Biometrics come to lunch lady land
By Evan Blass 
posted Sep 5th 2006 1:37PM
posted Sep 5th 2006 1:37PM
Since today's children will inevitably grow up to be tomorrow's criminals, what better way to get their fingerprints on file than by using biometrics as a payment method for those delicious, nutritious school lunches? Lunch has certainly gotten a lot more high-tech since the days when we were students (you used to be able to fill up on Tastycakes and chips -- no MealPayPlus to ruin your atrocious dietary regimen), and now one school district in Georgia has taken it to next level by installing print scanners that allow students to instantly put meals on their growing tabs. Apparently the Rome City Schools have already had a PIN-based payment system in place for some time now, but as second grader Adrianna Harris opined, "The finger's better because all you've got to do is put your finger in, and you don't have to do the number and get mixed up." Good point, Adrianna, although with calculators already having taken away our adeptness at simple arithmetic and cellphones making it increasingly impossible to remember anyone's phone number, this new method seems like it might hinder yet another valuable life skill: the ability to properly operate an ATM. Still, we're all for technology making the lunch line move faster, but paranoid parents looking to keep their progeny "off the grid" will probably want to start packing bagged meals from now on -- along with keeping their disappointed kids as far away from Disneyworld as possible.
can you imagine how disgusting that finger scanner could be at the end of the day? hundreds of kids sticking their finger on that thing...
What about that fat kid eating the cheatos , licks his fingers and then wants to go and wash it all down with a mountain dew.
Just think of how disgusting these things are going to be; if I have kid's it's all about prep or home schooling
At least bullies will have to work harder to get someones lunch. Now they have to cut off a finger...
And I thought metal detectors in schools were bad...
Looks like brown bag for little John Connor.
seem cool for kids :D
Doesn't matter if the bully cuts of a finger if they use Live Finger Detection!
See here for more on LFD - http://www.biometrics.co.uk/archives/68
This is cool, but I agree the scanner may get grubby ;)