The obvious loophole is that the US border services doesn't have to take your word for it that you are a citizen. Nor is their any mandate that they process your claim or evidence of citizenship in any sort of timely manner.
Q "Why did you prevent this us citizen from entering the country?"
A "We did not determine he was a US citizen."
Q "He's been here for 6 months now."
A "We are not obligated to make a determination; we didn't want to let him go, so we elected not to determine if he is a citizen."
it would be trivial to automate detection of video, audio, animation etc
It would also be possible to block any ad that includes "object" or "iframe" or "script" "blink"...
Black any ad that plays with css positioning etc..
Or go one further, and whitelist; only put adds that use the restricted set of html that a typical forum textbox allows... bold, link, font color, image, etc. And that's IT. If the ad contains anything else, block it.
As for keywords, let the ad companies meta tag their ads. Give them 400 characters, and let them go nuts. Let users report any abuse. If an advertiser is found to be abusing the meta tags... blacklist the entire advertising company.
What if you're in an apartment though, and don't have view of the street and didn't or couldn't hear the van pull up?
Yeah, its not universally applicable.
Also, what about other delivery services? Do you refuse to answer the door when you order a pizza and some guy driving his personal car shows up? Do you check to see if his car has a Domino's sign on top, or ask him for ID or call Domino's to make sure he's an employee there?
Not if its around 30 minutes after I ordered a pizza and he's holding a pizza box.
Remember also, this is supposedly a service so people can have stuff delivered from Amazon within an hour. It's not like Fedex when it could show up any time during the day; you place the order, and within an hour someone shows up with your item, not much different from pizza delivery really.
The Fedex van they got out of is a little more an investment though.
I don't know about you, but I'll answer the door if there's a fedex van out front and fedex uniform at my door.
I'm much less inclined if its random people knocking... usually they're either trying to recruit me to a religion, beg for money, or want to sell me something.
I suggest 1 cheap kvm, 2 hdmi switches, and a few hdmi port mirrors.
kvm1 manages your keyboard to input...
1 - dock input 2 - pc1 input 3 - pc2 input
hdmi switch 1:
dock video1 to screen1 left splitt pc1 video 1 to screen1 (left split) pc2 video 1 to screen 1 (left split)
hdmi switch 2:
dock video 1 to screen2 (right split) dock video 2 to screen2 pc1 video 1 to screen2 (right split) pc1 video 2 to screen2 pc2 video 1 to screen2 (right split) pc2 video 2 to screen2
This setup lets you put any video 1 on the first screen, and any video1 or video2 output on the 2nd screen.
Ideally you'd want hdmi selectors with direct selections (a lot just have one button) that you push to cycle. Some also have remotes... you probably don't want multiple remotes, but pair the above with a programmable remote, and you could probably set it up so that you can switch screen confiugurations with one button. (and then set the usb input separately...)
not ideal; as its a bit more work to switch configurations but its doable for under $200, give or take; vs several hundreds to thousands for a matrix kvm.
Alternatively to that, I'd suggest software solutions. Making one unit the master, and then remoting into the other two various ways to accomplish what you need. Remote desktop / VNC / NX Machine... etc. There are all kinds of solutions, cross platform, multimonitor support, etc...might work for you unless you are doing gaming or video editing.
And this is of course obvious from an anecdotal standpoint given the vast majority of viruses and bot-ted Windows systems out there over the last decade.
The anecdotal standpoint just observes that 90%+ of all systems are running windows; including a vast majority run by "consumers" and a "small business" with zero or even negative security awareness.
Heh, well, unlike you I still don't advocate actually USING cash. For me, its the lowest common denominator. I carry some because sometimes you do need the lowest common denominator; but given the choice to use cash vs credit I'll practically always choose credit.
I'm not sure I follow why you use debit cards instead of credit cards. The protection afforded you in terms of fraud protection, dispute resolution etc is far more favorable to the card holder with credit than with debit.
I'll try to be brief in response. For starters I do carry cash, not much mind you. When I travel internationally especially outside of major cities or in smaller / less developed countries, then I carry more cash. Because you are right there are all sorts of situations that can arise, especially traveling, where cash.
