Re: OT: Climate Change Bullshit

Sounds more like the tail wagging the dog to me. The UK market is big enough to dictate terms to the largest of corporations. Don't forget we are also the largest overseas investors in many other G7 countries.

The only way they could punish us would be if we retain a "leader" like Treason May who would let them walk all over us without any retaliation in kind, and I have a hunch she isn't going to be around much longer. Send a crabby old woman to do a man's job and this is what you get. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The PM job needs someone with *BALLS* and sadly May hasn't got any, physically or metaphorically.

I did get to spend some time in Oxford, which made the whole fiasco worth it.

Millions of USians promised to flee to Canada if you-know-who were elected.

The French do have a knack for anarchy. But they are experiencing the same dynamics as the US: urban elite foodies prospering at the expense of the deplorable ignorant yokels who keep them alive.

Could you possibly take a bit more trouble over your attributions, John? It's kind of hard to work out which utter, incorrigible *moron* you're attempting - in good but misplaced faith - to debate with here. ;->

It's just a newsgroup. It doesn't matter.

The attributions were perfectly clear in your post.

Others might like to speculate why Cursitor Doom couldn't follow them.

A fair point.

I know one person who is paying thousands of pounds to get the right paperwork w.r.t. a Greek grandfather. That's significant commitment.

I've posted previously w.r.t. Andre Geim's group and Robert Winston's colleagues.

There is currently a widespread dissatisfaction, since the financial scandals a decade ago. It manifests itself in different ways in different people. It is complicated.

However, Facebook has allowed malefactors to understand each individuals' dissatisfaction, and to spear-fish them by pushing their specific button.

The fuel price thing was a tipping point maybe. The EU promoted diesel for decades to Save The Earth; about 2/3 of the cars in France are diesel, and now the diesel owners are being punished to Save The Earth.

The EU messed up big time on not verifying compliance to clean-diesel standards. It took some guys at West Virginia University to discover the fraud.

Turbos are a similar cheat switch.

More like save people's lungs from particulates and NOx.

In addition diesel is more efficient, so it wasn't entirely unreasonable to push diesel.

My understanding is that they did comply with the standards, but the standards could be gamed. Is the fault in the standards or in the gamimg?

Exactly the same thing occurred with some computer benchmarks in the 90s. The compiler was frigged so it detected it was compiling the benchmark code, and simply output pre-defined hand-optimised object code.

Not strictly a fraud, but obeying the letter of the law rather than its spirit. That's what happens when given inappropriate goals.

The VW thing was clearly fraud, and people went to prison for participating. VW programmed the emissions computer to specifically recognize the dyno test and go into low-emissions, low-performance mode.

But it still passed the tests didn't it?

Sure, but the cars on the road violated law. And huge fines were paid and people went to prison. In the US, anyhow.

In what way?

If te law is constrained to passing the tests, they obeyed the law.

Mmm.

But not in Germany...

By killing people, for starters.

Which people? Those killed by the extra diesel fumes? You'd have a hard time linking that to a specific car manufacturer.

In any case, I'd be just as inclined to blame the gumment inspectors, who OKed the test results.

Interesting concept, the idea of cheating on tests being OK, and blame the officials for not catching the cheating.

So people should cheat on university exams and UL/CE certs and medical device safety tests and everything else, because it's cheaper than doing the work.

That creates a whole new industry, test cheat consultants. Being engineering consultants, they would heve to be certified PE's, which would involve taking tests. No problem.

I assume that NOx and other emission limits exist to protect public health. And since the air is a shared resource, all car companies are required to not pollute the air. It's total chemical and particulate levels that kill people; of course no individual death can be blamed on any single car.

google it:

Its a very old industry.

You have to accept that whenever there are benchmarks with a ranking order there is pressure for gaming them. Hell I can't think of any compilers that don't recognise certain benchmark constructs and optimise the hell out of them even if they almost never occur in the real world.

Any benefit in real world code is entirely coincidental but being up there in the top five on the benchmarks is essential for sales.

If you face a specification that is more or less impossible then detecting the artificial test conditions and making the engine do what is expected seems fair game. If the test was realistic of actual driving conditions then the engine management unit would not be able to cheat.

Schools in the UK are into that sort of thing. Excluding the thicker and disruptive students to move up the rankings. Some have even been caught telling their students the right answers in advance of the exams: