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Acer Laptop W/Fingerprint Recognition System
Dekaner writes "Acer has announced the TravelMate 740 with a built-in fingerprint recognition security system. The fingerprint sensor is part of the notebook? s palm rest. Users must train the recognition system, which is then used to boot the machine or to decrypt files stored on the hard disk. The TravelMate has a 1.2 GHz Pentium III processor, a 15-inch screen with a resolution of 1400 by 1050 pixels, built in 56K modem and Ethernet connection, and it can be supplied with either 128 or 256 MB of memory. It can be configured with a second hard disk, CD-ROM, DVD, or a DVD-CD-RW drive. It will go on sale in October."
If there is one thing I learned from 'Demoliton Man' with Rocky^H^H^H^H^HSylvester Stallone is that Wesley Snipes will come and cut parts of your body off if he needs them badly enough.
Don't keep data on this thing that's worth dismemberment, because scary terrorist-types will cut your fingers off.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Yeah, but according to the new crypto laws you'll have to cut off your pinkies and give 'em to the FBI to keep in "finger escrow."
This could've been a Seinfeld Episode:
George inherits this laptop, only to find it's fingerprint protected, so at the funeral, he tries to sneak it up to the corpse to get the print...
Yadda yadda yadda....
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
You can have my laptop when you pry it out of my cold-dead-er-nevermind.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
After doing some research, I recommended to my girlfriend that she buy an Acer laptop. The reasons were simple - it had a modem, ethernet, and wireless ethernet built in, it had a large 14" screen, and it was only 5.2 pounds with the dvd drive installed, 4.5 without, and came installed with Windows 2000.
And without Windows 2000 installed it was only 1 pound right?
I doubt Red Dwarf was the first show to use it, but they were much funnier about it....
They come upon a door.
KRYTEN: Uh-oh, a door. We'd better use an air vent.
LISTER: No need.
KRYTEN: Sir?
LISTER: Look, I'm gonna do something now, Kryten, that's totally, totally
gross. I don't want you to look. Turn around.
KRYTEN: What?
LISTER: Trust me, you don't wanna know!
KRYTEN reluctantly turns around. LISTER pulls the object he picked up
earlier out of his jacket: it's a hand. He presses the severed hand to
the palm-print device, and the door opens. He puts the hand back in his
jacket and turns around. KRYTEN has a sick look of realization on his
face.
KRYTEN: Logically, sir, there is only one way you could have possibly
have opened that door. I feel quite nauseous. Where is it?
LISTER: Where's what?
KRYTEN: Oh, sir!! You've got it in your jacket!!
LISTER: I got us out of the hold, didn't I?
KRYTEN: Sir, you are sick! You are a sick, sick person! How can you
possibly even conceive of such an idea?
LISTER: Cheer up! Or I'll beat you to death with the wet end!
KRYTEN: Sir, if mechanoids could barf, I'd be onto my fifth bag by now.
You're a sick person! Sick! Sick!
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Geez... Shortly after I started playing around with Apple's Voice Recognition login, I lost my voice. That kind of thing always happens to me... I don't even want to think of what would happen if I started using one of these...
It's easier to detect the authenticity of a finger than one might think.
After being unable to activate my touchpad with anything other than my finger, my curiosity had been captured. After a great deal of experimentation, and actually getting 5 other engineers running around looking for something to fool the touchpad, we finally resorted to technical support. Here was my letter:
I have a prosthetic limb which I am unable to use
the synaptics touchpad with. I am unaware of the type of touch sensing it uses, and have been unsuccessful in my attempts to 'simulate' a fingertip on my prosthesis.
I even bought a rubber hand and cut the finger off
and stuck it to my prosthesis, but to no avail.
I have also tried heating the prosthesis to my body temperature.
The pad works fine for the other engineers in the
group with real fingers, so I don't believe there is a problem with the pad itself.
Do you have any suggestions for a tip I can use to
properly activate the touchpad?
If not, do you plan on releasing something I would
be able to activate
with a prosthesis?
And their reply was:
Hi Chris,
Unfortunately, as you have discovered, our touchpad uses finger-sensing technology. Basically, the touchpad determines that a touch is made through the capacitance of the human body.
I'm very sorry to say that we cannot recommend a
product you can use to activate it at this time.
Best regards,
So what have we learned other than how fun messing with tech support can be? Even a heated pulsing finger isn't going to work if the electrical properties aren't right. Capacitance is a tough thing to trick. Try putting probe leads on two parts of a finger, and plot the voltage / current patterns. Very, very difficult to duplicate.
Of course, medical science will always find a way to stick severed fingers on hands, and we know that your average bin Laden follower won't scoff at the replacement of one of his fingers with a victims...
I apparently forgot that sig != uptime...
Train it to recognize your toe prints. They change less than your finger prints, and anyone who would steal your foot will have to smell it all day.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.