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Barcodes: The Number of the Beast
Boomzilla continues: Barcodes were first developed in the railroad business to keep track of which cars went with which engine. The barcodes were imprinted on the side of the railway cars. The barcodes on each car could then be read together to compile information on that particular grouping; what station they came from, where they were headed, etc. thus automating the process of marshalling. When the business world realized how well this system worked, these railway barcodes evolved into the UPC system with which we are all familiar. To really be able to take in the wonder that are bar codes, check out the excellent FAQ created by Russ Adams and an article from the BBC.
Coming full circle, the clever folks at Bekonscot Model Railway in the UK have utilized barcodes at every turn of their expansive system. For example, an MP3 player is driven off barcodes attached to trains. The trains are announced before they arrive and when they are leaving, stating their destination, route and at what stations they will call.
Want a barcode of your name?
Bill Gate's picture were made of barcodes from products Micro$oft 'destroyed' through illegal competition. I'm sure there are plenty of them ;)
I got a big tattoo of my SSN in barcode format right on my forehead.
That way people know who I am.
It is unclear from any of those links if this makes me cool or not.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Barcodes: The Number of the Beast
It never occurred to me that Satan might be living in my UPC symbols. Now I need a priest to accompany me to the grocery store.
The coolest voice ever.
This reminds me of a recent escapade that my good friend Julius and I recently blundered through. Our favorite magazine is "Club", a prestigious journalistic wonderworld of intelligence and quality. We decided to have the barcode for that magizine tatoo'd onto our male members. Painful, yet oddly spiritual.
So exactly what does that bar code on the back on my neck mean? I had it scanned at the grocery store, it seems I'm cheap and can be bought for $6.66
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
what does it mean for a person to be able to read and write in user group world, without being able to execute?
rw-rw-rw-Andy Deck has reinvented classic literature with Bardcode
Did anyone else read that as Andy Dick? I thought the only things andy dick did was get naked and fall down a lot.
If you do nothing else, be sure to raise the hair on the heads of these unsuspecting Russian artists as they see the traffic on their server spike beyond reason or expectation...
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Then there would be a chip inside the cat, that belongs to the Chip inside the Cat.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
...with the recruitment policy of our local hardware superstore.
:
B&Q is a large DIY chain in the UK. They might be in the US, I don't know. They have a policy of only employing people over 95 years of age.
So you get to the checkout with your self install kitchen. A little old 97 year old lady has now got to try and
a) locate the barcode on each item of your self-install kitchen, containing many items that are several orders of magnitude BIGGER THAN SHE IS.
b) having located the barcode, get her scanner to it.
but here you go:
Microsoft's latest wall poster
No, I don't remember who sent it to me. And I'm turning off the webserver in half an hour so I can go back to getting real work done, so somebody mirror the damn thing and stop hammering my home DSL. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
The 555 explanation comes about from illiterate, non-mathematical posters who don't realize that UPC barcodes aren't binary. If you look at the actual coding scheme, the bit sequence "101" actually *does* appear in the encoding for the number 6 (and 2,3,4,7, and 9). But you will not find "101" in the encoding for 5 on either side.
According to most slashdot posters: MSFT
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
Sally: How'd your research go?
Harry: Great. I was at the grocery store and... watch this: [holds up a can of corn] fat skinny skinny fat fat skinny fat skinny... $2.49. I cracked the bar code!
Sally: Good work!
c-hack.com |
Yup! Ain't it grand?? With RFID, even your competitors will know your inventory!!!
I love innovation.
Don't forget what'll happen if you try to transfer the support contract to another owner. You'll end up paying for a service that you'll never recieve.