Slashdot Mirror


User: Em+Adespoton

Em+Adespoton's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
4,889
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 4,889

  1. Re:Agreed but there is a point on Study Confirms No Link Between MMR Vaccine and Autism · · Score: 2

    What is bad about this is that Chicken Pox for adults is known as Shingles which is far nastier than Chicken Pox. So in this case taking the vaccine to protect against a very mild childhood disease may lead to an increased chance of a more serious disease later in life...unless you set a 20 year alarm so you never forget a booster shot!

    As far as I know, this is very inaccurate. Shingles is a neurological disorder which only affects people who have generated Chicken Pox antigens. Chicken Pox itself has two or three strains, which can be contracted at any point in your life. For instance, the common Chicken Pox (the one with the vaccine now) is something I might have been exposed to when very young, but I've never officially got it (no pox) and eventually I figured I was immune and was tasked as the person to take care of anyone who had it. However, as an adult, I got a secondary strain of Chicken Pox -- symptoms are pretty much identical to the common variety. Result? I'm now susceptible to shingles. If a vaccine had been available back when I contracted it (and I'd had the vaccine instead), that would likely prevent me from getting shingles, as I would never have developed the requisite antigens. However, since there's still no vaccine for the second strain as far as I know, had I taken the vaccine (which was pretty much the same as my existing immunity), I still would have contracted Chicken Pox and then been susceptible to shingles. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  2. Re:Makers or Service providers? on Does Lack of FM Support On Phones Increase Your Chances of Dying In a Disaster? · · Score: 1

    How do you explain phones that have identical international and US versions, and only the US version has the FM disabled?

    I already explained that... it's under the "FCC Testing" section. I bet if you look at the non-US version, there's no FCC stamp on the back.

  3. Does the FAA know? on USPS Shortlists 'HorseFly' Octocopter Drone Delivery Service · · Score: 1

    This thing fails a number of the FAA's requirements. While it *is* line of sight, it is not being controlled by a certified pilot. How has the college been flying it?

  4. Re:Words without actions are meaningless on D-Link Apologizes For Router Security · · Score: 1

    NAT adds security the same way that the two sets of doors into a shopping mall add security -- an extra layer people have to get through while on their way in/out. They both actually stop absolutely nothing, but they provide another point of defense, and a bit more clarity if something odd is going on.

    Of course, that's pretty much meaningless if you don't have a security guard *inside* your NAT. Don't expect some random shopper to report the shoplifter/vandal. And the fact that they're a shoplifter/vandal instead of a "potential" shoplifter/vandal means that your other built-in defenses already failed.

  5. Re:How about... on Comcast and TWC Will Negotiate With Officials To Save Their Merger · · Score: 1

    I don't have experience with Comcast TS personally (which I consider a blessing), but I've always found I can escalate myself to T3 pretty quickly, by addressing my problem at their level.

    When T1 starts their script, I state my problem. There's usually a pause, and they ask the next thing on their script, at which point, I politely state "It appears your script isn't designed to handle my issue. Would you please connect me to your manager?"

    They're more than happy to do so, as keeping me on the line guarantees that they'll have fewer calls handled, which means a worse score at the end of the day, and I've already informed them they'll eventually have to escalate anyway.

    I then run through the same routine with their manager, stating the same details, and adding in why the T1 couldn't handle my call with their script. I then ask some technical questions about the hardware they're using on their end, at which point they realize I probably know more about the domain than they do, and keeping this call or dropping it back to T1 is just going to look bad on their report. So they ask me if someone from T3/engineering can call me back, to which I say that would be fine, I expect the call within 20 minutes.

    Depending on the political situation that manager finds themselves in, this either results in me getting a call back within 20 minutes from someone who can actually do something, or, 20 minutes later, I call the sales number and ask to speak to someone in customer retention.

    I then go through the entire situation again with them, and most of it flies way over their head. They offer me a better deal on X for the next 6 months and apologize profusely, and I turn them down, explaining that unless this problem is fixed, I'm without service anyway, and have no reason to keep paying them when they aren't providing the agreed service.

    I then ask them if they could get someone who can fix the problem on the line, preferably someone from engineering. Within 3 minutes, I always have.

