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Implanted RFID Tag To Replace Cash?
Kulic writes "Wired is running a story about using subdermal RFID microchips to pay for goods. Applied Digital Solutions are marketing the VeriChip as the world's only implantable ID technology. CEO Scott Silverman says they could someday replace credit cards, but a final product is a few years away. They are also receiving condemnation from some fundamentalist Christians who believe that this is the fabled 'mark of the beast' of biblical lore." waytoomuchcoffee adds a link to a similar story at CNet.
This is not right. It violates privacy, integrity, and it makes me feel non-human.
Stop treating us like MACHINES and maybe people will start acting nicely again. I AM NOT A MACHINE.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
There is not any advanage to this unless you also believe that Home Land Secuirty is good for the country.
How is this better than biometrics?
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Microsoft doesn't get to make these 'implants'. The Service Packs, bug fixes and anti-virus updates would kill me!
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You can flip people off and then say, "No, I wasn't giving you the bird, I was buying a Coke."
removed by thieves to get the RFID?
Its kinda like the card in HongKong called octopus - http://www.mtr.com.hk/eng/train/octopus.html Which is used on the MTR and in shops and busses. Its great and a neat idea - you just wave your walet over the reader and thats it.
Is it a boat?
It does certainly bear similarities to said mark... I seem to recall that one had to had the mark to be able to buy goods.
Anyway, whether it's the mark of the beast or not, I'm not going to put such a chip on my body.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Gut reaction here says that someone, somewhere, would setup some means of remotely reading an RFID tag, hacking whatever PW/encryption is on it, and draining bank accounts. I could see it for small transactions, tolls, fast food, gas, etc. but would be leary about this sort of thing for all financial transactions.
Let's mandate RFID injections so we can end the /. bickering over "personal freedom" and get back to laughing at SCO and MS bashing. At least until that's illegal too.
It'll not happen in the US. Waaaaaaaay too many fundamentalist Christians about. I agree with them on this one, not because it's the mark of the beast, but because I don't like the idea of something in my body being money. I still like the cred' stick idea from Shardowrun. Anonymous, secure and very convenient. Near impossible to counterfeit and no money to print.
These devices used to be so big even goatse had trouble implanting one!
liqbase
Why not just put it in a watch or something?
Why is it that religion really brings out the nutcases. I hope that I can get one, just so I can wind the poor confused bastards up. What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon? ;)
I hope I don't go over my credit limit again, I don't want the bayliffs coming around and cutting ou t my credit tag.
;-( Maybe I can get a gold/platinum mark on my forehead????
And anther thing, how will will I show off my gold chip? Bye bye prestige
But seriously, who is going to want a microchip embedded in their body just for paying for stuff. Apart from the odd wierdo, most people get completely creeped out by this kind of thing. There will not be a market for this, and unless some sinister government thinks for soome reason that it's worth forcing its citizens to use this technology it's just not going to happen, because nobody will use it voluntarily. I'm sure there are serious uses for this kind of technology, but payment systems just aren't one of them.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
I don't think that people would adapt this. I extremely cash, because I can clearly see how much money I still have. When having the money "for real", I can somehow relate to it - it's touchable, countable, more than just a number on a display.
Electronic money - in whatever way, be it RFID tags or credit cards - just doesn't give me the same feeling.
The way I feel about money is also the way of many people that I know. So, what I have observed, people are generally quite conservative when it's about money, and so I don't think that RFID tags will be accepted as replacement for cash by the customers.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
if the Christian fundamentalists hate it...
I don't know about any "Mark of the Beast" but having a chip that anyone can track, that I can't just set down? Um, yeah. Uncomfortable with that. I think my personal habits are well enough documented by shadowy figures I am unaware of already, thankyouverymuch.
(Yes, Disney, Best Buy, etc. count as shadowy. Don't you agree?)
Mahnamahna!
...done that.
Lenina Huxley: That is correct, money is out-moded. All transactions are through code.
John Spartan: Alright, so he can't buy food or a place to stay for the night. And, it would be a waste of time to mug somebody. Unless he rips off somebody's hand, and let's hope he doesn't figure that one out.
~Philly
And people actually agreeing to have these things in them? These may work some day, but I can't see them actually being in common use at any point. One to put in the same file as flying cars and pill-food
For once I agree with the fundamentalist Christians. Cranial credit card implants? What next... usb hard drives in finger tips, infrared laser eye lense replacements, 5.1 audio augmentations, keyboard tattoed onto left forearm, plug-and-play genitals,...
All this mucking about with technology has got to stop, and I for one have started a new web site (easy payments via cranial credit cards accepted) to distribute a new "down with technology" flash cartoon.
Uhm. WTF are those people smoking, and can I have some, please?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Why is it that religion really brings out the nutcases.
Because religion is about belief; and being a nutcase is about deranged belief.
This is not to say that all religious belief is deranged; far from it. But nutcase belief often has something in common with religion. If I hear voices in my head, is it because of my deranged brain chemistry? Or because God is speaking to me? (Answer: God only knows.)
-kgj
-kgj
The talk about having a surgical RFID implant reminds me of some quasi-related advice I'd like to pass along. Don't EVER take your wife along when you see the doctor for a physical.
Doctor: I'm going to need some blood, a urine and stool sample and I'll need some sperm.
Me: Ummmm, okay.
Wife: Why don't you just give him your underwear?
16: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18: Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
Now why on earth would we worry. Strange that the text actually says in the hand or forehead, not on. I wish I could read the originals as they were written...
Why does everyone and their dog suddenly think RFID is the new sliced bread? Just because its new and it does something semi cool doesnt mean its suitable for every application. With this for example its totally unsuitable! Not only is your fucking credit card number or its alternative availiable for anyone in range to scan, but now you have a bloody tracking device attached to you hand. Where-ever you go and what ever you do, if your in range of a scanner then someones got you and yes they will pretty quickly tie that innocent number to your name - "hey bob, can you help me with this box" - afew seconds later bob's hand has been scanned from inside the box and his number is sold on the black market tied to his name and address. This is the stupidest thing ive seen in years, at the very least it must be controllable so you can disable it at will.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
... That'd bring a whole new meaning to "paying an arm and a leg" for something.
Can you imagine being robbed?!!!!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed, or numbered... my life is my own.
That sounds interesting.
;-)
It will probably make shoplifting impossible, combined with RFIDs on the products that could be stolen. The shoplifter sneaks out the store and hears a friendly spoken "Thank you for shopping with K-Mart!" message. D'oh!
I will go now and try to get one of the readers for those implanted RFIDs. Then I will place it on a busy street and bill every person only $9.99 that passes by to close to the reader
Does this mean when I get mugged they'll be taking body parts? :) Or that instead of people using the excuse "I left my wallet at home, can you cover the bill for me?" they'll be saying "I just had a really good loofah, can you cover the bill for me?"
