I haven't put gas in my plugin hybrid since March. I'm down to a half-tank.
I live in Michigan - where the GOP dominated state government has turned our roads to gravel - except with bigger chunks. I'd really like to see better roads, and I certainly understand that my lack of gasoline purchases means that I'm being subsidized. Fuel taxes are a great proxy for road usage fees, and so long as there aren't a noticable number of plugin electric vehicles this will probably continue to work - so I won't worry about it. The politics of doing anything with The Party of No is just too difficult for little things like fairness or common sense to have any hope of success.
I had to replace a 14 year old VW Passat V6 Sedan last fall. I went with a Ford C-Max Energi (it's a plugin hybrid.) I wouldn't have gone with an all electric vehicle because a 80-100 mile range just isn't enough for certain out-of-town trips (and I hadn't anticipated the range halving in sub-freezing temperatures.) I went with it because Ford had a discount/rebate, I also had a discount through my employer (who counts as some sort of Ford supplier), and because of the tax benefits of a plugin/EV. That made the Energi cheaper than a Prius.
I've been enjoying my car for the following reasons:
My work commute is short enough to be all-electric - even last winter when the all-electric range fell by half.
The car is very, very quiet.
It's still under warranty, so the maintenance feels like it's free.
However:
I'm paying for the free (ish) maintenance with big (ish) car payments.
Insurance on a new car really is a lot more than for an old car.
The driver's view a lot poorer than the VW
I get unreasonably anxious about the EV (electric vehicle) range.
It's a big, rolling, embedded system with weird software related flaws in the Windows Embedded Automotive based My Ford Touch infotainment syste,
I don't like getting into arguments with my car's voice controlled systems
It has a much smaller cargo capacity than any of my previous cars. For instance, I can't rent a roto-tiller that'll fit in the back.
Overall, I do like the car - but I wonder how much of that is because I don't expect having any major maintenance issues simply because it's a new car. If I were to replace it, I might go with an all electric vehicle and rent a car for longer trips - there's an Enterprise Rent-a-car just a couple miles from home - walking distance. But I hope not to replace it for a long time. (Fingers crossed...)
And I don't think my parking's gotten any worse, but I hardly visit Whole Foods anyway. (I'm mostly Kroger.) There are a heck of a lot of Priuses in my neighborhood though (but hardly any in Kroger's parking lot.)
As a new(ish) owner of an EV, I fear I agree. All of the problems I've had are the results of firmware - and that takes an excessively long time for my dealer to fix.
I'm not savvy enough to throw numbers at this, but I'd wonder about the large scale aspects of this.
How tall can can you build a pile of glass bricks before the ones at the bottom fail?
What effect does on-site manufacture of glass have on it's reliability? What about local impurities, etc.?
What additional stresses (sheering, etc.) will occur to the glass because of daily and seasonal thermal changes?
What are the effects of mile (or kilometer) distant heat source/sink differences on a Stirling Engine (esp. as regards to heat transport.)
What might the weather effects be?
A pyramid full of heat tubes suggests that most of the tubes will be of different lengths.
What effects will the weight of a mile-high structure have on the underlying bedrock, esp. in terms of quakes, shifting, etc.
The pyramid design is trying to optimize direct exposure of some of the surfaces to sunlight - what of the other surfaces? Don't forget seasonal effects (summer vs. winter)
I like speculating about this (in this non-quantitative way.) Without any serious thought about this proposal, it seems unlikely - but likely enough to be worth giving it more thought than I can.
This isn't We as in any individual with memories, personality, goals, culture, and values. This is We as in our abandoned children, perhaps brought up by an artificial intelligence. This is We as in the rest of our ecological support of plants and animals, fungus, and bacteria.
I'm there already. I bought a Ford C-Max Energi about half a year ago. About the only thing not mediated by a computer is the latch on the glove compartment.
I keep my wireless fob on a key-ring in my pocket. I'm still uncomfortable about this change to the User Interface as it means that I don't necessarily have the feedback of knowing I have my keys with me that I had back when I had a real key. And the key fob contains a small key-blade as a backup/emergency solution should the small battery in the fob expire (I've already replaced the battery once.) That small key-blade seems to be the ultimate back-door as far as security goes.
