posted 01-25-2010 01:33 AM                    

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Holiday Inn, operator of over 4,000 hotels worldwide, will begin to offer a free five-minute "human bed-warming service" at its London Kensington hotel throughout next week.

If requested, a willing member of hotel staff will jump in your bed, dressed head to foot in an all-in-one sleeper suit, until your nightly chamber warms up.

Holiday Inn spokeswoman Jane Bednall described the plan as something like having a "giant hot water bottle in your bed."

Dr Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, said the idea could help people get off to sleep, as cold beds inhibit slumber.

"Holiday Inn's new bed warmers service should help people achieve a good night's sleep especially as it's taking much longer for them to warm up when they come in from the snow."

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posted 02-19-2010 05:48 PM                    

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School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don't know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I'm getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students' clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.

Schools are in an absolute panic about kids divulging too much online, worried about pedos and marketers and embarrassing photos that will haunt you when you run for office or apply for a job in 10 years. They tell kids to treat their personal details as though they were precious.

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The Superintendant of the Lower Merion School District -- where parents have initiated a class action suit over the covert use of students' laptops to surveil them in school and at home -- has sent a letter to parents with more information about the spying. The school admits that there was spyware installed on students laptops that allowed for remote, covert activation of their webcams, but maintains that the measure was only to be used in the event of theft of the machine (some had speculated that the school was only able to surveil students' hard drives, and that the images of a student engaged in "misconduct" in his home that a vice-principal confronted the student with had been taken by the student, intentionally, and stored on the laptop's hard-drive, from which it was retrieved by the school administration -- this now seems not to have been the case). The school also claims that the system can only capture still images, not audio or video. They have disabled the system for now and deny that it was misused.

As a result of our preliminary review of security procedures today, I directed the following actions:
· Immediate disabling of the security-tracking program.
· A thorough review of the existing policies for student laptop use.
· A review of security procedures to help safeguard the protection of privacy; including a review of the instances in which the security software was activated. We want to ensure that any affected students and families are made aware of the outcome of laptop recovery investigations.
· A review of any other technology areas in which the intersection of privacy and security may come into play.

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posted 03-03-2010 12:35 PM                    

I don't care how cute you think your kids are, do not let them direct air traffic.

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Child Heard Directing Air Traffic at JFK Airport

NEW YORK -- The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether a child directed planes from Kennedy Airport's air traffic control tower.

A child's voice can be heard on a tape making five transmissions to pilots preparing for takeoff on Feb. 17. The recording was obtained by WFXT-TV in Boston.

In one exchange, the child can be heard saying, " JetBlue 171 contact departure."

A male voice in the tower says: "That's what you get, guys, when the kids are out of school."

The child later clears another plane for takeoff, and says, "Adios, amigo."

The FAA said in a statement: "Pending the outcome of our investigation, the employees involved in this incident are not controlling air traffic." It added: "This behavior is not acceptable."

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posted 03-04-2010 06:14 AM                   

quote: Paul Mayer

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And yes, that kid was not "controlling traffic" any more than your son is "driving" when he sits in your lap to steer the family car.

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