Scanning the veins in your hand; basically a 3-dimensional thermal map of the blood networks within.
Benefits of
1. Unique to every individual.
2. VERY difficult to duplicate.
The problem is that sometimes you don't actually want it to be truly unique per individual. The way things are today, if I'm not feeling well I can send my girlfriend to do some shopping, give her my bank card and tell her my PIN. The most she can rip me off for is £200 minus anything I may have already withdrawn that day, and as soon as I'm fit again I can change the number. And vice versa; if she's not well, she can temporarily authorise me to withdraw some money from her account (or at least she could, if she ever had any money in it). You can't do that with a hand scan. The nearest thing would be somehow to authorise my girlfriend's hand for a limited time, amount or number of transactions; which requires the co-operation of the bank and rather more talking than just hoarsely croaking "Get me some Benylin, darling. 2579".
Even if someone does cut off your hand, they would have to pump 37C fluid through it, this is a dead give away in public...picture guy with severed hand, a water heater, and a portable pump.
This is entirely feasible in the UK. You can drive down the road in a car with the alarm blaring and the most anybody will do is tut and express the wish that you could be a bit quieter. Criminals commit crimes right under the gaze of the ubiquitous CCTV cameras, then leg it before the police show up. Passers-by do not notice at all. There are several reasons for this: Firstly, an Englishman keeps his nose out of other people's business, and if someone else is doing something unusual they probably have a very good reason which is obviously none of your business, otherwise they would have told you about it. Secondly, the police are on a points-make-prizes system. They want to arrest someone and don't care whether that person is a suspect or an innocent witness.
If you're looking to clone the card using any readily-available blank smartcard, you should be aware that the chip on the card contains rather more information than just the card number. Also, the staff in the store may well notice that it's a plain white card without a bank logo on it.
If you want to do a "card not present" transaction, you need, in addition to the card number: Expiry date, invoice address (which does not have to be your home address, as long as there's a chain of contact that leads to you: you can apply for a card using the address of a friend or family member) and CVV2 number (which is on the back of the card). The PIN is the only thing you don't need!
Which sort of makes the case for a "duress PIN" which, when entered, allows you to withdraw money (maybe bring up a fake error message that you have only £50 -- or whatever the account holder's maximum liability in event of theft is; this guards neatly against the account holder withdrawing money themself with the duress PIN -- left of your daily spending limit) but also alerts the bank to the fact that it was used, photographs the user (if it's a HITW machine with a camera) and slaps an automatic trace on the card.
Many burglar alarm systems have something similar which cuts off any local bell boxes but not the remote monitoring service. (Unfortunately, the duress code is almost always the usual code with the units incremented, so a savvy criminal only has to enter "1233" if you said "1234". Most systems give 2 retries, so if 1234 really was the real code then entering 1233 would still be non-fatal; entering a wrong code usually even restarts the timer. One would hope for the banks not to fall into this trap.)
I think this is one of the reasons why those keypads at store tills where you enter your PIN are insecure. They could be made less insecure by having a touch screen with the digits displayed in a random arrangement each time (and one of the keys should be "re-randomise"). It's very easy to work out which keys a person is pressing (especially in the summer when sleeveless tops are common and you can see a person's tendons moving). At least if there were no correlation between key position and number entered, it wouldn't be as easy to get another person's PIN that way.
When you use a hole-in-the-wall machine, your body is blocking the view of the keypad and your arms are mostly inside the cavity, so this is much less of an issue.
How do I know? Because the exact same maths apply to a different domain, and we'd already have seen developments there if this was true.
Decompilation uses exactly the same abstract mathematical concepts as shape recognition (of which facial recognition clearly is a subset). Just replace "vertices" with assembly-language instructions and the "shapes" to which they may belong with program structures (for / while loops, subroutines &c).
If there was anything in this facial recognition malarkey, somebody would have created a working decompiler by now. That's just a simple application of the law of averages; there are many more hackers out there than there are biometrics researchers. And there's a huge application for a decompiler: the ability to decompile a program which originally was written in, say, Visual BASIC into C++ will mean that programmers can collaborate on a project without having to have a language in common (and, incidentally, it will also mean that Freedoms One and Three can be taken by force like Freedoms Zero and Two). So far, nobody has created such a thing.
It's snake oil, pure and simple.
