've upgraded because you wanted to benefit from several years of innovation. And I'd bet that you'll do so again.
My point is that it makes no sense to discuss how old, mechanical techology is superior because of it's simplicity. I think it's quite clear that electronics increase system complexity and make repair more complex. However, computers and electronics make possible feats that are entirely IMPOSSIBLE to practically implement mechanically.
Infact, that would tend to indicate that device manufacturers are just shovelling shit drivers out for their low end products, and putting the real developers on their high end models.
Mind you, I've been picking Lexmark here just as a printer manufacturer, I've got a Z-55 and the drivers under Windows XP have been pretty rock solid. I haven't encountered any issues with them to date, unlike say, older HP-4 Drivers and Adobe Acrobat/PostScript files.
cgenman: I agree with you. My post was a response to parent "State of Software Sucks" by Anonymous Coward.
Neo: Who?
Oracle: Not too bright, though.
One simple rule for its versus it's
In at least one instance, they are buying Infiniti's as well. Father just picked up (10 days ago?) a Q45. Why not an M5 (about the same sticker)? iDrive is one big freakin' reason. The Q45 has much of the same crap, but it was usable after just a few minutes. And last week, the salesperson made a visit to my mother (an hour or more from the dealership) to spend a few hours training her on each and every little function. No, not the 'change volume and station', but the minor stuff.
Having experienced neither machine (hell, my car doesn't even shift itself:) I can offer nothing but the opinion of people who just bought a car whose value exceeds my annual salary. So there may be some 'Emperor's New Clothes' in there.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Well, that will certainly help me when I'm panic braking on wet ice, sliding towards a cliff.
The problem, you see, is that you can't *trust* Windows. Simply because it works perfectly one second, is not a guarantee that it will work the next second, too. Furthermore, you cannot be certain it is working correctly any one second. To do so would require you to verify the output data against another source. That source cannot be another Windows machine, because if there's a bug which causes the data to become corrupted under certain circumstances, both computers would experience it at the same time, because they would have gone through the same sequence of input data since startup.
And if you verified the output against some other method of calculating it, it would be pointless to have Windows on board in the first place. All it would do would be to increase the likelihood of random system malfunction on a critical moment.
Then why use an operating system originally designed for desktop computers ? Or an operating system based on a desktop operating system ?
Linux is remarkably stable even with everything possible compiled in. The kernels that ship with major distros do this, to support as many devices as possible without recompile. My Red Hat 9 system asked for target partitions, keyboard type, language, mouse type and network address when installing, if I remember correctly. Rest of machine configuration was auto-detected. Besides, Windows doesn't include any drivers that aren't installed, and still manages to be ridicilously unstable...
I'm an ex-Windows user, and will not set my foot on any vechile where any Microsoft product has anything to do with anything important. The only expection are mices; those Microsoft can make well...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
1. Design cars to have better visibility. There shouldn't be giant 'pillars' blocking the driver's view of other cars on the road. A driver should also always have an excellent, unobstructed view out the back.
2. Day-time running lights, so the car is more visible by other drivers and pededstrians.
3. Airbags for every possible passenger in the car.
4. Lots of compartments in the car to store things. I should have more places to store my 3 foot long 20 pound Mag-Lite of death than just the trunk. Of all the cars I've been in, only Suburu is really good about providing lots of places to put stuff.
5. Well-placed controls that allow a driver to operate them without taking their eyes off the road. The general placement of these controls should be standardized across all car brands and price-ranges.
6. Radios that lets the driver do the same as #5.
7. Make it impossible for someone to get locked out of their car. For example, my honda will only let me lock the driver's side door from the outside (using the key).
8. Cup-holders that do very well in accommodating a large variety of different sized-shaped beverage containers.
These are eight simple, easy, lo-tech things that we really should have done years ago that would make cars safer and more pleasant to be in. It is my opinion that until these basic things are added to every model of car produced in every price-range, we shouldn't even begin to think about adding something as complex and expensive as a computer.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
That would KICK ASS. But with the way we insist on individual transportation in Canada everybody would have to have their own sled+team and we would end up with dogs outnumbering people 10 to 1.
Pets.com was ahead of its time.
Serve Gonk.
Hmmm thats explains a lot about M$ dominance in general.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
It's one thing for the computer to freeze just as you walk into the enemy base and you have to restart only to discover that the game is now over. But I don't want my in-car electronics freezing while I'm cruzing the freeway. Oops, sorry officer, I couldn't avoid him, my car froze.
