REALLY bad idea.
I work in IT, I've worked on the kinds of electronics and microcontrollers that are used to control acceleration and braking, and frankly, it's a buggy, glitchy technological framework. The shit needs to be run by hydraulics and cables, not software and firmware.
You know how Farmville won't even load right on a laptop with too little memory, and the avatar pops up bald and you can't see your crops?* You know how Office 2007 is SLOWER than any Office product package ever, and you can't find any of the commands and functions you spent over a decade learning? You know how the dude at PWN2OWN just found 20 bugs in Safari, IE8, and Adobe in a few minutes using a really basic fuzzing program?
THAT'S the shit we're trusting to take us from 0-60 in 3.5 seconds, to control the velocity and acceleration of a metric ton of mass while we trust a thin strap and a balloon to save us if it fails.
Electronics, programming, sensors, and the computers they put in cars are dangerously unsafe.
Oh, uh... This is supposed to be a blog about magic... uhm...
You wouldn't trust Microsoft or an EPROM with managing your initiation into the Sphere of Saturn, would you? Then don't trust the same technology in cars. It's dangerous. One memory buffer overflow, and you're rapidly accelerating with the brakes fully applied and the multi-million dollar industrial complex will do everything in its power to bury the truth and make you look like a liar.
Uhm...
And Toyota is secretly an Illuminati cover for a Bilderberger plot... and... uh, aliens! The technology is based on recovered alien tech from Roswell, and it doesn't work for humans because... uhm, because... because they were silicon-based lifeforms who communicated directly with the circuit boards and we can't so ... uhm, it doesn't work for us.
And that's why we have to recompile the kernel.
There. It's a magic blog post now.
* My spouse plays it, I used to, but it got to be stupid after a few months. It's very zen, though. I planted crops, watched them flower and grow, harvested and saved my money up, and sometimes I'd just let the crops wither and die to remind myself of the Circle of Life. Uhm... Ok, the truth is I forgot about the freaking blueberries and strawberries and cotton I planted to make a huge American flag after timing everything to bloom just right, and they died and I had this ugly brown flag, and I was all pissed about it, and then I realized I was WAY too into this fake farm with fake crops and fake stuff.
Head for the Red: The ongoing adventures and insights of a magician's attempts to accomplish the Great Work.
Oh but keep in mind Toyota never admitted a software problem lmfao. I write software for a living and concur having software-based systems control steering, braking, or acceleration are all REALLY bad ideas.
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite part of the debacle with Toyota is that Steve Wozniak has documented how to reproducibly make the accelerator go nuts in his Toyota Prius. His Prius is a model/year that there is supposedly no problem with. Toyota won't even talk to him about it.
its not a blog about magic, its about YOU!
ReplyDeletewhat do you mean "stalking"?
;)
You know, if the quality of a person is determined by the intelligence and insight of their stalkers, I'm WAY ahead of David Letterman. :D
ReplyDeleteQL,
ReplyDeleteFrom this site's comments, my favorite is:
I think Wozniak's Prius experiences unintended acceleration any time he's within 4 miles of a Dunkin' Donuts.
Or Krispy Kreme.
Or a Hostess used bread store.
Or a Twinkie truck.
Did you notice that Toyota had the best reputation for quality for decades. That very publicly died in a huge wave of negative publicity just at the time the American car companies tanked due to bad management and corrupt unions. I'm sure this is all just one big coincidence. Riiiiight. This is just as likely a coordinated hoax as it is a real safety issue. Toyota will play right along. It isn't about cars, companies and nationalities. It is the moneyed versus the not so moneyed.
ReplyDeleteThe money is a red herring. It's really the Cassiopeians vs. the Reptoids, a.k.a. the Celestial vs. the Chthonic.
ReplyDeleteI thought that I was the only one that ever said, "Oh wait, this is a themed blog; my posts are actually supposed to fit into the theme...how do I crowbar magic into this?"
ReplyDeleteI just love how Toyota is still trying to downplay the fact that there is a circuitboard involved in this braking problem. Their big solution was a little piece of metal, or so that what I gathered from the nightly news. No mention of a circuit board at all.