Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/02/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Which reminds my of my car (BMW), which has nothing to do with Leica other than both German made. Anyway, under warranty, BMW had to replace the throttle housing (twice) with died while on the freeway. The result was instant lost of power. I later found out that these new generation of BMWs are all "throttle by wire" with no physical linkage between the throttle and pedal, but computerized with sensors in retarding or advance throttle based on the signal input. This throttle by wire is integrated into their steering control as well. In other words, when it senses any wheel breaking loose, the throttle will retard and brake as well to straighten the car. Basically, a dummy can drive it in ice/snow/wet without getting into trouble. Now that sounds great provided everything works, but when it went bad when cruising 70mph on the freeway is downright dangerous. Ironically, a safety feature is in itself detrimental. The latest and the greatest I heard is that BMW is coming out with ..... are you ready ?...."Brake by wire". Hmmm...hate to imagine if that thing goes haywire while you are going downhill. - --- Gary Elshaw <godard@hotmail.com> wrote: > There's a nice (but very long) article by Neal > Stephenson that covers some > of this: > > http://www.spack.org/words/commandline.html > > He's way off-base, well maybe just shallow, on some > of his cultural > observations, but that's just me nagging. It's a > really interesting take > from 1999. > > Cheers, > Gary > > Henry wrote: > > > It's the digital revolution that gone haywire. I > think > > computer applications while greatly advance our > > control over complicated variables, also gives us > the > > technological abuse of the 21st century. > > The modern automobile is another example of such > > evolution by offering us tons of features, but the > > irony is that we spend more time visiting the > service > > bays and the likelyhood of even the so-call > experts in > > fixing it is a chancy business. What begins as > > machines to serve me, is turning us all into > slaves in > > serving IT endlessly. > > ___________________________________________________________________ > > "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very > important part of your > life." > - Brooke > Shields > ____________________________________________________________________ > > -- > To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games http://sports.yahoo.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html