Thai Finance Minister Trapped By Rogue Computer In BMW
from the where-do-you-think-you're-going,-Dave? dept
Once again, life takes after the movies. Apparently, BMW is now programming their computers with HAL-like efficiency. Thailand's Finance Minister, Suchart Jaovisidha, had to be rescued from his car after a malfunctioning computer locked him and his driver inside. Eventually, they got someone to break the car's windows in order to rescue them. He's quoted as saying, "it was one of the most frightening moments of my life." Apparently, the computer malfunction caused the car to stop, the air conditioning to turn off, the doors to lock and the windows to remain stuck shut. You would think that a manual override would make sense... They tried to break the windows from the inside, but discovered the wonders of German engineering: "I learnt that that German car had very strong windows." Update: Unfortunately, the original article from Thailand with all those great quotes seems to have been taken offline, though other news sources have picked up on the story (though, they leave out the best quotes).
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Neal Stephenson Short Story
http://pacificcoast.net/~evavanemden/books/neals/jipi.html
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I was going to make a joke about ....
So I won't.
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can you imagine?
Unless that's who made the one for that car...the link doesn't seem to work anymore...
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Re: can you imagine?
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excess in the land of the poor
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Gotta love MS Bashers.
Well, we all have to love those MS bashers.
I don't know about that basher, but I've never had any major problems with my own pc's (excluding a virii or two). You may be an idiot that has no clue on how to maintain a pc, and use it for that matter, but it's ok: bash away.
But sure, go on, blame MS for your cheap pile of $hit that you try to call your PC.
As for me, I'm running WinXP and I'm very happy with it.
Anyways...
Usually when a car (or any other application that requires dependability) has a "computer" controlling it, its usually a microprocessor such as the motorola MC6800. This doesn't use an operating system, it's a fully self contained logic device built upon the Assembly coding language.
My guess is; heat caused the micro logic device to fail. But I don't know enough about those BMW's to tell.
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Re: Gotta love MS Bashers.
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Re: Gotta love MS Bashers.
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Re: Gotta love MS Bashers.
I agree with you. Windows XP is quite good, when you're not doing anything too complicated with it. As a home system for the novice, it's great, but still not commercial quality.
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Re: Gotta love MS Bashers.
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gotta love MS fanboys
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