"Goverment Motors"

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Saw this today

The U.S. Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in accidents blamed on sudden acceleration and found that the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren't engaged at the time of the crash

Are you suggesting that the go-pedal was the one being pushed, rather than the brake pedal the operator thought they were pushing on? Huh.

Pilot error.

[Haggis@wk]

Saw this today

The U.S. Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in accidents blamed on sudden acceleration and found that the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren't engaged at the time of the crash

Are you suggesting that the go-pedal was the one being pushed, rather than the brake pedal the operator thought they were pushing on? Huh.

Pilot error.

Occam's razor. I mention in an earlier post that all the Audi 5000 cases were 100% driver error. Stuck on stupid appears to be highly contagious. Where do Audi and Toyota go to get their reputations back?

[analog]

....the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren't engaged at the time of the crash

Were i on the jury i'd disregard that testimony.

part of my autistic streak makes me parse words carefully.

What was recorded by the computers and examined by the DOT guys? - position of the throttle plate and hydraulic pressure at brakes, or positions of the gas and brake pedals?
There's sensors for all four. Former are under control of drive by wire computer, latter are under control of driver's feet.
The whole matter rests on whether the drive by wire computer took a notion to ignore driver's feet. Computers can do that.

Had the reporter said "gas pedal pushed down and brake pedal not " it would be unambiguous.
As is, the statement is either weasel words or sloppy reporting.
Maybe it's clarified in body of the article.

a.

[Haggis@wk]

....the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren't engaged at the time of the crash

Were i on the jury i'd disregard that testimony.

part of my autistic streak makes me parse words carefully.

What was recorded by the computers and examined by the DOT guys? - position of the throttle plate and hydraulic pressure at brakes, or positions of the gas and brake pedals?
There's sensors for all four. Former are under control of drive by wire computer, latter are under control of driver's feet.
The whole matter rests on whether the drive by wire computer took a notion to ignore driver's feet. Computers can do that.

Had the reporter said "gas pedal pushed down and brake pedal not " it would be unambiguous.
As is, the statement is either weasel words or sloppy reporting.
Maybe it's clarified in body of the article.

a.

As I said, Occam's razor

[analog]

Hence Occam's razor is not an objective comparison method, and merely reflects the subject's prior beliefs. Thus it might be argued that one's choice of exactly which razor to use is culturally relative

from some wikipedia stuff on Occam's razor... (i had to look it up)

okay - i am definitely prejudiced here.
I'm the one who expounds as fundamental rule "Never let a computer do anything really important". (observe my pacemaker already has two recalls)
When one builds a machine capable of something, one should not be surprised when it does it. That was message of Dr Strangelove.

Occam brings it down to human error - by scores of drivers or one computer programmer...

a.

[jamiebk]

Hence Occam's razor is not an objective comparison method, and merely reflects the subject's prior beliefs. Thus it might be argued that one's choice of exactly which razor to use is culturally relative

from some wikipedia stuff on Occam's razor... (i had to look it up)

okay - i am definitely prejudiced here.
I'm the one who expounds as fundamental rule "Never let a computer do anything really important". (observe my pacemaker already has two recalls)
When one builds a machine capable of something, one should not be surprised when it does it. That was message of Dr Strangelove.

Occam brings it down to human error - by scores of drivers or one computer programmer...

a.

Personally I use a Gillette Mach 3...............

[Haggis@wk]

Hence Occam's razor is not an objective comparison method, and merely reflects the subject's prior beliefs. Thus it might be argued that one's choice of exactly which razor to use is culturally relative

from some wikipedia stuff on Occam's razor... (i had to look it up)

a.

"The popular interpretation of this principle is that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. However, this is often confused, as the 'simple' "is really referring to the theory with the fewest new assumptions."

Criminal investigators call this the Duck Theory (Theorem in my book), i.e. if it walks, talks, etc. The simplest explaination is almost always the correct explaination. That's not 100% true all of the time but damn near north of 90% most of the time!

[piqaboo]

I'm w analog on this one - I want to see more data.
I've seen computers make errors that looked just like an I D Ten T error,
but were eventually traced to a bug in the code.

[analog]

Thanks Ms Boo.. and for the birthday wish too.
Congrats on that 'new-ish' car, keep up with lubrication and it'll last as long as a brand new one.
Dad's old Jaguar project will do well in that regard too, what with today's oil and no-lead gas.

