At 11:10 AM 4/9/96, jim bell wrote:

At 07:57 AM 4/9/96 -0500, Mike McNally wrote:

...

jamesd@echeque.com wrote:

...

There are supposedly some new techniques that look at the infrared signature of your face (like, I guess, distribution & position of hot & cold spots), and that's less likely to be fooled by facial hair and other superficial disguises. It's probably a fairly simple technology, and could be applied to the credit card ID problem.

I think this is based on looking at your face with near-infrared, not the medium and far (thermal) infrared. Near infrared is supposed to penetrate flesh far better, so your blood vessels are visible and form a pattern which can be recognized.

Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com

Jim, Where did you get your info? Near IR is around 1-1.5 microns, at these wavelengths, the body radiates very little energy. I think most of the systems you are discussing use mid (3-5) or long-wave (8-12) IR, where objects that are room to body temp radiate most of their energy. Clay --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clay Olbon II | Clay.Olbon@dynetics.com Systems Engineer | ph: (810) 589-9930 fax 9934 Dynetics, Inc., Ste 302 | http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html 550 Stephenson Hwy | PGP262 public key: finger olbon@mgr.dynetics.com Troy, MI 48083-1109 | pgp print: B97397AD50233C77523FD058BD1BB7C0 TANSTAAFL - Robert Heinlein, in various works ---------------------------------------------------------------------------