It makes me a litle nervous - not quite for the privacy concerns many of the traditional tinfoil hat crowd will be worried about (which are not entirely non-valid concerns, but I don't see them as being quite as bad as they are often made out to be.) This concerns me because of the rise in things such as ATM and banking fees (Most major banks here in Canada recently started charging extra fees for using anything but their ATMS, and yanked their ATMs out of the convenience stores - conveniently leaving rebranded identical machines with a new no-name company listed on them in at least a few cases I can think of)
When you are RFID'd and if they manage to essentially change the monetary base to an electronic one, will this provide them with a monopoly (the banks) and allow them to raise service fees for electronic transactions - since you will not effectively have any other recourse?
Of course on the other hand - with rampant counterfeiting - this may be less of a choice and more of a necessity to move away from physical paper money that is relatively easily forged to a secure electronic transactional system.
Well, unless it's made by Diebold anyways.
But one thing is certain: the RF-ID chips will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new subdermal overlords ... and I'd like to remind them that as a fat person with lots of surface area, I can be helpful in persuading others to get the implants and toil in their underground shopping malls ....
-kgj
My wife used to work there. All this embedded-RFID stuff they are doing (this isn't their first attempt) really gets the loonies worked up. And a lot of the staff is pretty creeped out by it, too, truthfully. The sad part is they ditched several PROFITABLE lines of business to pursue this RFID stuff full-time. The only thing that has been paying off is embedded ID's for pets, and even that isn't doing so hot.
Nokia is doing trials with North European bank Nordea involving using an RFID tag embedded in a mobile phone cover for payment.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
>Or even nastier, finding someone with money to burn, kidnapping and or killing them and removing the chip
if you're prepared to injure or kill to steal money, then guess what? YOU CAN ALREADY DO THAT RIGHT NOW!!!!
I guess it gives new meaning to the phrase, "It cost me an arm and a leg".
This elimiates the anonymous purchase. No more slinking into the adult bookstore for that copy of "Wendy the Whip" Quarterly (or whatever) that is purchased with cash so it doesn't show up on your bank statement for your wife to see.
.
Seriously though, if you have absolute access to how someone spends their money, you essentially know everything about them. It becomes an extreme invasion of privacy making the technological hurdles somewhat minor in comparison to the social and political hurdles.
.
Regarding the mark of the beast; given that this is an implantable device, I can't help but find it interesting that the "number of the beast" is also the Unix mode number for universal device access. Don't know if that means anything, but it is an interesting coincidence.
.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I'm not sure which is more disturbing implanted RFID or agreeing with people whose best explination for the dinosaurs is some supposed reference to 'bohemoths'.
Or is it the Best Buy at Disney?
is good enough for me.
After all the thieves and hax0rs warRFID'ing in the mall, manufacturing new RFIDs and running up my credit with black market tags, my arm will look like swiss cheese from all the replacements.
If you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear citizen...
MUHAhahahahahahahahahaha.......
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Sounds good to me! As long as it works better than the "plug and play" in Windows 95! :)
Just my gives-a-new-meaning-to-plug-and-play's worth...
-RickTheWizKid
Just another example of people who think that just because something is technically possible and perhaps even practical in some cases, that is somehow automatically considered desireable.
Most people don't want this. Not now, probably not ever.
Credit cards have been around a long time too.. now wouldn't it be practical not to have to lug that heavy card around?
Why not have credit card numbers tattooed onto the card holder? That's been technically possible for a long time, and it could also be practical in some cases.
Would anyone suggest this? Why not? Same reasons.
Isn't referring to the Bible as a fable in a /. story just trolling the Christians?
Why do fundamentalist Christians have a problem with this? Every time one of the prophetic things come to pass, they're like, "my god, the number of the beast! Satan is among us! You cannot do this!!"
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Know Your Religion! Guess what guys? The New World Order and the anti-christ's coming are a bloody prerequisite for your savior's return. Remember that bible thing?
You guys should be cheering this stuff on.
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
I'm a firm believer that anything that sends those fucking Bible-thumping loonies into a tizzy is a good thing.
But I'm not crazy about the idea of being lojacked, because I can see the good old U.S. Government abusing such technology-- like making RFID implants mandatory for everyone, and sprinkling RFID readers all over the place, in every doorway, parking meter, fire hydrant, and other such everyday objects that people see so often they no longer even notice them.
~Philly
Ummmmm.....yeah, REAL hard for traditional thieves if you don't have a knife
And how long until they can stand in a theatre lobby, say, with a handheld scanner, screening for the "high-rollers", ready to call upon the aforementioned thugs to roll the targets for their tags? No more guessing how much money is in the targets wallet, only go for the sure-bets
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
...it would have to use Chaumian digital cash. Anonymous, untraceable.
I'd still be worried about muggers in the city cutting off my hand.
In Soviet US, thief cut hand off YOU!
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Right now, if a mugger wants my wallet he can just take it instead of having to carve it out of my body.
It's the same as unremovable transmitter bands for children -- ie a horrible idea. If you're dealing with someone who is willing to kill or maim you to get money, the last thing you want to do is give them a reason to have to do it.
This is common sense.
The enemies of Democracy are
If someone tries implanting a chip under your skin, cut off that body part.
While watching THE TERMINATOR my brother was joking about Reese passing his arm over the UPC scanner in a supermarket...
"Can I get a price check on one soldier?"
to bash "fundamentalist Christians"? If anyone made these same sorts of remarks about Buddhists lighting themselves on fire because of their beliefs, they certainly wouldn't be modded as +1 funny.
I know there are certain assumptions made about people branded with that title, but understand that there are PhD's in EE, CompSci, and other disciplines who are fundamentalists.
Do you even know what it means to be fundamentalist? Or do you just look at the nutcases and make assumptions about everyone under that label. You know, like "Boy that (race) guy sure went nuts. You really have to watch out for those (race) people".
It is politically, and ethically, incorrect to do this with race, it ought to be just as incorrect to do it with any religion.
I could rant about how stupid these things are, about all the security holes in the system, about all of the abuses, about the violation of rights, and on and on and on. Instead I'd just like to say that if it does somehow get rammed down our throats then I want chip number 666! Thankyou.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"...sufficiently dedicated thieves may try to slice the tags out of their victims."
I'm a Christian, and I say bring it on! A Christian shouldn't have anything to fear! Any "body mark" that could be a *requirement* for global commerce just means that the Bible's predictions are right and the Christian can rejoice that the end is near. Yay!
Again, why should I be afraid???
Just to be clear though, I'm not saying *I'm* going to *sign-up* for one.
2) Solves all those problems with the police tracking people.
3) The next step will be to require all aeroplane passengers to be chipped.
4) Isn't this the ultimate form of slavery to money?
The fact that Christian fundamentalists hate it or that I agree with them in this case *shutter*.
Those wacky polytheistic idol-worshipping Xtians (full disclosure: I'm Jewish) also believed that barcodes were the mark of the beast. (I guess the "beast" is one of their many, many false gods.) Here is one of many references about what xtians think UPC codes are.
Assuming these things are adopted, I see a few countermeasures to avoid being "read" by scammers or govt officials.
1. tin foil armband over the device to block reception/transmission of RFID bits.
2. removable bracelet with multiple dummy chips that confuses scanners with too many hits.
3. Scanner detector device that beeps when an RFID reader is in the neighborhood.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
is that if I'm mugged, it's at the mugger's discretion whether to let me walk away in one piece.