But, I *only* use case for those situations. If I used cash more then I'd need to carry a lot more cash. Because if I want to have a couple hundred on me for unexpected situations then I need to either stop in at the bank multiple every day to top up, or start the week with $1000s on me. Neither appeals to me.
How the hell do you buy drugs without cash?
I don't.
You can't throw a credit card (though I've carried gift cards for reasons such as this) into a busker's guitar case.
The average busker, even the above average busker doesn't entertain me. But yes, there are a few places where the street performers are worth it.
In many jurisdictions you can't bail yourself out with a credit (or debit) card but have to have a third party come do it for you which is quite a process.
This has never come up. And I'm skeptical that having some cash on me, and more in my hotel room would save the day.
You can't throw a credit card into a panhandler's cup.
I don't think supporting panhandlers that way achieves anything but to create professional panhandlers. My acts of charity are directed elsewhere.
At the end of the day I've lost more money by having cash on me than I've ever lost to fraud. I don't want to carry more cash than I do. (And to your points, I wouldn't want to carry less either.)
2 factor auth is irritating. I really don't want to carry a bunch of dongles. I'd be open to using my phone for larger purchases, especially online. But what if I can't get SMS where I am? What if I'm on vacation in the carribean and need to book an emergency flight, and my phone isn't working properly there? Yeah, that seems far fetched, but its also happened. I want assurances that my card will work, more than I am concerned about fraud that ultimately doesn't directly cost me anything.
Cash is for chumps. Fraud doesn't cost me anything personally. Sure in aggregate i pay more for stuff because of fraud, but i don't get a rebate for paying cash. Meanwhile, I assume the risk of my cash being lost or stolen from my person, whether I'm pick-pocketed or robbed at gun point or I drop my wallet into the marina.
offset and savings accounts... transferring cash again confers risk onto me. If my visa has been stolen (and it has been) it ties up some credit for a while until it gets resolved; sometimes not even that much hassle. If my bank account is drained (even an offset with a small amount in it) im still out the money for the period of the dispute.
I think a low limit card card for online, small, and riskier purchases is a sensible precaution though. But its tricky... I can spend several hundred in a day easy (gas, groceries, restaurants, clothes, etc), and I don't want to bother with paying my card off every day, or multiple times a day. (And that goes double if I'm travelling.)
The reason being that, almost NO mobile software is actually designed to take advantage of "relatively-massive" parallelism.
I'm sure I'm not running anything individually that needs 8 cores. But I'm running a hell of a lot more than 2 threads. I agree the benefit drops off pretty rapidly... but I'm not convinced 2 is really the ideal number either; and I think the best solution is probably some sort of asymmetric solution, where the foreground interactive app is running on a couple fast cores, while the rest of the system lives on lower power cores...and it doesn't have to wake up a fast core just to stay in contact with the cellular network, do tower handoffs, and receive SMS messages, email...
Or not. Maybe the extra complexity of that loses you any advantages. I don't think its really a settled question.
Well, if it is anything like my iPhone 6 plus, the battery life will be stellar. I never get less than three days' use, and most often, about 5 days.
Yeah, that would be fine. Successive generations of iphone/ios have not always been an improvement on their predecessors though. But I expect the 6S to be good... adequate performance has been with us for a while, and the focus on efficiency has been everyone's priority lately.
No he just doesnt like ad companies, you know like Google
Heheh... don't think i don't see the irony of preferring android, while not liking ads / ad companies.
The reality is the smartphone market is garbage; and any selection is one of tradeoffs and compromises. I've found that Android is the best compromise for me so far.
You cherry-picked the first benchmark mentioned, and disregarded the other tests where iPhone 6S out-performed the other phones.
To be fair, the other benchmarks were:
sunspider
and
graphics benchmark, graphics benchmark, graphics benchmark. (Where I'd generally expect the same system winning one really should mean winning all.)
Personally, I don't play games on my phone. So 3dmark etc is irrelevant to me. (But I realize many people do, including my own kids... and the iphone 6s looks like the best phone for games right now; at least in terms of hardware performance.) The fact that I can't load it up with hundlebundle mobile games, emulators, and so forth still counts against it though.
