Let me see if I've got this right
It is a Universal Serial Bus
We have 3 different partially compatible versions, and 5 different incompatible standard plug types - along with a handful of quite incompatible propietary versions.
5893 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2007
This is one car designed to run a limited number of times, as efficiently as possible, that will test materials and techniques to the limit (hopefully not beyond), providing a huge amount of information.
Compared to:
Millions of barely maintained cars, each covering much greater distance on a daily basis. That does provide information of course - a progressively more accurate account of how crap most drivers are.
Could do better.
I can understand them wanting to keep the details under wraps for now, but they could have allowed a bit more info I think, and maybe a date when full details would be released. They shouldn't need to be whiter-than-white (compared with everyone else), but that's the reality of their current situation.
No matter what they say, such a move would have no effect at all on any real baddies, but would put everyone one else at serious risk.
As a comparison, in the UK guns are very tightly controlled and licensed, yet still the crims seem to get them, and in central London (the most watched city in the UK - and possibly the world) there has been an increase in gun crime, including multiple murders.
P.S. I'm not advocating letting everyone have guns, just pointing out that prohibitions don't work.
What is the point of examining ancient firmware of just one company?
Now if they did some real research they would examine the work of a range of similar products from different manufacturers, comparing their initial quality, current quality and most importantly, code development trends.
However, if they did that they probably would annoy their paymaster.
Well, if you think that's bullshit how about this then.
In the middle 1960s the Prudential Assurance Company's entire data processing system was transferred from punched cards to an IBM360. A single machine with no backup facilities, and it remained like that for about 6 months.
And the reason for no backup? Not in that year's budget!
I have no qualms about mentioning it, because the person overseeing the transfer (very much under protest) was my dad - who is long since beyond any kind of retribution.