I think the idea here is that the system would be two-part: challenge/response key, but with extra biodata, meaning it has to be activated by your particular stomach in order for the challenge to be accepted in the first place.

However, there are all sorts of problems with that:
1) Our bodies change over time.
2) The information must be broadcast, at which point any receiver can grab that info (unless it's protected by ANOTHER c/r system)
3) Spoofing this would be relatively easy with a replay attack.

Wearing a seatbelt does in fact increase risk to you of serious harm in certain kinds of accidents. It also protects those around you, as you are held into the driving position in your vehicle, so are less likely to lose/be unable to regain control of your car.

Vaccines protect the herd -- this is not "random people" but the people you come into contact with each day.

The next time a vaccine starts shooting random people, let me know.

You do indeed have the right to get the flu instead of a shot. However, by exercising that right, you are putting people in harms' way that would otherwise be more protected. That's a decision you get to make. Other people have made the decision to get vaccinated, which indirectly benefits you, as long as enough people get vaccinated.

Who is we? I haven't been hearing these things. There are some non-approved vaccines that have side effects that are considered worth the risk in the middle of a pandemic -- are those the ones you're referring to? They have nothing to do with chicken pox, nor with the flu virus, nor MMR (the vaccines discussed in this thread so far).

Flu vaccines are a crap shoot -- I never used to get them, but now I do, as it costs me nothing. The reason they're a crap shoot isn't because they're not effective though; it's because they only target one strain. Vaccine companies look at what's brewing in China at the beginning of their flu season, and then inoculate against that in North America so by the time flu season hits NA, enough people are inoculated to the most likely strain, protecting the herd. This year, they guessed wrong, and a different strain made the hit list. Result? A greater number of child and elderly deaths due to influenza.

Everyone was still inoculated against the strain that went nowhere; nobody was inoculated against the strain that became pandemic. Was the vaccine effective? Not at minimizing flu exposure, but it WAS effective at minimizing exposure to the target strain -- in China, before it ever spread anywhere else.

The main reason vaccines don't work as well as we are led to expect is that what many people hear regarding vaccines is "get this shot to be protected from viral family X" when, as I originally stated, that's not what vaccination is about at all.

Vaccines are pretty simple; reviewing them is pretty simple, and delivering them without side effects is getting simpler as time goes by. Stay away from "live strain" vaccines, and at worst you're injecting junk into your muscle tissue that your lymph nodes have to collect and dispose of (or in a minority of cases, your body marshals its T cells and histamine chains, and the NEXT time you're exposed, you go into shock).

Do you trust Forbes?

That's not what vaccines are for. They're herd protection, and are to decrease the number of possible hosts in a population. If everyone who CAN get vaccinated does, then that protects those few who can't get vaccinated for whatever reason (too young/old, react to the vaccine, forgot to get the booster, etc.).

That's the point of getting vaccinated. What possible side effects are there that are greater than contracting chicken pox without the vaccine?

It's kind of like wearing a seatbelt while driving a car. Same counter-arguments get used too. It doesn't change the scientific reality that belt enforcement saves more lives than not having belt enforcement.

That's rewriting history. The anti-vaccine movement was specifically against MMR, following the publishing of a (since redacted) paper showing a link between MMR and autism. Not only was the paper redacted, the research was proven to be flawed and then re-done properly to show that there is zero correlation. That's the ONLY autism-related vaccine issue that's ever been raised.

There are other (past and present) vaccines which do have potential side effects; these are generally understood and considered to be worth the risk. Usually it's a case of allergic reaction to the suspension that the vaccine is in, and is tied to the person taking it.

Vaccines are not all safe, but herd protection is generally safer for the population at large than unchecked infections. "Dead" vaccines are generally safe, other than the possibility of your body rejecting the vaccine itself.

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/...

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.

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.