In most states, including NY, the check is simply an ODBII test. This test simply asks the car for a list of components that need to work to meet emissions and a yes/no/maybe answer for if it's working. If all things work then the car must pass emissions. This is known to be true because the EPA requires that the manufacturer write up a report that proves they tested the emissions and it meets the standards when the emissions components are working and that the computer detects and reports when the emissions components don't work.

VW's problem is they lied on the report which and actual emissions are not tested for each car.

Depends where you are, but I got my LEDs for $10, and they use 6W. CFLs are $1.35 for a 13W ot the same brightness. Power for me is $0.25/kWh, the LED pays for itself after about 5,000 hours over the CFLs, and the LED is rated for 50,000 hours (no idea how accurate that is, but they should last longer than the CFL) and the CFL is 8,000 hours, it's worth it right now, by a lot.

However I got to say, I actually bought the LEDs because CFLs were a non-option for me, I was living with someone sensitive to UV, and they couldn't be around CFLs.

Yea, it's a weird situation, but we have already make people pay for things they don't want. A real big one is war, you are required to pay taxes to support a war. It's irrelevant that you may or may not approve of it, or that you might be against killing people, even if that's your religious belief. You are required to pay for the food for the soldiers, which may involve killing sacred animals. You are also required to pay for courts, that may preside over divorce cases.

That's the real issue, the government can and does make you pay for things you disagree with, and you don't have a say in it (other than your vote). So why can't the government make you pay for health care that you don't agree with? If the receiver disagrees with it, that's usually when your choice comes into play. But we found that doesn't really matter either, for example in a draft. Being against the war doesn't exempt you from being required to kill someone.

Yes, it's very worth it, it lets you move the cockpit so it doesn't interfere with aerodynamics. It will most likely result in an improved view (they can put cameras on the bottom so they can actually see crew on the tarmac when taxing). And removing the windows will help aerodynamics and save fuel. Considering the plane is already fly by wire, it's not a significant complexity addition.

In addition I wonder how this patent is even valid, the Virginia class submarine already does this, they have a photonics mast which means cameras are the only way to look outside. The benefits for them is that the periscope no longer enters the hull (safety), the control room no longer needs to be directly under the conning tower which means a bigger control room, and other items on the ship don't have a periscope they have to design around. Also the photonics mast is more capable as it's not limited by optical tech, they can put better cameras on it (IR) that you couldn't really do in a purely optical system.

I don't think it's much of an issue, you can put cameras on board that are much better than what you can normally see (like a couple IR cameras), and identify actual objects (like other planes) in the monitor. It results in a much more interesting display. Not to mention at cruising altitude there isn't all that much to look at anyways.

Airbus want this probably because they can move the cockpit, it no longer needs to protrude out the nose (and impact aerodynamics), it can save lots of fuel that way.

In a highly redundant system it should be enough to have multiple monitors inside, with multiple cameras outside whose field of view significantly overlaps. Camera fails? Well the other camera can still see the same thing. Monitor fails, well you can pull up that camera on another monitor. All cameras are cross connected via multiple display computers, and display computers are powered via separate power busses. So a display computer failing does nothing, a power surge only affects half the system, and half your monitors can pull up half your cameras which still gets you a full view. In an extreme case like a power surge killing systems it shouldn't affect everything, but you still only get a degraded system, not a failed system.

Also don't forget that power systems are many times redundant on planes (any engine can power it, APU can power it, battery can power it, and ram air generator can power it) and have to go through certifications that they don't fail in a way that causes damage (usually implemented by putting breakers on the power systems, if it surges it disconnects and lets the backup take over). And on top of that you can still fly by instruments alone. Something as simple as a short or loss of multiple engines does not kill power on a modern commercial plane.

Nah, legally it's not that bad for them. They'll claim they got a government contract, and all is good. If the court agrees with that the the logical conclusion is to sue the state for failure to bid the contract and a whole bunch of government contracting laws, and you'll also end up with that SWAT isn't government, so there are probably legal issues and conflict of interest type things letting them handle a police type job.

In short either they are government, and open to all of this, or they are private and fucked up the contract. Either case they can get sued.

But they are not solving it, just using ARM does nothing, it's still developed by a company in an NSA friendly country. How is russia going to audit that code? If they want to get away from foreign hardware then get away from it and develop your own CPU. Write a new one from the ground up, it's really not that hard (performance is the hard part).

Not C, some weird OS somewhere had a sucky heap manager so they made their own (C just says you'll have something, over the years that something meant something different on different systems). And yea, the OpenSSL people were correct, never roll your own crypto because even a PhD in crypto doesn't really make you qualified in it. With that said, rewriting a known crypto algorithm is mostly fine, the issue OpenSSL had is bad programming, not bad crypto.

Don't worry, I work in a government agency, IE8 is the only authorized browser (with java of course), and if you gained access to that computer you would have plenty of access to sensitive (but not classified) stuff.

I was working out the logistics behind doing a full system remote backup. I ended up just buying a hard drive and mailing it to my brother for storage because uploading 1.5TB of stuff takes a few days on my connection, even 100Mbps would take 1.5 days and there are questions about the ISP data caps (would his ISP, with a possible data cap of 250GB/mo drop him if he did 1.5TB in a week?).

I don't know about any specifics for the UK, but that generally just falls under it's not yours. Public infrastructure isn't your to touch, just as your neighbors bed isn't yours to sleep in. Taking it is just considered theft, they don't tack on extra charges because you took it from the public (and they arguably should). As an example they do do something like that with police and government employees in the US. In NY Punching a random guy on the street is third degree assault (class A misdemeanor) and punishable by up to 1 year in prison, but if that guy is a cop or public bus driver (and a whole list of other public workers), then it's automatically bumped to a class D felony punishable by up to 7 years in prison (at least that's what I get attempting to interpret the law).

How much? As someone who invests for the long term, I really don't see large spreads affecting me. Right now, looking at google, I see a spread of 16 cents on a $1000/share stock. If I invest in that stock, I'd probably consider anything under 1% in gains a wash, so the spread would have to be over $10 to even factor into my decision making. I don't care if the spreads go up 10x, to $1.50 on that stock, it won't affect me, yes I'll lose that extra dollar or so, but I'm trading on double digit gains/losses, if I buy at $700 and sell at $1000 I don't care about that $1.50, it doesn't materially hurt me. All that HFT does it make the stocks react faster to the news, and the cost is that the HFT people get to suck money out of the market for nothing (though make it liquid I suppose), But is that something we really need? I don't need it that liquid for my investments, and the businesses don't either.

If it was up to me I'd change the stock exchanges to process one trade per account per stock per day, all at 4pm (meaning you got the whole day to enter your trades, speed won't have an effect at all).

Depends how big the company is I suppose, but honestly if it was just one or two guys who really own it, for $7mil I'd seriously consider just moving to China. You are not going to get arrested trying to flee the country from a civil suit, and China or some other country that won't care about that type of business. Moving could very well be more cost effective than losing $7mil and your income.

But it would have to crop the image as the sensor is fixed to the phone, if that's what you want you can crop your portrait to landscape post processing and get a fugly video.