Biometrics may not be secrets, but if you can keep a biometric secret, then it is much harder to forge. This property is what confuses people and leads to inappropriate applications. Unfortunately, it is very hard to keep a biometric a secret. The obvious example is that someone breaks into the system and downloads everyone's biometrics. However, a digital repository is not required: fingerprints can be lifted from a glass you were holding, your face can be surreptitiously photographed etc... (Even your iris could probably be secretly reproduced if you could be convinced to look into something like a specially-designed telescope or take a picture with a digital camera that is designed to image your iris as well as perform its primary function).
If the use of biometrics ever becomes widespread, I am sure that all of the above will attempted to some degree. The solution is that there must be a trusted person present to ensure that the biometric is measured properly - that the person is using their own fingerprint, is not using a tape-recorded voice, is not wearing special contact lenses etc... This would make forging a biometric much more difficult (similar to having to sign your name in the presence of a witness as opposed to photocopying it)
The upshot of all this is that it is not so important that someone steals your biometric. It is how the biometric is measured that is the determining factor. Therefore, the inability to keep biometrics secret should not a major impediment to their widespread use.
One problem I see with this system (and all similar systems) is the amount of drug that it can hold. While drug dosages can vary from micrograms to grams, most drug dosages are measured in milligrams. Even for a relatively low-dose medicine of 10 mg/day, that would mean that the device would have to hold 3-4 grams for a year's supply (which is probably much more that the thing can hold at only 1 cm long). And most people would probably not want to have an implantable chip changed every year! For the vast majority of current medications this thing will be useless. It also has other problems: How do you change the dose? What if you are admitted to a hospital and you blood pressure is low so you need to stop your anti-hypertensives? Many elderly patients are also on 10-20 medications. Do anyone really think that any of them would go for 20 implants? This device will not end up being very useful.
Viruses are not only more likely to be written for popular operating systems, but they are also more likely to spread. If only a few people in the world ran Linux, then they would be unlikely to know one another and be unlikely to spread the virus to one another. This is analagous to "herd immunity" where you are unlikely to catch a disease if most of the people around you are immunized against it. I imagine most virus writers are interested in how far their virus can spread and don't want to deal with this potential obstacle.
I think that we have to remember that computing is still in its early childhood; Eventually software will become more secure. People often state that software is becoming less secure, but one has to remember that today's software is exposed to many more challenges and malicious influences than software 5 or 10 years ago. There are a finite amount of vulnerabilities in code. Once software is "mature" and no longer has new versions coming out every few years, those vulnerabilities will start to disappear. After the same piece of software has been in use for 20 or 50 years, then I suspect it will be quite secure.
I do recognize that there will always be a human factor providing insecurity. The human factor, however, will not be the fault of the software.
As a doctor freqently involved with transplant patients, I will try to address a few of the issues that have been brought up:
Currently the US uses an opt-in system for organ donation. However, an opt-out system is being considered in which you will be considered an organ donor unless you specifically request no to be. This is already used in a number of countries.
In some countries, organ swapping is common (20% of kidney tranplantations in S. Korea for example). Say you want to donate a kidney to your brother but you are the wrong blood type. Somewhere else, a mother wants to donate a kidney to her daughter but she is also the wrong blood type. Therefore you donate a kidney to her daughter, she donates a kidney to your brother. This is not done in the U.S. because the programs that looked into it found a legal quagmire.
Refusing to be an organ donor because you are afraid that someone will be less enthusiastic about saving your life is a misguided notion that is causing many people to go on suffering needlessly while they wait for organs. The reasons for this are many:
- your doctor probably rarely even thinks about transplantation in the course of his/her daily work. So much so, that the last state I practiced in had laws requiring that doctors notify UNOS (united network for organ sharing) if they believe that one of their patients is going to die. Doctors just weren't doing it and organs were going unharvested.
- even if your organs are harvested, then they go to UNOS to be distributed. Your doctor has no say in who gets your organs and probably will never even know. (so much for a doctor thinking, "if I let this person die, I can take his organs for this other patient down the hall...")