If this RFID thing were to replace cash, I'd have to worry about being cut up or killed, as the thief attempts to retrieve the tag, or kidnapped and coerced into paying for stuff.
To sum it up: with RFID, when the fool and his money are parted, so too are several of his fingers.
I've seen this one before. Except RFID tags were replaced by blue numeric tatoos, the picture was black and white, and the narration was in German.
----
Squirrel
Put it in a ring watch or other jewelry and have an easy way to faraday shield the chip built in to the peice and I'll think about it.
The danger is that they will be "voluntary", as in you don't have to have the chip, unless you want privileges like the freedom to travel, medical care, a bank account, a driver's license and a job.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I mean, really -- what's wrong with cash? Coins and bills have been around for a long long time, and have worked fine. Why tamper with a system that works? The systems not perfect, but it's not like I'm willing to give up my privacy and get chip implants because I can't sleep at night worrying about counterfeiters.
This is a non-issue, except that some desperate penny stock NEEDS to make it an issue in order to stay alive. I'll stick with cash, thankyouverymuch.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
OK so having not to carry cash around is nice in prinicpal. Same as not having to carry keys or a mobile but how far should this go? It should be my choice if I want to have some for of gadget that can handel all this. Peronally I would much rather see something like a medical bracelet which could be hard to get off (To stop theft). Prehaps have an unlocking device at home.
The basic thing is that it should be my choice of what I have on me and when. Ease of use in regard to my privacy. I think I know which camp I would sit in
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
While I quite like the idea of a "duress PIN", I have more than enough trouble remembering all my various PINs already, and particularly those that I don't use very often. Let's please not complicate matters by adding yet another one that I'll (hopefully) use so seldom that there is almost no chance I'll recall it in the kinds of circumstances you describe.
At least that's what it says on the schedule I've got.
Thank you! I've always felt the same way! I don't understand people sometimes. This is a *good* thing for Christians.
;)
I'm not saying that *I'm* going to signup for the thing, but, hey, it's a *good* sign of things to come!
I don't why Christians should condemn it, it will after all happen at some stage if you believe the Bible.
Just because it could now happen in their lifetime I don't see the problem. Heck the prophesies from the book of Revelation could start at anytime, so they'd better be ready. hmm maybe that's it...they haven't being doing what they can to live rightly before God and believe 'they' need more time, rather than relyig on God's timing and adjusting themselves to this.
Ohhhh.... Why did I sign up for instatrace?
1. Make portable RFID scanner
2. Walk down crowded street
3. ???
4. Profit!
Cash is king... always has been. always will be.
Credit and transactions that are completely executed in the digital relm are fundamentally evil because they are about reducing you're freedom.
Nevermind that funadamentalist christian crap.
I suppose it all boils down to just much control you're willing to hand over to the powers that be. Everyone assumes that complete transparency is a good thing (as some of the SiFi writer have written rosely about). The fact of the matter is that there is someone out there who thinks, you're not paying enough tax, or you're too sick to be in their healthcare system or you need to buy more of their brand-x product that you don't need... the list really is endless and their version of reality will be projected onto your life as some very basic fundamental level once completely digital transactions become ubiquitous.
Me? I'm completely for freedom as long as it doesn't infringe on my physical space and/or well-being. That means privacy. The privacy you need to smoke pot in the your own home. The privacy you need to buy your pain killers. The privacy you need to crack open a beer and watch the game while cooking burgers in the back yard (oh, wait, you don't need privacy to do that any more).
So, go ahead and get that implant. Opt-in for convience and good wholesome living that a proper citizen gives to society (or whatever bullshit help you to sleep at night). Just don't come crying to me when you're healthcare system ejects you because a routine lab test required for your driver's license flags you as having an expensive to treat disease.
Opt-in for freedom and just say "know" to tracking, demographics and the completely digital lifestyle.
What encryption? RFID as it stands has no challenge-response, it's just a static barcode readable by radio interference. When my number is stolen, do I get a new government-sponsored surgery to change numbers?
[
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed, or numbered... my life is my own."
:P
The italics part is the only part that holds a bit of truth in it...
The day you are born, you ARE pushed, then filed by your parents (birth certificate, which is... umm... stamped?), you are breiefed by the said parents (usually) until a certain age... the de-briefing part is usually done by your spouse each day you come from work (assuming you're a man)... and I won't even start talking about "numbered"...
Get back in line, number 7567610 !
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
You guys seem to be getting hung up on the money thing. The real issue here is identification.
Identity theft is a problem, as we all know. This is just another way to counter-act that.
I use an RF ID tag to buy gas now. The Mobil Speedpass is very handy. But easily stolen.
Easily stolen like your credit card, credit card number, password, ssn... etc etc.....
Instead of injecting technology into the human body, why don't we just apply the human body to technology as a means of identification?
Biometrics
Anyone remember Gattica?
Just imagine getting mugged...
"Don't try anything smart, we're just gonna cut that RFID out of you."
I'd rather have someone take my wallet.
...gangs getting in the business of cutting your fingers off your body?? I'd rather have my money picked out of my pockets than a piece of my body (or all my body)...
C'mon. You don't really believe that they would use this technology in a bad way do you?
it must be good if the Christian fundamentalists hate it
Yes, I know that the median Slashdot user is more much more liberal than the median devout Christian. On the other hand, I've observed that Slashdot users do seem to share quite a few hatreds with devout Christians. For example devout Christians hate murder, and devout Christians hate rape. Devout Christians hate The Walt Disney Company, admittedly for different reasons than Slashdotters do.
Anyone read Revelations from the Bible? It talks about such a thing as yet another sign of the end. I'm not going to run out and get myself a couple of boards with some shoulder straps and paint "THE END IS NEAR - REPENT" like the guy on Stephen King's "The Stand", but it is bad nonetheless. Leave it to our government to even consider it.
"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."
... and they don't take American Express...
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
First Hitler made all Jews wear badges and then they were required to have ID numbers tatooed on them so he could easily track them and send them to concentration camps and into the gas chambers.
We certainly do not want to pave the way for anything like. Let's stop Nazi tactics in its tracks before it is too late because you never know what type of government we will have in 10 years from now. Let's fight abuse of RFID tags and make it clear to those companies that we, the people, will not accept abuse of technology.
"time to call the doctor." Come on. They just set up a new translation table. Or you change your PIN.
PIN?
You damn right. It's sheerest folly to think I'm gonna let a vending machine nick me for a pop without entering a PIN. Security is something you possess and something you know. This is breaking the most fundamental (no pun intended) tenets of security based transactions.
Not to mention that I could be persuaded that The End Times Are Near as well, but I don't go into a Frothing Fit every time some invasion of privacy rears its ugly head.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Even if this were the most innocent use of technology today...
chipping yourself is not only placing trust in the powers that be, but in all future powers that be, that this technology would not be abused...
no thank you.. not now not ever.
Guilty conscience on their part, I suppose. When you've been yelling "only I truly know what Jesus wants, so do what I say", the last thing you want is the Son of God turning up and saying "Well, what I actually meant was..."
On a slightly less jocular note, the power over people that gives those Fundamentalists the power trip they crave relies on an (apparently) imminent apocalypse. Take the sense of impending doom away from their followers and you'll take away a fair portion of their power.