I try to avoid exposing my kids to freemium ad-ridden crap.
Now the sunspider (javascript) win is more interesting to me, but I'm pretty sure it's just showing that a faster core is faster at single threaded operations, and the A9 is a dual core with 2 faster cores vs Samsung which is octocore but the cores are slower.
That's not particularly interesting by itself; although it does hint at valid question -- is fewer faster cores better or worse than more slower cores a better strategy in a smart phone?
Real world use will answer that... benchmarks not really.
So the upshot... Apple 6s has better graphics performance than a phone released 6 months ago. The new CPU is good... better at single threaded than anything out right now due to faster cores, but it still lags in multithreaded due to only having 2 cores despite them being faster, and I don't know which core strategy ends up being actually better.
How does the battery compare? I was happy with an iphone 3GS years ago, then I was disappointed with my S3 battery, but am quite happy with my current S5. I expect I'd be happy with the battery on an iphone 6s.
And at the end of the day, benchmarks don't matter. Choosing apple vs samsung isn't about benchmarks. Its about ecosystems, and deciding which one you want: apple or android. Myself, I have no intention of ever returning to IOS due to the overly restrictive walls on the garden. But that's just me.
"How do you validate, read the entire engine code for the engine"
How does anyone validate anything? Documentation of specs relative to what is actually happening. There are not a particularly large number of maps, and the purpose of each should be documented. Is the one that is documented as being for driving on the road at constant residential velocity being used when driving on the road at constant residential velocity? If not... that's a major problem... you could be using the towing or hill-climbing profiles. Surely a car manufacturer would validate that the correct profiles are used at the correct time, and that it switches appropriately. That's a no-brainer.
Then when testing emissions for driving on the road at constant residential velocity... clearly we need to ensure the same profile is active. Otherwise we might be testing the hill-climbing profile.
" or take your manager's word for it that Engine Map 17(b) is the proper engine control routine in use on the road"
Or that. Sure. Even if you did THAT. Then you would need to ensure that Map 17(b) was active when doing a normal road test, that Map 17(b) was active when measuring torque and fuel economy on a normal road test, and that Map 17(b) was active when doing the emissions test.
Folks, you have to branch on emissions (and dyno) tests in the ECU solely because otherwise the safety side of things will bring everything to a halt.
But the engine emissions control profile active during a simulated road test on a dyno needs to be the emissions profile active actually on the the road, otherwise you are just wasting your time.
Even if the cheat was magically embedded such that the engineers implementing it were all somehow blinded from the truth of the matter.
At the end of the day, the guys validating things would have to validate that the profile active during a simulated road test on a dyno was the same profile that was active during actual road driving.
Otherwise, all they've validated is that the emissions are accceptable on a simulated dyno test, and can make no claim whatsoever about what the car actually does on the road.
I think my point remains though. Somebody somewhere along the line does have a fairly holistic view of the engine management system being built. That person would be in a position to make decisions to design in a cheat maybe with people doing the work below them being aware maybe without.
Yes, potentially, but THAT person is going to be an engineer. So the question of engineering ethics is still pertinent.
And further, it still falls apart in a proper validation testing environement. Where you need a holistic view again... someone should have been saying:
Ok... I'm driving down the test track at residential speeds and the expected emissions control profile is not active. Or... I'm on the dyno at the emissions testing lab, and for some reason the emissions profile that was active during the road test isn't active? And the engine temperature doesn't match. And looking at the logs, this profile wasn't active at any stage during any road test... ?!! Even if its a different person, that did the road/track torque testing and emissions testing, they should still be x-referencing the results.
It's a no brainer to validate that emissions testing done in a road test simulation (dyno) environment is done against the profile that is actually active during the applicable road test conditions.
That's quality control and validation 101.
I work with quality control systems, both in physical and software situations. If this 'cheat' got through undetected it represents a serious failure of the QA/QC team to validate essential assumptions about what they were validating.
Specifically: is the profile we are testing for regular road driving emissions the profile that is actually active during regular road driving.
This is essential.
Because "What is the point of an emissions test that tests a profile that isn't active except during an emissions test?"
