Safe Speed Forums

Remember the old jokes about microsoft and cars like if microsoft made cars then-
Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
or
You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.
or It wouldn't recognise that any other types of car exists.

From the driving section of the times today -Bill Gates opens the car Windows

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/articl ... 45,00.html

Being tested on fiat,alfa and ford -
famous last quote -" “It can be upgraded just like programs on a PC.”
( for angel read pig)

My computer crashed twice today.

My car has more than 8 computers onboard and has not failed once since new 18 months ago.

Do you think ANYONE would trust Microsoft software in their car.

just imagine........you switch on, wait for 2 mins for the system to boot up then get the message FATAL ERROR you car is shutting down, refer to your software vendor for support..............

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Speed camera policy Kills

If this goes ahead - don't try using an apple ipod - or what happens if Ms and Nokia fall out.

Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

Especialy in Arkansas...



Seriously though

Merc recently did a controlled experiment where they deleted no less than 200 electronic comfort features form a car and loaned it out to existing owners. None noticed the features were missing. They are now going through a program of reducing specifications on their cars to reduce manufacturing costs.

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Speed camera policy Kills

You can't hold MS responsible because a 3rd party piece of software (or cheap hardware) caused your PC to crash.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

Quite believe it - suspect very few people read user manual -and then are features those customers would want or what the techie bods think they would want.
Drove a volkswagon caddie a few years ago -on flooded roads - system set up to kill throttle functions on braking - so impossible to dry out brakes as normal.
Just think ,having seen MS in action on PCs that there must be some problem with their other software of there wouldn't be jokes.
Apart from that - the most hostile environment for electronics is inside a vehicle.

If windows crashes it is windows problem. The operating system should be robust enough to be able to "survive" a software glitch.

I say again, when was the last time you had to re-boot any of the electronics on your car? and if you don't think the systems are as complex all new generation Fords have an engine management system based around a Power PC core.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Windows by itself is very stable.
The only time it will become unstable is when people install poorly written 3rd party software, or are insistent on trying to save a few pounds by using crappy hardware, eg, PC Chips motherboards, unbranded memory, etc (or a combination of both).

That is a ridiculous statement. There is so much going on inside a PC that it is a wonder it actually works at all.
In fact, if you were asked to explain what was happening when even something relatively simple such as opening a JPEG was taking place, you would more than likely end up in the loony bin before you ever fully comprehended it.


The closest I have to any form of electronics in my car is the airbag, and I disconnected that back in January after the warning light refused to go out.
If you want an example of computer failure on cars, then just look back in time to the Renault 5 automatic. Plenty of auto gearbox companies made a small fortune replacing the computers on them because they used to fail on a regular basis.

With regard to Windows though, I have a Windows 2000 Server based domain controller in the cupboard under my stairs that has functioned quite happily for the last 4 years running multiple services without any glitches at all.
My own XP based system that also never gets switched off has never given me any problems either in the 2 years that it has been running.


That still doesn't alter the fact that the effective operating system only has to carry out one particular task and nothing else. If you were given the choice to start installing your own software on the engine management system, then I have no doubt it would fall over very quickly indeed.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

Windows started off being written for intel based hardware - and other makes adapted to get into the market.

Now if you were trying to remember where you had stored a letter etc and you had to use the system intel had decised to find out where you'd stored it , you'd get baffled ,troubled and lost.
Motorola devised a far simpler system, far faster but intel had gotten in first. So we are left using an inferior system that needs more instructions ( and time, as each instruction takes a finite time ) to complete an operation than with motorolla.

But hey - why should a hands free phone system become legal /not distract you just because its made by ms and fitted as standard.Same as a sat nav .
If MS fitted a fruit bowl , would eating an apple become more legal.

Even today, MS Windows can trace its roots directly back to the Microsoft's original Operating System, MS-DOS, which (I'm paraphrasing here) was a pretty neat attempt at writing a high powered operating system to run on low spec hardware. No-one else at the time made these breakthroughs, but the trade-off that made this possible was that they paid lip service to fault tolerance and security - in other words the Operating System "trusted" software to behave properly, both in terms of not deliberately abusing the free access it had to all the computer's resorurces, and in terms of following all the "rules". In short MS trusted all applications to be entirely free of bugs (which actually seems pretty ironic), and absolved itself of all responsibility for any problems they might cause.

Twenty years on MS is the biggest player in the World, yet they remain true to their roots.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Now you are confusing hardware problems with software failure.

Current world class manufacturing quality in Automotive means achieving a failure rate of less than 25 units per million manufactured. The life expectancy is in excess of 30 years. How many PC manufacturers can claim that? I am on my third lap top in 6 years.

BTW if you plugged a diagnostics tool into your car it would tell you why your airbag warning light was on... Probably a bad connection, they usualy are.

