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New Jaguar XJ Suffers Blue Screen of Death

An anonymous reader writes "CNET UK is reporting that it crashed a £90,000 Jaguar XJ Super Sport — one of the most technologically advanced cars on the planet today. It's not the sort of crash you'd imagine, however — An unforseen glitch somewhere within the car's dozens of separate onboard computers, hundreds of millions of lines of code, or its internal vehicular network, led to the dramatic BSOD, which had to be resolved with the use of a web-connected laptop."

14 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Anonymous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Next step -> Airplanes. It's the best timing to start a parachute business.

  2. Yo Slashdot, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I heard you like car analogies, so we put a computer in your car so you can crash when you crash.

    Wait, that's not actually an analogy.

  3. Too much eminem by LoRdTAW · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was going to read the article, until I reached this line:
    "Our first instinct was that we'd exhausted the car's battery by watching too much Eminem on its integrated DVD player"

    Then I figured out their problem. The car simply could not take take it anymore and once it realized they were going to load an 8 mile DVD, committed suicide.

  4. Windows did stop working by davidwr · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well, I *assume* the power windows did not respond to user input.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  5. Re:Not a BSOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Exactly. A less sensational headline could have been "XJ Power button kinda flakey". This kinda stuff is what drives technical support people nuts. The technically ignorant public comandeers a technical term, such as BSOD, with a very specific meaning, then generalizes it until it's no more useful than the word "Crash". Less useful, actually, since it makes people familliar with the original meaning infer information that the ludide doesn't mean to imply. For people of this level of technical sophisticaiton (Toughbooks, OBD2 interfaces, etc) to do this is shameful.

    Yeah. They should have said that they bricked the car instead.

  6. Re:Not a BSOD - No Microsoft here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Yes but, if it were Microsoft Windows, we could say:

    They are giving us a choice between a car that can't be driven without crashing, and a car with no Windows!

  7. Carl Sagan woud have said..... :=) by spazekaat · · Score: 1, Funny

    "Millions of millions of lines of code"

    How many of those lines were just comments????

  8. Re:Not a BSOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    Or perhaps it's dropped as in:

    I just dropped a deuce. You may not want to go in there for a while

    That would fit a lot of products that come out these days. Insert your favorite Iphone4/PopularVideoGame/TechnologyProduct reference here...

  9. Lesson Learned: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Keep your drivers up to date.

  10. roflcopter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    "hundreds of millions of lines of code"

    quote from south park:

    Mitch: W-we're not sure what exactly is going on inside the town of Beaverton, uh Tom, but we're reporting that there's looting, raping, and yes, even acts of cannibalism.
    Tom: My God, you've, you've actually seen people looting, raping and eating each other?
    Mitch: No, no, we haven't actually seen it Tom, we're just reporting it.

  11. I long for the days .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ... when British cars were noted for leaking oil, not memory.

  12. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    GP is just way too fat to fit into even a quite large car as a Camry.

  13. Re:Well, apparently not Lucas fault by kimvette · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Lucas went defunct in 1996."

    So recent Jags no longer have the "off-dim-flicker" settings on the headlight switch, but due to Ford's influence there is just an increased risk of catching on fire?

    --
    The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
  14. Re:Not a BSOD by Hognoxious · · Score: 2, Funny

    Disclaimer: I am not British ... and I am humbly grateful for that.

    Really? How nice. We're very grateful for it.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."