And hypothetically, if they did some regular driving, with profile monitoring equipment attached, and that tripped the emissions profiles into being active..yes that would mislead them into thinking they'd validated that. HOWEVER, in that case, the performance testing guys would be red flagging all over the place because the torque levels and fuel efficiency wasn't up to spec...
A single requirements engineer or manager (not all managers are stupid) a
First, a manager who could do this would likely be an experienced and educated engineer, even if his business card currently said "manager".
Second, at the end of the day, there existed a "road profile" that was active whenever emissions test gear wasn't attached. There's some major explaining at all levels of the chain.
Really, there was no engineer who ever once validated which profiles were actually active during regular driving? Or that it matched what they were for? I mean, by your logic, VWs might have been running around in hill-climb towing-a-trailer...
Conversely, during testing, with all the monitoring all hooked up nobody noticed there wasn't the expected torque (since the vehicle was thinking it was on an emissions test and...)
Seriously there should have been red flags all over the place; for anyone paying attention and responsible for validation to find. The only plausible explanation, short of extraordinary evidence to the contrary, is that they did it on purpose.
There was a guy somewhere higher up who could orchestrate the specs so that nobody below them knew what was going on [long example of copy protection system]
Sure, but that's an even more complicated thing to do; and it certainly wasn't something done by mid-level MBA.
Nobody ever said, "go forth and flaunt the law" maybe $Engineer did not even realize what he was doing violated the testing rules.
Ok... read this:
Specifically, VW manufactured and installed software in the electronic control module (ECM) of these vehicles that sensed when the vehicle was being tested for compliance with EPA emission standards. For ease of reference, the EPA is calling this the "switch." The "switch" senses whether the vehicle is being tested or not based on various inputs including the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, the duration of the engine's operation, and barometric pressure. These inputs precisely track the parameters of the federal test procedure used for emission testing for EPA certification purposes. During EPA emission testing, the vehicles' ECM ran software which produced compliant emission results under an ECM calibration that VW referred to as the "dyno calibration" (referring to the equipment used in emissions testing, called a dynamometer). At all other times during normal vehicle operation, the "switch" was activated and the vehicle ECM software ran a separate "road calibration" which reduced the effectiveness of the emission control system (specifically the selective catalytic reduction or the lean NOx trap). As a result, emissions of NOx increased by a factor of 10 to 40 times
You are trying to seriosly tell me an engineer responsible for this didn't know exactly what he was doing here? That he could design, impement, and test a clean running profile that was activated when and only when the vehicle thought it was running on a dyno under the conditions of an EPA test?
And that he also had sufficiently large rocks in his head to fail to suspect this would somehow be against the rules?
My German cousins TDI Jetta broke a timing belt at 100,000km and was totalled.
What exact year vehicle? What was the actual odometer?
The official service interval on a TDI timing belt ranges from as low as 60k to 130k+ depending on the year. And most VW mechanics I've dealt with recommend changing the timing belt every 4 years regardless of mileage.
Its an interference motor. If that belt goes the engine is wrecked. Proactive preventative maintenance is required. Buy a noninterference motor if you want a car that you can wait for it to break before you fix it.
The dealerships response: 'Yah, they do that...buy a new one.'
I'm betting an untold part of this story is that the dealership previously told him it would be smart preventative maintenance to replace it; and that he declined.
Your cite is the EXACT opposite of what is needed, for an unrelated case entirely. You show an EPA recall made changes to IMPROVE emissions at the expense of engine life.
The OPs post says that given a button that gave improved performance and worse emissions such a button should be labelled that it would reduce engine life.
I doubt it would, and if anything your cite is suggestively in agreement with me. (Your cite shows that improving emissions reduces engine life; that's the opposite of what this hypothetical button does.)
I'll wager that the PSTN has an uptime of 5 nines, at least.
Sure. But at what cost. Check out what they bill you for even just a simple 8 lines into a small business office. That runs hundreds even thousands of dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
even without a passport.
The obvious loophole is that the US border services doesn't have to take your word for it that you are a citizen. Nor is their any mandate that they process your claim or evidence of citizenship in any sort of timely manner.
Q "Why did you prevent this us citizen from entering the country?"
A "We did not determine he was a US citizen."
