Hardware That Recognizes You

Amit Upadhyay writes "Gizmodo is reporting about extra funding for smart guns at NJIT. Few have qualms about it, mostly on the line of: would optical sensor for finger prints work when the hand is soaked with blood? Would you get time to enter the override code in an emergency? But if we remove speculative emergency situations, the technology seems to be interesting. While checking out Fingkey Hamster what struck me was, this is one passkey I will not mind publishing on my webpage, and it can't be cracked, unless hardware tampering takes place. Kind of thing that you can put in all the car ignitions and lockers where password entry using keyboard can become too obtrusive."

Bogus.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already been well-covered that fingerprint-based biometric solutions all fail in the face of some guy with a jello model of someone's fingerprint. Pretty pathetic in terms of security if you ask me.

On another note, Trollaxor has returned to Slashdot and has posted sdem's interview with him [slashdot.org].

Various OS my fingkey!!

[lNxUnDeRdOg]

The specs on this things say it support "various OS"...what is various by only M$ OS'? That's pretty lame...

Re:How about your partner?

[bje2]

if you read the story...

"By using a series of sensors along the grip, the gun can determine who is holding it and can even support multiple users."

Smart Holsters!

[Zobeid]

A few years ago, a prototype of a smart holster was shown -- it wouldn't let you draw the gun from it unless it recognized your fingerprints. Although this wasn't perfect, it seemed very promising, and it seems like an idea that many people would find more acceptable than smart guns.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BTT/is _151_25/ai_70380673 [findarticles.com]

Smart guns conjure up a lot of fears from gun owners. There's a fear that "smart" technology might be required on new guns. There's a fear that they might be too expensive, or unreliable (batteries gone dead), or that it might be possible to disable them remotely with something like EMP. Don't laugh, it's already possible to stop many motor vehicles this way.

Smart holsters could provide practically all of the same benefits without all the associated fear.

Re:The problem with biometrics

[JesseL]

Refutation [guncite.com]. I'd like to know how you can tell when an intruder intends to just steal your DVD player, rather than kill you and rape your wife and daughter.

Re:Over-engineered solution to a non-problem

[The Only Druid]

Yeah, except Thoreau was totally wrong. The mistake occurs at the point where you say "[the law abiding] don't need to be coerced to do good". That's just wrong. There are plenty of situations where the laws exist to essentially inform the good-intentioned of how they're going to have to behave to do good. The simple example is the complexity of contract law, which provides people with instructions on entering an enforceable contract [while uneducated laymen would generally fail to write enforceable documents]. Other examples include laws which require things like taxes [which good people may not want to pay, but sitll need to].

The better way to understand what Thoreau is saying is to view it in terms of the Aristotilian division of types of men: Angelic men (i.e. those whose impulses are to do only good, and whose reasons for acting are to do only good) don't need laws. Temperate men (i.e. those whose impulses are to do some bad things, but whose reason overwhelms it and means they still do only good) need laws to help them perform that reasoning. Intemperate men (i.e. those whose impulses are to do some bad things and whose reason fails to keep them from doing at least some of those bad things) need laws to help them try to do good, even if they fail. Bestial men (i.e. those who have bad impulses and bad deeds, with no attempt to do otherwise) don't need law, since they don't care.

Re:The problem with biometrics

[wa5ter]

I've been mugged loads of times, and so far I haven't been murdered. I used to live in Nottingham, high gun crime for the uk. Nonetheless, we got 20 or so muggings a night in the city. Roughly 1 murder a month. Almost all of the murders involved firearms. Your average criminal can persuade himself that mugging some wealthy students is ok. It takes someone pretty diseased to thing killing someone for a wallet is ok. Statistics back this up. So your point is just paranoid bullshit.

Re:Ring lock

[pete-classic]

Can you cite a source for that?

I believe that this stat only holds if you count suicides.