How rugged are these things? I would not like have one implanted every time I stand next to a radar gun. Or some joker decides it would be fun to spray a crowd with a HERF Gun
Yea, I got your money right here (grabbing crotch).
A goal is a dream with a deadline
The stock value of this company is down to something like 40 cents from the $14+ range and is going to be delisted. The market has ALREADY voted.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
ATM cards require confirmation in order to protect the contents of your bank account from someone who may have stolen or cloned your card. Credit Cards require a signature to ensure accountability and traceability. What do RFID tags do that makes them fundamentally secure?
Nothing, apparently. Not having to type in numbers or sign a receipt are touted as the advantages of the new system. Yet traditional cards could have easily forgone the secondary identification, simply by sacrificing the security we have come to expect.
By the proliferation of universal garage remotes out there, and RFID's lack of a challenge-response system, it's obvious that if you will be able to get within 3 feet of someone you can steal their identity without their knowledge. Without the secondary identification, the system is useless. With secondary identification, it's a credit card.
Furthermore, why implant? Everyone has to have their keys with them at all time... The speedpass route seems like the more intelligent and flexible way to go. Implanting could be convenient once all of the bugs are hammered out and it is accepted as a universal form of payment, but for a 1st generation technology likely to be upgraded quickly, why commit?
This reminds me a lot of the Dot Com days, when people attempted to sell anything that was possible, without even bothering to think if it should be done.
The ______ Agenda
honestly this just sounds like an end-run around mastercard/visa's payment monopoly (they were found guilty btw, it's not just an accusation).
if a new company owns an entirely new piece of hardware to facilitate purchases, then businesses must buy a new scanner to read it, and pay for a new service to verify transactions.
and of course this service provider can then parlay this into a new service for medical and financial centers, to ensure patron identity at time of service, and provide an ideal unique identifier for records management.
but that's why this sits opposed to a simple proposal to extend visa/mc by associating their RFID chip and a PIN to your existing credit account. that would doubtlessly be easier, but less profitable.
personally, i dont consider it any sort of an invasion of privacy, because it's an opt-in service. if you don't like it, you don't use it.
though one or two more 'incidents' on US soil, and I can easily see a certain liberty-leeching Ashcroft pushing for an 'update' to the Social Security and National ID Card systems to include this sort of technology.
but it's that kind of app that's an invasion of privacy, not an optional payment system.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
implanted Palm Reader, loosy bar and "old drunken pal" or "pretty underlighted hag" will be holding your hand all night long 8)
Also, a politician on campaigncould stike it big if he's well known ("Shake hands with your president/gvernor/sheriff, only 12$54+vat, direct transfer and offical, frame bound receipt for the home")
Missing Fingers also a must.
The problem with Auto-Micropayment is the confirmation you must give. say, as an additional code type in, to really confirm you wanna pay. wich I already do with my card, wich is already a chip. (EU 8p)
We don't need it. But the, cattle Herding on large areas need this to locate and track cattle; with a big receptor covering miles. Keep the industry concentrate on cattle. And remember your not a lamb.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
since everyone would have a unique number (i assume), it could help identify corpses in a graveyard or morgue, or at the site of some horrible accident where the body is otherwise unidentifiable.
who would hold and control the databases that link these numbers to identities? this is an important question.
i wonder if the numbers would be recycled like social security numbers. i can see websites popping up now that help you locate your numerical RFID relatives. wait, i better patent that now!
Would you mind telling me more about this 'Unix mode number for for universal device access'
plasmagrid@yahoo.com
I'm sure every chip will contain the bit pattern 666.
Remember how every Jew going to concentration camps in WWII had a number tattooed to them? I've seen these folks at a local supermarket near a Jewish community here in Edmonton. It isn't pretty, and the way these people speak they wouldn't speak in too flattering a manner. I'm sure the processing at concentration camps would've been much more "efficient" if the Nazis had RFID tags. I'm also certain that there are other examples throught history where mass murders and the tracking of individuals for control purposes would've been better facilitiated by RFID (e.g. Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung).
There are a lot of people who wouldn't want any tag like this attached to them even if it is "anonymous" (famous last words...). What it more sounds like is that yet another anti-Christian want to take another cheap swipe at Christians for no good reason. There are real reasons not to have RFID that have everything to do with privacy, security and even history.
They are already cheering on Israel to accelerate the second coming. (clarification: I think both Israel and Palestine have bloody hands in this conflict, and I support groups that would allow both to exist peacefully). Such a violent attitude only makes it more likely that those RFID tags will be used for big-brother type surveillance.
With idiots that can believe a book with literal contradictions can be absolutely and literally true running around trying to promote policy, you know the execution is going to be fubar. The best we can hope for is that they are NOT at all involved with RFID tags.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
'they put the rf tag just over my kidney and while I was sleeping somebody cut it out!'
I mean really.. this is silly. In an age when in big cities you need to be concerned with atm and other card theft at teller machines, how long before we see the stories about
forced extraction?
'Soon you'll be able to use an implanted chip to [FILL IN EXCITING GEE_WHIZZ TECHNOLOGY WHEN YOU GET A MOMENT]. Applied Digital Solutions will shortly announce [CAN YOU GET THE GUYS IN MARKETING TO THINK OF SOMETHING SNAPPY?], a whole new generation in personal security.'
The company sounds like its on a scam, perhaps the venture capital is running out.
Is there any chance the people at ADS can be implanted with microchips that will set off alarms in all news bureaux when they make a press release?
Best wishes,
Mike.
...if you think about it. Both our cats had to be 'chipped' before we could bring them with us to Oz (over 8 years ago) and it's often been a point of discussion about how humans could so easily be chipped too, suggestions being the mentally challenged, certain criminals, etc. The only real difference here is the detection range of the technology - the cats' scanner has to be within inches to identify the chip (10 hex digits).
The real big issue is it's RFID, given the high profile it's getting in the media just now. At the end of the day, you can already be tracked by all sorts of passive measures (credit card transactions, ATMs, etc.) - this is just a bit more in your face (literally). Besides which, it would be a bugger when the eftpos went down and they had to stick your head/hand/whatever in the manual paper imprinter!
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
Actually, we welcome the Return of the King. But we would hate to receive the "mark of the beast" and be denied entrance to the Kingdom.
According to one interpretation of Revelation, when these things occur, though, Christians will be persecuted in a way that will make the Holocaust seem like a fairy tale. Then, after the tribulation, the faithful will join Christ in his Kingdom.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
My prediction is that all the fundamentalist Christians that decry this as the mark of the beast will be ignored, mocked, and or maybe even harassed/persecuted for their stance on this (if it ever comes to fruit mainstream).
Then, once it's become the standard for commerce, all trade will be outlawed with anything but these tags. Anyone without one would be a terrorist, right?
And then the government uses the tags and the respective databases and equipment to monitor and track anyone that they deem as 'suspicious'.
I can't believe that people actually see this as being a contrived possibility, considering all the shit that's flying about, and all the freedoms that the government -and- large corporations are trying to take away from Citizens (or are we Consumers?).