Q "He's been here for 6 months now."
A "We are not obligated to make a determination; we didn't want to let him go, so we elected not to determine if he is a citizen."
it would be trivial to automate detection of video, audio, animation etc
It would also be possible to block any ad that includes "object" or "iframe" or "script" "blink"...
Black any ad that plays with css positioning etc..
Or go one further, and whitelist; only put adds that use the restricted set of html that a typical forum textbox allows... bold, link, font color, image, etc. And that's IT. If the ad contains anything else, block it.
As for keywords, let the ad companies meta tag their ads. Give them 400 characters, and let them go nuts. Let users report any abuse. If an advertiser is found to be abusing the meta tags... blacklist the entire advertising company.
What if you're in an apartment though, and don't have view of the street and didn't or couldn't hear the van pull up?
Yeah, its not universally applicable.
Also, what about other delivery services? Do you refuse to answer the door when you order a pizza and some guy driving his personal car shows up? Do you check to see if his car has a Domino's sign on top, or ask him for ID or call Domino's to make sure he's an employee there?
Not if its around 30 minutes after I ordered a pizza and he's holding a pizza box.
Remember also, this is supposedly a service so people can have stuff delivered from Amazon within an hour. It's not like Fedex when it could show up any time during the day; you place the order, and within an hour someone shows up with your item, not much different from pizza delivery really.
That's a good point.
The Fedex van they got out of is a little more an investment though.
I don't know about you, but I'll answer the door if there's a fedex van out front and fedex uniform at my door.
I'm much less inclined if its random people knocking... usually they're either trying to recruit me to a religion, beg for money, or want to sell me something.
I suggest 1 cheap kvm, 2 hdmi switches, and a few hdmi port mirrors.
kvm1 manages your keyboard to input...
1 - dock input
2 - pc1 input
3 - pc2 input
hdmi switch 1:
dock video1 to screen1 left splitt
pc1 video 1 to screen1 (left split)
pc2 video 1 to screen 1 (left split)
hdmi switch 2:
dock video 1 to screen2 (right split)
dock video 2 to screen2
pc1 video 1 to screen2 (right split)
pc1 video 2 to screen2
pc2 video 1 to screen2 (right split)
pc2 video 2 to screen2
This setup lets you put any video 1 on the first screen, and any video1 or video2 output on the 2nd screen.
Ideally you'd want hdmi selectors with direct selections (a lot just have one button) that you push to cycle. Some also have remotes... you probably don't want multiple remotes, but pair the above with a programmable remote, and you could probably set it up so that you can switch screen confiugurations with one button. (and then set the usb input separately...)
not ideal; as its a bit more work to switch configurations but its doable for under $200, give or take; vs several hundreds to thousands for a matrix kvm.
Alternatively to that, I'd suggest software solutions. Making one unit the master, and then remoting into the other two various ways to accomplish what you need. Remote desktop / VNC / NX Machine ... etc. There are all kinds of solutions, cross platform, multimonitor support, etc...might work for you unless you are doing gaming or video editing.
-cheers
And this is of course obvious from an anecdotal standpoint given the vast majority of viruses and bot-ted Windows systems out there over the last decade.
The anecdotal standpoint just observes that 90%+ of all systems are running windows; including a vast majority run by "consumers" and a "small business" with zero or even negative security awareness.
Heh, well, unlike you I still don't advocate actually USING cash. For me, its the lowest common denominator. I carry some because sometimes you do need the lowest common denominator; but given the choice to use cash vs credit I'll practically always choose credit.
I'm not sure I follow why you use debit cards instead of credit cards. The protection afforded you in terms of fraud protection, dispute resolution etc is far more favorable to the card holder with credit than with debit.
I'll try to be brief in response. For starters I do carry cash, not much mind you. When I travel internationally especially outside of major cities or in smaller / less developed countries, then I carry more cash. Because you are right there are all sorts of situations that can arise, especially traveling, where cash.
But, I *only* use case for those situations. If I used cash more then I'd need to carry a lot more cash. Because if I want to have a couple hundred on me for unexpected situations then I need to either stop in at the bank multiple every day to top up, or start the week with $1000s on me. Neither appeals to me.