As for wet key fobs - my previous car had a remote lock/unlock/alarm built into one of the keys that came with the car. That died when I rushed into a lake after one of my kids while carrying the key in my pants pocket. It wasn't worth it then to replace - but it would have cost $300+ to do so.
As far as I can tell, my car is now a kind of colonial embedded computing system that happens to roll along the highway at deadly speeds. It's already been into the dealership for software updates (that took two days to apply.) I suspect that as automobiles become even more dependent on automation for their functionality, the resale value of the cars will decrease as the manufacturers eventually put limits on the support for the systems - or go out of business - or go through bankruptcy. GM - having gone through bankruptcy - now has a nice, legal excuse to stop supporting older processors in automobiles that don't impact safety.
I don't see a third-party market developing to support or enhance these systems like there is for mechanical systems. Yes, there are car hackers who download some firmware into their engine computers - but I don't see it happening for navigation systems, entertainment/audio systems, etc. And I doubt it'll happen with EV, hybrid, or plugin-hybrid vehicles.
Most personal computers I see ARE monolithic devices - or may as well be such. Very few people I know will customize or upgrade a PC after it's purchased, outside of (perhaps) RAM or storage - and even those people are rare. Of course, there are discretionary computers used by a few people - but discretionary means that if those computers are unusable while parts are being shipped or OSes being reinstalled or whatever, the only activity impacted is discretionary activity - like gaming.
Personal communication devices (cell-phones) are non-discretionary. You need them to WORK, especially if you have more responsibilities than bathing between visits to your parents' basement.
Perhaps this will allow phones to have more customizable features when they're purchased. But I don't see people swapping parts of their phones in and out the way they might connect and disconnect USB, et. al. devices.
I've heard this kind of thing before. It seems to recur every 8 to 10 years or so. The thing about the skilled trades is that in order to earn mini-banker-like compensation you need to be highly skilled in the very high end of the trades because they're the people who can afford welders good enough for nuclear power plant requirements and things like that. Residential and commercial (i.e.: office and retail) trades aren't going to need the high end skills. It takes years to get there.
As for myself, my backup plan if I couldn't hack college were the electrical and plumbing trades. That was during the Reagan Recession, and as it happened I never had to seriously pursue that. But having been unemployed during the depths of the Great Recession, perhaps I ought to pursue getting an Electrician's license.
The Golf Sports Industrial Complex is in a dither because without Tiger Woods, people realize that golf is boring and a waste of a great green-space for picnics, frisbee, and games of catch.
A 15 inch hole? Pulling the covers off of sewers and using the resulting pit for a target would be more interesting. (Those lids are HEAVY and ball recovery would be more challenging.)
Why would we want someone able to deploy an EMP capable nuclear device to go instead with a dirty bomb or use it to cause more physical damage (i.e.: city-busting?)
Would defending against EMP like this also defend against a solar coronal mass ejection (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... ?) If it can't be justified for an event like that, I don't see the point.
Besides that, the amount of energy it takes to deal with children is daunting. It's a lot easier to convince yourself to have children when you're younger and think that you can do anything.
While some people may think that any monkey can code, most such simian code is fraught with rotting banana peels. And most great apes who make such statements often have long since left their brown, oozing mass to some underling who had to rewrite it to make it work right.
Grumbling about the 1% aside, the real issues of drastic career (or life) changes in middle age are:
Learning a new set of skills
Where can you find instruction?
How can you afford instruction?
How much of your old skill-set can you apply to the new skills?
How can you afford to support your family and yourself while training?
Applying a new set of skills?
Who's going to pay you?
How much are they going to pay you?
Where you need to be for them to pay you?
What value does your fixed assets (home) have when you move?
Can to life where you need to move to?
By middle age, you have a family to support - and your parents probably can't put you up anymore. (Mine were deceased.) There might be other prospects where more of your skills transition than going from a labor intensive, physically focused occupations to intellectual, mind-games focused careers.
And I just don't see a coal-miner going to work riding a skate-board and wearing a backwards turned baseball cap.
