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Submission + - Hilton Plans Phone-based Check-in and Room Access

GTRacer writes: Forbes reports that Hilton Worldwide, international hotel operator, is rolling out smartphone-based guest tools allowing self-service check-in, access to a virtual floorplan to select a room, and (in 2015) actual door access once checked in. The author states the drive for this technology is the growing influence of the swelling ranks of Millennials, who "[...] have a very strong inclination toward automated and self-service customer service." The security risks seem obvious though "Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts [is] working on using the same, or a similar, system soon–and Four Seasons is nothing if not secure and discreet."

Comment Re:Anti-piracy (Score 1) 234

Given Zaphod's massive ego, bolstered by the Total Perspective Vortex proclaiming him the center of the Universe, I'd say the zed's are for his three arms?

I mean, what are the odds two earthlings and two Betelgeusians would meet not once but twice in an interstellar backwater only to go off on an adventure spanning time and space? At least as big as Zaphod's ego anyway...

Comment Re:If you tried fixing that you did it wrong (Score 1) 128

Why would you slap a single line atop someone's letter and send the entire thing back?

Because we can and bytes are cheap? Hiya! I promise I'm not trying to start a religious war over top-versus-bottom posting or the like, but I'm genuinely curious:

I save all emails. Always have. I can usually find a thread easily enough, but there are times when multiple people are in a thread and the subject gets manually mangled, so Outlook won't incorporate those in its "conversation" search. So having the whole thread, TOP-POSTED, makes it simple to quickly review what was said about whatever we were discussing. As long as the email client clearly marks each message's beginning, how hard is it to read the top one and only scan down if needed?

That said, I'm all for stripping out inline images on reply, and if the topic shifts I have no problem [snip] -ping out the completed thread to make room for the new one. Or if an email thread goes marathon and bounces more than like 10 times...

Comment Re:well (Score 1) 128

I'm going to give s.petry the benefit of the doubt here and assume their systems are tightly locked down and they have various antivirus / tripwire / ip rules in place. That said:

If someone got phished leading to trojan installation, *BAM* alerts go off in the NOC. If phishing led to credential leakage, eventual usage of the credentials by the outside attackers would set off alarms in the NOC, assuming we aren't dealing with valid external staff. If phishing led to credit card / invoicing info loss, unauthorized purchases would set off alerts in Finance.

This also assumes an environment where credentials are not shared (the norm everywhere I've ever worked and none of those were DoD postings). It also assumes that pretty much anything of power is tied 1:1 to a person so any kind of abuse (use off-hours or in excess of limits, etc.) would be detectable.

Comment Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument (Score 1) 67

Hi Bill! First, I want to thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me! Second, I promise I'm not trying to be thick. I believe in my position and am using this back-and-to to clarify and refine my thoughts.

As to Aereo, I thought the core issue came down to the public performance threshold. Multicasting is in effect, a public performance, right? Requiring cumpulsory licensing?

If Aereo truly is private performance, bolstered by previously-approved technical measures like remote DVR, I don't get the issue other than the broadcasters aren't getting paid for something they have to give away already.

Comment Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument (Score 1) 67

The original purpose of a cable TV system was to provide reception of OTA broadcasts to areas [...]

I get this part. But the difference I see is that the CATV operator is taking a good OTA signal and MULTICASTING that signal to whomever wants to tune to that channel out of the total channels in the pipe. Aereo is NOT multicasting - they're maintaining a one-to-one relationship between a received OTA signal and the user tuned to it. Only one channel's signal is in Aereo's feed to the customer at any given time. Unicast, as it were.

Again, they do the same sort of thing a CATV does, but by aggregating several discrete receptions across several discrete connections. This to my IANAL eyes is why Aereo should have been allowed to continue until someone changed laws regarding OTA reception and access.

Comment Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument (Score 1) 67

I'll be honest here - I didn't read the "Cablevision" decision validating third-party DVR operation on the behalf of a customer. But what it says to me is that Aereo is taking a legal, single OTA broadcast reception, storing it in a third-party DVR and making it available to a customer who is already entitled to that OTA broadcast by being in-market.

I *still* don't see how any of what they did violated the LETTER of the law. And as Number 1.0 said, technically correct is the best kind of correct.

Maybe what I need to see is this clarified: Could I, as a New Yorker, rent a rooftop in the city, put up an antenna and run a wire to my ground floor apartment several blocks over? If the answer is yes, then why can't Aereo do the same thing on my behalf? Where does it say I have to OWN the antenna and transmission medium versus RENT?

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