How the hell do you buy drugs without cash?
I don't.
You can't throw a credit card (though I've carried gift cards for reasons such as this) into a busker's guitar case.
The average busker, even the above average busker doesn't entertain me. But yes, there are a few places where the street performers are worth it.
In many jurisdictions you can't bail yourself out with a credit (or debit) card but have to have a third party come do it for you which is quite a process.
This has never come up. And I'm skeptical that having some cash on me, and more in my hotel room would save the day.
You can't throw a credit card into a panhandler's cup.
I don't think supporting panhandlers that way achieves anything but to create professional panhandlers. My acts of charity are directed elsewhere.
At the end of the day I've lost more money by having cash on me than I've ever lost to fraud. I don't want to carry more cash than I do. (And to your points, I wouldn't want to carry less either.)
2 factor auth is irritating. I really don't want to carry a bunch of dongles. I'd be open to using my phone for larger purchases, especially online. But what if I can't get SMS where I am? What if I'm on vacation in the carribean and need to book an emergency flight, and my phone isn't working properly there? Yeah, that seems far fetched, but its also happened. I want assurances that my card will work, more than I am concerned about fraud that ultimately doesn't directly cost me anything.
Cash is for chumps. Fraud doesn't cost me anything personally. Sure in aggregate i pay more for stuff because of fraud, but i don't get a rebate for paying cash. Meanwhile, I assume the risk of my cash being lost or stolen from my person, whether I'm pick-pocketed or robbed at gun point or I drop my wallet into the marina.
offset and savings accounts... transferring cash again confers risk onto me. If my visa has been stolen (and it has been) it ties up some credit for a while until it gets resolved; sometimes not even that much hassle. If my bank account is drained (even an offset with a small amount in it) im still out the money for the period of the dispute.
I think a low limit card card for online, small, and riskier purchases is a sensible precaution though. But its tricky... I can spend several hundred in a day easy (gas, groceries, restaurants, clothes, etc), and I don't want to bother with paying my card off every day, or multiple times a day. (And that goes double if I'm travelling.)
The reason being that, almost NO mobile software is actually designed to take advantage of "relatively-massive" parallelism.
I'm sure I'm not running anything individually that needs 8 cores. But I'm running a hell of a lot more than 2 threads. I agree the benefit drops off pretty rapidly... but I'm not convinced 2 is really the ideal number either; and I think the best solution is probably some sort of asymmetric solution, where the foreground interactive app is running on a couple fast cores, while the rest of the system lives on lower power cores...and it doesn't have to wake up a fast core just to stay in contact with the cellular network, do tower handoffs, and receive SMS messages, email...
Or not. Maybe the extra complexity of that loses you any advantages. I don't think its really a settled question.
Well, if it is anything like my iPhone 6 plus, the battery life will be stellar. I never get less than three days' use, and most often, about 5 days.
Yeah, that would be fine. Successive generations of iphone/ios have not always been an improvement on their predecessors though. But I expect the 6S to be good... adequate performance has been with us for a while, and the focus on efficiency has been everyone's priority lately.
No he just doesnt like ad companies, you know like Google
Heheh... don't think i don't see the irony of preferring android, while not liking ads / ad companies.
The reality is the smartphone market is garbage; and any selection is one of tradeoffs and compromises. I've found that Android is the best compromise for me so far.
You cherry-picked the first benchmark mentioned, and disregarded the other tests where iPhone 6S out-performed the other phones.
To be fair, the other benchmarks were:
sunspider
and
graphics benchmark, graphics benchmark, graphics benchmark. (Where I'd generally expect the same system winning one really should mean winning all.)
Personally, I don't play games on my phone. So 3dmark etc is irrelevant to me. (But I realize many people do, including my own kids... and the iphone 6s looks like the best phone for games right now; at least in terms of hardware performance.)
The fact that I can't load it up with hundlebundle mobile games, emulators, and so forth still counts against it though.
I try to avoid exposing my kids to freemium ad-ridden crap.
Now the sunspider (javascript) win is more interesting to me, but I'm pretty sure it's just showing that a faster core is faster at single threaded operations, and the A9 is a dual core with 2 faster cores vs Samsung which is octocore but the cores are slower.
