If these cars are drive-by-wire then I'd be suspecting that the potentiometers and/or positional encoders that are used to read the throttle position are failing (or starting to fail) as potentiometers and encoders do.

Can anybody in the know verify what sort of technology is used to actually read the throttle position in cars these-days (not for the TPS sensor so much - but for the drive-by-wire setup)? I'm hoping it's not potentiometers because the resistive layer can wear through on those with age causing unreliable behaviour. Even if they're using rotary or optical encoders, they can have dodgy reliability problems when they age (grease/lubricant starts to age) etc. Who hasn't had a stereo where the volume control has started getting flaky after a few years?

I'm sure that the manufacturers have thought of simple things like this, which makes me think that there's either people are making this stuff up, or there's something screwy with the car's control software or electronics. If it's a software error then, as another poster has already pointed out, no amount of pontificating is going to solve the problem without giving us access to the source code.

Of course, it could be something more sinister. Perhaps the CAN bus command to signal 100% throttle to the ECU happens to be easy to trigger with a particular type of noise? Again, nobody is going to be able to figure that sort of stuff out without some serious insider knowledge..

I hope they do figure this out though as my car happens to be a reasonably recent model and is drive-by-wire. Although I'd like to think I'd have the presence of mind to kill the engine or throw it in neutral if there were any problems, until you're put in that situation it's really hard to know how you'd react.

Also, when you're 5 years old, the maximum amount of time that you need to spend doing something in order to feel like you've achieved something worthwhile is probably in the order of 5-10 minutes or so (drawing a picture, writing your name, building a sandcastle at the beach, making something with Lego).

When you get to middle-age, things take much longer (achieving success in your chosen field, raising children, paying off a mortgage etc).

My theory is that it's the lengthening of the distance in time between major milestones that makes time appear to move faster as you get older. It simply takes a lot longer to achieve anything of significance.

... as a driver who started driving utility vehicles shortly after getting his licence, I can attest to the fact that the side mirrors are invaluable for reversing a loaded ute (or car/truck for that matter) into tight spaces. Perhaps the intention is not to distort the field-of-view when they are used for this purpose?

Can you imagine what would happen if:

• GM or Ford said that they want a cut of all used car sales?
• Builders & architects wanted a cut of all used house sales?
• Dell wanted a cut of all used Dell PC sales?
• Book publishers or authors wanted a cut of all used book sales?

There would be blood on the streets. How is this any different? FFS - can someone please stop the madness?

I hate myself for doing this, but to carry your car analogy one step further, there would be NOTHING stopping me from setting up a company, buying your RemmeltCar engines, even if it is from one of your overpriced dealers, and selling kits to install those engines in another type of car - or even, to sell a kit-car with your RemmeltCar engines. I have never heard of a car dealership that would validate the expected end-use for a part before they would sell it to you.

That's what Apple are trying to do here. They're trying to restrict the way that you use a component that you have purchased even though there are no technical barriers to your goals, and even though you wouldn't be doing anybody any harm or breaking any other laws by doing so.

I think the key word here would be 'specialization'. You may never be in the all-time top 10% of software engineers. Most who fall into that category are probably working at google/sun/ms/ibm/redhat/nasa/etc or making a shitload of cash doing it for themselves.

That's not necessarily reason to despair though. You may still be able to make yourself valuable by being in the top 10% of software engineers who also understand some particular business domain well (finance/biomed/farming/basket weaving/whatever). The same applies to specific types of technology that one comes into contact with (SAP, Oracle, Lotus Notes, xxx obscure vendor product etc)...

I believe that there are an unlimited number of niches that people can fit into, and that as long as you're prepared to work hard to find a niche that someone is demanding, you will do well. For example, your niche might be software engineers who can code in C & Java, understand basket weaving, have done embedded development on an ARM CPU, and have experience with Oracle. It's unlikely you'll be at the top of your field in any of those individual specializations, but getting in the top 10% of the intersection set might be achievable and profitable (at least in the industry of manufacture of industrial basket weaving equipment).

Of course, the downside is that niche markets have a habit of disappearing quickly as particular skills fall out of favor, so if you're going to play this game you need to be prepared to be constantly up-skilling, but that's what keeps life exciting, right?

I thought that the "novel" part of the invention was supposed to be the "gestures" used over-top of multi-touch (as others have pointed out, multi-touch has been around for a long time before Apple started using it). Surely, if nothing else, 'Minority Report' shows that such tech is 'obvious' to anyone with an inkling of UI imagination...

Bill Buxton's multi touch history (in particular, check out 1992 onwards, starting with a system called "Starfire")..

I don't mind protection of truly novel ideas, but multitouch seems to me like one of those things that would be pretty obvious to any half-decent geek who's been presented with a piece of hardware capable of accurately reading such things.. (witness Jeff Han et. al).. Hell - the movie 'Minority Report' was released before the patent was claimed - doesn't that count as prior presentation of the idea?

It seems to me that iPhone-esque multitouch is the sort of thing that has probably been discussed over beer & pizza by literally thousands of wannabe dreamers who lack only the [ materials science background / electrical engineering knowledge / financial backing / time / etc / etc ] to pull it off...

*sigh*

Can a physics boffin help me out here? What sort of a coefficient of drag would this need in order to be able to sustain the 80km/hr that it's makers claim it can achieve with the 300w that their fuel cell claims to achieve? IIRC when you start getting up to highway speeds a not insignificant amount of energy is spent just to overcome drag.

300 watts hardly seems like enough energy to power the headlights & radio on most cars these days.

I call complete and utter bullshit.