socaldano - Slashdot User

Comment how far are they going to get?? (Score 1) 385

by socaldano on Thursday October 21, 2010 @10:29AM (#33973236) Attached to: Blizzard Suing Creators of <em>StarCraft II</em> Hacks

There are lots of lawsuits like this that are more of a nuisance or scare tactics then anything else. If you compare a hack to a parody or a quote. You will see that neither are a copyright violation, as they are not selling the authors work. The portions of the EUL need to be valid before they are enforceable, and the company needs to show damages. If the EUL stated that if you share the EUL with your friend penalties are $10,000 is as ridiculous as this claim. If you write a book review of a book, is that a copyright violation? If you black out or highlight sections of a book you bought and wrote in the margins is that a copyright violation (see students/textbooks)? If you buy a cell phone and buy an aftermarket accessory for it, is that patent infringement because it did not come with the phone? The "hacked code" is almost certainly new code and therefore probably not a copyright violation.

Comment Re:You're looking at it wrong. (Score 1) 750

by socaldano on Friday February 26, 2010 @01:28PM (#31287350) Attached to: Should I Take Toyota's Software Update?

I doubt the primary motivation is because of a suspected software problem. I'd say the primary motivation is because Toyota is the one (or one of the few) car manufacture that didn't have a brake-override feature in their fly-by-wire vehicles. After all of the publicity about the raw away cars, they are pulling out the stops to prevent it from getting worse.

I think it was Car and Driver who did a test of vehicles which had fly-by-wire throttle systems to see how they handled under runaway conditions. They basically took the cars up to certain speeds (20, 40 and 60 MPH IIRC), kept the throttle depressed, and then tried to stop the car with brakes and emergency breaks. Every vehicle with the brake override system, the engines immediately went down to idle power when the brakes where pressed even with the thottle held down. It was very easy to bring the vehicle to a controlled stop.

The Toyotas w/o the brake override system could be stopped if you were at slow speeds with a lot of effort on the brakes and emergency brake. At higher speeds, the breaks where not enough to stop the vehicle with only the brakes. They also tried turning the vehicles off which would stop the vehicle, but the driver had to manhandle the vehicle w/o benefit of power steering and power brakes.

Side note: The Toyota Prius has a surprising amount of power at full ouput. That's when the gas engine is driving the wheels, teh eletric drive motor is drawing off teh traction battery to drive the wheels, and the gas engine is driving a secondary motor/generator to creating electricity which is feed to the eletric drive motor. The secondary motor/generator is normally used to recharge the traction battery when the car is operating in usual conditions.

I was doing 65-75 MPH up the foothills in Arizona and Southern California. I was outdoing a lot of other vehicles with power engines. My cruise control kept at the set speed and didn't slow down at all. Unfortunately the Prius can only maintain that kind of output as the traction battery charge lasts. And the gas milage really sucks in that mode.

My real world test went like this. In May 2006 my couple of weeks old Prius was pulling up to a light under 10mph. Suddenly, with my foot on the brake. The car surged to full power, tranny engaged. I tried the joystick into neutral, nope. Didn't think of park. Looked at my feet carefully nothing down there wrong. Carefully released enough brake to go into the gas station on the corner. Shut down power (windows reboot?), got on my hands and knees to see if anything was in the way. Nothing. Carefully powered the car with foot on brake. Drove home terrified. Took to dealer on Monday who said this was known and there was a flash he can do, then reversed himself and said there was a flash for 2005. This service record disappeared from dealer records. This happened again to my friend driving the car a year later. I also had extensive problems with cruise control which suggests this is purely a software problem... If I am setting and unsetting cruise control repeatedly, cruise will lock up. The cruise light will remain on, but the cruise will refuse to reset speed, set speed, turn off, or respond in any way. The ONLY way to fix this was to power down the vehicle and power it up. This was also reported to the dealer multiple times. Short story, if you have problems under warranty..send Toyota a certified letter return receipt requested noting it. To retain rights to have it fixed after warranty expires and proof that the problem was reported.

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