That's not particularly interesting by itself; although it does hint at valid question -- is fewer faster cores better or worse than more slower cores a better strategy in a smart phone?
Real world use will answer that... benchmarks not really.
So the upshot... Apple 6s has better graphics performance than a phone released 6 months ago. The new CPU is good... better at single threaded than anything out right now due to faster cores, but it still lags in multithreaded due to only having 2 cores despite them being faster, and I don't know which core strategy ends up being actually better.
How does the battery compare? I was happy with an iphone 3GS years ago, then I was disappointed with my S3 battery, but am quite happy with my current S5. I expect I'd be happy with the battery on an iphone 6s.
And at the end of the day, benchmarks don't matter. Choosing apple vs samsung isn't about benchmarks. Its about ecosystems, and deciding which one you want: apple or android. Myself, I have no intention of ever returning to IOS due to the overly restrictive walls on the garden. But that's just me.
Pretty much. Headline should be:
"Man who makes all his money selling online advertising wants more people to see his ads."
Were you really looking at a diesel SUV as a mid-life crisis car?
Are you serious?
"How do you validate, read the entire engine code for the engine"
How does anyone validate anything? Documentation of specs relative to what is actually happening. There are not a particularly large number of maps, and the purpose of each should be documented. Is the one that is documented as being for driving on the road at constant residential velocity being used when driving on the road at constant residential velocity? If not... that's a major problem... you could be using the towing or hill-climbing profiles. Surely a car manufacturer would validate that the correct profiles are used at the correct time, and that it switches appropriately. That's a no-brainer.
Then when testing emissions for driving on the road at constant residential velocity... clearly we need to ensure the same profile is active. Otherwise we might be testing the hill-climbing profile.
" or take your manager's word for it that Engine Map 17(b) is the proper engine control routine in use on the road"
Or that. Sure. Even if you did THAT. Then you would need to ensure that Map 17(b) was active when doing a normal road test, that Map 17(b) was active when measuring torque and fuel economy on a normal road test, and that Map 17(b) was active when doing the emissions test.
This is really not THAT complicated.
#define buffalo x++;
#define Buffalo x--;
{
int x=0;
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
printf(x);
}
That'll pass muster even in K&R C :p
Folks, you have to branch on emissions (and dyno) tests in the ECU solely because otherwise the safety side of things will bring everything to a halt.
But the engine emissions control profile active during a simulated road test on a dyno needs to be the emissions profile active actually on the the road, otherwise you are just wasting your time.
Even if the cheat was magically embedded such that the engineers implementing it were all somehow blinded from the truth of the matter.
At the end of the day, the guys validating things would have to validate that the profile active during a simulated road test on a dyno was the same profile that was active during actual road driving.
Otherwise, all they've validated is that the emissions are accceptable on a simulated dyno test, and can make no claim whatsoever about what the car actually does on the road.
That's validation 101.
I think my point remains though. Somebody somewhere along the line does have a fairly holistic view of the engine management system being built. That person would be in a position to make decisions to design in a cheat maybe with people doing the work below them being aware maybe without.
Yes, potentially, but THAT person is going to be an engineer. So the question of engineering ethics is still pertinent.
And further, it still falls apart in a proper validation testing environement. Where you need a holistic view again... someone should have been saying:
Ok... I'm driving down the test track at residential speeds and the expected emissions control profile is not active. Or... I'm on the dyno at the emissions testing lab, and for some reason the emissions profile that was active during the road test isn't active? And the engine temperature doesn't match. And looking at the logs, this profile wasn't active at any stage during any road test... ?!! Even if its a different person, that did the road/track torque testing and emissions testing, they should still be x-referencing the results.
It's a no brainer to validate that emissions testing done in a road test simulation (dyno) environment is done against the profile that is actually active during the applicable road test conditions.
That's quality control and validation 101.
I work with quality control systems, both in physical and software situations. If this 'cheat' got through undetected it represents a serious failure of the QA/QC team to validate essential assumptions about what they were validating.
Specifically: is the profile we are testing for regular road driving emissions the profile that is actually active during regular road driving.
