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?

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.

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 :)

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).

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.

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!

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....

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

They nailed it!