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An ID Number for Everything

Posted by michael on from the technology-is-not-neutral dept.

jon323456 writes "Put this in your privacy pipe and smoke it. According to news.com, MIT researchers have cooked up a new barcode that has enough dataspace to include a unique serial number for everything. And in combination with RFID tags...."

9 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. Applications in lost good recovery by GeckoFood · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, having a unique bar code could be very beneficial when recovering lost and stolen property. If everything is uniquely identified, and you have somehow recorded your id codes for certain things that are of some value (either real value or sentimental), this could potentially aid in goods recovery. Granted, it could be taken to absurd extremes, but for more important items (artwork, computers, rare books, etc), this could be invaluable.

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    1. Re:Applications in lost good recovery by jaxle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A lot of products already have this don't they? Like computers have unique serial numbers etc. Besides, whats to stop the criminal from removing it?

    2. Re:Applications in lost good recovery by putaro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Pieces of fine art and rare books are not enhanced by slapping a bar code label on them.

    3. Re:Applications in lost good recovery by tomzyk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      this could potentially aid in goods recovery.

      Um, I'm gonna say "not bloody well likely" to that. A few years ago when my car got broken into, my cellphone, digital camera, PDA and CD player were all stolen. They all had serial numbers, which I had documented, and I gave the info to the police. What happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just because it has a unique ID labelled on it (whether it's a number or a barcode or a hologram or anything else!), doesn't mean you can recover it any easier.

      Hell, doesn't pretty much everything have a serial number now anyways? Yeah, so what if my couch might have the same serial number as my computer monitor; I'm still not going to confuse the two.

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    4. Re:Applications in lost good recovery by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, the advantages do not outweigh the scary possibilities of this scheme. Imagine receiving the following in the post:

      You, person #825765.983.9782.2987634 have hereby been fined $500 for littering. Coke can #178246.886.1235.783553 was found on 29-8-2005 in an area not sanctioned for waste disposal. Bank and customer records show that you purchased the aforementioned can, therefor the fine is yours. This fine can not be contested as our Object Tracking Database is infallible. Have a nice day.

      Never mind that some homeless guy fished your can out of the trash and dropped it later.

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      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  2. IPv6? by achurch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why not just give every item an IPv6 address? Assign the UCC a /16 for merchandise and you've got 2^112 == 5e33 possible codes. The IPv6 folks are going on and on about giving everything an IP address--wouldn't this be a perfect application?

  3. Re:An ID on every car axle? by avalys · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There will be a huge fight against these in terms of the privacy issues -- tracking cars, for example.

    Yeah, imagine how awful it would be if every car had a unique identifier associated with it. You could be identified wherever you go by anyone with access to the right equipment.

    Ever heard of a license plate?

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  4. Re:No more inventory counts by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Article states:
    "No more inventory counts. No more lost or misdirected shipments. No more guessing how much material is in the supply chain--or how much product is on the store shelves."
    Boy, these guys need to get into the real world. Stuff gets spoiled, damaged/dropped/spilled, eaten by rats, misfiled/misplaced, etc. Sure, you query the rdif tags, and they report back that you've got 6 cans of #2345 white paint in stock. Now you go to ship all 6, and find that 3 cans are leaking, 2 of the other cans are mislabeled, and the last one, someone's opened and "borrowed" the contents to repaint the john..

    You'll always have a need to do a physical audit.

  5. Re:96 bits??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thank heavens you aren't allocating bit-space then. Part of the power of what you think are excessively large address spaces comes from the fact that they stay sparsely populated (and the resultant ease with which you can perform classifications due to that sparseness).

    Example: IIRC there are less than 256 countries in the world. One possible IPv6 allocation is an 8-bit country code field embedded in the 128-bit address, leaving 120 bits for each country to address devices. And then in the US, for instance: 6 bits for the state field, 8 bits for the county field, 8 bits for the city field, still leaving 98 bits for addressing *per city*. A similar example holds for 96-bit barcodes.