This is essential.
Because "What is the point of an emissions test that tests a profile that isn't active except during an emissions test?"
And hypothetically, if they did some regular driving, with profile monitoring equipment attached, and that tripped the emissions profiles into being active..yes that would mislead them into thinking they'd validated that. HOWEVER, in that case, the performance testing guys would be red flagging all over the place because the torque levels and fuel efficiency wasn't up to spec...
A single requirements engineer or manager (not all managers are stupid) a
First, a manager who could do this would likely be an experienced and educated engineer, even if his business card currently said "manager".
Second, at the end of the day, there existed a "road profile" that was active whenever emissions test gear wasn't attached. There's some major explaining at all levels of the chain.
Really, there was no engineer who ever once validated which profiles were actually active during regular driving? Or that it matched what they were for? I mean, by your logic, VWs might have been running around in hill-climb towing-a-trailer...
Conversely, during testing, with all the monitoring all hooked up nobody noticed there wasn't the expected torque (since the vehicle was thinking it was on an emissions test and...)
Seriously there should have been red flags all over the place; for anyone paying attention and responsible for validation to find. The only plausible explanation, short of extraordinary evidence to the contrary, is that they did it on purpose.
There was a guy somewhere higher up who could orchestrate the specs so that nobody below them knew what was going on [long example of copy protection system]
Sure, but that's an even more complicated thing to do; and it certainly wasn't something done by mid-level MBA.
Nobody ever said, "go forth and flaunt the law" maybe $Engineer did not even realize what he was doing violated the testing rules.
Ok... read this:
Specifically, VW manufactured and installed software in the electronic control module (ECM) of these vehicles that sensed when the vehicle was being tested for compliance with EPA emission standards. For ease of reference, the EPA is calling this the "switch ." The "switch" senses whether the vehicle is being tested or not based on various inputs including the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, the duration of the engine's operation, and barometric pressure. These inputs precisely track the parameters of the federal test procedure used for emission testing for EPA certification purposes. During EPA emission testing, the vehicles' ECM ran software which produced compliant emission results under an ECM calibration that VW referred to as the "dyno calibration" (referring to the equipment used in emissions testing, called a dynamometer). At all other times during normal vehicle operation, the "switch" was activated and the vehicle ECM software ran a separate "road calibration" which reduced the effectiveness of the emission control system (specifically the selective catalytic reduction or the lean NOx trap). As a result, emissions of NOx increased by a factor of 10 to 40 times
You are trying to seriosly tell me an engineer responsible for this didn't know exactly what he was doing here? That he could design, impement, and test a clean running profile that was activated when and only when the vehicle thought it was running on a dyno under the conditions of an EPA test?
And that he also had sufficiently large rocks in his head to fail to suspect this would somehow be against the rules?
Give me a break.
My German cousins TDI Jetta broke a timing belt at 100,000km and was totalled.
What exact year vehicle? What was the actual odometer?
The official service interval on a TDI timing belt ranges from as low as 60k to 130k+ depending on the year. And most VW mechanics I've dealt with recommend changing the timing belt every 4 years regardless of mileage.
Its an interference motor. If that belt goes the engine is wrecked. Proactive preventative maintenance is required. Buy a noninterference motor if you want a car that you can wait for it to break before you fix it.
The dealerships response: 'Yah, they do that...buy a new one.'
I'm betting an untold part of this story is that the dealership previously told him it would be smart preventative maintenance to replace it; and that he declined.
Its hard to talk about a vehicles long term reliability and performance without talking about older vehicles.
Your cite is the EXACT opposite of what is needed, for an unrelated case entirely. You show an EPA recall made changes to IMPROVE emissions at the expense of engine life.
The OPs post says that given a button that gave improved performance and worse emissions such a button should be labelled that it would reduce engine life.
I doubt it would, and if anything your cite is suggestively in agreement with me. (Your cite shows that improving emissions reduces engine life; that's the opposite of what this hypothetical button does.)
I'll wager that the PSTN has an uptime of 5 nines, at least.
Sure. But at what cost. Check out what they bill you for even just a simple 8 lines into a small business office. That runs hundreds even thousands of dollars.