Plus, I kind of like the extra security layer that I get by having different PINs for all my cards and different paswords for all my online accounts. If someone discovers, say, my Halifax PIN, they'll have to steal my Halifax card. But if they catch me on a day when I'm not carrying that one and steal my Lloyds TSB card or my Abbey National card instead, the Halifax PIN is useless to them (and while I'm sorting out blocking the stolen card, I can change the compromised PIN). Likewise, if someone discovers my Yahoo! Messenger password, they can't impersonate me on Slashdot.
Not only are BMWs all arse-end drive, they're fucking proud of it!
Let me give you a hint. If you pull something along from in front, it can only ever possibly come towards you. If you try to push something from behind, it's got a choice of just slightly less than 180 degrees' worth of directions to go in.
Oh, and BMW drivers are invariably prats who tailgate you for as long as possible, then overtake and cut you up.
If you want to invest in something, you could do a lot worse than fags. They go up every year. So what you do is you buy several truckloads, all duty-paid and above board, and you stash them away (with copies of all the relevant paperwork to prove to the relevant authorities that the duty really has been paid) in a nitrogen-filled underground vault (to prevent degradation). Then, when the street price has gone up enough to have made your nitro-flushed storage more than worthwhile, you unseal them and sell them. The Authorities have already had their cut, albeit awhile ago, so they have nothing to complain about.
I think the only thing that can go wrong with that scheme is a total smoking ban, but the government are still keen enough to rake in billions in nicotine-stained pound notes that this is unlikely. And the packaging will look wrong, but my experience suggests that most people are prepared to overlook that for the sake of a cheap smoke (and if they're really that shallow, then they can always transfer them to a more modern box; I've actually seen people stuffing imported Fortunas into Benson and Hedges boxes before).
Actually, the printing mechanism is almost the same. The big difference is how the image gets onto the drum. In a photocopier, light is reflected from the white parts of the paper onto the negatively-charged drum, where it displaces electrons; in a laser printer, a laser beam is used to remove charge selectively. In a photocopier, the toner is uncharged and sticks to the negatively-charged portions of the drum where light did not hit (corresponding to the black parts of the paper). In a laser printer, the toner is negatively-charged and sticks to the uncharged portions of the drum where the light did hit. The image is then transferred from the drum to the paper, and the paper passes a heating element (called the fuser) which melts the toner so it sticks to the paper. (If this isn't working, or in the course of resolving a jam a page is pulled out before being fused, a large amount of toner dust can be released. You have to wash it off with cold water. Hot water is hot enough to fuse it to your skin and clothes.)
About the only thing that has really changed over the years is the realisation that the drum does not have to hold a full page to print in a single turn. This has created portable machines.
Quick answer: It means someone is using a pirate copy of Microsoft Office.
Long answer: It's an abbreviation for "Paper Cassette: load US Letter (216x279) size paper". Only one country in the world actually uses this size paper; everybody else uses normal A4 paper (210x297). Microsoft Office has its own independent paper size and measuring unit settings, which are unaffected by the similar settings in Windows Control Panel. Pirate copies of Microsoft Office invariably are made from originals which were intended for sale in the USA, so will use US Letter paper and measurements in inches.
If you use a genuine copy of Office intended for sale in (and therefore localised to) your country, it will default to A4 and centimetres.
That's like the dodgy landlord who asked all prospective tenants if they smoked..... if you said "yes" he put you in a house with asbestos, and if you said "no" he put you in a house with a gas leak.
Even though I hate Windows, I hope that's not true.
Windows 2000 was supposed to have introduced a hardware abstraction layer (like the one in Solaris, which was so good even Linux ended up copying it). I can just about see the idea of Windows 2000 drivers working on XP, but '98 drivers? Not sure about that at all. Once you start allowing things to bypass the HAL, you sacrifice any advantages it afforded you in the first place.
Yes, but the power points could be on a coin-meter which would pay for your parking and your electricity in one go. You just put in enough coins to pay for the juice it's going to use while charging, and plug in your car.
There are a few details to work out, for sure; but first look to the campsite industry, where they probably already use something similar.
Maybe its nothing more than a test, a social experiment of sorts. A test, of how effectively they can rewrite history and how much the public will care.
You know..... I hadn't really thought about it in quite those terms, but you're spot-on. There are things that Word and Excel did in a really ugly way, and OpenOffice.org has slavishly copied them, rather than plough its own furrow. In effect they're saying "This is bollocks, but we have to do it because people like bollocks." You're right, nobody dares to be different anymore because there's this standard that they will be judged against; and however terrible it is, it's still the standard. The playground bully is by definition incapable of wearing bad shoes, because he'll beat you up if you so much as suggest that his shoes are anything shy of wonderful.