I'm worried that having Windows being free but not open sourced for "small devices" will lead to even more irresponsibly designed and supported devices by embedded device manufacturers. (As everyone ought to know it's pretty bad now.)
On the other hand, Microsoft's definition of a "small device" means that my 3,859lb Ford CMax Energi with My Ford Touch powered by Microsoft might qualify because the touch screen is smaller than 9". Ford, on the other hand, seems to want to move away from Microsoft given the difficulties it has had with MFT - so perhaps Microsoft is trying to convince Ford to stay.
The presumption of the article is that Zombies cause their host to permanently be no longer capable of reproduction, which the article mentions. That aspect of Zombiness is usually implicit (body parts falling off, etc.) in most Zombie stories. I certainly haven't heard of any stories where Zombie hosts are capable of reproduction, although the BBC series about cured Zombies seemed may have touched on that topic.
How is using using QR codes any improvement over such dusty techniques as unique error numbers, like "ABEND 07235453" - other than it doesn't require any discipline in registering error numbers?
Wouldn't integrating the frame buffer into kernel oops messages be one (small) step into the MS/Windows disease of integrating user land GUI primitives in the kernel?
This seems to be a solution for desktop (or laptop) Linux only - so it shouldn't be the default.
Most of the time when I'm dealing with Linux, it's either as a tablet (android), a server (used to run 150 headless servers, now I run only about 30), or as an embedded device from the low-end (an internet camera or a WiFi router running DD-WRT) to high-end (research lab equipment supported by a vendor.) My work desktop (Ubuntu) already hides as many error messages as possible, and I don't expect any Linux desktops in an office/workplace setting to reveal such messages - whether they're text, QR code, or cryptic IBM-like ABEND number.
Yes, it'll help Linux geeks report kernel oops messages to the kernel developers better (provided they can capture the image). But for most uses of Linux, it's unnecessary complication.
Bandwidth in my household is often shared with other people gaming and whatever. (Also, the NetFlix streaming customer profile mechanism doesn't work well in a household shared devices.) Watching a DVD means I'm not impacted by by teenagers weird gaming addiction. It also gives me an excellent excuse to punt them off to the "family room" and leave me with the comfy couch.
Unfortunately for NetFlix, this fondness for physical media and unhappiness with their on-line profile mechanism (and unwillingness to spend any more time learning about it, after a couple of unhappy months a few years ago), combined with a general satisfaction with the local public library means I go to the library for my movie fixes - and often get a book too.
In any event, the DVD format is still valuable to me.
When I'm not yelling at the neighborhood kids to get the F off the lawn.
My Ford C-Max Energi (2013) with My Ford Touch has "Microsoft SYNC" stamped on the dashboard.
Microsoft can't escape being associated with SYNC.
My Ford Touch had very bad problems before summer 2013 when the most recent version came out. Now the problems are only bad. The problems I've noticed so far:
FM radio doesn't come back on when starting the car - and requires changing stations in order to make it come back on.
Configuration of MFT as WiFi CLIENT still present - even though there's no functionality gain there. And WiFi passphrase is limited to 10 characters.
Unplugging one USB device (iPhone) causes car to forget other USB device (flash-drive)
There's other issues I'd consider "documentation" issues too. The "Vehicle Health Report" requires that the internal combustion engine (ICE) be on for several minutes - but the messages only require for the car to be "On", something that isn't the same for a plugin-hybrid as it is for an ICE-only car.
We're there, in more than the Start Button (I have a Ford C-Max Energi with My Ford Touch.)
My own exploration of My Ford Touch has led me to consider it a "good first effort. For high school."
Given that My Ford Touch is supposed to be the high-end version of SYNC, the fact that My Ford Touch can NOT support "apps" the way that SYNC does probably makes this an easier decision. The existing SYNC App infrastructure is already doomed.
UPS deliveries to a car sound like a niche market for traveling consultants, lawyers, etc. who might discover they need some smallish thing while on-site.
But pizza and beer deliveries to the party on the beach (or in the park) sound like a much bigger market. Flying a drone-load of beer to ice-fishermen slowly floating out into the middle of one of the Great Lakes after the thaw hits would help make the wait for rescue by the Coast Guard much easier.
