“Imagine this. You’re driving along when a voice comes over your car’s speaker system. “Your vehicle now requires its 10,000-kilometre oil change,” the voice says.” A reliable, embedded OS with this ambitious a goal could only be QNX. Read the rest here.
QNX Revs Up for the Road
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
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since modern cars already inform about this… this is not to down QNX, only, I hate to read such stuff that goes kinda astray to begin with…
you should…here’s the rest:
“To accept this oil change now, please turn right at the next intersection. One hundred metres along, on the right-hand side, is Slick’s Garage where Bay 5 is holding for you. Your oil change will take 21 minutes. Thank you and safe driving.”
wow.. I’ll NEVER read it. Thank you. The person who thought this up obviously hasn’t got a clue about cars whatsoever.
At least when you buy a new car, you will get a service book along with it (don’t know how you call that in english exactly). In there, all scedulled services will be listed. This is quite important to have if you want to sell your car one day — people value it if a car has been serviced decently. This is most and always done by your respective dealer. For example, driving a Merc, I will have it serviced at Mercedes and so I will have everything in order. BTW, there it no such thing like 10.000 KM/miles oil service — modern cars won’t need the first one after 50.000 KM. So, if my car system was to tell me about an oil change, it hasn’t to be done in that very minute, it can be done 2000 KM earlier or later. I will then call my dealer and make an appointment — that is how the world is like, sorry. There are many useless inventions and this certainly got to be one of them.
Why would you be so closed minded? Are you actually picking on the mileage the car read at the warning? It’s a demo for crying out loud!
The fact is, that’s an option that can be configured or tweaked. The OS itself is the feature of this story. And frankly, QNX is like a friggin rock. It’s awesome.
I don’t know I’d ever use it as a desktop, but it’s a hell of an embedded product. I tell you this: I’d trust QNX to keep my car running – and more than Windows, Linux, or BSD.
Well, I did use it as desktop + I know is is a cool embedded OS — still, I don’t want to read an article that tries to introduce it to me this way…
Personally I wouldn’t trust Windows either:
http://toastytech.com/evil/billwilldo.html
And then especially this part:
After getting fed and dressed he gets in to car to go to work. The car dashboard has hundreds of option switches and displays. He presses several buttons. The car starts up and plays several happy sounding advertisements for various car supplies from the MS motor vehicle division. The displays light up with advertisements and driving tips, obscuring a system error reporting low oil. Half way to work the car grinds to a halt. He pulls over.
He tries several numbers on his car phone, but the same “all circuits are busy” message keeps occurring. In desperation he tries the cars built in e-mail system, but it can not uplink to a mobile network service provider.
In the distance he hears honking and the screeching of tires. He turns around in his seat to see an automated truck swerving through traffic… and coming right for him! The truck plows in to the back of Joe’s car.
Joe wakes up in a hospital. There is a mob of screaming, injured people and many doctors and nurses scrambling about in a panic. Still very disoriented, he tries to listen, but only picks up phrases. “major system failure… automated shipping trucks just upgraded with incompatible device drivers… nothing is working… can’t log any of this in… resort to pencil and paper… it’s all gone to hell… expect more injuries and deaths…”
Now I would also like to try it on the desktop sometime… only my video card (sis6326, ET4000-compatible) isn’t supported 🙁
The best way is to have three computers running different Operating Systems (Linux, BSD, QNX) to make the important decisions. If all three make the same decision, you can trust it must have been a good decision. If one fails, go with the majority decision. With embedded computers so small/cheap these days it would be a good way to help avoid bugs specific to a single OS.
The best way is to have three computers running different Operating Systems (Linux, BSD, QNX) to make the important decisions. If all three make the same decision, you can trust it must have been a good decision. If one fails, go with the majority decision.
looks like you’ve watched a lot of Evangelion – if you didn’t, you should – you will love the Magi System
21 mins to do an oil change? wow ………i can do it in 5….
😛 anyway good article
At one time the AMIGA was going to use QNX as its base! Too bad Gateway ^(*&ucked it up.
Apple could have used it instead of Mach! Oh well.
OK…maybe I’m just picky…but is this a sign that people have become so self-absorbed and so lazy that they need the car’s computer to tell us when service is needed? The little windshield sticker isn’t good enough??? Are we too dumb to drive…is the car going to steer next?
Sorry if I sound too critical…I just find this form of over-engineering wasteful and, frankly, foolish.
From the article
If the car were permanently parked in the driveway, the insurance would be negligible. If the car were driven regularly in downtown Toronto, the insurance company would increase the insurance rate because Toronto is considered high-risk for accidents. Once out of the downtown core and on a rural highway the rate would decrease. “Companies are looking at real-time insurance based on how fast you drive and where you drive,” said Mr. Dodge. “They will actually be able to adjust the insurance rate by this monitoring.”
This may be a good thing. Hackers(crackers) will concentrate on hacking the system to get cheaper insurance and leave other computers alone 🙂