Armageddon, Mark of the Beast/666 or not, this is a Bad Thing. This falls under the blanket of the philosophy that any sacrifice of freedom for safety (or convenience) will rightly result in the deprivation of those freedoms from those that do not care enough to defend them.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Revelation 13:17
and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.
Revelation 14:9
Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
Revelation 14:11
"And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name."
I'm guessing they're looking at the success of Speedpass and FastLane devices and continuing the argument to its 'logical extreme'. First it was 'bring the cash', next 'bring the proxy for cash' then 'bring something / know something' - have the proxy/card and know your code. That's a successful model because stealing a atm/debit card isn't enough - you have to have the thing that's (supposed to be only) in the owner's brain. If they hold you up for cash, it's gone. If they hold you up for debit/credit, a phone call with your last bill in hand stops them cold within very short time. When my house was robbed, they didn't take the cards in plain sight. Too easy - i knew they were missing. When a local restaurant started photocopying cards in the back room, no one knew until it was after the thefts. The credit card model - where you can use them without knowing anything - is in need of revision - adding a pin would be good - the CVN system is too easily foiled with trivial methods.
.
If the key is my retina or my fingertip, I can bring you on a tour of neighborhoods where you would soon check over your shoulder at the atm for someone approaching with a knife or a grapefruit spoon
Speedpass works well because you now simply bring something - tag, watchband, etc.. and you're buying a tank of gas or a bag of snacks or a car wash - if you lose it you'll see that soon (it's a personal item) and the damage will be minimal (unless they stand at a mobil station and make a sign that says 'free gas!' - in which case one would hope the attendants would call someone...)
So for small payments it seems like a good solution - they're testing it at Stop&Shop supermarket in Boston - i'd be a little wary-er about this - you can load up a cart with dvds and lobsters and swipe and go...
The speedpass watch is nice because it's innocuous - the owner knows it's a speedpass, nefarious persons think it's a cheap timex. That seems better than the speedpass itself - easily identified and take-able.
The iButton model is also enticing - it's a piece of jewlery, and to a potential thief, it's like the final scene in the 2nd thomas crown affair - you'd have to go after every piece of jewelry in sight to get a live one. Until of course they're ubiquitous.
It really is a fox hunt - and until it's tested, you aren't going to get people wanting this without knowing the unintended consequences...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
One interesting thing about it all - if they use the general encoding scheme used for UPC bar codes, we'll all have something close to a 6-6-6 on us, though not exactly.
If you look here (cached because howstuffworks.com seems to be flaking out), you'll see that a UPC bar code has a start code, some data, a middle code, some data, and an end code.
Each digit is represented by a set of bars and spaces - 6 is represented by 1-1-1-4, 2 thin bars, close together, followed by a long space. It is the only digit to have 2 thin bars separated by a 1 unit space. Interestingly, the start code (1-1-1), middle code (1-1-1-1-1), and end code (1-1-1) are all 2 thin bars, close together, so if you just look at them, they look very much like an encoded six.
Point is, get yourself a UPC bar code based ship, and you're pretty close to that 6-6-6 you've been hoping for.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
I haven't been to church in years, but I will sooner cut out of hands than let them implant anything in them to facilitate commerce.
"And no one will be able to buy or sell without the mark"
That's all I need. But seriously, Biblical implications aside, do you really want Big Brother to know how much weed you smoke? How much porn you buy? Some things are better in cash.
I find the concept of tagging human beings like animals to be repugnant. And anyone who desires that sort of power over fellow human beings is insane.
The last thing people should be concerned about is some fictitious mark - what should be triggering flashing lights and warning sirens is the incredible potential for abuse!
The heck with some sort selling rfid enabled clothing, with implantable rfid chips the government would finally have a dream come true - allowing them to track the populations movements.
1984 is paradise compared to this nightmare.
First they burn books, then they burn people.
I don't know about you, but the exact line of thinking is already embedded within our own government.
I mean, I even recall a well-known senator once saying, in stark contrast to your own post, "I am... A MACHINE."
Now, how creepy is that?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Every time one of the prophetic things come to pass
Correction - that should read:
Every time one of the prophetic things come to Speedpass
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
What if jesus was a highly functioning schizophrenic? :)
Mohammed apparently experienced altered states of conciousness:
"He was drawn to solitary contemplation, and he often experienced visions, some violent and disturbing. Some modern scholars have theorized that he was epileptic."
Link
-kgj
1) What happens when it is obselete?
2) How many people will get infections at the implant site?
3) How long until every doorway and chair at a person's workplace has transducers in them tracking employees at an unprecedented level?
4) When it is cracked, what then?
5) How does this fit into the Fourth Amendment?
6) How about the Fifth Amendment?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
but I'm feeling spent and if I buy one more thing I'll be worthless.
I guess you haven't seen the protesters down in Florida or the ones a few years ago up in Seattle? Liberal extremists are just as nutty as Christian extremists (if not more so.) The real difference lies in causes. People from the Earth Liberation Front will burn car dealerships because they believe it will somehow stop "global warming" while Christians fight to give every man, woman, and child "everylasting life".
Send in your arm to pay on-line!
First we must ask ourselves why people are even considering such technology? Is it convenience? Is it something else? The proponents of this technology tout things like security and convenience. The security is for those who want power - they want a way to know where the people who can threaten them are. I'm not talking about with weapons, either - I'm talking about with power, with ability. They attempt to get more mechanisms of control into society oh so subtly by making it "convenient" to do things. Think about this though - is it really faster to pay by credit card like the commercials say? They always say you need ID for checks, but I would hope to goodness they check ID with credit cards as well! So personally I think the convenience and security aspect is a farce.
The most secure financial situation, oddly enough, is a physical one - where there is actually hard currency. The reason? You actually have to posess the currency to use it. It's a whole lot more difficult to rob a safe than it is to tell a computer to move some numbers around (part of this difficulty is psychological - the rest is physical. You actually have to go somewhere and transport the currency. You have to get it, have something in which to carry it, and you have to get it to where you want it. Vastly different than computer crime - sit in a remote location, no immediate threats...you see what I'm saying, right?). Sure, with cash, you might get mugged. And if you're obscenely wealthy, you need a good place to store your cash. I think the financial gurus overlook the fact that posession is the most enforcable type of security (assuming, of course, you have a big enough stick to fend off any would-be theives).
I think the concept of sticking something unnatural in my body just to participate in commerce is fundamentally wrong, independent of my religious beliefs. Rather than just complain about this, here are some reasons:
It is segregatory: it automatically divides a population into the "priviledged" and "non-priviledge", the group who "works in the system" and those who "go against it", etc. etc. It's not like humanity needs any more reasons to focus on differences between people.
It is a "rite of passage". It may be arguable that "commerce" is an inherent right of people - if you're born, you have the ability to contribute to society and probably will get the resources and toys you want in exchange for that ability. Requiring some "entry" into this arrangement (either chip, or other form of ID) can only serve to cause more social rifts. Think about the present taboo of "illegitimate children" and how this will be exacerbated by "hey you don't have an ID chip! Why not!?!"