- it is unlikely your doctor knows your organ donation status. (I honestly don't know if it is even listed in a patient's medical chart as I have never looked for it.)
- even if you are donor and your doctor was aware, it is likely that your family will refuse to let you donate your organs after you die. (no one will harvest your organs without your family's permission and many families are too distraught at this time to consider something like that)
- if you are every severely ill, I think you will find that the efforts to save you will meet and probably exceed your expectations. Think about having a hard plastic tube in your throat, another tube or two down your nose, being tied down in bed unable to move for months on end while drifting in and out of consciousness and unable to tell people you are hungry or thirsty or in pain. Not having anything to do except listen to the television if someone thinks to turn it on. Meanwhile not knowing whether you are dying or getting better, having painful procedure performed, etc... As doctors we try to minimize the discomforts and fears, but knowing how hard it can be to control a person's pain even if they are awake and talking, I am sure that we are inadequate. Having seen the hundreds of thousands of dollars we spending to keep 90-year-olds with terminal metastatic cancer alive for a few more weeks, I have absolutely confidence that no one (in the US) is being allowed to die to harvest their organs.
My point was that even if they sold a million songs a day, it would not even come close to repacing the income of a $50 billion dollar industry. Moreover, it is unlikely to EVER replace the income of this industry because people are now buying music for about 10% of what they paid before. The records companies might be satisfied with this if they think it is the best they can do, but I imagine they will resist it as long as they can...
Okay, I guess over a million songs is pretty good for a new service on an obscure platform (apple:-) However, that's still only a million dollars. I thought that the recording industry was something like a 40-50 billion dollar industry. How much money would a service like this need to make because the RIAA would adopt this business strategy across the board? People used to pay $20 for a CD with 1 or 2 good songs on it, now they will pay $1-2. How can the recording industry avoid losing 80% of their income? (Until that question is answered, I don't think we will see this widely adopted.)
The reason that AOTC opened in so few theaters is that Lucas hand-picked the theaters that he would allow to show it. He only picked theaters that met his technical specifications for sound etc...
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Computers already beat humanS. There seems to be only only one human (singular) left that they cannot beat reliably.
Biometrics may not be secrets, but if you can keep a biometric secret, then it is much harder to forge. This property is what confuses people and leads to inappropriate applications. Unfortunately, it is very hard to keep a biometric a secret. The obvious example is that someone breaks into the system and downloads everyone's biometrics. However, a digital repository is not required: fingerprints can be lifted from a glass you were holding, your face can be surreptitiously photographed etc... (Even your iris could probably be secretly reproduced if you could be convinced to look into something like a specially-designed telescope or take a picture with a digital camera that is designed to image your iris as well as perform its primary function).
If the use of biometrics ever becomes widespread, I am sure that all of the above will attempted to some degree. The solution is that there must be a trusted person present to ensure that the biometric is measured properly - that the person is using their own fingerprint, is not using a tape-recorded voice, is not wearing special contact lenses etc... This would make forging a biometric much more difficult (similar to having to sign your name in the presence of a witness as opposed to photocopying it)
The upshot of all this is that it is not so important that someone steals your biometric. It is how the biometric is measured that is the determining factor. Therefore, the inability to keep biometrics secret should not a major impediment to their widespread use.
One problem I see with this system (and all similar systems) is the amount of drug that it can hold. While drug dosages can vary from micrograms to grams, most drug dosages are measured in milligrams. Even for a relatively low-dose medicine of 10 mg/day, that would mean that the device would have to hold 3-4 grams for a year's supply (which is probably much more that the thing can hold at only 1 cm long). And most people would probably not want to have an implantable chip changed every year! For the vast majority of current medications this thing will be useless. It also has other problems: How do you change the dose? What if you are admitted to a hospital and you blood pressure is low so you need to stop your anti-hypertensives? Many elderly patients are also on 10-20 medications. Do anyone really think that any of them would go for 20 implants? This device will not end up being very useful.
