But what happens when you hit 2 of the surrounding buttons? Or one alpabetic button and a one numeric button. This mistake could happen if you were trying to hit the letter or the number, so there is no real smarts that could be added to the device to make it "forgiving" to these types of mistakes. So, without using the device I will still have concerns about how easy it is to mash the wrong button combinations.
The letters are raised and the numbers are recessed, so presumably it would be hard to accidently press a number plus a letter if you were trying to hit just the letter. So I think that any time you hit a number, all letter keys should be ignored. It should assume that you were going for the number, and ignore any letter keys that you also hit by accident.
Here's the original Slashdot article from last year. It sounded like a brilliant idea to me at the time, I was wondering if they were getting anywhere...
Biometrics are essentially useless for over-the-net identity verification because you have no way of knowing whether the equipment on the other end has been tampered with. There might be no retinal scanner there at all -- just software that pretends there is one and feeds you faked up scans.
Maybe I missed something... don't passwords have this same problem? They're not any worse than passwords in this area, plus they have the advantage that you don't have to memorize anything, and nobody can "guess" your "password".
The disadvantages are that you can't change your "password", and potentially large number of false identification (which you say won't improve, but who knows...)
Biometrics certainly doesn't seem totally useless for authentication over the net to me...
No, but it's naive. People are dying, so let's require that their medicines are affordable. It makes you feel good by fixing the current problem, but totally ignores the long-term consequences of this short-term fix. Forcing companies to make their drugs cheap now means less drug discovery in the future. MORE people will die, not less.
Slashdot Mirror
But what happens when you hit 2 of the surrounding buttons? Or one alpabetic button and a one numeric button. This mistake could happen if you were trying to hit the letter or the number, so there is no real smarts that could be added to the device to make it "forgiving" to these types of mistakes. So, without using the device I will still have concerns about how easy it is to mash the wrong button combinations.
The letters are raised and the numbers are recessed, so presumably it would be hard to accidently press a number plus a letter if you were trying to hit just the letter. So I think that any time you hit a number, all letter keys should be ignored. It should assume that you were going for the number, and ignore any letter keys that you also hit by accident.
Here's the original Slashdot article from last year. It sounded like a brilliant idea to me at the time, I was wondering if they were getting anywhere...
Biometrics are essentially useless for over-the-net identity verification because you have no way of knowing whether the equipment on the other end has been tampered with. There might be no retinal scanner there at all -- just software that pretends there is one and feeds you faked up scans.
Maybe I missed something... don't passwords have this same problem? They're not any worse than passwords in this area, plus they have the advantage that you don't have to memorize anything, and nobody can "guess" your "password".
The disadvantages are that you can't change your "password", and potentially large number of false identification (which you say won't improve, but who knows...)
Biometrics certainly doesn't seem totally useless for authentication over the net to me...
This article says that in 1950, 35% of people lacked "full indoor plumbing", not 50%.
No, but it's naive. People are dying, so let's require that their medicines are affordable. It makes you feel good by fixing the current problem, but totally ignores the long-term consequences of this short-term fix. Forcing companies to make their drugs cheap now means less drug discovery in the future. MORE people will die, not less.