If automobile manufacturers made as few different models of their products as Apple makes of their products, then I might trust that the update process could be reasonably tested and verified.
However, with all the different models and packages and trim lines - combined with different revision levels of different parts from 3rd party manufacturers - that automobile manufacturers produce, I don't think verifying that it's possible to verify that an update that can't be verified and documented by trained people is going to do anything but cause problems from dead cars in garages (or wilderness camps) to dead people when something bad happens at highway speeds.
In short, modern cars are not just one large, lethal embedded system - but a NETWORK of embedded systems controlling a potentially lethal device. A system with an expected useful life of several decades.
The business of embedded systems is barely up to the job of designing for systems with a useful life of several years in a hostile, networked environment. Automotive systems are networks of systems from different vendors, any of which might go out of business at any time - all of which jealously guard their designs as proprietary.
Last fall, I bought a Ford C-Max Energi (plugin hybrid.) It turned out that it had problems charging from a Level 2 (220V) charger that didn't manifest until after I'd been charging for a few weeks - which I didn't do until I installed a Level 2 charger after X-mass. This was a problem documented in the online forums for the car but I never received notice of it.
There are continuing problems with My Ford Touch - although (according to the online forums) it's better than it was a year ago (before an update this past summer.) My Ford Touch interacts with the charging system, the engine, etc. It seems to do so in a passive way - but the whole design of the internal communication network in automobiles (CAN) is based on implicit trust that one system won't send false messages to another system. (And various researchers have already exploited this.)
The English language isn't as strongly gendered as most Romance languages (not that English has more than a kissing-barbarian relationship to Romance languages) - but What About The Pronouns?
Our third-person pronouns are Male (singular), Female (Singular), Neuter (singular), and indeterminate (plural.)
I've thought for some time that we need additional pronouns for gender-unknown and gender-indeterminate (a sort of an equivalent to Pollster's "don't know" and "don't care".)
The Theory of Capitalism depends on Perfect Information about prices among all participants.
(I'll pause a while to give you time to stop laughing.)
I think that means that all political donations should be disclosed. After all, how would the market price for a legislator otherwise be properly determined.
Also, the Federal Gov't and most State Gov'ts have the power of Eminent Domain - where the State can take property for the common good. (Michigan abused this power by taking people's homes in order to hand the property over to GM - and lost the power, but other States still have it. And the power still exists for taking property for the Public Good, such as to build roads, bridges, dams, etc.)
It's time to apply Eminent Domain to the wired infrastructure.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't put gas in my plugin hybrid since March. I'm down to a half-tank.
I live in Michigan - where the GOP dominated state government has turned our roads to gravel - except with bigger chunks. I'd really like to see better roads, and I certainly understand that my lack of gasoline purchases means that I'm being subsidized. Fuel taxes are a great proxy for road usage fees, and so long as there aren't a noticable number of plugin electric vehicles this will probably continue to work - so I won't worry about it. The politics of doing anything with The Party of No is just too difficult for little things like fairness or common sense to have any hope of success.
I had to replace a 14 year old VW Passat V6 Sedan last fall. I went with a Ford C-Max Energi (it's a plugin hybrid.) I wouldn't have gone with an all electric vehicle because a 80-100 mile range just isn't enough for certain out-of-town trips (and I hadn't anticipated the range halving in sub-freezing temperatures.) I went with it because Ford had a discount/rebate, I also had a discount through my employer (who counts as some sort of Ford supplier), and because of the tax benefits of a plugin/EV. That made the Energi cheaper than a Prius.
I've been enjoying my car for the following reasons:
However:
Overall, I do like the car - but I wonder how much of that is because I don't expect having any major maintenance issues simply because it's a new car. If I were to replace it, I might go with an all electric vehicle and rent a car for longer trips - there's an Enterprise Rent-a-car just a couple miles from home - walking distance. But I hope not to replace it for a long time. (Fingers crossed...)
And I don't think my parking's gotten any worse, but I hardly visit Whole Foods anyway. (I'm mostly Kroger.) There are a heck of a lot of Priuses in my neighborhood though (but hardly any in Kroger's parking lot.)