It might get interesting when KDE4 comes out. We're promised a native Windows version, which could be perceived as an upgrade path from XP, a kind of Vista-alternative. KOffice isn't afraid to take the path less trodden. If it's become a bit more usable by then, there's a real chance it could become popular. And as much as it galls me to say this, KDE on Windows will turn out to be a good thing for Linux. If anybody's going to be able to switch from Windows to Linux without noticing it, it'll be after they've been using KDE4 and all their favourite KDE applications on Windows for awhile. Wine also will have improved by then, to take care of the last inevitable vestiges of Windows-dependency.
When you want an Office suite, assuming you don't know about OpenOffice, you have four choices.
Buy MS Office for £500.
Buy Mom+Pop Soft CheapOffice for £50. Saving = £450.
Pirate MS Office. Saving = £500.
Pirate CheapOffice. Saving = £50.
The biggest saving is to be had by pirating MS Office, so that's what people will do. (Even if the honest ones buy CheapOffice to begin with, chances are that they'll eventually hit a snag with save-file incompatibilities and the disillusionment will persuade them to pirate MS Office. They've already been Good Citizens by supporting a small company; pirating MS Office won't undo the good they did by buying CheapOffice, will it? Mom+Pop Soft still have their money.)
The crazy part of all this is that Mom+Pop Soft can be forced out of business by piracy, without anybody ever having to pirate a single copy of CheapOffice!
No, not really, They had the technique down fairly well, to the point of being able to do several per night. Initial access is made on stilts, so as to avoid leaving a visible trail. To make the main circle, a pole is planted in the centre with a rope attached and the stalks flattened down using a roller (which needn't be big and heavy; the prototype was made from plastic water pipes. It's the back row of stalks that does the main work). Extensions are then added, as evidence that the circle was not created by a whirlwind or similar phenomenon and also to disguise any unwanted artefacts created during ingress. Pull out centre pole, stiltwalk out of cornfield, bored ? do another : go home.
Or how about: if you want to release your copyrighted works under anything more restrictive than a BSD-like licence (and there's a good case that withholding the Source Code could be construed as restrictive, since it prevents you from doing something for which you ostensibly have been given permission), you have to pay for the privilege -- and the cost of doing so increases geometrically over time?
Unfortunately, that's impossible. Not supremely difficult (like getting to the Moon), but mathematically impossible (like constructing a rectangle whose area is equal to that of a given circle using naught but ruler and compasses).
The problem is that there's no way for a computer to know whether any given use of a piece of software is legitimate or otherwise.
Two ways that you could come close would be: (1) Have a policeman and standing watching everyone as they use Microsoft Windows. (2) Encrypt every binary in a way which is tied to the actual processor on which it runs, so a copy won't run on any other machine.
Either way, the solution ends up costing more than the problem.
The problem is that a "generic" laptop, intended for customisation by resellers, would have only limited appeal. In these shallow times, image often counts for more than product quality -- witness the amount of spam advertising fake Rolex watches (or should that be \\atches?) Presumably, there are at least some people out there who'd rather have a watch that looks like the ones worn by dickheads, than one that keeps accurate time.
The manufacturers would be up against established players, who have the cash reserves to start selling their own machines below cost for just long enough to bankrupt the competition. Then, of course, they'd hike up their prices to recoup their losses with interest.
(As for the driver argument, there's a "simple" solution: Mandatory Full Disclosure -- i.e. make it illegal to sell any hardware at all, unless you provide all the relevant information to anyone wanting to write a driver for it. Unfortunately, it can only be made to work by means of legislation; which first requires a government who know exactly who they work for.)
Hence why Microsoft became so opposed to the OLPC idea the second they learned that it was to be based on i-tal software.
They only ever viewed "teaching a man to fish" as a means to sell expensive, proprietary bait and tackle. Once it became clear that Negroponte's vision explicitly included teaching a man where to dig for worms and how to select a suitable tree for making a fishing-rod, they cranked the scorn-pouring machine right up to 11.
And shooting heroin is a bad idea. Stick to Silver Surfing -- for one thing, you can bypass all sorts of risks associated with injections; and for another, it's much easier to regulate the dose you are getting. (Which doesn't mean you won't get addicted; but a £10 habit is easier to deal with than a £20 habit.) Plus, you get an extra stash for When Times Are Hard (TM).
Just make sure (1) to take the tube out of your mouth before you answer the door and (2) not to mistake it for a joint and try to light it.