-Tim Louden
most BMW's are now being sold with the bluetooth kit, which REQUIRES a non BMW phone. BMW is finally getting it shead out of its posterior and getting out of the carphone business.. and letting customers use the handset of their choice (not to mention service plan)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I suppose it could be considered mean-spirited to forever hold one little battleship that has to be towed into dock against Microsoft because their NT BSODed, but this so seems like it fits the "Don't They Ever Learn" department.
At least the Army is developing heavy vehicles with linux. Maybe we all _should_ drive Humvees?
...their previous advertising campaign:
http://www.sockenseite.de/war/english/bmw.html
Mirrors:
http://www.avaruusmies.com/jokes/images/161.html
http://www.zone6.dk/nerd/nerd-03.shtml
The cell phone usually *is* approved. By the FCC (or national equivalent/s) and has several other governmental and industry permits, seals, etc. At International, National, Regional, State, City, and County levels.
If the car can't handle it, it's the car that should have its approvals revoked, repealed, voided, rescinded, spat upon and dumped. And the guys that made and sold it should be made to spend a few years cleaning up ERs, or something.
You got to be a COMPLETE LOSER who is BEYOND stupid to get ANY OS to crash more than windows....
Uh....no.. X windows was started at MIT. Xerox Parc came up with the IDEA of GUI's. But X windows is completely UN-related to Xerox Park. All of the Xerox Park guys went to Apple and created MacOS.
Fuel is used to cool the the fuel pump. This is common to practically all cars made today (even carbureted engines) If you constantly run on low fuel, the fuel pump will overheat.
Only YOU will be able to drive your car,
In Soviet Russia, cars drive YOU!
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
they would be just like today's Fords. Anyone ever drive a Ford with an over-heating ignition module? You're driving down the road, it stalls and you restart and keep driving until it fails again.
I heard it SUCKS... feels totally unnatural. If you're so infeeble that you can't work power-assisted brakes, you have a chauffer... so what the hell were they thinking....
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I really don't think Toyota will be fooled into that sad situation, heck they are allready using Linux for thier dealership inventory system.
I drive the most heavily computerized car on the market, a Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid. Such fundamentals as whether the engine is running are decided second-by-second by the onboard computer systems. Even the valve timing is under computer control.
It's been as flawlessly reliable as a good Linux box. It's never been in the shop except for scheduled maintenance and the times when my wife wrecks it. Yellow Cab in Vancouver BC has been using one as a taxi for 120,000 miles.
That kind of reliability is very hard to achieve in software, and you're certainly rational to prefer a mechanical car.
The M5 is based on the previous 5 platform and doesn't have iDrive...
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Windows CE, like most embedded OS manufacturers, uses a modular build system, which in CE's case is called Platform Builder.
You can eliminate all but the most essential components. Don't want the GUI? Don't build it. Don't want networking? Don't build it. Don't want ATA disk access? Don't build it. The smallest kernel with an OAL you can create is only good for managing memory, scheduling, and minor CPU control. It will comfortably run in a very small image space from a ROM.
iDrive is not CE's UI. It's BMW's. BMW made a simplified version of iDrive UI for the 5 series. I'd have thought they would have offered a similar UI to 7 series owners as a retrofit.
Windows CE development comes with an extensive stress testing kit. If a manufacturer creates a version of CE customized to their car, it's up to them to test it adequately. Microsoft gives you the source code to the operating system with CE.NET, so any excuses about not being able to fix bugs you might come across during testing are no longer true.
I have a Citroen C3. I've had it a month now, and it's had two Proxia updates so far, one for the automatic, and one for the ABS. I don't know what Proxia is running, but my automatic shifts a lot better now. Updating these things is not rocket science and will become a normal part of car ownership.
Andrew van der Stock
this is a very good point, there is something seriously wrong with a EKG machine rebooting. however I would not blame MS as much as I would blame company that made such a faulty product, OS choices included. the product manager for leting this thing ship, and the hospital for buying and using something clearly defective.
this is my sig.
Then it may have been a 540. Or a 740. I didn't pay that much attention. The taste of sour grapes was getting to me.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
This is scary. I remember the reasons given for using MS servers as the customers front end (Internet). They were easy enough that an idiot could set them up, manage them and put content onto them. Noone cared if they crashed (which they had projected would happen often enough anyway based on a lab setup with many systems running servers), since all you had to do was restart and/or reinstall. It is funny how none of the important (mission critical) applications were ever allowed to be considered for the MS servers.
Is this coming?
