Abstract: A safe method for fingerprint payment, in which no card or password is needed, and the applying of the customer's finger is witnessed by an authorized cashier. For each particular payment, both the customer's fingerprint and the cashier's fingerprint are scanned in real-time, and are sent to the server side together with related payment information; the payment is allowed to accomplish if and only if both fingerprints match their pre-collected counterparts in server side databases. In this process, the cashier plays a role resembling to a public notary or an eye-witness.

Abstract: A method and related input/output devices for using biased 2 digit "hybrid radix" numeric fields for inputting, generating, storing, processing, and outputting year numbers ranging from 1900 to 2059 in a data processing system. In a hybrid radix 2 digit year number, the higher digit is treated as hexadecimal, but displayed in a decimal-like style with font patterns such as 0-9 and '0-'5, while the lower digit is treated as ordinary decimal, so that the year 1900 is represented and processed as 00 while the year 2000 as '00. For applications written with high level languages such as COBOL and SQL, the method can be embodied solely in the system side (compiler, other system software and/or hardware), and so that no change other than a re-compilation with a new compiler is needed for existing application software. Compatibility with existing data files and databases is automatically maintained.