I was talking to someone once about corn circles. She was convinced they were made by aliens. I pointed out that they all seemed to be within a few miles of a university, and asked her what she thought that suggested. Her suggestion: "That the aliens are seeking out places of learning, so that they can communicate with smart people?"
Years later, it was revealed that two men had been responsible for a large number of corn circles. One of the original pranksters (the other had tragically died in the meantime) revealed their methods for how they had produced their corn circles on a TV programme about hoaxes (including how they altered the designs from a simple circle when scientists suggested, with some plausibility, that freak whirlwinds may have been responsible for the phenomenon). There were still people who, after seeing this, professed that the other corn circles must have been made by aliens!
Once someone has a stupid idea in their head, it takes a lot of shifting.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're looking to clone the card using any readily-available blank smartcard, you should be aware that the chip on the card contains rather more information than just the card number. Also, the staff in the store may well notice that it's a plain white card without a bank logo on it.
If you want to do a "card not present" transaction, you need, in addition to the card number: Expiry date, invoice address (which does not have to be your home address, as long as there's a chain of contact that leads to you: you can apply for a card using the address of a friend or family member) and CVV2 number (which is on the back of the card). The PIN is the only thing you don't need!
Which sort of makes the case for a "duress PIN" which, when entered, allows you to withdraw money (maybe bring up a fake error message that you have only £50 -- or whatever the account holder's maximum liability in event of theft is; this guards neatly against the account holder withdrawing money themself with the duress PIN -- left of your daily spending limit) but also alerts the bank to the fact that it was used, photographs the user (if it's a HITW machine with a camera) and slaps an automatic trace on the card.
Many burglar alarm systems have something similar which cuts off any local bell boxes but not the remote monitoring service. (Unfortunately, the duress code is almost always the usual code with the units incremented, so a savvy criminal only has to enter "1233" if you said "1234". Most systems give 2 retries, so if 1234 really was the real code then entering 1233 would still be non-fatal; entering a wrong code usually even restarts the timer. One would hope for the banks not to fall into this trap.)
I think this is one of the reasons why those keypads at store tills where you enter your PIN are insecure. They could be made less insecure by having a touch screen with the digits displayed in a random arrangement each time (and one of the keys should be "re-randomise"). It's very easy to work out which keys a person is pressing (especially in the summer when sleeveless tops are common and you can see a person's tendons moving). At least if there were no correlation between key position and number entered, it wouldn't be as easy to get another person's PIN that way.
When you use a hole-in-the-wall machine, your body is blocking the view of the keypad and your arms are mostly inside the cavity, so this is much less of an issue.
It's bogus. I can say this with certainty.
How do I know? Because the exact same maths apply to a different domain, and we'd already have seen developments there if this was true.
Decompilation uses exactly the same abstract mathematical concepts as shape recognition (of which facial recognition clearly is a subset). Just replace "vertices" with assembly-language instructions and the "shapes" to which they may belong with program structures (for / while loops, subroutines &c).
If there was anything in this facial recognition malarkey, somebody would have created a working decompiler by now. That's just a simple application of the law of averages; there are many more hackers out there than there are biometrics researchers. And there's a huge application for a decompiler: the ability to decompile a program which originally was written in, say, Visual BASIC into C++ will mean that programmers can collaborate on a project without having to have a language in common (and, incidentally, it will also mean that Freedoms One and Three can be taken by force like Freedoms Zero and Two). So far, nobody has created such a thing.
It's snake oil, pure and simple.
Plus, I kind of like the extra security layer that I get by having different PINs for all my cards and different paswords for all my online accounts. If someone discovers, say, my Halifax PIN, they'll have to steal my Halifax card. But if they catch me on a day when I'm not carrying that one and steal my Lloyds TSB card or my Abbey National card instead, the Halifax PIN is useless to them (and while I'm sorting out blocking the stolen card, I can change the compromised PIN). Likewise, if someone discovers my Yahoo! Messenger password, they can't impersonate me on Slashdot.
Not only are BMWs all arse-end drive, they're fucking proud of it!
Let me give you a hint. If you pull something along from in front, it can only ever possibly come towards you. If you try to push something from behind, it's got a choice of just slightly less than 180 degrees' worth of directions to go in.
Oh, and BMW drivers are invariably prats who tailgate you for as long as possible, then overtake and cut you up.
If you can't even spell HIPAA then how can you possibly hope to be compliant with it?
