The above statement (parent), if true, is the most informative item I have read in this entire comment discussion.

People born on February 29th would have to wait a darn long time to drive or watch adult movies.

Things that are small enough will not arc or destruct. You'll notice that if you microwave a CD, it will arc and separate the foil down to a given size, and no smaller no matter how long you bombard it. A (house) fly in a microwave is too small as well. (Horseflies are SOL).

The chip itself is of course too small, but the radio antennas that actually allow it to operate as an RF tag are not. So now the question comes up: Is it possible to create an RF tag that works at a high enough frequency that the antenna can be small enough to evade 2.4 GHz?

How long before they lock out microwaves from starting up when it reads an RFID tag inside?

The next worry though that I have is that now I'm afraid to take my towel to the pool. Somebody can swap theirs for mine. I turn in theirs and they're good. They steal mine and I get charged.

"Okay, Jim... Be VERY careful edging up to that cliff drop. We need precision control... Don't go too far..."

*Bump*

"Woah!"

*Vrooooom! -KEE-RASH-*

"You know... It was bad enough when you bumped my arm when I was playing Super Monkey Balls..."

(* I'd love to see a robotic Mars rover that could go vrooom)

Broken nose... Lose fingers to a saw... go blind...

It simply stands as a standard that there is no standard that is 100% effective or unbreakable or loss-proof. Things can only be "More Secure" or "Less Secure". Generally the more secure they are, the easier it is to lose them as well.

The only major difference between passwords and biometrics is that one is knowledge-based and one is physical. Neither are fully secure. There is the difference between how easy it is to potentially steal or duplicate somebody's biometric signature versus how easy it is to steal or duplicate a password of similar relative "strength" in any given situation. Compare the process of stealing an 8-digit numeric key code versus duplicating somebody's fingerprint in a way that the scanner will recognize for example.

But with the low recognition rate, and the recommendation to use this as an additional layer of security, itreally is just that, an addition layer. Just like IP access lists. The duplicated fingerprint will do you no good as the nose knows!

So yeah, looks like they reach in but failed to pick a true winner (sorry). But as an extra layer of entropy, the speed makes it potentially more useful than face recognition, and due to the multiple angles and shadows, it doesn't suffer from "Photo in front of the camera" problems.

The "machine" in this case is the contrivance of the world by the writer. Thus it is a singular machine in all essence. Deus ex machina uses machina as opposed to machos, which is what it really should use.

Disclaimer: The use of parent as an example is in no way an attack on the author in any way. The author simply provided perfect fodder for this example.

Having written and published (badly) some stuff that could be considered "Sci Fi" by some folks, I will say my impression is that the critics are the real killers in this case. People who complain that it's "Not realistic enough" and "Breaks all the rules" are the folks who are killing the genre and the will of the writers in the genre.

Back in the old days of Sci Fi, we didn't have everybody and their brother who were "internet experts" on anything and everything. A concept could break ideas that the average person knew at that time and still be accepted, since the high end scientists learned more about these ideas and "rules" as we went forward in ways that made these outrageous concepts from Sci Fi a decade ago completely normal now. People enjoyed Star Trek because it was FUN. We didn't have a massive group of people who wanted... ahem... "...SCIENCE fiction, with emphasis on the science...". Sure, we don't have communicators that will chirp and allow an instant communication link from orbit, but current cell phones are pretty darn useful and a lot of them are very similar. So we end up with real things that are inspired by the outrageous things.

Improvements in technology and "Sci Fi" writing do go hand in hand, but the moment the writer gets slammed by 'edumacated' folks who seem to think that the scientific rules are a box to stay in and not inconveniences to find a solution around, they give up on these people and don't write.

This is a box. A person who thinks only this way will have zero success at furthering current technology. A person who sees the facts and rules above and then decides to figure out a way to make it work anyway is the person who will bring about great advances in Science Reality. Will they succeed at accomplishing that specific thing? Maybe. Probably not. But the work they do to try might just have some interesting side effects that are good.

The problem is that there are more and more people who can't think outside the box and slam Sci Fi writers who try to for not being realistic enough to today's box. Creative folks are not easy to come by (which is why copyright law is considered so important to try to help encourage creativity). Slam them and discourage them out of what they were doing and suddenly you've got the loss mentioned above.