6 months after the whole issue of embedded systems blew up in Mom and Pop's pizza shop router is breaking news for InfoWorld.
I don't want to think about the number of times more visionary people have brought up this very topic over the past 15 years.
I wonder I'll be concerned in 20+ years - after I've retired from my career and will be paying rent on my hot-bunk from earnings I make washing dogs.
As a new(ish) owner of an EV, I fear I agree. All of the problems I've had are the results of firmware - and that takes an excessively long time for my dealer to fix.
I'm not savvy enough to throw numbers at this, but I'd wonder about the large scale aspects of this.
How tall can can you build a pile of glass bricks before the ones at the bottom fail?
What effect does on-site manufacture of glass have on it's reliability? What about local impurities, etc.?
What additional stresses (sheering, etc.) will occur to the glass because of daily and seasonal thermal changes?
What are the effects of mile (or kilometer) distant heat source/sink differences on a Stirling Engine (esp. as regards to heat transport.)
What might the weather effects be?
A pyramid full of heat tubes suggests that most of the tubes will be of different lengths.
What effects will the weight of a mile-high structure have on the underlying bedrock, esp. in terms of quakes, shifting, etc.
The pyramid design is trying to optimize direct exposure of some of the surfaces to sunlight - what of the other surfaces? Don't forget seasonal effects (summer vs. winter)
I like speculating about this (in this non-quantitative way.) Without any serious thought about this proposal, it seems unlikely - but likely enough to be worth giving it more thought than I can.
This isn't We as in any individual with memories, personality, goals, culture, and values. This is We as in our abandoned children, perhaps brought up by an artificial intelligence. This is We as in the rest of our ecological support of plants and animals, fungus, and bacteria.
I'm there already. I bought a Ford C-Max Energi about half a year ago. About the only thing not mediated by a computer is the latch on the glove compartment.
I keep my wireless fob on a key-ring in my pocket. I'm still uncomfortable about this change to the User Interface as it means that I don't necessarily have the feedback of knowing I have my keys with me that I had back when I had a real key. And the key fob contains a small key-blade as a backup/emergency solution should the small battery in the fob expire (I've already replaced the battery once.) That small key-blade seems to be the ultimate back-door as far as security goes.
As for wet key fobs - my previous car had a remote lock/unlock/alarm built into one of the keys that came with the car. That died when I rushed into a lake after one of my kids while carrying the key in my pants pocket. It wasn't worth it then to replace - but it would have cost $300+ to do so.
As far as I can tell, my car is now a kind of colonial embedded computing system that happens to roll along the highway at deadly speeds. It's already been into the dealership for software updates (that took two days to apply.) I suspect that as automobiles become even more dependent on automation for their functionality, the resale value of the cars will decrease as the manufacturers eventually put limits on the support for the systems - or go out of business - or go through bankruptcy. GM - having gone through bankruptcy - now has a nice, legal excuse to stop supporting older processors in automobiles that don't impact safety.
I don't see a third-party market developing to support or enhance these systems like there is for mechanical systems. Yes, there are car hackers who download some firmware into their engine computers - but I don't see it happening for navigation systems, entertainment/audio systems, etc. And I doubt it'll happen with EV, hybrid, or plugin-hybrid vehicles.
Most personal computers I see ARE monolithic devices - or may as well be such. Very few people I know will customize or upgrade a PC after it's purchased, outside of (perhaps) RAM or storage - and even those people are rare. Of course, there are discretionary computers used by a few people - but discretionary means that if those computers are unusable while parts are being shipped or OSes being reinstalled or whatever, the only activity impacted is discretionary activity - like gaming.
Personal communication devices (cell-phones) are non-discretionary. You need them to WORK, especially if you have more responsibilities than bathing between visits to your parents' basement.
Perhaps this will allow phones to have more customizable features when they're purchased. But I don't see people swapping parts of their phones in and out the way they might connect and disconnect USB, et. al. devices.
I've heard this kind of thing before. It seems to recur every 8 to 10 years or so. The thing about the skilled trades is that in order to earn mini-banker-like compensation you need to be highly skilled in the very high end of the trades because they're the people who can afford welders good enough for nuclear power plant requirements and things like that. Residential and commercial (i.e.: office and retail) trades aren't going to need the high end skills. It takes years to get there.