    Yeah, a one-time test might be easier and faster, but they'd abuse it. This way, you get to play the politics against them. Figure out what each person's lever is, push it, and you'll get to the right person fairly quickly.

    One thing with this: make sure you record the name of each person you deal with, and the time you dealt with them. Sometimes, asking for a direct line you can call them back on works too (at each level). That way, if you get "accidentally" dropped into the voice system merry-go-round, you can skip the first steps next time and call in where you left off.

    Amassing a list of names, times and numbers will always help with leverage on future calls as well :)

  6. Re:How about... on Comcast and TWC Will Negotiate With Officials To Save Their Merger · · Score: 1

    You're on the right track, but think about what this merger actually lets them do.

    First off, they get to give half the management the golden handshake. Seems like a good deal for those leaving, and cuts management costs as well in the long run.

    Secondly, this is two cable providers that don't have coverage overlap... so the actual service to customers isn't really an issue one way or the other -- and will likely stay exactly the same or devolve to the lowest common denominator.

    What they want is to become the Wal Mart of Cable TV: if they own that much of the market, they start to get to dictate how the market works, demanding certain rates and concessions from the content providers "to pass the value along to you". This means that the investors will make more profits, the customers will get exactly the same (or slightly worse) service, and the content providers are the ones that lose out. Which is probably why the likes of HBO have now diversified into pure Internet Streaming -- because they don't want to get trapped in a "my way or the highway" situation with TWComcast. If TWC/Comcast attempted something like this right now, they'd get hit with Anti Trust suits like the book publishers did -- they'd be doing pretty much the same thing, and for the same reason. So instead, they've requested the right to become one big company, so that there's no longer any collusion: just one policy across the company.

    I'm surprised the content creators aren't being more vocal than they are about this proposed merger, as they're the ones who lose the most -- subscribers only lose in a minor way comparatively (although they'll also lose out by lack of program variety as all the smaller shops close when they can't land the multi-year contracts with TWComcast).

  7. Stats, or it isn't needed.... on Automakers To Gearheads: Stop Repairing Cars · · Score: 1

    OEMs and their main lobbying organization say cars have become too complex and dangerous for consumers and third parties to handle.

    How many deaths and injuries are caused by modded car systems? Is this a large enough value to measure outside a single standard deviation on the number of deaths and injuries caused by motor vehicles?

    If the answer to the first is an actual value and the answer to the second is yes, than I have no problem with this. However, if it isn't (which is likely), they should take their FUD and go home, and come back when there's an actual (societal) problem that needs to be fixed.

  8. Re:Well done! on George Lucas Building Low-Income Housing Next Door To Millionaires · · Score: 1

    At 224 units at a *very* low rate of 500 a month that is 1.4 million a year. Not a bad ROI.

    For a 200 million dollar developement that's a terrible ROI. 0.7% and that is before expenses. A more reasonable 5% per annum yeild (before expenses) woudl require charging $3720 per month.

    Is a $3720 per month rental considered "affordable" in that area?

    In Lucas' area? Yeah... but I'm pretty sure that by "affordable" he's not really referring to the lower-class millionaires who've had to sell a yacht lately; he's probably subsidizing the housing so that it can rent for at most half that much -- which would put it in middle-class territory. The horror!

  9. Re:Look at previous disasters on Does Lack of FM Support On Phones Increase Your Chances of Dying In a Disaster? · · Score: 1

    That doesn't really matter though, as with the collapse of society as we knew it after 2000, it's not like anyone's going to be around to tell them they can't use their ham radio....

  10. Re:Makers or Service providers? on Does Lack of FM Support On Phones Increase Your Chances of Dying In a Disaster? · · Score: 4, Informative

    This discussion happened around a month ago on reddit -- the FM chips are for the most part vestigal in phones -- that is, some of the chips used in phones ALSO have FM capability. However, the phones usually have no appropriate hardware interface, antenna (yes, they COULD be hooked up to the headphones), or software interface, rendering the FM processor-on-chip pretty much useless, kind of like the extra chip on Apple devices that's only used as a secure data store.