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Speed camera policy Kills

I agree with Gizmo here, the fundamental OS architecture plays a major role in the stability of the systems and applications running on it, and this must be considered when choosing a technical platform for mission-critical systems.
Disregarding for the moment exactly how "mission critical" the entertainment/navigation/communication systems referred to in the original post are, I think that using an OS where "poorly written" software is allowed to run in a manner which crashes the whole system is unnecessary and probably undesirable in situations where safety could be compromised.
Forcing applications to run in some form of protected memory area with limited and clearly defined interfaces to hardware (such as sound systems) could be considered, along with software-validated "approved and tested" security certificates/codes for software updates etc.

Alas MS had nothing to do with creating DOS, young Bill simply purchased it from some poor sucker whose name escapes me now, changed a few lines of code so it would run on an IBM, and then licensed it's use to IBM.

The actual "licensed to use" as opposed to selling outright maneuver was a very smart move by Bill, and is what helped him get to where he is today.

Even the original concept of Windows (which was nothing more than a "point & click" interface for DOS) wasn't MS's idea, they nicked that from Apple as well.


Having spoken to a few auto box specialists at the time (because it also happened to the girlfriend's car at that time in life), it was the consensus that it was software failure.
All they used to do was replace your unit with a good one, and then send your's off to be reprogrammed and then that would go back on the shelf for the next customer.

Kawasaki used to have the same problem with the fuel injection ECU on their big superbikes back in the 80's, although computer failure on them was brought about because of a design fault in the mountings.


A PC can hardly be compared to a car computer.
You will expect your PC to carry out a multitude of tasks, whereas the car computer only has to run one program throughout it's entire life.

If you want an example of computer longevity & stability, then look at a games console.
The other half recently bought an old SEGA Master System from a car boot sale (for the kids) for £5. She brought it home, plugged it in, and it worked first time and is still performing now in exactly the same fashion that the manufacturer first intended it to 20 years ago.
Whether you want to admit it or not, a games console is still a computer in it's basic form (just the same as the ECU in a car is a computer in basic form).

I can't comment on you being on your 3rd laptop in 6 years because I have no idea on what you paid for your first machine, nor how you treat it in day to day life.
What I can tell you is that I have a Toshiba Satellite lappy here that is coming up on 4 years old and still functions perfectly.
Granted it cost £2,500 when new, but you only get what you pay for.


Our car is an 11 year old Citroen Xantia with 320,000 miles on the clock, it wasn't worth the £60 diags fee to find out why the warning light was on

Add to that the fact that an airbag is supposed to be replaced every 10 years regardless, and the cost of an airbag is around the £400 mark, it soon becomes apparent why I settled for disconnecting the airbag in it's entirety

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

Given the enormous possble combinations of CPU and additional hardware you can attach to/in a modern PC, I reckon its a bloody miracle that Windows actually runs on so many machines in the first place.
Apple and Motorolla have it easy, their platform is fairly uniform.




Yeah that's right. I think it was a guy called Gary Kildall who wrote CPM that became the basis for MS-DOS. Young gates and his mates wrote MS-Basic for the first 8088 based machine, the MITS Altair, which was programmed using switches and not a keyboard.

One of the big drawbacks that Windows still carries is backwards compatability to segment registers and real mode. In real mode there's no 'protection' for memory space, yet Windows still has to switch back to real mode to maintain backwards compatability with bios services. I aways wondered why they hadn't written a real mode virtual machine to provide backwards compatability while in protected mode. They still haven't (Have they? Someone please tell me if I'm out of date.)

Those bloody segment registers are the root of at least half the problems. Intel were fudging a development step from 8080 (8 bit) to 8086 (16 bit)) while also attempting to maintain backwards compatability. That was one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of computing. The market should have said: "no thanks", but too many important folk just didn't understand the problems. I was rooting for Z8000 myself - that was a really nice genuine 16 bit architecture.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

NTVDM (Virtual Dos Machine) in the current NT based versions.

Still flakey though...

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Ask current 7 series BMW owners - The I-Mode system is messy and I know of several 7 series BMW's that required a complete software reload.

I love BMW's but IMO they went too far too quickly with I-Mode.

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

windoze might be fine for infotainment in a car where lets face it the hardware is increasingly the same as a PC/home netertainment system.
(inside the cabin is alot less harsh an environment than where many ECUs spend their lives).

infotanment is a premium product people are going to pay for, your average ECU is the cheapest it can be whilst still being able to function efficiently.

for safety critical systems MS doesn't even make it onto the radar and would be far too processor hungry to be practical. most systems have their own OS written specifically for that application.

Indeed. In fact I've found it generally easier to make a safety case by managing without an OS and keeping control of all memories and peripherals myself by just polling as required or using interrupts.

gosh.. a techie
shall we wow them with embedded software speak?