Microsoft Software in Every Car?

Wired News ^ | 06:47 PM Nov. 30, 2003 PT | Associated Press

[vannrox]

REDMOND, Wash. -- First Microsoft set out to put a computer in every home. Now the software giant hopes to put one in every vehicle, too.

"We'd like to have one of our operating systems in every car on Earth," said Dick Brass, vice-president of Microsoft's automotive business unit. "It's a lofty goal."

[vannrox]

hum...

[B Knotts]

Great. That's all we need. Turn the key, and get the Blue Screen of Death.

[blowfish]

Oh yeah, I'm real comfortable with that...

[Petronski]

Reboot my car every two hours? NFW!

[Redcloak]

They'll be easier to fix when something goes wrong. You just roll up all the open windows, turn off the engine, and then restart it.

[narby]

They tried selling an "Auto PC" several years ago with partner Casio.

It was pretty neat. You could talk to it and get it to make cell phone calls and give you directions. All with simple voice commands.

But I've got almost the same thing in my cell phone now.

Too late MS.

[ErnBatavia]

Personally, I need both hands to do the CTR-ALT-DELETE thing....therefore this sounds dangerous.

[BrooklynGOP]

No problem. They'll place ctrl-alt-delete right on the wheel.

[Jim Robinson]

Now why in the world would anyone want his own personal computer? What we he do with it? Well, I guess we could keep our recipies on it.

A computer in every house and two in the garage!

[Revel]

I am with you. No Thanks. I preffer simple programs written in Asembly language.

[B Knotts]

[ridesthemiles]

They'll be easier to fix when something goes wrong. You just roll up all the open windows, turn off the engine, and then restart it.

I hope my 1976 Chevy truck lasts as long as I do. I don't want ANYTHING to do with all this whiz bang technology. I would have nightmares about my hauler truck quitting while I was hauling horses over some dicey part of Donner Pass. There is a limit to what I will accept into my home. While I admire Bill Gates for what he has built and what he has done, This is an invasion of my world I do not want.

[Salo]

Guess who wrote the os:

Computer glitch traps man in BMW

May 13 2003

While on the way to an important speech, Thailand's finance minister got locked inside his luxury car because of an onboard computer malfunction and had to signal someone to smash a window for him to crawl out.

"It was pretty bad because nothing worked, everything was locked," a shaken Finance Minister Suchart Jaovisidha told reporters yesterday.

Mr Suchart said he was on his way to give a speech to central bank officials from 17 countries when his ministry-assigned BMW car stalled on a road, not far from his house.

The engine stopped, the air conditioning shut down, the doors got locked and the windows wouldn't roll down, he said, adding that he was trapped for about 10 minutes.

"We couldn't breath because there was no air," he said.

He and his driver waved at passers-by to draw attention to their plight, but it took a while to make them understand that they wanted the windows smashed.

Finally, a guard of a nearby building came to their rescue with a sledgehammer and broke a window. Mr Suchart then climbed out of the car through the hole.

"Even using a hammer, it took a long time to break the window because the glass proved to be very resistant," he said.

Mr Suchart then went back home and got his personal car, also a BMW, to drive to the speech venue, where he arrived one hour late. The speech was to open a meeting to plan the set-up of an Asian bond market.

Mr Suchart said he had got the official BMW car two days ago as a replacement for his regular Mercedes Benz, which had broken down.

[Doug Loss]

How about this: BMW computer crashes, nearly suffocates minister

[ConservativeMan55]

Hold muh beer!!

[FastCoyote]

Cars with the Microsoft software will speak up when it's time for a license renewal. They'll warn drivers about wrecks on the road ahead and ignore any alternatives because they are a monopoly. They'll reroute to Bill Gates any freeway tolls automatically. The software running their brakes will upgrade itself wirelessly with more crappy software that you will be automatically billed for.

[sweetliberty]

Just what we need....cars that will suddenly crash for no apparent reason and is subject to viruses.

[sweetliberty]

At a recent computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating the following: "If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would be driving cars with the following characteristics:

For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.

Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would accept this, restart, and drive on.

Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart; in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought 'Car95' or 'CarNT.' Then you would have to buy more seats.

Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was more reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.

The oil, water, temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car fault' warning light.

New seats would force everyone to have the same back-end size.

The airbag system would say 'Are you sure?' before going off.

Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more.

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

You'd press the 'Start' button to shut off the engine.

[Eala]

It's bad enough I catch viruses. I don't want my car to as well.

[MD_Willington_1976]

Ahh more crap to break in your car/truck...

I know i'm not as old as some of you, but do you remember when you could usually fix your car out in front of your home with some tools that didn't require batteries, chip readers etc...

Follow the KISS rule..Keep It Simple Stupid...