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An ID Number for Everything
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...."
It has been shown that IPv6 will provide 4 IP numbers per square centimetre of space on earth. That should be enough to cover all products. My proposal would be to make the UPC the same as a IPv6 number, and then make the barcode show the item's IPv6 address. Network configuration would be simplified - just scan the barcode - and the item wouldn't need a UPC *and* a IPv6. They would be the same. That would simplify marketing and tracking as well, items such as coke cans and underwar could simply be ping:ed on the net. No need to bother with those RFID tags.
Sure, for a while. Back in the 70's, I'm sure they figured that 12-bit barcodes were plenty. According to the article, they're now starting to run out.
It's called thinking ahead: Design a system that will last at least twice as long as you think you'll need. Yeah, 64 bits is incredibly huge. They're talking about serializing every product made by every company with a unique id. So say we plan on it lasting 100 years. That's still like 184,400,000,000,000,000 unique id numbers, per year (64bit). Actually, that does seem pretty damn excessive.
But who knows - maybe there will be other uses for this space as well. Using a few bits to encode sizing/weight information, color, hazards, if it's flamable, disposal instructions, etc, to allow simpler devices to read it without having to link to a database somewhere. A good example of this is the licence scanners some bars use: they swipe your drivers licence, and it shows the info encoded on the card, and they compare it against the info printed on the card. It doesn't link back to a database to verify anything, its just a simple device to help prevent fake id's. Same sort of thing could apply here for shipping purposes, and probably lots of other things, too.
It's a lot easier to just use 96 bits now, than switching to 64 now, and then having to switch to 96 again in a few (or many) years.
Speak before you think