fP-Tech's bio-metrics

[Fairlight]

Is it just me, or did Walter Vaughan say:
> 
> I don't know for a fact, but since fpGI runs on SCO-Unix and variants, I 
> am guessing that the hooks for this are built into the fpGI windows clients.

Yeah, but they specified ODBC.  And Nancy's reply doesn't address that
fact.  That or my interpretation of her post does not reveal to me her
addressing of the point.  Either way, if ODBC is required, and they're
saying, "Later on we'll support multiuser *nix," then in light of their
stance on ODBC for *nix, I'm making a semi-educated inference that you'd
-also- need a separate Windows machine just for the ODBC.  Which, to me,
doesn't equate with full *nix support.

> I just about coughed when I saw the price of $3995 for a single user 
> application that included the device, but it includes a copy of fpGI 
> server and a couple of GI-client licenses.

Yeah...lots of stuff in there.  And one wonders just how much is needed to
accomplish using such a thing in conjunction with fP.  I'm no expert on it,
but from what people have told me, it's probably not too far off doing
barcode or credit card scanner stuff.  In which case it seems...well, like
possibly an attempt to jump-start incoming revenue from the tertiary
products using this as a vehicle.

Hey, they need revenue as much as the next guy, so I'm not crying foul.
I'm just wondering how much of what they're citing is actually -necessary-
to do a scheme like that.  I have suspicions that it's a lot less.

> If I were Bob Rassmussen, I'd just add in API's from different finger 
> scanners (I found several online) and add it into AnzioWin and call it 
> AnzioWinID (whatever) and have a solution that doesn't require changes 
> to any code nor require fpGI.

That would be cooler indeed.  The lack of re-development is the big bonus
there.

> Make it no different than using a barcode wedge to input data into 
> filepro fields.

That's how I'm looking at it.

> If I had unlimited time, I'd get me one of those parallel port finger 
> scanners, and 'speriment. I bet it's not rocket science to read the 
> parallel port even from unix.

They're character device nodes.  What does that tell you? :) Open /dev/lp*
and start reading against the spec for whatever reader.

mark->
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