re: risks of personalized guns

  The article talks about fingerprint recognition, etc.  At that point
we're getting into fairly sophisticated computer processing, and have to
deal with false positives and false negatives.  I.e. failing by allowing
someone else to fire the gun, and failing to fire for the owner.  There
seems to be an indication that neither will happen - yet these are
common computer problems.

  Problems of convincing a gun to fire in a crisis, even if one is
wearing gloves or has dirty hands (e.g. with blood and mud on them) are
not easy to solve. What if the battery runs down? Difficulties such as
these, and more, have made police object to having this technology
required for their use.  E.g. see
http://www.etherzone.com/2003/lang051203.shtml

  For a more far-out presentation of the undesireability of complicated
gun interfaces, see: http://www.angelfire.com/comics/pinton/gun.html :-)

--henry schaffer
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