The concept of a biometric gun ala Judge Dredd is not a bad idea for law enforcement.
Things that would be useful:
* A gun that stores or broadcasts GPS coordinates of each shot fired. Makes post incident investigation easier.
* Biometric access to the gun. Fingerprints perhaps are a bad idea though, dirt being a prevalent problem. But what ever method chosen, it would be a good idea for the gun to recognize anyone on the force, or at least on each particular assignment. Solves the "my partner is down and my gun is damaged" scenario.
* Clear tagging of bullets by gun. Makes post incident investigation easier.
* The camera probably should be "on the officer" and not on his gun, and should probably upload it's data via wireless, rather than recording locally, otherwise the bad guy will just destroy the camera after killing the officer, or the officer would destroy it to CYA.
In regards to posters of the opinion that trusting your arse to one of these is crazy, it might break. I wouldn't trust any gun, technologically advanced or not, if it hasn't been field proven and heavily tested. There is no reason why a gun like this can't be brought to a high level of reliability, although we may not be technically capable of it yet.
Slashdot Mirror
The concept of a biometric gun ala Judge Dredd is not a bad idea for law enforcement.
Things that would be useful:
* A gun that stores or broadcasts GPS coordinates of each shot fired. Makes post incident investigation easier.
* Biometric access to the gun. Fingerprints perhaps are a bad idea though, dirt being a prevalent problem. But what ever method chosen, it would be a good idea for the gun to recognize anyone on the force, or at least on each particular assignment. Solves the "my partner is down and my gun is damaged" scenario.
* Clear tagging of bullets by gun. Makes post incident investigation easier.
* The camera probably should be "on the officer" and not on his gun, and should probably upload it's data via wireless, rather than recording locally, otherwise the bad guy will just destroy the camera after killing the officer, or the officer would destroy it to CYA.
In regards to posters of the opinion that trusting your arse to one of these is crazy, it might break. I wouldn't trust any gun, technologically advanced or not, if it hasn't been field proven and heavily tested. There is no reason why a gun like this can't be brought to a high level of reliability, although we may not be technically capable of it yet.
It could simply mean some level of cacheing, and yes more dependency on RAM and longer load times.
They may simply borrow many of the methods used in the Xbox.
HD based state and temporary data storage, everything else either on the CD/DVD or in RAM.
-mike
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I miss good old Clausewitzian warfare