Many Biometric security systems are used to grant restricted access to certain resources. This paper presents a biometric system for automatic vending machines. It ensures that products submitted to legal restrictions are only sold to authorized purchasers. Making use of an identity card, the system checks if the purchaser verifies all the restrictions to authorize the product sale. No special ...

The conventional wisdom is that indirect network effects, unlike direct network effects, do not give rise to externalities. In this paper we show that under very general conditions, indirect network effects lead to adoption externalities. In particular we show that in markets where consumption benefits arise from hardware/software systems, adoption externalities will occur when there are (i) in...

In this paper, we describe the Software Tag which makes software development visible to software purchasers (users). A software tag is a partial set of empirical data about a software development project shared between the purchaser and developer. The purchaser uses the software tag to evaluate the software project, allowing them to recognize the quality level of the processes and products invo...

In a typical purchasing situation, the issues of price, lot sizing, etc, usually are settled through negotiations between the purchaser and the vendor. Depending on the existing balance of power, the end result of such a bargaining process may be a near-optimal or optimal ordering policy for one of the parties (placing the other in a position of significant disadvantage) or, sometimes, inoptima...