-Peter

Re:The problem with biometrics

[Graff]

If someone breaks into my house, going after them with a gun does not seem like an intelligent option. In fact it seems like an incredibly stupid option, and one likely to incite violence.

Of course it is going to incite violence! That's what the gun is for!

If you have a gun you're just inviting people to try and shoot you first.

If a criminal knows that a house has a gun then they are more likely to look for another target. If they think that there is a good chance that robbing a place will get themselves shot then they are going to look for another line of work.

When you say 'take direct action and neutralize the threat', do you actually mean 'get into a firefight with a criminal'? Or do you just mean 'brandish the gun in a frightening way'?

Never, ever ever ever, take a gun out and brandish it. That's just the absolute dumbest thing to do. That's like the movies where the criminal mastermind ties someone up and then uses some complicated way to kill them, giving the victim a chance to get away.

If you pull out a gun, use it. Don't brandish it, don't shoot to warn, don't shoot to maim, SHOOT TO KILL! If you were in enough fear for your life to pull out the gun then shoot. If you are not going to shoot then leave the gun where it was, hesitation just gives the criminal a chance to kill you first. When facing a gun a criminal's fear for his own life will probably push him to violence much more readily than he would have originally. Don't let him have the chance, if he has a weapon and you think that your life is in danger then grab the gun and shoot him. Aim for the upper chest, it's a bigger target than the head and less protected. A hit there is more likely to stop him than a hit anywhere else.

If you can't be sure that you will shoot to kill when you need to then don't bother even buying a gun. Part of gun ownership is the willingness to use it. The other part of the gun is responsible ownership. Train to use it, keep it maintained, always know where it is and its status (loaded, round chambered, etc), keep it handy, and take all possible precautions against someone using it without your consent.

Responsible, trained, conscientious gun owners are not a problem. The problem with guns are with the sloppy, untrained, careless gun owners and the criminals who use guns. Banning guns is not a solution either. Unless you can be 100% certain that criminals can't get guns then by banning them all you are assuring is that honest citizens don't have guns. The criminals will always be able to find a gun somehow, somewhere.

Re:The problem with biometrics

[Monf]

Now suppose you are responsible for several small children. What do you do now, genius?

I don't have a gun in the house - statistics overwhelmingly show that a gun is far more likely to kill a household member or a friend than a criminal. 43 times more likely (of course we can all get whatever statistic we want depending on whether we go to a right-winged or left-winged site - this ones from http://www.essays.cc/free_essays/d5/arn109.shtml [essays.cc])

The problem with guns is that you don't have a chance to burn off the rage before a bullet does its job, or we underestimate the ability of kids to pick a lock or find a gun...

While I might feel safer if I had a gun around, 43-1 odds that I would kill someone (or myself) either accidentally or in the heat of emotion who WASN'T a criminal are a little too long for me.

Yeah, everyones gonna scream "those are the irresponsible ones" or "i took a gun safety class", but so did a lot of the people in the above statistic.

maybe i'll get a taser or pepper-pellet paintball gun, or tranquilizer darts, or napalm, or sarin, or vx....

I agree with the 2nd amendment, you know, right to bear arms, state militia... etc... So, everyone who wants to own a gun should be required to join their state's national guard...

With weapons you mentioned, I'd probably put the guy down before I'd kill him ('cept the arrow and the knife)

Now suppose you are responsible for several small children. What do you do now, genius?

If I have guns, I'd do everything I could to make sure they couldn't accidentally discharge them - biometrics, if it works, trigger locks, pin codes - Whatever it takes....

Re:The problem with biometrics

[badmammajamma]

Whoa there cowboy! You better check what state you live in because in most states they require you to be "in fear for your life" before you blow the guy's head off. A person merely being in your house doesn't count because otherwise you could just shoot anybody in your house whether they are threatening or not. They have to be armed and dangerous, and your assumption of armed and dangerous won't help you when they throw your ass in jail for murder.