Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!hpfcso!hpfcdj!myers
From: myers@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Bob Myers)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: credit-card encoding (was Re: Wiegand wires?)
Message-ID: <17660118@hpfcdj.HP.COM>
Date: 28 Sep 90 17:45:22 GMT
References: <1990Sep25.153854.2812@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: Hewlett Packard -- Fort Collins, CO
Lines: 25

>|Yeah, or didja ever stay at a hotel that has those new magnetic-card-reader
>|locks?  Ever try to explain to the front desk clerk that your card won't work
>|anymore, because you spent the day at a monitor manufacturer and had occasion
>
>Far more effective to just tell them their darn locks are broken
>and you can't get into the room you paid money for.
>
>Why assume any responsibility for it?

Well, the full story is that the hotel in question had some sort of reader
at the front desk, to confirm that a given "key" was properly programmed for
a given room.  The clerk was a bit surprised when the key he'd given me
just that morning turned out not only to not match my room, but to be
completely BLANK!  (He had, of course, confirmed the key before giving it
to me earlier.)

>Phil Ngai, phil@amd.com		{uunet,decwrl,ucbvax}!amdcad!phil
>Freedom is dead, long live privacy!

There's a difference?


Bob Myers  KC0EW   HP Graphics Tech. Div.|  Opinions expressed here are not
                   Ft. Collins, Colorado |  those of my employer or any other
myers@fc.hp.com                          |  sentient life-form on this planet.