Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/02/22

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Re: [MUGers] Turn off the options, and turn up the intimacy.
From: Henry Ting <henryting10@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 19:59:33 -0800 (PST)

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
>
____________________________________________________________________
> 
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