I don't think this is just a storm in a teacup, as actual harm has been done. People have been duped into buying cars they might not have purchased otherwise (some people do care about the environment). People with respiratory problems have suffered from the increased NOX emissions. Investors in VW have lost a load of money. And soon VW will start lay-offs as their sales suffer.

I don't think it's a storm in a teacup, as actual harm has been done. People have been duped into buying cars they might not otherwise have purchased (some people do care about the environment). People with respiratory problems have suffered from the increased NOX emissions, and investors in VW have lost a load of money. And probably VW will start announcing lay-offs soon due to the impact it will have on their sales.

Yes but what we have here is something that is patently wrong by anyone's standards. The code was deliberately designed to cheat during the emissions testing. It's not a question of not knowing the local laws - they knew the law and deliberately flouted it.

No - people make mistakes for sure. But for this to happen a whole gang of people had to collude in doing something which should have set all their inner alarm bells ringing.

I disagree. It was unethical. The ACM's code of ethics and professional standards says: 1.03. Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment. The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good. What VW did drove a cart-and horses through that one.

I suspect no money found its way into the hands of the engineers. Only the VW executives would have gained. The engineers were probably just following orders.

Something that really bothers me about the current Volkswagen scandal is that the engine management system 'cheat switch' didn't write itself. Assuming that Volkswagen followed a fairly traditional software development model: * someone wrote a specification * someone approved it * someone modified the code * someone reviewed the code * someone tested it So that's at least five people who were involved who either didn't think about the ethical or commercial consequences of what they were doing, or were too scared to do anything. And presumably they all considered themselves to be 'Engineers'. I know software engineers don't have the equivalent of a Hippocratic Oath, but I'm disappointed that those involved at a technical level allowed this to go as far as it did.

I would recommend Yorkshire Tea [^], despite being from Lincolnshire.

I really enjoyed this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b063s4gx/bbc-proms-2015-season-radio-1-ibiza-prom[^]

So it's down to a choice between keyboard or drums?

Actually this is pretty much what I had in mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSE-Alpha[^]

I know - no atmosphere!

I say steady on old chap! No-one should get thrown out of the airlock, however silly they are. I agree it wouldn't convince the hard-core swivel-eyed sceptics, but there are a lot of people who's basic argument is "If the Americans went in 1969 why haven't they gone back"? A repeat trip might convince them.

No Hubble does not have sufficient resolving power. It would have to be tens of metres across to see the LEM on the moon. http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/answer.php?id=77&cat=topten[^]

I believe even the Hubble Telescope isn't powerful enough to do that. But photos of the landing sites have been taken by Lunar Orbiters: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html[^] But of course that didn't convince the sceptics.

Well 46 years since Apollo 8, to be precise. But that probably means that most people on Code Project were not born then!

The very fact that this is a computer simulation will just play into the hands of the sceptics. Someone needs to do it for real. And someone unconnected with the government of the USA.

Or maybe it could be funded through Kickstarter.

I'm hoping it can be done without spending any taxpayer money. If billionaires can afford a holiday on the ISS, maybe they could fund a jaunt to the Moon.

Yesterday on the radio I heard Phil Collins arguing with Prof Brian Cox about whether the moon landings were faked. I get the same thing all the time from my own relatives. Isn't it about time someone went back to the Moon and so shut these idiots up? Anyone - the Chinese, the Indians, Elon Musk, whatever. Just a repeat of the Apollo 8 mission (without actually landing) ought to be cheap, and would at least prove that you don't get fried if you pass through the Van Allen belts. It's nearly the 50th anniversary after all.