I believe you when you state that people are passing. This tells me that currently
the inspection is doing the bare minimum cursory inspection (ie: just reading the
checksum that's being reported and accepting it as fact, instead of taking the additional
step of scanning the actual image, performing a checksum calculation against that,
and
then comparing the actual checksum against the 'reported' one.
Going back to my analogy, it would be like walking up to my fake COPO Camaro, observing
the 427 badge, never opening my hood, and declaring my vehicle is legit. Now, according to
the official press release by the people in charge of all this (Cali BAR) they claim they are doing the
full monte with their testing. (
BAR Press Release)
But what if they are just doing a cursory scan in the real world, yet reassuring us that they going the
full distance to both score points with the environmentalists on the one hand, and at the same time
use this as a scare tactic for the tuner community?
When it comes to a bureaucracy speaking out of both sides of it's mouth? This wouldn't the first
time something like this has occurred. And as evidenced by these folks passing, this may be the
correct explanation. At the computer level, with enough digging the truth can be uncovered.
With people...sometimes not so much.
No problem, sir. When I switched from fixing cars to computers for a living, I was a stranger in
a strange land. I was a concrete learner working in an abstract virtual environment. But by
using analogies I was eventually able to reason my way through all the secret sauce inside.
Let's use music for this. Pick your favorite song, and assign a unique numerical value for each and every
note in the song, from start to finish. Run
all the resulting numbers through the checksum algorithm,
and out pops a value. Go back, edit the song, remove a
single note, and rerun the new numbers
through the same algorithm, and you will absolutely get a different number. (See attached.)
(
And here's the associated Wiki entry.)
I'll even go so far as to state that the GMT400 forum would not work reliably worldwide without the
use of checksums to validate each individual data packet at each point in it's journey, from New Zealand,
TX, or Sweden, to the server array...and back. And not if, but when stuff gets garbled, it's a failed
checksum that forces a request to retransmit that bad packet...all this going on many layers below
our daily activity. Cool stuff. Checksums are why our computers sound like FM (no static at all) vs the AM
radio with heavy thunderstorms nearby. And then you turn the fluorescents on...
And your final questions allow me to come full circle on all this.
Based on the evidence that all these people are passing tells me that the
bureaucrats are only looking for a specific calibration number and taking
it at face value? And as always, follow the money. The state wants to
perform as many vehicles tests are quickly as possible, following the
regulations with the least amount of time/money spent.
On the other hand, the Stellantis engineers were highly motivated
to A) figure out what went wrong with their baby, and B) prove that
the $36K expense to repair the Jailbreak special is
not a result of
them doing bad job. (I know how I would act if I was directly involved
in this.)
To me, following the money when it comes to people helps to explain
a lot of what goes right *and* wrong with all things having to do
with computers and data.
Sincere apologies for the length, but it's nice to have others interested
in this stuff. Normally when I start talking about all this at a party people
start drifting away like I've got BO or something.
Hope this helps. And I thank my lucky stars that I'm
not relocating to Cali...
Cheers -
