Slashdot Mirror
Cars that Can't Crash?
johnsee writes "Microsoft is working with Ford Motor Co towards car that can't crash. The future of cars according to Gates will involve high-definition screens, speech recognition technology, cameras, digital calendars and navigation equipment with directions and road conditions." From the article: "Also on Friday, Microsoft unveiled its Performance Peak Initiative -- a line of computer systems to help the auto industry better coordinate supply chains, streamline design, production and sales and fill vehicles with computer gadgets."
Yes the story invites the inevtiable, insipid jokes about Microsoft and unstable software. Some are even clever. Some might even be funny.
It is worth pointing out the scale of this proejct for those who can't (or won't) accept it: cars are simpler than general purpose computers. Yes, cars are complicated machines with lots of interworking parts. However, the hardware installation on a car is fixed (within paramters) whereas today's general purpose PCs are not.
The flexibility of modern computer peripherals makes for seemingly endless combinations of hardware and existing software. Microsoft attempts to support quite a few of those combinations, with the mixed results we see today.
But cars are a different beast. I bet it's possible to get good test coverage of this car software through test driving. The scope is that much smaller. Think of your favorite console game; has it crashed recently? Ever? It is possible to create software that passes some reliability metric with a fixed hardware platform. A general purpose OS would be hard pressed to make that guarantee.
Microsoft could get this right technically speaking. It remains to be if they do.
Oh, and is it a good idea? I wouldn't buy one :)
Just a few weeks ago my wife and I were leaving a restaurant's parking lot after dinner and the engine was running really rough. I mean really, really rough, and this truck has always run fine before. It coughed and it gasped, and the power was just not there. I stopped and started the engine, but it still continued to run rough. I got maybe a half mile down the road when I realized I wasn't even going to make it home.
I pulled to the shoulder, and was going to phone my son to come pick us up when I said "hey, what happens if I reboot this thing?" So I turned off the engine, let it sit totally dark for about five seconds, then started it up. It started right up and took off, no problems, no choking, no gasping.
A cold reboot fixed my truck.
And now Microsoft wants them to run WINDOWS on this thing? Words fail me.
John