Viruses are not only more likely to be written for popular operating systems, but they are also more likely to spread. If only a few people in the world ran Linux, then they would be unlikely to know one another and be unlikely to spread the virus to one another. This is analagous to "herd immunity" where you are unlikely to catch a disease if most of the people around you are immunized against it. I imagine most virus writers are interested in how far their virus can spread and don't want to deal with this potential obstacle.
I think that we have to remember that computing is still in its early childhood; Eventually software will become more secure. People often state that software is becoming less secure, but one has to remember that today's software is exposed to many more challenges and malicious influences than software 5 or 10 years ago. There are a finite amount of vulnerabilities in code. Once software is "mature" and no longer has new versions coming out every few years, those vulnerabilities will start to disappear. After the same piece of software has been in use for 20 or 50 years, then I suspect it will be quite secure. I do recognize that there will always be a human factor providing insecurity. The human factor, however, will not be the fault of the software.
As a doctor freqently involved with transplant patients, I will try to address a few of the issues that have been brought up: Currently the US uses an opt-in system for organ donation. However, an opt-out system is being considered in which you will be considered an organ donor unless you specifically request no to be. This is already used in a number of countries. In some countries, organ swapping is common (20% of kidney tranplantations in S. Korea for example). Say you want to donate a kidney to your brother but you are the wrong blood type. Somewhere else, a mother wants to donate a kidney to her daughter but she is also the wrong blood type. Therefore you donate a kidney to her daughter, she donates a kidney to your brother. This is not done in the U.S. because the programs that looked into it found a legal quagmire. Refusing to be an organ donor because you are afraid that someone will be less enthusiastic about saving your life is a misguided notion that is causing many people to go on suffering needlessly while they wait for organs. The reasons for this are many: - your doctor probably rarely even thinks about transplantation in the course of his/her daily work. So much so, that the last state I practiced in had laws requiring that doctors notify UNOS (united network for organ sharing) if they believe that one of their patients is going to die. Doctors just weren't doing it and organs were going unharvested. - even if your organs are harvested, then they go to UNOS to be distributed. Your doctor has no say in who gets your organs and probably will never even know. (so much for a doctor thinking, "if I let this person die, I can take his organs for this other patient down the hall...") - it is unlikely your doctor knows your organ donation status. (I honestly don't know if it is even listed in a patient's medical chart as I have never looked for it.) - even if you are donor and your doctor was aware, it is likely that your family will refuse to let you donate your organs after you die. (no one will harvest your organs without your family's permission and many families are too distraught at this time to consider something like that) - if you are every severely ill, I think you will find that the efforts to save you will meet and probably exceed your expectations. Think about having a hard plastic tube in your throat, another tube or two down your nose, being tied down in bed unable to move for months on end while drifting in and out of consciousness and unable to tell people you are hungry or thirsty or in pain. Not having anything to do except listen to the television if someone thinks to turn it on. Meanwhile not knowing whether you are dying or getting better, having painful procedure performed, etc... As doctors we try to minimize the discomforts and fears, but knowing how hard it can be to control a person's pain even if they are awake and talking, I am sure that we are inadequate. Having seen the hundreds of thousands of dollars we spending to keep 90-year-olds with terminal metastatic cancer alive for a few more weeks, I have absolutely confidence that no one (in the US) is being allowed to die to harvest their organs.
My point was that even if they sold a million songs a day, it would not even come close to repacing the income of a $50 billion dollar industry. Moreover, it is unlikely to EVER replace the income of this industry because people are now buying music for about 10% of what they paid before. The records companies might be satisfied with this if they think it is the best they can do, but I imagine they will resist it as long as they can...
Okay, I guess over a million songs is pretty good for a new service on an obscure platform (apple :-) However, that's still only a million dollars. I thought that the recording industry was something like a 40-50 billion dollar industry. How much money would a service like this need to make because the RIAA would adopt this business strategy across the board? People used to pay $20 for a CD with 1 or 2 good songs on it, now they will pay $1-2. How can the recording industry avoid losing 80% of their income? (Until that question is answered, I don't think we will see this widely adopted.)
The reason that AOTC opened in so few theaters is that Lucas hand-picked the theaters that he would allow to show it. He only picked theaters that met his technical specifications for sound etc...