It objectifies people. One major problem I see today is that people forget that relationships are more important than things. The general population today is more and more selfish (I've mentioned this before) - look at all the "it's not my fault, it's theirs!" lawsuits. Look at how everyone is basically saying "let me do my thing how I want - but I'm going to tell you you can't do things how you want". When people are simply consumers and potential threats and all that jazz, we take something away from humanity.
I guess to summarize, and before I get much more too wordy with this, it seems that this is another example of being able to do something and not considering if it should be done. There are far more implications than mere ones of faith, though those may not be least important.
Somehow I feel as if all my deliberations on this have been random thinking, and I almost h
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
If subcutinous (sp?) RFID is used for mainly for personal identification and RFID chips are embeded :-) (BTW would produce interesting FOREX rate fluctuations between RFID currencies and NON RDFID
into dollar bills (euros, yen etc etc) you can
suddenly get rid of organised crime, money laundering etc etc. Dpt of homeland security take note
currencies)
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
I NEVER thought that i'd agree with a fundamentalist christian about anything.
RFIDs allow for passive scanning by businesses or CRIMINALS. Now you can walk down the street and get your credit card stolen without even losing your wallet. There isnt even a way to know it is stolen since it is still planted inside you. I think someone didnt really think this thoroughly.
This is just too far. Why implant it? So you can not loose it? I am fine with the cards I have now.
Since it is an RFID tag it could be used to track you where ever you go. Go to a movie and they know you went. Go to a bathroom in tha mall and they know you went there. Anyplace with an RFID scanner would know you are there.
This is just... TO STRANGE and does not do anything that is good. Plus what about the medical risk of the inplant? I am sure the risk is minnimal but since it is of no benifit any risk is not worth it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Christians consider their bodies as being a temple of God. A far more nobler concept than the nameless product of the commercial sector. It creeps me out that some people don't mind becoming walking credit cards? Then again people that only worry about materialistic things are the ones with the issues IMHO. The problem is not with the fundamental Christians. The problem is with the apathy of normal materialistic people. I mean what's wrong with a credit card or cash? I definitely don't want to be monitored 24/7.
Mark of the beast. I'm a techie.. but I won't implant an RFID tag in me for identity.. no way.
Being a Christian and seeing the scripture (mainly Rev 13:16-18) of my relgion banded about so much I thought I would link to a bunch of different translations which can be found Here. But some have mentioned that they would prefer to see the orginal text, well this one is the closest I can find (the web site has a bunch of other versions clicky here).
My reason is simple, for only by looking at how man sees this text can we hope to discern the meaning behind this very poetic prophecy.
Oh yeah, I think its a dumb idea by the way talk about one great way to track the movements and purchases of a people. Welcome to 1984.
How can you say that civilisation's do not advance... in every war we invent new ways to kill you.
There are no contradictions in the Bible. It may appear that way but that is usually because of the reader is trying to create them.
The important thing to realize about the Bible and how you can know it is truely God's Word is the following:
Manuscript evidence
Archeological evidence
Predictive Prophecy
Statistical evidence
I'm not going to get into a long explanation but there is sufficent evidence in each of these areas to demonstrate that the Bible is unlike any other book ever written.
I will give one example from the area of predictive prophecy. Around 750 B.C. the prophet Isaiah wrote these words:
Is. 27:6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.
Pretty crazy thing to predict considering Israel at the time was a barren wasteland. Israel remained mostly dessert for 2700 years until 1948. Following the establishment of an Israeli state they began to irrigate the desserts and today Israel is a major agricultural producer. In 1999 Israel exported over $25 billion dollars worth of produce. Not only that but a significant portion of it is was as the prophecy stated fruit. Not only that, but another one is Israel's major exports is flowers. Israel sells flowers to Holland!
This prophecy has been fulfilled virtually word for word in exacting detail. But that is not really that amazing when you consider that this is only the tip of the iceberg. The Bible contains 100s of prophecies like it.
stipulate that this person will rain down fire from the heavens, making them believe he is a miracle worker, AND THEN ask everyone to have this mark in order to trade.
That doesn't sound like this Applied Digital Solutions company to me...
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Do you seriously think they would win any implantees if they ran out and said that they were going to use these to herd dissenters into the nearest incinerator?
Hell no, tel them the tag will get them 20% off at the grocery store and they'll flock to you.
Hammer of Truth
Assign 6 to A, 12 to B, 18 to C etc.
For a word add the numbers together.
Excise for the reader.
What is the number for Computer ???
The insighter.
Another one of Neal Stephenson's inventions comes true. Only, IIRC, in the Diamond Age they used the entire skeleton as the antenna (by implanting a chip inside of a bone). With this, and the e-paper, and all the nanotechnology... I can't even tell truth from fiction anymore.
>|<*:=
Don't worry. It's just like piercing your hand!
or...
"Here we go!"
"Owwww!"
"Oh, don't be such a baby. Ow!"
That green slime had it coming.
This elimiates the anonymous purchase.
And flea markets, and selling your friend your lawnmower, and basically everything for the poor, and the arguably-innocent black-markets for some drugs, and pawn shops, and prostitution...
You know, anyone who tries to make these things mandatory definitely has an agenda, because anyone else wouldn't care one way or another.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
If the sun goes out, the moon turns red, the entire earth quakes and big meteors start crushing houses, Ima gonna spend a lot more time than I am right now studying the bible and preparing for shit to go down than I am right now.
x .html
I'v been also reading this website
http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/sbs777/prophecy/inde
which has some interesting info on it. Now, I'v been around wierdo's and crazy people all claiming to be christian since I was a widdle kid, and after reading through that stuff I'm a bit freaked. Especially since he makes it sound like the bible was written in a sensicle manner and if you've read any good cyberpunk horror novels, you'll realize the bible is the same thing with older language and more meaning.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I would venture that Donald Knuth has at least a 50 point IQ advantage over you.
The word "anti-Christ" does not appear anywhere in Revelation.
It appears only in John's letters, and there in the plural ("antichrists", referring to anyone who is not Christian).
Revelation is not about the anti-Christ. Revelation does not mention the anti-Christ. Try again, please.
All's true that is mistrusted
Then it must be real good.
Wanted : A Signature.
I'm sure someone already mentioned this... and the Fatherland Security post was getting there... but isn't everyone reminded of the Holocaust? I think I will steer clear of any identification implanted in my skin - be it a tattoo or a RFID.
just a few years off in his prediction. Shoot ANYONE who advocates this tracking system. They are communist, spying Big Brother types in desperate need of death. Track down all supporters of this and similar technology. Ohhhh, we may save one child from molestation or kidnapping, BFD. The other side of the coin is tarnished with shit. Too many rights are being lost due to such shoddy thinking. Remember the Second Ammendment is an absolute, read the wording. The words "SHALL NOT BE ABRIDGED" is a commandment, not a suggestion. Learn to read you mealymouthed gun haters, you realize this ammendment was written speciically for your ilk.
What I imagine is a new "customer convenience" feature: To buy something, all you have to do is pick it up and walk out of the store. The RFID sensors would identify you and the things you're buying, and automatically charge your account.
At least that's what the advertising would tell you.
What would also happen is that the RFID sensors would also identify the articles of clothing that you're wearing from their embedded chips, and would charge you for those, too. And every time you went out of that store, you'd be charged again for everything you're wearing.
