"The answer is.....is.....42."
Posted on 03/15/2010 3:54:27 PM PDT by dickmc
While the Toyota portion of the article is informative, the really interesting is the authors remarks on:
As anyone with experience in embedded systems will tell you, there are nasty software bugs that can be extremely difficult to reproduce in a laboratory test environment. To illustrate, I'd like to describe one such bug we encountered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory while developing the flight software for NASA's Mars Pathfinder spacecraft....
much more experience is detailed in the article here which is quite interesting and well worth reading.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It’s more of a wetware glitch.
This is the way government competes in the marketplace.
A glitch between the ears of the drivers, a gray matter glitch.
The software is set on Kamikaze OverDrive. It was adapted from WW2 Japanese Zero fighter hardware. It is in the file folder titled “Banzai!”
Seriously folks there is no glitch, Do you actually believe obama? He’s a bold face straight liar and he took over GM. R U kidding me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Toyota has been hijacked by a commie regime
Nasty software bugs in 40 million cars sold on a global basis?
Only incidents are a broke grifiter with a failed porn site, who’s Prius is about to be repossessed and a cop in a Lexus loaner with floor mats that do not fit.
40 million cars with glitchy software would be crashing in every town. This is an Obama, trial lawyer, Goobermint Motors & UAW shakedown to get UAW leaches in transplant non-union factories.
B for Brake pedal
G for Gas pedal
L for headlights
B-B-G-L-G-L-B-B-G-G Will make your car jump to ludicrous speed. Try it, it works.
“Wetware” is the human mind. I more or less called it driver error, but with a play on the words “software glitch” from the headline.
A glitch between the ears of the drivers, a gray matter glitch.Bingo!
In most cases like this, the problem is usually the "nut behind the wheel."
DRIVER error.I don't particularly like Toyota, but I don't like seeing them get SLIMED in the government-owned meda, either.
As a former software engineer, I developed software for motor drives (controls) used in industrial applications. A software bug could literally kill someone. If I had a car that depended on software to control the engine and brakes, I would install a hard-wired kill switch.
Too bad that Toyota mechanics can’t fix stupid drivers.
I would suppose that Toyota would greatly prefer to find out that this is a software bug— and therefore a software fix. Flashing new code into the computer is likely far, far less expensive to fix than a mechanical or design flaw.
But in any case, isolating the root cause(s) of extremely rare failure(s) is harder than it sounds.
Toyota: "Moving Forward"
...whether YOU want to,
or not!
Obama got his facts from that indisputible source of knowledge in the auto industry, the eminent engineer, Ron Givemthefinger of the UAW.
Code ping
YES, OF COURSE!! It was a SOFTWARE GLITCH that gave us teh dreaded Mann Hocky Stick Graph, RIGHT?? You know, like the way the overdraft on your account was due to a computer error when your paycheck was deposited into somebody else’s account...if you wan to talk PROGRAMMING, you can come up with ANYTHING. Ever tried troubleshooting Windows? I did for several versions.
So his POINT is......? IIRC, the Answer is 48.
Also there is a very interesting technical, business, and computer/software risk occurrence and "screw up" reporting site called The Risks Digest that is well worth looking at from time to time if you are interested in monitoring this kind of thing. It also has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to.
So this is Hope and Change?
Could be RF interference. There is a ton of RF energy floating around, especially in urban areas and along roads. RF interference wouldn’t be hard to prove one way or the other, though. Half an afternoon with Toyota, a signal generator and PA and I could determine fairly conclusively whether or not RF was the culprit.
This is of no danger to anyone, but a friend of mine has a 2 year old Caddy. When she parks her car on the North side of the local JCPenney store her remote door locks will not work. If she parks on the east side they work fine. The problem only happens there and can be duplicated each and every time. The service dept can duplicate the problem at that location but no where else. The only thing they have come up with as a possibility is the RFID transceiver at JCPenney. Her answer is “just park on the east”.
The F-86 Sabre is a "jet fighter". So is the MiG-15.
Jus' Sayin'.
But do they have 100 million lines of code?
The more I hear the more I think this goes beyond software.
≤]B^)
We have lots of military jets that are "fly by wire". F16, F117 and F22. The aerodynamics of the F117 are such that only a computer can fly the damn thing.
Actually the aerodynamics of most fighter planes are “geometrically unstable” to be flown by controls directly linked to the pilot. Computers make thousands of minute adjustments per second to keep the plane stable in flight.
This isn’t just with the F-117.
Could be a reflection off the building from a high powered FM or TV transmitter nearby, or a harmonic from a combination of sources like that. Anything powerful enough to cause a problem like that should be fairly easy to identify if you have the right test gear and knowledge of how to use it. The RFID transceivers have very low effective radiated power. I doubt that is the source. There might be a cell site on the roof of the JC Penny's that could be interacting with a high power RF source, causing a harmonic that the door locks don't like, too. That would be the first place I'd look.
"The answer is.....is.....42."
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