If you want to invest in something, you could do a lot worse than fags. They go up every year. So what you do is you buy several truckloads, all duty-paid and above board, and you stash them away (with copies of all the relevant paperwork to prove to the relevant authorities that the duty really has been paid) in a nitrogen-filled underground vault (to prevent degradation). Then, when the street price has gone up enough to have made your nitro-flushed storage more than worthwhile, you unseal them and sell them. The Authorities have already had their cut, albeit awhile ago, so they have nothing to complain about.
I think the only thing that can go wrong with that scheme is a total smoking ban, but the government are still keen enough to rake in billions in nicotine-stained pound notes that this is unlikely. And the packaging will look wrong, but my experience suggests that most people are prepared to overlook that for the sake of a cheap smoke (and if they're really that shallow, then they can always transfer them to a more modern box; I've actually seen people stuffing imported Fortunas into Benson and Hedges boxes before).
It's bound to be worth something on eBay one day .....
Actually, the printing mechanism is almost the same. The big difference is how the image gets onto the drum. In a photocopier, light is reflected from the white parts of the paper onto the negatively-charged drum, where it displaces electrons; in a laser printer, a laser beam is used to remove charge selectively. In a photocopier, the toner is uncharged and sticks to the negatively-charged portions of the drum where light did not hit (corresponding to the black parts of the paper). In a laser printer, the toner is negatively-charged and sticks to the uncharged portions of the drum where the light did hit. The image is then transferred from the drum to the paper, and the paper passes a heating element (called the fuser) which melts the toner so it sticks to the paper. (If this isn't working, or in the course of resolving a jam a page is pulled out before being fused, a large amount of toner dust can be released. You have to wash it off with cold water. Hot water is hot enough to fuse it to your skin and clothes.)
About the only thing that has really changed over the years is the realisation that the drum does not have to hold a full page to print in a single turn. This has created portable machines.
Quick answer: It means someone is using a pirate copy of Microsoft Office.
Long answer: It's an abbreviation for "Paper Cassette: load US Letter (216x279) size paper". Only one country in the world actually uses this size paper; everybody else uses normal A4 paper (210x297). Microsoft Office has its own independent paper size and measuring unit settings, which are unaffected by the similar settings in Windows Control Panel. Pirate copies of Microsoft Office invariably are made from originals which were intended for sale in the USA, so will use US Letter paper and measurements in inches.
If you use a genuine copy of Office intended for sale in (and therefore localised to) your country, it will default to A4 and centimetres.
Pity, really. If they did, you could double the value of your clothes by standing next to one!
That's like the dodgy landlord who asked all prospective tenants if they smoked ..... if you said "yes" he put you in a house with asbestos, and if you said "no" he put you in a house with a gas leak.
Even though I hate Windows, I hope that's not true.
Windows 2000 was supposed to have introduced a hardware abstraction layer (like the one in Solaris, which was so good even Linux ended up copying it). I can just about see the idea of Windows 2000 drivers working on XP, but '98 drivers? Not sure about that at all. Once you start allowing things to bypass the HAL, you sacrifice any advantages it afforded you in the first place.
Yes, but the power points could be on a coin-meter which would pay for your parking and your electricity in one go. You just put in enough coins to pay for the juice it's going to use while charging, and plug in your car.
There are a few details to work out, for sure; but first look to the campsite industry, where they probably already use something similar.
You know ..... I hadn't really thought about it in quite those terms, but you're spot-on. There are things that Word and Excel did in a really ugly way, and OpenOffice.org has slavishly copied them, rather than plough its own furrow. In effect they're saying "This is bollocks, but we have to do it because people like bollocks." You're right, nobody dares to be different anymore because there's this standard that they will be judged against; and however terrible it is, it's still the standard. The playground bully is by definition incapable of wearing bad shoes, because he'll beat you up if you so much as suggest that his shoes are anything shy of wonderful.
It might get interesting when KDE4 comes out. We're promised a native Windows version, which could be perceived as an upgrade path from XP, a kind of Vista-alternative. KOffice isn't afraid to take the path less trodden. If it's become a bit more usable by then, there's a real chance it could become popular. And as much as it galls me to say this, KDE on Windows will turn out to be a good thing for Linux. If anybody's going to be able to switch from Windows to Linux without noticing it, it'll be after they've been using KDE4 and all their favourite KDE applications on Windows for awhile. Wine also will have improved by then, to take care of the last inevitable vestiges of Windows-dependency.
When you want an Office suite, assuming you don't know about OpenOffice, you have four choices.
- Buy MS Office for £500.