The simplest explaination is almost always the correct explaination.

i won't disagree with that.

Simplicity being in our perception of a thing, it lies as much in the description of a thing as the thing itself.

to me a common flaw on scores of computers is simpler than scores of peoples' cerebellums forgetting their brake pedal reflex.

If they find such a flaw it'll get described simply by some savvy writer and the mystery will disappear.

Not to mention there's lots of tort money to be saved if it stays pilot error, and it'll forestall questions about Gov't Motors' own drive by wire.

but that's a lot of assumptions......

a.

[Haggis@wk]

url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/04/AR2010080407086_pf.html]CHANGE:[/url]

“When General Motors went through bankruptcy last year, it suspended its political donations. Now that it’s owned by the U.S. government, it’s donating to lawmakers’ pet projects again.”

Wanna guess who will receive the bulk of those donations?

[Haggis@wk]

You mean that abrogating bankruptcy law, screwing over secured creditors and rewarding Democrats’ union supporters with billions in equity, tax breaks and subsidies didn’t really fix GM?

Gee, that was hard to predict.

[Haggis@wk]

U.S. loses $1.3 billion in exiting Chrysler

Shameful

[Giant Communist Robot]

U.S. loses $1.3 billion in exiting Chrysler

Shameful

One of the turkeys of TARP. Could be some more like this later.

[jamiebk]

AIG and others seem to working out pretty well:

New York (Reuters) - American International Group (AIG.N) repaid another $6.9 billion of its bailout on Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury said.

With that payment, the Treasury said it has now recovered 70 percent of the $411 billion distributed under the crisis-era Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

AIG paid the Treasury $6.6 billion from the proceeds of its sale of shares in insurer MetLife (MET.N), shares it acquired when it sold its international unit Alico to MetLife last year. AIG paid Treasury another $300 million in funds it had retained for expenses related to the Alico deal.

After those payments, the Treasury still holds about $11.3 billion in preferred interests in AIG. It also owns about 92 percent of AIG's common stock.

At Tuesday's closing share price, the sale of that stock would generate a profit for the taxpayer of about $14.22 billion. The Treasury said it expects taxpayers to recover "every dollar" of AIG's bailout, which at one point swelled to $182 billion.

Of the TARP funds still outstanding, about 70 percent are concentrated in AIG, finance company Ally Financial and automaker General Motors. (GM.N)

[Giant Communist Robot]

Ally is the new name for GMAC

[Haggis@wk]

The Treasury said it expects taxpayers to recover "every dollar" of AIG's bailout, which at one point swelled to $182 billion.

Whereas your tax dollars will pay for GM's losses, you'll never receive a dividend check for AIG.

[Haggis@wk]

The Treasury Department dramatically boosted its estimate of losses from its $85 billion auto industry bailout by more than $9 billion in the face of General Motors Co.'s steep stock decline.
In its monthly report to Congress, the Treasury Department now says it expects to lose $23.6 billion, up from its previous estimate of $14.33 billion.

[Giant Communist Robot]

Whereas your tax dollars will pay for GM's losses, you'll never receive a dividend check for AIG.

This is how our government has decided to regulate the economy. To me the AIG bailout was a clear necessity--it was for Bush, too. Bailing GM was probably good, too. Claiming our tax dollars are paying for GM's losses implies some sort of tax increase or spending cuts elsewhere.

AIG was so deeply entrenched everywhere in the economy with swaps (well, they are an insurance company) it's hard to imagine things functioning if they had defaulted. The real dividend is a weak and mildly positive economy instead of economic ruin.

I read Paulson's book, and he said Bush was stunned at how big the AIG problem was.

[Shapley]

It seems to me that, once you bailed out the banks to prevent the defaults, bailing out the company that insured against those defaults became redundant. Or vice-versa. Logic would seem to say you needed to bail out one, but not both...

I think even AIG was stunned at how big the AIG problem was...

[Giant Communist Robot]

It seems to me that, once you bailed out the banks to prevent the defaults, bailing out the company that insured against those defaults became redundant. Or vice-versa. Logic would seem to say you needed to bail out one, but not both...

I think even AIG was stunned at how big the AIG problem was...

The swaps were based on mortgages