I share those concerns as well. I'm just trying to avoid conflating them with the security risks that pose a direct threat to life and limb.

The trouble is, these remote functions are useful and they are seen as purely beneficial by people who don't yet understand the implications of the technology, which of course means most people who are going to buy a car. And so more and more cars, starting from the high end and pushing down over time, have this crazy stuff built into them.

I'm happy to see this campaign starting now, because hopefully by the time the technology is effectively mandatory at the price point where I want to buy a car, some degree of sanity will have been restored. I fear it may take a horrifically expensive lawsuit where the damages were multiplied up and maybe even some executives wind up facing jail time personally because the auto makers had been explicitly warned of the risks and failed to act on those warnings, though.

Fair point, but perhaps not the one you intended to make: my house has high-spec security doors and windows. :-)

No doubt someone sufficiently determined and well-equipped could still break through, and this is deliberate, because that person might be a paramedic or fireman trying to reach a child in an emergency. However, no casual burglar stands much chance of getting inside, and even a professional thief has poor odds of getting inside, collecting valuables, and getting away again before someone arrives to arrest them.

I suppose this is equivalent to saying you could still cause a car with properly secured modern electronic technologies to crash, but beyond a certain point it would become easier to do so by simply running the car off the road with a big truck than by cracking its wireless link. What is out there in car security today is sometimes more like trusting that I won't even need a working lock on my front door because no-one bad would ever try to open it.

Which the overwhelming majority of them can't. That's kinda the point.

The culture in tech hubs today is in a very real sense based on gambling. VCs bet 7-8 figures on a company that might be the one to make 10 figure returns. It's a high variability strategy that rarely pays off, but pays out staggering amounts of money when it does. And because any VC always has a pool of investments on the go, they can stand to play the long game knowing their mean return is always going to be astronomical.

Many founder/entrepreneur types are playing the same game, just with fewer zeroes and one big shot at a time. Some will make it. Most will fail. Some of them will come back and try again. Many of them won't. It's just like the VCs, but a whole lot more personal, because VCs are the house that always wins, while first-time founders are more like the whales who bet it all on number 3.

Almost everyone else working at these businesses is just along for the ride, because the amount of money they're making is relatively good and they have a chance for a nice windfall if their employer's exit strategy does work out. Neither the founders nor the VCs much care because the salary and perks for decent technical staff are just table stakes in a much bigger game.

But you only have to look at the kind of recruitment processes and qualifications some of these big name SV firms advertise/leak, and then look at the quality of the software they actually produce and/or what some people who used to work there can (or can't) do when they move on, and you can see that having Google or Facebook on your resume doesn't actually prove that you're some sort of super-elite 10x genius geek demigod. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of the people working inside the bubble didn't get the memo.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.