This was my question/reply to this on Slashdot: "Where's the CONTROL test?" So it's fine that you can't send viruses to the Prius, but how about normal stuff like phone numbers? I can speak from personal experience, that the Prius has nice person bluetooth support. Not only is it difficult to dump an entire phonebook to it (you might have to resort to sending one at a time!), but if you have multiple entries in your phone per name, it would stall on transfer or install extremely slowly, and have no way to preselect the specific number the Prius would pick up. Don't get me started on audio distortion sounding like the phone was out of range even with the phone inside the car, and no way to "adjust it" except to get inside the non-user facing "diagnostic" menus. The other conclusion to virus immunity could be the Prius has horrible [or primitive] bluetooth functionality.
Heya, The Prius is THE bottom line in well thought-out vehicles. So the answer is - it will NOT end. If you can't handle all that shine - get some sunglasses, because Prius IS the "shooting star" in automotive. 8) Yoda
Yoda - In fact I have a pair of sunglasses that I keep only in the car - same color as the car!! NuShrike - In fact I posted a question to the organization that performed the tests as follows with the answers - Question: > I'm curious as to how dependent is the transmission of a virus thru a > bluetooth connection on just how functional the bluetooth based > applications are on either end (car or phone)?? Answer: Somewhat dependent...But as you can see from our tests, we also sent the Cabir file manually using special program. So we know what happens when car receives Cabir SIS file Question: > As great a car as the Prius is one area it has received criticism about is > the bluetooth connection - it works but most people cannot transmit > phone numbers from their cell phones to the address book in the car. > Would this type of limitation make it reasonably immune to viruses?? Answer: What makes the car immune to Symbian viruses, is that the Car OS is not Symbian, so Symbian binaries cannot work there. Basically we did the testing to put rest to the rumors, and of course because it was one fun test to do
Here's the other thread floating around about how unmodern the Prius's bluetooth functionality is. And there's already other threads hinting that the GPS display and functionality IS showing its age. I'm thinking it's almost time to replace it with something more portable and easier to update like Street & Maps, or TomTom; just not so integrated. Now that I'm driving a 2005 Corolla S rental, I've noticed the Prius is missing some other basics this lower level brother-model has. Lessee: o auto-lock of doors going into gear o auto-detection of light levels to turn on some of external and internal lights (if not headlights); of course, disabled in the Prius for usa o manual adjustable-tilt bucket seats (oh so much more comfortable than the Prius's) o soft interior surfaces instead of Prius's hard, flat, scratch-residue attracting, dust-attracting plastic o soft-grip steering wheel o stiffer suspension with less body roll Other than that, I totally miss the HSD, the auto-climate, steering wheel controls, and JBL system of my Prius.
Cool, so the Prius is unable to get a virus either due to the lack of BT protocol ability, or intrinsicly incompatible OS. But still lacking a control test. : P Remember the days when email viruses were just a hoax? I would still like to see if you can buffer-overflow the phonebook transfer which already goes whacky if you send it unexpected characters in the number. thanks!
