People  gathered around Saturday to witness the 3rd Annual Solar Tour and to see how solar energy lights up homes and businesses.

The owners explained the reasons in using solar energy as a source of their power, how much the cost to put it up and the benefits they are getting out of it.

Currently, there are more than 1,000 buildings in the Fresno area that uses solar power to supply their energy. This is one of the fastest growing industries in the area.

If you think a set of wheels is just a way of getting from point A to point B, think again.

There is more under your car’s hood than you think – from systems that will monitor car performance to structures that are capable of giving directions.

The onboard computer in the car controls functions from electric window, central locking to even the wipers.

There are also two networked systems managing the engine performance, throttle input, the gearbox and much more.

Vincent Ng, product manager at KAH Motor, said: “What we have now is the 32 bit CPU, so you can imagine the computing power that is in your car. I would say because it is very specialised, the rate of information that arrives at the computer unit could be a lot quicker than a laptop.”

With a car’s innards linked, there is no more guesswork with repairs as it is a breeze pinpointing faults with a diagnostic tool.

Because of that, KAH Motor is servicing 20 percent more cars.

“The technology is actually coming down from our more luxurious cars, and some of the more advanced cars available in the United States. For a car like the Civic, the technology has caught up,” said Mr Ng.

Dr Rainer Thiel, president and CEO of DaimlerChrysler Southeast Asia, said: “Your advantage in innovation lasts roughly six months, sometimes a year’s time, then it is more common for everybody.

“It could be that competitors have looked to our cars (to find out) what we are doing because we try to be a trendsetter and set benchmarks in the automotive business that leads to the potential to create new innovations.”

Some standard features in the next generation of mass market cars could include factory-installed GPS navigation, voice command, bluetooth mobile communication and rear-view camera system.

A Heads Up Display (HUD) has practical applications in a car as it shows your current speed and gives you directions, without you taking your eyes off the road.

Some industry players said the next big thing could be onboard telemetry.

Combining GPS and traffic information, it can help navigate you to less congested roads.

Other manufacturers are also working on ‘accident-free cars’, which are vehicles that take evasive actions to help you avoid a crash.

Some may argue they don’t really need all these high-tech features, but it’s hard to escape the modern technology that’s rumbling down the road.

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Reverse-engineering is a term that is used for the process of taking apart something to figure out how to use it, basically. In many cases, something new and great has come about. In order to understand how it works or to recreate it, engineers will pull it apart and study it. Understanding how it works is one thing. But in order to recreate it, they will have to make it different somehow. This can be challenging but is often necessary. Reverse-engineering is quite a fantastic, but worrisome way to learn new things.

The task that is difficult in reverse-engineering is the task of making what is in such a way that it will no longer be the same. The fear that is involved has to do with the fact that patent information can be quite sensitive. Copying a product that is under a patent is highly illegal. But, if they can figure out how to use it and make it in a different method, it may fall into the gray area. What is important to remember, though, is that the patent is on the functionality of a product, not necessary on the way it is designed.

Reverse-engineering is something that has happened the most often by the military. In this case, the reverse-engineering will be used to copy other nation’s technology when it comes to military endeavors. In many cases, the information is obtained by intelligence operations. Reverse-engineering was most commonly used in the Cold War and World War II.

You will find that reverse engineering also happens as a result of curiosity; seeing if they can do it, so to speak. It is also used as a means of cracking the code of security measures and finding a way to get around the security restrictions that can be found in such things as software and electronics. It is quite possibly quite illegal to do these things though and this needs to be taken into consideration.