MADD -> Mothers Against Drunk Drivers
MAMS -> Mothers Against Microsoft
I see automotive functions in a similar way. If we want some dinky music system that uses something so unreliable, cool. Let the radio crash. Not my brakes, engine, locks, ... No. I do not relish the thought of anti-lock breaks not functioning correctly when the OS crashes, or returns erroneous results.
As a cold calculation, if you really hate MS, you should encourage this. I believe that the ensuing deaths from MS's OS will be able to finally pierce the EULA and expose MS to a fatal barrage of lawsuits. Until now, MS has never really been accountable to their shoddy software (monopolies have a great tradition of this - Here, their history of arrogance and complete disregard for their responsibility as a supplier of a product would create a situation in a court room not unlike the smokers lawsuits. Lied about what they knew about the products shortcomings, the damage inflicted upon its users, produced an environment where the user could not get away from the faulty product even though they wanted to. Though, hopefuly not with the same numbers of victims.) This would also be good for the linux community, as MS will have to raise prices to handle tort claims once the lawsuits start happening.
Most of us know what will happen with Windows CE in charge of the car's brain. It is not pretty. Personally, I will now be asking what the OS is the car runs on. Unknown or MS, and I go to the next manufacturer. From the looks of the article, it may be that we used to buy Honda and Toyoto cars. They have been extremely reliable for us.
For those who say that the bugs will be worked out enough in 3 years, MS has never had an OS that became that stable. Any MS OS ever. There are some exceptions to individual installations with the perfect combination of hardware and software, but just as in computers, there are many different pieces of hardware and features to be added to cars.
In the end, I think we have enough safety issues to deal with just with the human factors behind the wheel. Now, we are talking about making the car as reliable as a desktop (have reinstalled Windows XP 6 times in 4 months on multiple systems already as upgrades have caused hardware issues and left XP unable to even crawl along). I hope consumer reports starts to include testing of the carse computer system in their safety and ranking tests!
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Every CD-ROM drive can be opened even if power fails. The didn't think to build an override into the car systems?
that take the whole OS Down?
The only times I've personally seen XP Blue screen, were from Video Card drivers (Thanks ATI you cocksuckers)
I've never personally seen a scanner, or printer, or modem or a frigging web cam crash an XP machine.
the terrorists have is government itself and a social policy that encourages civilians to trust the authorities to protect them. We are routinely encouraged to avoid resistance to criminals through the misguided idea that it will protect us. "Let the snatcher have your purse..." "Don't resist ..." Any government finds a passive population preferrable to one armed and willing to take a risk rather than submit to a terrorist or a tyrant. Don't blame the "optimism" of the passengers, blame their trust of authorities instead. And blame the authorities who encourage this.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Imagine, you are driving down the freeway in the dark in western Washington at 70 mph, and your windshield wipers suddenly stop... If you live here, you can probably imagine what would happen. Think: Completely unable to see, except for blurry outlines of the headlights from the oncoming traffic.
Now, what if the lights went out as well. You had better hope you were in the far right lane, and the barrier is far enough away from the road...
This will give A times B times C equals X a totally new twist every time I see that film ...
It seems that a windowns crash actually resolved this problem :)
"The difference between meat and fish is that if you beat your fish it dies"
Heck, I'm still waiting for Sony to start building cars...
By my estimate they'll look great, perform adequately, and cost $10,000 - $15,000 more than their direct competitors.
Picture a Purple-ish last Generation Honda Prelude, with leather, Sony Xplod sound system (powered by magic gate of course!) with all the creature comforts.
Come One, Come All, test drive the New Sony Vaio!
My 1989 Jeep Wrangler, the first OBDC based Jeep (2.5L TBI 4Cyl) is still running, original engine and electronics. The computer and the engine have outlasted 5 Sets of Brakes, 4 Sets of tires, 4 Catalytic Converters, 3 Exhausts, 3 Clutches (Hydraulic), 2 interiors, 3 stereos, and 2 suspensions (I off-road a lot). Despite having a full set of trail racks, lock-boxes, beefed up suspension and driveline (slip yoke eliminator, Dana 44 4.11 Diffs), it still gets 15 MPG average, and that is including a LOT of 4WD on dirt.
My 2000 Audi S4 also has had no computer related problems (Blown Tranny and Turbo, but that was from driving a tad hard on mountain roads).
Prior to that, my 1994 Acura Integra LS ran flawlessly for 6 years, and it had all the computer-controlled bells and whistles you'd expect from a VVT car.
Maybe the problem is BMW (Audi owner snicker as we note their running away from Le Mans with their tail between their legs)?