As for myself, my backup plan if I couldn't hack college were the electrical and plumbing trades. That was during the Reagan Recession, and as it happened I never had to seriously pursue that. But having been unemployed during the depths of the Great Recession, perhaps I ought to pursue getting an Electrician's license.
The Golf Sports Industrial Complex is in a dither because without Tiger Woods, people realize that golf is boring and a waste of a great green-space for picnics, frisbee, and games of catch.
A 15 inch hole? Pulling the covers off of sewers and using the resulting pit for a target would be more interesting. (Those lids are HEAVY and ball recovery would be more challenging.)
Why would we want someone able to deploy an EMP capable nuclear device to go instead with a dirty bomb or use it to cause more physical damage (i.e.: city-busting?)
Would defending against EMP like this also defend against a solar coronal mass ejection (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... ?) If it can't be justified for an event like that, I don't see the point.
Besides that, the amount of energy it takes to deal with children is daunting. It's a lot easier to convince yourself to have children when you're younger and think that you can do anything.
While some people may think that any monkey can code, most such simian code is fraught with rotting banana peels. And most great apes who make such statements often have long since left their brown, oozing mass to some underling who had to rewrite it to make it work right.
Grumbling about the 1% aside, the real issues of drastic career (or life) changes in middle age are:
By middle age, you have a family to support - and your parents probably can't put you up anymore. (Mine were deceased.) There might be other prospects where more of your skills transition than going from a labor intensive, physically focused occupations to intellectual, mind-games focused careers.
And I just don't see a coal-miner going to work riding a skate-board and wearing a backwards turned baseball cap.
I'm worried that having Windows being free but not open sourced for "small devices" will lead to even more irresponsibly designed and supported devices by embedded device manufacturers. (As everyone ought to know it's pretty bad now.)
On the other hand, Microsoft's definition of a "small device" means that my 3,859lb Ford CMax Energi with My Ford Touch powered by Microsoft might qualify because the touch screen is smaller than 9". Ford, on the other hand, seems to want to move away from Microsoft given the difficulties it has had with MFT - so perhaps Microsoft is trying to convince Ford to stay.
The presumption of the article is that Zombies cause their host to permanently be no longer capable of reproduction, which the article mentions. That aspect of Zombiness is usually implicit (body parts falling off, etc.) in most Zombie stories. I certainly haven't heard of any stories where Zombie hosts are capable of reproduction, although the BBC series about cured Zombies seemed may have touched on that topic.
How is using using QR codes any improvement over such dusty techniques as unique error numbers, like "ABEND 07235453" - other than it doesn't require any discipline in registering error numbers?
Wouldn't integrating the frame buffer into kernel oops messages be one (small) step into the MS/Windows disease of integrating user land GUI primitives in the kernel?
This seems to be a solution for desktop (or laptop) Linux only - so it shouldn't be the default.
Most of the time when I'm dealing with Linux, it's either as a tablet (android), a server (used to run 150 headless servers, now I run only about 30), or as an embedded device from the low-end (an internet camera or a WiFi router running DD-WRT) to high-end (research lab equipment supported by a vendor.) My work desktop (Ubuntu) already hides as many error messages as possible, and I don't expect any Linux desktops in an office/workplace setting to reveal such messages - whether they're text, QR code, or cryptic IBM-like ABEND number.
Yes, it'll help Linux geeks report kernel oops messages to the kernel developers better (provided they can capture the image). But for most uses of Linux, it's unnecessary complication.
Yes.
Bandwidth in my household is often shared with other people gaming and whatever. (Also, the NetFlix streaming customer profile mechanism doesn't work well in a household shared devices.) Watching a DVD means I'm not impacted by by teenagers weird gaming addiction. It also gives me an excellent excuse to punt them off to the "family room" and leave me with the comfy couch.
Unfortunately for NetFlix, this fondness for physical media and unhappiness with their on-line profile mechanism (and unwillingness to spend any more time learning about it, after a couple of unhappy months a few years ago), combined with a general satisfaction with the local public library means I go to the library for my movie fixes - and often get a book too.