After a while, of course, customers would wise up to this and raise a stink. So the stores would fix the bug. They'd only pick one or two such items, and only when you're carrying a lot of new purchases. That way, you probably wouldn't notice the extra charges, unless you were really a stickler for checking every purchase. And even then, you'd face taking off a day of work and trying to prove to them that they'd included an extra charge.
And if you tried to pay for something with cash, you might find yourself also being charged via the RFID. This has a precedent here in Massachusetts. The local toll roads have a "Fast Lane" electronic toll collection scheme. Usually it works well. But something that some people have found: In heavy traffic, sometimes you can't reach the Fast-Lane tollbooth. If you decide to go through a cash-only booth, there's a good chance that the sensors will detect your car and charge your account in addition. Sure, you can challenge it, and you'll probably win easily. But you'll have to take at least one day off work, and that's a steep price to pay to get maybe a $1 refund.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Because I'm a whimp and I don't want to go through the massive persecution of Christians that will accompany this. I think most other Christians are of the same ilk.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Revelations13:16: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
;)
17: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
(Karma whoring with the help of God!
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
The government will have to kill me. There's no way I'm going to allow anyone to electronically tag me.
Because of the hell we'll have to go through first! Nobody is in any hurry for that!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
1- Which Bible? Do you include revelations?
2- What version?
3- What language?
4- From what language?
It's easy to find predictions that were realized. But some of the arguments you use are flawed. Of course it's unlike any other book. Every book is different. This also reminds me of arguments made by Muslims about the beauty and scientific accuracy of what's in the Qu'ran.
And note, there ARE contradictions. There are statements that can't possibly be seen as true by any reasonnable person. The flood, the earth on four pillars... come on! And of course, the classic "earth is 4000 years old". If you go around saying/writing such silly things as this apparent contradiction being due to my inability to understand them, you must think I'm a moron.
(Nota Bene: The earth is not 4k years old, it is only 5 minutes old. We have been actually created with all memories of what we did together, just like that 5 minutes ago by my very powerful God. Seems unsatisfying a cosmology? Yeah, I thought so. But why?)
What's worse is that Jesus was a master at using allegories, and all his followers want to interpret his second-hand, second-language records literally.
Repeat after me: "We are all individuals"
(PS: I have a lot of admiration for what Jesus actually did and taugth)
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
The joke is that RIGHT NOW it's the hyper-conservatives that are doing all the damage! ...the very same people fearing the "666" of the beast. It's all about lack of personal responsibility...typically a Democrat thing, that nobody should be able to take advantage of anybody else [loan fraud, abusive work contracts...]...so we need more technology [i.e. govt] to "protect" people. Coupled with the recent attacks and financial screw ups even the other side [Reps] wants more govt control...more acountability, paperwork, sigs...get the idea...protect those corps... now they want ID so they can sneak around and find out what you were doing when nobody was looking.
Asia has these issues even more than the US...and accept it even more redily. Both America and Southeast asia have very busy, highly complex societies...and even "playful disruption" is becomming a "terrorist" act. The problem is that govt has gotten too big...and make too many stupid laws nobody can follow. meaning that the General Pouplation tolerates a certian amount of "lawlessness" because they've lost control of the govt [not enough people vote to matter]...it doesn't represent the people's interests anymore! Now the govt is interested in enforcing the law as "cheaply and effecently" as possible...it's not about right or wrong anymore, just "acceptable losses" [sounds like war, hun?] to look like they're doing their job. The govt is a company now...justice meeted out like fries a McD's. [with less personal accountability]
In all these cases, it makes more and more sense to normal people [most /.er are not normal people] to simply "make it so you can't" break the laws...or be wrongly accused... So we have to build a bigger, better "mouse trap". Look at all the hacks to the current round of technology...many normal people just want stuff to be easy and simple. even innocent hacking is "terrorist" to most people...you'd be suprised how many "normal" people think "internet programming" == "bank cracking" ...it's way more than you would think!
so in the end, for security and liberty, people will throw all their trust, and personal responsiblity, into the next big electronic system that the govt pushes. The govt has the ability to use guns to enforce it, so it will be MADE to work...get the idea. Who controls the govt...well, it's an irresponsible "beast" already isn't it? And there you have it. The only glimmer of sunshine right now is that the events are described after rapture...all those pesky "christian zelots" won't be here to bother you anymore...and it will be great...for about 3.5 years. People forget THAT fact when they read those prophesies...everything that happens in Revelation is the apogee of human ingunity and "wisdom" ...Without silly "religous" pressures. Until the whole thing goes to ....
Applied Digital Solutions are marketing the VeriChip as the world's only implantable ID technology.
... and it's different from the ones already inside my dogs, how?
What's really goddamned scary about the idea of implantable chips is that banks are probably going to want a fifty-dollar a month 'service' fee just for having the thing and will probably still be deducting fifty cents or two dollars or more for every stinkin' transaction that you make.
Neato technology, but I'll be paying with cash, thank you.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
Hey there! Welcome to "You Don't Know My Religion"!
The prophecy of Revelations is what will happen, not what has to happen first.
In other words -- the End Times don't occur just because some people decided to try to make it occur. They may do a pretty damn good job of recreating the living hell that is described in Revelations, but that doesn't make it Revelations.
I could go out today and "convince" everyone on earth to wear my "Mark of the Burke" (slogan: "Easier than cash; better than being shot!"). That doesn't make me the anti-Christ, and wouldn't put Christ's return a day sooner. Even a pet genetically-engineered seven-headed giant monitor lizard (who I'd call "Gnashy") wouldn't qualify me.
Unless of course I -am- the anti-Christ. I'm pretty sure I'm not. I'm certainly not going to go make peoples' lives miserable on the off-chance that I am.
Another way to look at is this: Revelations describes some of the worst human suffering imagineable. World War II involved some of the worst human suffering imagineable, but it wasn't the war of Revelations. If World War III occurs, it may or may not be the war of Revelations as well, but it will still be an unimagineable human disaster.
I know you were being facitious, but you also are saying "Know Your Religion" when you are the one who is less informed.
Although there are people who think exactly what you're saying and they claim to have read the Bible. Apparently they missed the part, which I thought was pretty clear, when it is said that you won't know when the end times are here.
So advocating, allowing, or heaven forbid causing human suffering in the hopes of seeing Jesus return is really, really stupid.
The enemies of Democracy are
Wow, some neat ideas there. I especially like the first one. I'm not sure if you're offended, or just think I'm an arse. I don't really care either way to be honest. I believe that religion is a fundamentally flawed concept, and in general a bad idea best forgotten. Therefore I reserve the right to make fun of those who practice it. Note that I fully accept the right for people to believe what they wish, and have no intentions of malice. If they in turn wish to point and laugh at me for being a total nerd, then I have no problem with that.
:)
I have no intention of ever having kids, so your final point is moot. But nice attempt at offence nonetheless
when you can use biometrics with encryption instead? A retina scanner in place of a PIN for a debit/credit card would be easy to integrate into the existing system and would not be objectionable.
42
For the benefit of the non-elves here, the cred-sticks were essentially sophisticated credit-card devices that were tied to a specific account.