- Buy Mom+Pop Soft CheapOffice for £50. Saving = £450.
- Pirate MS Office. Saving = £500.
- Pirate CheapOffice. Saving = £50.
The biggest saving is to be had by pirating MS Office, so that's what people will do. (Even if the honest ones buy CheapOffice to begin with, chances are that they'll eventually hit a snag with save-file incompatibilities and the disillusionment will persuade them to pirate MS Office. They've already been Good Citizens by supporting a small company; pirating MS Office won't undo the good they did by buying CheapOffice, will it? Mom+Pop Soft still have their money.)The crazy part of all this is that Mom+Pop Soft can be forced out of business by piracy, without anybody ever having to pirate a single copy of CheapOffice!
No, not really, They had the technique down fairly well, to the point of being able to do several per night. Initial access is made on stilts, so as to avoid leaving a visible trail. To make the main circle, a pole is planted in the centre with a rope attached and the stalks flattened down using a roller (which needn't be big and heavy; the prototype was made from plastic water pipes. It's the back row of stalks that does the main work). Extensions are then added, as evidence that the circle was not created by a whirlwind or similar phenomenon and also to disguise any unwanted artefacts created during ingress. Pull out centre pole, stiltwalk out of cornfield, bored ? do another : go home.
Or how about: if you want to release your copyrighted works under anything more restrictive than a BSD-like licence (and there's a good case that withholding the Source Code could be construed as restrictive, since it prevents you from doing something for which you ostensibly have been given permission), you have to pay for the privilege -- and the cost of doing so increases geometrically over time?
Unfortunately, that's impossible. Not supremely difficult (like getting to the Moon), but mathematically impossible (like constructing a rectangle whose area is equal to that of a given circle using naught but ruler and compasses).
The problem is that there's no way for a computer to know whether any given use of a piece of software is legitimate or otherwise.
Two ways that you could come close would be: (1) Have a policeman and standing watching everyone as they use Microsoft Windows. (2) Encrypt every binary in a way which is tied to the actual processor on which it runs, so a copy won't run on any other machine.
Either way, the solution ends up costing more than the problem.
The problem is that a "generic" laptop, intended for customisation by resellers, would have only limited appeal. In these shallow times, image often counts for more than product quality -- witness the amount of spam advertising fake Rolex watches (or should that be \\atches?) Presumably, there are at least some people out there who'd rather have a watch that looks like the ones worn by dickheads, than one that keeps accurate time.
The manufacturers would be up against established players, who have the cash reserves to start selling their own machines below cost for just long enough to bankrupt the competition. Then, of course, they'd hike up their prices to recoup their losses with interest.
(As for the driver argument, there's a "simple" solution: Mandatory Full Disclosure -- i.e. make it illegal to sell any hardware at all, unless you provide all the relevant information to anyone wanting to write a driver for it. Unfortunately, it can only be made to work by means of legislation; which first requires a government who know exactly who they work for.)
Hence why Microsoft became so opposed to the OLPC idea the second they learned that it was to be based on i-tal software.
They only ever viewed "teaching a man to fish" as a means to sell expensive, proprietary bait and tackle. Once it became clear that Negroponte's vision explicitly included teaching a man where to dig for worms and how to select a suitable tree for making a fishing-rod, they cranked the scorn-pouring machine right up to 11.
And shooting heroin is a bad idea. Stick to Silver Surfing -- for one thing, you can bypass all sorts of risks associated with injections; and for another, it's much easier to regulate the dose you are getting. (Which doesn't mean you won't get addicted; but a £10 habit is easier to deal with than a £20 habit.) Plus, you get an extra stash for When Times Are Hard (TM).
Just make sure (1) to take the tube out of your mouth before you answer the door and (2) not to mistake it for a joint and try to light it.
I was talking to someone once about corn circles. She was convinced they were made by aliens. I pointed out that they all seemed to be within a few miles of a university, and asked her what she thought that suggested. Her suggestion: "That the aliens are seeking out places of learning, so that they can communicate with smart people?"
Years later, it was revealed that two men had been responsible for a large number of corn circles. One of the original pranksters (the other had tragically died in the meantime) revealed their methods for how they had produced their corn circles on a TV programme about hoaxes (including how they altered the designs from a simple circle when scientists suggested, with some plausibility, that freak whirlwinds may have been responsible for the phenomenon). There were still people who, after seeing this, professed that the other corn circles must have been made by aliens!
Once someone has a stupid idea in their head, it takes a lot of shifting.