The big deal with this particular reform is that, in most cases, Florida police will actually have to arrest and charge a person with a crime before attempting to seize and keep their money and property under the state's asset forfeiture laws. One of the major ways asset forfeiture gets abused is that it is frequently a "civil", not criminal, process where police and prosecutors are able to take property without even charging somebody with a crime, let alone convicting them. This is how police are, for example, able to snatch cash from cars they've pulled over and claim they suspect the money was going to be used for drug trafficking without actually finding any drugs.
It is the voters who are to blame, or to be credited. When the laws were passed allowing police the right to confiscate private property, the voters cheered, thinking such actions would help stop the drug trade (which they were encouraging by buying the drugs). Politicians responded to the voters, and passed the laws, tweaking them as power-hungry politicians do to make them work to the government's favor, not the citizens. Now, having realized how bad these laws are, the voters are electing politicians who want to remove the laws. That pressure is resulting in laws like this.
This comes on the heals of the DOJ restarting its legalized theft program, which shows citizens now lose more property to the government via civil forfeiture than they do from ordinary burglaries.
Product managers will love dealing with 7 year testing timelines.
Testing aside, what a ridiculous way to kill innovation.
The fundamental parts of the engine are all mechanical. They work without a battery.
Resilience to electrical failure is important.
The fundamental parts of the engine are all mechanical. They work without a battery.
Resilience to electrical failure is important.
Critical components of your engine, i.e. fuel injectors, ignition, your high pressure fuel pump all work with electricity from the 12V system. On most newer cars, so does the throttle body (it's no longer actuated by a cable from the accelerator).
Resilience to failure in an interference engine can be achieved by failing closed, i.e. if the valve actuators lose power, they should close to move out of the way of rising pistons.
The bigger reluctance on the part of auto manufacturers is probably reliability given actuators would need to sit near or on valves that are close to the combustion and therefore rapidly heat up and stay hot for drive cycles. Since electrical impedance changes as metals heat up, the issue is even more complicated. These parts are difficult to access and expensive to repair or replace if there are widespread reliability issues (think recalls). Finding a way to transmit the motion to control valves, e.g. via a pushrod, might help with some of these factors, but not eliminate them and reintroduce mechanical complexity.
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer. -- A.J. Perlis
