Drugs and the physiological response - A peculiar effect

[Richi]

Recently a friend of mine bought a new computer with a fingerprint reader.

When he is sober and scans his finger, it has roughly a 75% success rate.

For those who haven't seen this new technology, the Dell XPS notebooks have fingerprint readers on the right hand side under they keyboard, and one scans their finger to logon. Almost instantly, a green check appears on screen and the computers logs in, otherwise a red X appears on screen saying the scanning failed, or other error message (too fast or too slow if you swipe your finger accordingly, or too short or too long if not enough or too much of your finger is scanned).

When I say 75%, I basically estimate an average. If he is in a rush, the scanning is more likely to be incorrect. However, he could scan his finger once and it would work 100% of the time if he took the time to do it right.

The peculiar effect is apparant when he is under the influence of a drug. Alcohol is known to slow and slurr body movements and speack patterns, so this was not a surprise when it took him a few tries to get it right, while he was drunk. More surprisingly is that he has a major difficulty in scanning his finger correctly under the influence of marijuana. Many times he gives up and logs in using his password, after 8 or 9 failed attempts.

I just found this interesting.. s'all....

Perhaps some more experimenting is in order, or a controlled experiment?

[elpatto]

Thats funny, maby like softening or temporary "bluntening" of the actual fingerprint if there is much heat, like associated with holding a lighter on for too long, or mayby tiny resin or fillers imbetween the actual fingerprints, from touching or rolling marijuana.

Also another thought, alot of these non-state-of-the-art fingerprint scanners rely on a pulse aswell, possibly the change in heart rate might influence this?

Mayby just different movement types under influence of different things, eg. ever hear a stoner tip-toe down the hall? Of course not.