In any event, the DVD format is still valuable to me.
When I'm not yelling at the neighborhood kids to get the F off the lawn.
But I didn't like it and turned back.
My Ford C-Max Energi (2013) with My Ford Touch has "Microsoft SYNC" stamped on the dashboard.
Microsoft can't escape being associated with SYNC.
My Ford Touch had very bad problems before summer 2013 when the most recent version came out. Now the problems are only bad. The problems I've noticed so far:
There's other issues I'd consider "documentation" issues too. The "Vehicle Health Report" requires that the internal combustion engine (ICE) be on for several minutes - but the messages only require for the car to be "On", something that isn't the same for a plugin-hybrid as it is for an ICE-only car.
We're there, in more than the Start Button (I have a Ford C-Max Energi with My Ford Touch.)
My own exploration of My Ford Touch has led me to consider it a "good first effort. For high school."
Given that My Ford Touch is supposed to be the high-end version of SYNC, the fact that My Ford Touch can NOT support "apps" the way that SYNC does probably makes this an easier decision. The existing SYNC App infrastructure is already doomed.
UPS deliveries to a car sound like a niche market for traveling consultants, lawyers, etc. who might discover they need some smallish thing while on-site.
But pizza and beer deliveries to the party on the beach (or in the park) sound like a much bigger market. Flying a drone-load of beer to ice-fishermen slowly floating out into the middle of one of the Great Lakes after the thaw hits would help make the wait for rescue by the Coast Guard much easier.
If automobile manufacturers made as few different models of their products as Apple makes of their products, then I might trust that the update process could be reasonably tested and verified.
However, with all the different models and packages and trim lines - combined with different revision levels of different parts from 3rd party manufacturers - that automobile manufacturers produce, I don't think verifying that it's possible to verify that an update that can't be verified and documented by trained people is going to do anything but cause problems from dead cars in garages (or wilderness camps) to dead people when something bad happens at highway speeds.
In short, modern cars are not just one large, lethal embedded system - but a NETWORK of embedded systems controlling a potentially lethal device. A system with an expected useful life of several decades.
The business of embedded systems is barely up to the job of designing for systems with a useful life of several years in a hostile, networked environment. Automotive systems are networks of systems from different vendors, any of which might go out of business at any time - all of which jealously guard their designs as proprietary.
Last fall, I bought a Ford C-Max Energi (plugin hybrid.) It turned out that it had problems charging from a Level 2 (220V) charger that didn't manifest until after I'd been charging for a few weeks - which I didn't do until I installed a Level 2 charger after X-mass. This was a problem documented in the online forums for the car but I never received notice of it.
There are continuing problems with My Ford Touch - although (according to the online forums) it's better than it was a year ago (before an update this past summer.) My Ford Touch interacts with the charging system, the engine, etc. It seems to do so in a passive way - but the whole design of the internal communication network in automobiles (CAN) is based on implicit trust that one system won't send false messages to another system. (And various researchers have already exploited this.)
The English language isn't as strongly gendered as most Romance languages (not that English has more than a kissing-barbarian relationship to Romance languages) - but What About The Pronouns?
Our third-person pronouns are Male (singular), Female (Singular), Neuter (singular), and indeterminate (plural.)
I've thought for some time that we need additional pronouns for gender-unknown and gender-indeterminate (a sort of an equivalent to Pollster's "don't know" and "don't care".)
The Theory of Capitalism depends on Perfect Information about prices among all participants.
(I'll pause a while to give you time to stop laughing.)
I think that means that all political donations should be disclosed. After all, how would the market price for a legislator otherwise be properly determined.
Also, the Federal Gov't and most State Gov'ts have the power of Eminent Domain - where the State can take property for the common good. (Michigan abused this power by taking people's homes in order to hand the property over to GM - and lost the power, but other States still have it. And the power still exists for taking property for the Public Good, such as to build roads, bridges, dams, etc.)
It's time to apply Eminent Domain to the wired infrastructure.
Accenture could drive a kid's lemonade stand into multi-million dollar bankruptcy. With the staff "going postal" as a finishing touch.