    So it's more than the service providers at work here -- the manufacturers avoided the headache of integrating yet another RF spec into their hardware (which would complicate FCC testing even further, increasing the potential for crosstalk and attenuation issues on all wired and wireless systems in the device), avoided yet more hardware to add bulk/weight/cost and constrain the design, and avoided more software and associated testing. The actual changes might be small, but the cost of the QA and design changes for those actual changes could actually be quite large.

  11. Re:"exploit" on Exploit For Crashing Minecraft Servers Made Public · · Score: 1

    So... it doesn't have the code design to exit gracefully. This means it's not just open to game world corruption, but memory and DB corruption -- which hints at the possibility of an in-memory or on-disk exploit. In order to prep such an exploit, you'd likely have to have a client logged in already and performing a specific function when you hit it with the attack.

  12. Re:America! Fuck yeah! on Gyrocopter Pilot Appears In Court; Judge Bans Him From D.C. · · Score: 1

    Also, it's too bad telling the honest truth so often offends somebody, but they'll get over it. If you are the parent of a five year old, that five year old becomes morbidly obese, and there is no thyroid problem or other solid medical reason for that, you deserve to be tried and convicted of child abuse/child neglect. Destroy your own health all you like, as you are an adult and can make that choice just like you can choose to smoke, but to destroy your child's health from the start like that is just evil.

    The problem is that in some parts of the US, it's REALLY hard to source affordable real food.
    http://blog.ted.com/a-visit-to...
    Watch the talk; the stats on obesity are quite disturbing... as is the fact that Finley was arrested and cited for growing vegetables (spoiler: he eventually fought back on that and won).

    But this is a guy who's willing to go counter-culture and risk jail time to get real food to real people. Want to avoid jail and not sink all your time into sourcing your food? You may not have a choice but to buy growth hormone-infused meats and produce. Especially if you want something affordable.

    I think what *really* needs to happen is that the FDA in the US needs to reclassify a bunch of stuff so that only real food can be sold as food in the US -- anything with growth hormones should be clearly labeled as such with a disclaimer "warning: consuming product can lead to obesity and diabetes." I bet this would go a long way towards cleaning up the problem.

  13. Re:I am completely unsurprised. on Exploit For Crashing Minecraft Servers Made Public · · Score: 1

    Then again, this approach means that any attacks will have to target MC directly, as they can't just target something like Heartbleed and expect it to work here too.

    But they really do seem to suffer from NIH syndrome; those writing hacks for MC are having to code around the outside of it, degrading performance and introducing security issues.

    Anyone know of a modular open source alternative to MC?

  14. Re:"exploit" on Exploit For Crashing Minecraft Servers Made Public · · Score: 3, Informative

    The guy has found a way to exploit the server code to cause denial of service via code complexity.

    Further to this, depending on how the complexity managed to cause the server to crash (as opposed to just using up all server resources decoding the nested elements), it may also be possible to use his exploit to gain remote code execution (RCE).

    But I haven't actually seen anything documenting a server crash -- just an exhaustion of resources, resulting in denial of service. If someone could document what actually happens on the server when this is run, that'd be useful for indicating if there's a possible RCE here or just a case of the server software using up all resources and grinding to a halt, with a possible out of resources exception thrown at the end, causing the server to exit gracefully.

  15. Re:Now if only he'd deal with blatant cheating on When You're the NFL Commish, Getting E-Medical Record Interoperability's a Cinch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, the NFL could get some really good PR out of this.

    If they're able to get every hospital's EMR to work with their system (over time), then that means that their system becomes a gold-standard for interoperability.

    So if they publish the format they use, ANYBODY should be able to use that format and have the records be directly importable into any hospital system where NFL players have been seen.

    If they did this, the NFL could be seen as leaders in healthcare reform, which would definitely help their image on the healthcare front -- and might light some fires under the vendors who are abusing the system as well.

  16. Re:Does it report seller's location and ID? on Google Helps Homeless Street Vendors Get Paid By Cashless Consumers · · Score: 1

    Am I wrong?

    No, you're just thinking too small-scale ;)

  17. Congrats... on MIT Researchers Develop Wireless Trackpad For Your Thumbnail · · Score: 0

    They nailed it!

