On Wed, 23 Sep 2015 04:29:39 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Tuesday, September 22, 2015 at 9:05:57 PM UTC-4, Ashton Crusher wrote:


We are talking about two different codes. The code I'm talking about
is the "real code" that doesn't have any special switches in it. The
code you are talking about is code someone slipped into the "real
code" to turn off the emissions controls.



AFAIK, there is only one set of code under discussion here, that's
the code that is in the actual VW cars that were cheating.



was to first determine if
the car was currently being emissions tested, and if so, then to run
the car with the full emissions control protocol to meet the test.
Otherwise it ran the car with emissions that according to the news
last night was 10 - 40x above the limits.



As the EPA found, and I doubt it was
hard, the on the road emissions didn't match what was produced during
dynamometer testing. How would anyone realistically look at the code
and be able to figure out that it "worked" as far as controlling
emissions?

They didn't look at the code, EPA went after VW to explain the huge
differences between dyno testing emissions and emission on the road.
VW couldn't explain it and finally admitted what they had done.


That is my point exactly. They looked at what came out the tailpipe.
Looking at "the code" isn't going to tell them anything, it's not like
it's just a 1980 15 line BASIC language do loop to count how many
times the wheels go around in a minute where you could look and see
they were inserting an extra 10% every 120 seconds with two extra
lines of code.

If competent investigators choose to actually do the
investigation, to find out what was happening, to look at
the code, they could show that the code was written to detect
when the car was being tested and to then do a different
emissions control algorithm. It's right there, in the code.
It would be much easier to decipher if it was documented and
labeled "cheat code", but it can still be done.



It's undoubtedly got thousands and thousands of lines
of code, much of it interrelated, much of it doing periodic "turn this
off and see if sensor X reacts" to verify sensor X is still working.
If sensor X is not working turn the CEL on and depending on the fault
code it might make it flash. No one is going to be able to look thru
that and find some hidden loop aimed at fooling the system unless the
author of the illicit code wanted to be caught and put in "ILLEGAL
CODE - NEXT 12 lines!!!"

Of course it can be found and determined. It's not trivial, but it
certainly can be done without the code being documented.



And even if this presumed code looker found
something suspicious, so what? If the car passes both the emissions
test and ALL on road verifications what do you think EPA should do?
Fine them for writing code that's looks funny to EPA but still meets
emissions standards?

If the car actually met the EPA standards, then I agree that
having the cheat code there might not violate the law. But the
fact is that the cars don't meet the limits by 10 to 40x. If you're
point is that it's not worth it for the EPA to be routinely demanding
source code, analyzing it all, deciphering it, etc, for all cars,
I agree with that.

That's my point for this thread branch, yes. Not only isn't it worth
it, the code is none of teh EPA's damn business.