I couldn't agree more. I was just challenging the idea that not using modern technologies at all was a viable solution to the problem. Some technologies do make cars safer, more reliable, and more efficient, and the important practical question is how we secure those technologies, not whether we should use them in the first place.
And in the winter, I'd love to be able to warm the engine and the interior from inside my house while I gather my things for work.
This is clearly a case of prioritising convenience over security, which you're welcome to do as your own personal preference but I would never choose myself.
This data is used to help triage the severity of the crash before the EMTs roll out.
Well that's probably the single most disturbing thing I've seen in this whole discussion. Are you really telling me that in the event of a known road traffic accident, which is severe enough that no-one on the scene can immediately respond to verbal contact, they don't routinely send the full works where you are?
In any case, I would point out that this is purely status reporting, i.e., read-only data. There is no need for anyone to control anything remotely in this situation.
Also, in extreme cases, the OnStar / Bluelink / et al. system can actively end a felon's joyride by cutting throttle, braking, or cutting the engine entirely. Then it can honk and flash the lights to attract the authorities' attention.
This is my main problem with the whole debate: any system that can do this kind of thing can also be used for less welcome purposes.
Car theft is essentially a solved problem without any remote control needed. Technologies like immobilisers have become so good that stealing the car keys has been the preferred technique for some time. Trackers, which need no integration with any control system, provide an effective deterrent and means for police to locate a vehicle that has literally been put on the back of a lorry.
Again, YMMV, but personally I would rather be careful about where I keep my keys than risk a hostile party, or simply a human error or software bug, doing something like cutting the engine and applying the brakes when I'm driving at high speed or through a hazardous area.
You find me a human driver who never makes a mistake, and I'll find you someone who has little need for ABS, ESC and their friends.
No human can outperform a modern ABS system using manual cadence braking. ABS is essentially cadence braking judged at the speed of a computer and applied to each wheel independently.
You don't need to control a skid you never got into.
And speaking of skids, for driving on public roads under normal conditions, I don't know what handbrake turns have to do with the price of fish.
It's the combination of Wifi/remote accessable parts of a system, that once gotten into leads to total control.
Exactly. Think how many people run WiFi in their homes that is insecure. Now imagine a world where every script kiddie with a grudge can kill everyone on each of those homes just by running some software they found on the Internet.
I'm afraid I don't buy your examples.
Why does anyone need the ability to mess around with starting my car remotely, ever? I see no need to start my car if I'm not in the driver's seat, and if I'm in the driver's seat and we've got cell reception why I can't I just turn the key or push the button?
Accident detection and related safety systems absolutely should be independent of engine control and the like. Why can't they be? (If your answer involves having both the normal control systems and the safety systems relying on common sensors, please consider that there is a significant likelihood that if an accident happened it was precisely because something electronic or sensor-related failed, and therefore you really want redundancy here.)
As for recovering my car in case of theft... Unless you are suggesting that someone is going to take over control of my car and auto-pilot it home against the will of someone physically in the driver's seat, again I don't buy it. And if you are suggesting that, I really don't want that system in my car. If I'm in the driver's seat and responsible for what happens with my vehicle, then any system that someone could use to take over lawfully and drive my car is also by definition vulnerable to being taken over unlawfully and used to crash my car, and I know which one I am more concerned about.
It would be truly horrible if people had to concentrate on their driving rather than the six-channel, streaming video playing on their dashboard while they blend margaritas.
No doubt, but it would be more horrible if modern systems for things like braking and traction control went away. People who've grown up with cars that are full of three-letter technologies like ABS and EBD might not appreciate how much more skill is required to drive a car safely at the same speeds and in the same environments without these driver aids.
It's kinda terrifying that the people making fast, heavy lumps of metal with computerised control systems don't already routinely isolate those control systems from any other computerised technologies in the vehicle, particularly any that can interact remotely. They shouldn't need to be publicly admonished about the dangers of these situations. Don't these organisations employ actual engineers any more?
But given that it does seem to be necessary to make a public display of this -- which presumably removes any plausible deniability if the auto makers do get sued after an accident later, so I can believe it will at least get their attention -- I'm glad it seems to be a responsible group with the right motivations who are starting the ball rolling. If it were just a bunch of lawyers or insurers, the general public could write the campaign off as the signatories just looking out for their own interests.
Totally agreed about the G'Kar/Londo/Vir storylines. The non-human characters often got the best personal storylines and character development in B5, because the human officers (and Delenn as a notable exception to the non-human rule) tended to be tied up in moving the main plot arc forwards much of the time. Lennier was another non-human who had a diverse range of relationships with other characters and developed well through the series, at least until his completely implausible Toby Ziegler style character transplant near the end.