  18. Re:Hasn't this been proven to be junk science? on A 2-Year-Old Has Become the Youngest Person Ever To Be Cryonically Frozen · · Score: 2

    And at 2 years old, the body might be able to even develop and learn from scratch again.

  19. Re:Any other examples that anyone's spotted? on How Many Hoaxes Are On Wikipedia? No One Knows · · Score: 1

    There's more to it than that though... I contribute to wikia.com, and find that even with the federated style, there's really a lack of people willing to do more than a couple of legitimate edits before moving on -- and more often than not, they don't have the domain knowledge to get it right, meaning someone else has to come in and make minor corrections. It all comes back to "editors" being required to exercise extreme control in order to preserve data integrity.

    So it doesn't really matter whether you treat people poorly or not; the entire Wiki thing has gone stale, and it's hard to get /qualified/ people to get involved no matter how you treat them.

  20. Re:Hmmm .... on Calling Out a GAO Report That Says In-Flight Wi-Fi Lets Hackers Access Avionics · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://www.defcon.org/images/...

    Different physical network. Someone in GAO misread the original report.

  21. Re:So? on NVIDIA's New GPUs Are Very Open-Source Unfriendly · · Score: 1

    It's still an okay deal. The alternative happens to be the "open source" door opener guy, who fails to pick some items from inside the fridge, and opens the door very slowly.

    You've come full circle -- the reason the "open source" door opener guy fails to pick some items from inside the fridge and opens the door very slowly is that some compartments in the fridge are hidden and the manufacturer won't say where they are, and the open source guy has to pick the lock every time he wants to open the door, as the key he was given isn't all that accurate.

  22. Re:Private IoT reporting for duty! on The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers · · Score: 2

    My point exactly (the last one)... making the devices respond to signals, and making the concentration point "in the cloud" means that people hacking into your home computer is a thing of the past -- all they have to do is get your Apple/FaceBook/Google ID, and suddenly they've got access/control for every device you own.

    Vacuum cleaner won't be chasing you, but your lights will be tracking you and your power meter might just send an extra few amps to your digital doorknob just as you go to open it....

  23. Re:China is Taking Over on Chinese Ninebot Buys US Rival Segway · · Score: 1

    I thought Segway got bought out by a UK guy prior to this?

    But the UK doesn't have the most powerful supercomputer and lost their number 1 spot a long time ago....

  24. Re:Still vapor on The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'll be really excited when they've scaled it down to the size of vapor. Then we can have REAL "cloud computing!"

    However, this isn't really a computer, as it still needs a power source and I/O. It's just a small wafer of etched silicon until it has those things.

    If they used this as the basis for an environment-powered computer and it contained bluetooth and/or WiFi capabilities as well as decent storage, this could be interesting. Get a bunch of these self-powering in a mesh network and you've got something interesting.

    To self-power, they could just stick some PV chips on top. For WiFi, use the new quantum-state on-wafer antennas. With these two things on board, you've got something that has a power source, a sensor, and data I/O -- it can truly be called a computer, and a handful of them could be programmed to do all sorts of things (distributed streaming video camera, security system, control any other device that requires motion/light sensitivity, etc.).

  25. Re:Private IoT reporting for duty! on The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's *one* IoT... but how does that relate to my lightbulbs that track me around the house or my garage door opener that lets me open it remotely from my Apple Watch after seeing who's standing outside?

    The IoT is about networking commodity hardware and aggregating telemetry and sensor data remotely. For some reason, it seems to have significant overlap with Cloud Computing such that we really have a CloT with access control nightmares.

    Funny thing is, vending machines were on the Internet almost 20 years ago. This was useful for the parent's illustration (service tech knows what to restock and when, and if the machine's out of service / bil cartridge is full / etc). But we didn't call it the IoT back then; just the Internet. That was part of the original vision, before .com got involved and morphed it into some sort of a "display your web browser banner here" place.

    In other words, the IoT is closer to the original concept of the Internet than what most people have thought of as "the Internet" for the past decade or so. A bunch of internetworked hardware talking to each other and to humans, all around the world.