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NASA Summoned To Fix Prius Problems
coondoggie writes "If you want to solve a major engineering mystery, why not bring in some of the world's best engineers? The US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today said it was doing just that by bringing in NASA engineers with expertise in areas such as computer controlled electronic systems, electromagnetic interference, and software integrity to help tackle the issue of unintended vehicle acceleration in Toyotas. The NHTSA review of the electronic throttle control systems in Toyotas is to be completed by late summer." We're really in trouble when NASA has no choice but to call Bruce Willis.
Yes. Toyota decided the least convoluted way of admitting to software issues was to have a government agency of a foreign country (NHTSA) call in another agency (NASA) to look for software bugs as part of that foreign country's investigation into the matter.
Or it's an admission that the administration wants to make a public circus out of this in order to protect their investment in GM and Chrysler. Or maybe it's an admission that the NHTS doesn't have experience in embedded computer systems and grabbed some from elsewhere.
and when it is all said & done, they will conclude people are hitting the GAS instead of the BRAKE.
You do realize the government could flush every penny invested in GM and Chrysler down the toilet and not miss it, right? Dragging down Toyota to prop up GM and Chrysler might make sense if the federal government was dependent on their success, but it isn't. And even if they took down Toyota, that wouldn't prevent the dozen or so other non-gov't owned brands from rushing to fill the gap (and likely succeeding given the shitty reputation of GM and Chrysler over the past couple decades). Without a motive, inventing conspiracy theories in advance seems rather pointless.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
And if the reason it is so cheap for them now is because of inadequate development practices (testing, code review, etc), I'll be all the more happier to pay the extra price. The question isn't did Toyota fuck-up here. The question is how may fuck-ups where there before they got caught. And how many fuck-ups are there in the rest of the automotive industry that just haven't surfaced (because of any one of a number of reasons)...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
If NASA cannot find a problem, then Toyota is off the hook.
If NASA does find a problem, then Toyota can say -- "It was such a subtle problem, it took NASA's resources and expertise to find and fix it."
Either way, it can be spun positively by the PR folks.
In all seriousness, no, its not.
They need to call in the guys at IGT. They make the majority of the slot machines and video poker machines in the world. If anyone knows about ensuring data integrity, and error checking, etc in embedded systems, it is them.
Its amazing how much detail and error checking go into any system dealing with money, but not with human lives.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
They didn't do so well either....
Colorado Woman Celebrates $42 Million Slot Machine Win Until Casino Says Machine Malfunctioned
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/colorado-42-mil-jackpot-winner-jack/story?id=10235836
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
And as a bonus, the US taxpayers get to pay for it instead of Toyota.
When I see someone say "That's not true." and nothing else, I almost exclusively interpret that as an empty post. If you know for a fact that that isn't true, then please, be more informative. Tell us what IS true. Or at least how you know that that is not true.