People using this feature freak me out when I'm riding my motorcycle into San Francisco. The normal behavior of phone-users is to brake, speed up, slow down, bounce off of the lane markers (Driving by Braille) and generally endanger those of us on two wheels.

Tesla drivers? There they are, tapping away on the fucking phone with their eyes down and the car is gliding along, centered in the lane and steady, station-keeping a safe distance form the car in front of it.

Please, more like this.

As far as people blaming cars for their own stupidity, I'll trust the engineers at Tesla, thanks. Our Audi 5000 didn't take off by itself and neither do Teslas.

You have no idea how the architecture of these cars works and yet you're ready to announce that it's all a German industrial conspiracy.

Bosch didn't write that code. Volkswagen did. The original article's author is poorly informed about how the CAN-bus in VW/Audi/Seat/etc works. A simple monitor on the CAN-controller could easily compare steering angle sensor against wheels
speed and other factors, and then tell the Bosch engine controller to enter test mode.

Conspiracy, my ass. While it's plausible that people at Bosch knew this was happening, they didn't have an active hand in it. All it took was VW understanding their own "controller of controllers" architecture.

If the OP or Charles Day had any clue whatsoever about Volkswagen products, they'd know that all these sensors are available on all cars from pretty much all platforms from 2000 forward, that they all communicate on the CAN-bus, and that they all need input from those sensors for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with engine performance, period. (Steering angle - ABS or steerable headlights; wheel speed sensor - circumferential flat detection, ABS, etc)

"not even an improvement over an old invention."

Right. Because the Macintosh was exactly like the Xerox Star, right down to the three-button Mouse and Smalltalk commands. Which Jobs licensed for a very agreeable amount - and he then directed the improvements that led to the popular GUI-driven personal computer.

The iMac - a minimalist, low-cost, laptop-derived machine with a CRT that was extremely easy to set up and which was design-forward - good-looking enough to put it in the center of your living area and not hide under a desk. Yeah, that was totally already done.

I wonder sometimes if Slashdot has gotten any better, then I come over and read stuff like this in the 'discussion' and realize it's just the same old, same old.

For all his faults, he was terrific at determining what people actually wanted to buy and directing engineers to create that.

Your invention is worthless if no one uses it.

Yeah, you're right. Engineers would be so much better off if we just let them develop their ideas, market them, and fail in peace.

"Oh and I can see the fanbois are out modding again and taking everything personally."

Been here long?

Airliners carry transponders that squawk. Same diff.

"Either that, or the money is really going somewhere else and the F-35 development program is a scam."

CHEMTRAILS!

"But how many US pilots have been in an actual dogfight since, say WWII"

John McCain. You might have heard of him. He ran for president a while back.

Positive ID is obtained with IFF. Not sure why you'd have to wait until visual range for that.

TFX. The Navy's desires were built into the F-111 and they decided they wanted the F-14 anyway. This is the same story.

Procurement isn't about getting the right weapon. It's about exercising a decision-maker's ego and getting votes back home.

How it works is that Google gets to use the successes in a later design and avoid the failures.

Rather, that's how it would work if Google were actually a hardware company, which they emphatically are not.

Say what you will about Apple but at least they admit they build hardware and aren't ashamed to do the R+D necessary to ship great hardware. They push the envelope and break it at times, but at least they don't do embarrassing things like 'hey, let's impress everyone with our design idea that will never ship' homage to someone's 20% project.

Also, Apple couldn't care less where you are or what you're looking at when using their hardware. ;-)