Except that the series jumped the shark when Sherdian came back from the dead, which was always part of the arc.
FWIW, I never saw it that way. With the powerful races that are in play by that point in the show, it needed someone from the younger races to do something that appears miraculous from our perspective to put us in the same league and make the final outcome to the main plot arc credible. What happened to Sheridan was that something, and it was clear from well before the critical event that the older races knew and understood things about what was happening that the younger races in the show and, by extension, we as the viewers did not, so personally I didn't find it either out of character or a random deus ex machina twist.
Season 5 is best viewed as a collection of disparate standalone stories, of which there are actually a few redeeming ones.
There I definitely agree. JMS didn't get to finish things quite the way he'd hoped, with the potential cancellation after season 4 obviously causing some reordering and early resolution of major plotlines, and things like losing a major cast member for related reasons that they couldn't fix in time when they did get the green light for season 5. However, a few of the individual episodes in season 5, particularly the ones that looked at the station and characters we had become so familiar with from a very different perspective, were some of the best single episodes of the whole series IMHO. There's a great little moment at the end of "A View from the Gallery", where something happens just in time, and it puts the often grand themes and seemingly awesomely powerful characters we normally see in the show in a very different light.
I wonder whether a reboot of the main series is the best way to go, though. It's hard to believe anyone could play characters like G'Kar and Londo with the brilliant individual performances and wonderful chemistry of the original actors. I can watch the new Star Trek films and enjoy a big space fight with the best of them, but I don't see Kirk and Spock, I see a different ship, a different crew, and a very different (read: Hollywood) style. It's more like ST:TNG compared to ST:TOS, a familiar environment but different characters and stories. I'm not sure trying to retell the original B5 story with a bigger screen, a bigger budget, bigger SFX, and none of the original magic is a winning move (although if there's anyone who could pull something like that off, JMS would be the one, and if they manage some exceptional casting as well then it might be worth watching).
Nearly 100 years ago, the same kinds of busybodies were trying to outlaw radios in cars, since that was "obviously" a distraction for the driver. News flash - the vast majority of the time, people (yep, even the ones that don't live in your hipster high-rise) are more than capable of enough multitasking to deal with both driving and another task.
Are you seriously arguing that anyone who thinks using a HUD to display tweets and text messages is dangerous must be a busybody?
If you are then you are the guy those laws are written for, so the authorities can take you off the road before your arrogance kills someone.
I try to avoid using obscure abbreviations, but "IME" is one of the most common abbreviations on the Internet. Maybe next time, instead of flaming, you could just look it up and learn something?
YMMV of course, but on this issue I find mine is unfortunately very consistent. FOSS projects with good usability and user documentation are rare things, while leading commercial/proprietary software frequently got to its dominant position by being better in these respects than its competition.
I personally believe this enough to spend a lot of money on the software I use. Apparently enough other people are concerned about it that there are hundreds of posts in this discussion without many posts seriously questioning that the problem exists -- and this is Slashdot, which is about as pro-FOSS a forum as you're ever going to find on-line.
While your points about the snail's pace of web "standards" development are fair, it's also important not to go too far the other way. Not so long ago, another browser became dominant in market share through pushing new but not widely supported features its own way, and people started making web sites that were written specifically to work with that browser rather than any common standard.
That browser was Internet Explorer in the late 1990s, and the result was IE6.
HUD's don't require you to take your eyes off the road.
Ideally, no. In practice, IME we aren't quite there yet: the focal distance for current in-car HUDs still tends to be significantly shorter than where a driver should normally be looking. However, it's still interesting to consider whether even the HUDs we have available today are an improvement on static instrument consoles, where the driver also has to look down/over, as well as changing focus to an even closer range.
Hopefully it goes without saying that using this kind of technology to display anything that isn't immediately relevant to driving (such as the notifications shown on their site right now) is crazy.
However, in a few years, I can imagine that navigation systems will use a combination of eye-tracking and HUD technology to skip the stylised graphics we use today and just highlight the required driving line directly on the road ahead. My other big wish for this kind of technology is enhancements for when visibility is poor: think night vision/IR with additional highlights on hazards such as a car ahead slowing down sharply or a pedestrian moving toward the road. Those kinds of qualitative improvements in driver awareness could save a lot of lives and a lot of time, not to mention the general frustration that sometimes comes with driving in unfamiliar places today.
You're misunderstanding that section of the DPA. It's about allowing journalists and the like to work with personal data so they can prepare a piece for publication, because otherwise it could become impossible for people like investigative journalists to even keep notes on their research, which is considered important enough to the public interest to merit special protection.
The section you quoted is not about the end result of any search research and preparation. It grants no special exemption to the usual privacy and data protection obligations for the publication itself.
Many people are unenthusiastic about their work.