They came in certified and non-certified forms, the former being allocated a certain amount of credit on purchase from your local bank / authority and the latter being keyed to a registered individual.
The other nice detail was that certified ones were colour coded so you could wave around your black and gold one in the club to impress people.
- At least if you were a cat shaman and you liked to behave like that... *yuk yuk*
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I'm thinking the scanner reads your finger print, meaning that the your finger was facing you, so basically you were telling yourself to fuck off.
Brings a new meaning to the phrase "a pound of flesh" though...
Once this idea gets started, it will be impossible to reverse. The need for cash has almost been eliminated already; they will say only CRIMINALS use cash. Yeah, to hide my meager wealth from the bloodsucking corps. and gov.
Mod parent up.
This is the Christian view and I agree with it.
They are also receiving condemnation from some fundamentalist Christians who believe that this is the fabled 'mark of the beast' of biblical lore.
For this reason alone, I really want one of these now. Piss off a bible-thumper and pay bills easily.
kidnapping and murder will only arise from this.
because if theifs want your money, theyll either cut your arm off, kill you, or kidnap you.
at least it'll make ransom easier..
"I WILL RELEASE...fuck it..." *scans the person's arm and shoots them instead*
Another way to look at is this: Revelations describes some of the worst human suffering imagineable. World War II involved some of the worst human suffering imagineable, but it wasn't the war of Revelations. If World War III occurs, it may or may not be the war of Revelations as well, but it will still be an unimagineable human disaster.
Do you have any idea how offensive you sound?
Here you are comparing imaginary, theoretical human suffering to the very real suffering and deaths of the Jews, Gypsies, Poles and others targeted by Hitler's reign of terror. The fuck???
It's so much better to feel like a victim than face your own shady past, isn't it? What a great way for white christians to avoid their guilt about The Trail of Tears, American slavery, anti-semitism, and the persecution of Irish and Chinese. "Those persecutions were nothing compared to what we (who so far have only reaped the benefits of other's persecution) will suffer!" Wow. That's brilliant!
PS-Last time I checked, Revelations was an allegorical account of the persecution of Christians under Roman rule, with the hope of immediate Theistic reprisal. Last time I checked, it's been irrelevant since, oh, about 392CE.
Excellent post!
This is the best summary I have seen today.
Then at least our kids won't have to suffer this new, ridiculous fad... If the fundamentalists are wrong, let's just go and implant a few chips in mr. Silverman and see how the stock market responds to that announcement.
-- Joseph Sobran
This isn't just crackpot ideas people have about black helicopters (that being my Southern Baptist relations' big one) or whatever; it is informing, helping to shape, U.S. Foreign Policy. Think Bush's backing of Sharon has nothing to do with Revelation? It isn't just the Middle East, either. Reagan used to say stuff about living in the "end times." 'Cause, you know, he was fighting that 'evil empire,' you know?
Or take a look at the "Left Behind" series of novels. Best sellers in the U.S.
I had a girl sit in front of me in a creative writing class who told me her plan was to have children soon -- but to schedule them so the apocalypse would come just before they became adolescents. No unruly teenagers -- all thanks to the "end time," again.
These people, or a healthy percentage of them that amounts to millions of Americans anyway, are positively pining for the Apocalypse. Their internal lives can largely involve fantasizing about the end. Without going out of my way in a fairly "liberal" state (Minnesota), I've run into my share.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Seems as true as ever in this case. This puts the Fundamentalist Christians, the Libertarians and the Techno-Liberal-Anti-Ashcrofters squarely on the same side.
So we have vociferous moral beliefs that this is intrinsically wrong, reasoned political arguments that the government should not have such tracking power over indivitual liberties, and a long list of technical arguments about inadequate security for the chips, their data, etc. Moreover this brings the new reality that a mugger will now have a reason to cut off one's hand instead of just taking the wallet.
Could somebody remind me why anybody would think this is a good enough idea to even propose? I like the RFID technology for a lot of purposes (e.g., we already use similar transponders for timing and scoring in sportscar races). But this idea seems so toxic that the RFID promotors would avoid it like the plague.
The real point is that you will be forced to conform. Do you think it would be implanted and not forcibly utilized or enforced? No paycheck, no scholarships, no buying food, no registration with gov. means, no job. Pay compensation is now made with bank transfers; no cash or check allowed.
enuff said
A lot of people (or their machines) are listening. Many of them work for General Ashcroft. Many of them do not. Only recently have the people running the machines been allowed to talk to each other. (It used to be that if the people running not-the-General's machines talked to the people running DoJ machines, both of them went to jail. That little bit of 60s-era enlightenment cost us 3,000 people, $100B of property damage, caused two wars so far, and delayed the present global economic recovery by a year.)
Let me put it this way: If we were really heading into a police state (as opposed to merely a secure state), you, along with everyone else who uses terms like "Herr Ashcroft" and "Fatherland Securite", have just committed suicide by posting pseudonymously to a message board on a monitored network.
So fess up. If you're one of those people, are you truly suicidal, or are you merely suffering from terminal Godwinian hyperbole? There are people who can help.
Sure...devices and files on a Unix (or Unix like) system are handled essentially the same way. Each has a designated owner and a designated group. Say, the device is a modem. The owner would be "root" (or the "superuser") and the group could be, say, "internet". Permissions could be set up so that any user who is a member of the group "internet" can access the mode through thier account. It's basically a simple, elegant way to manage permissions.
.
.
Now, the mode number follows the format USER-GROUP-OTHER ("OTHER" is everybody else). Each of USER, GROUP, and OTHER gets it's own three digit binary number to represent what they can do to the file in order of READ, WRITE, and EXECUTE. So, giving everybody access to said modem would be as follows:
.
USER = 110, GROUP = 110, OTHER = 110.
.
This means anyone can read data from or write data to the modem (in Unix, you can't execute a device so the last bit is zero. If we were talking about a file, then U, G, and O would each be 111).
Now, the shorthand is to express this as a three digit "mode" number where each digit is the decimal equivalent of the three digit binary numbers for USER, GROUP, and OTHER. Therefore, the mode number that grants universal access to a device would be 666.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Unless you think you're being funny mentioning "_bloody_ prerequisite" you obviously need to read the Bible a bit more with less biased eyes, sure the the returning of the Savior is a good thing. But the coming of the Antichrist is not. There are lots of other bad things that will happen around then too.
Why don't you go ask a mother-to-be if she's worried about labour pains (even if everyone knows it's going to go well in the end), I mean she should be cheering the birth of her baby right?
I won't be very happy the day the Beast or his minions revoke my smartcard's digital cert just because I decided the new "EULA" just wasn't agreeable to me[1].
Within 30 days (or certificate revocation list update period), my identity certificate then becomes invalid, can't buy, can't sell, can't travel.
As for people talking about "why not biometrics". They're ignorant. YOUR biometrics will be included in YOUR certs, so it will be easy to validate that a certificate belongs to a person and wasn't "ripped off" from another. e.g. if the certificate is valid, but the included photo, iriscan, fingerprints don't match, it's been ripped off from someone else.
Oh yeah cheer this stuff on. Lots of us in the tech industry are sure speeding it along. But you got to give credit to the guys making stuff like DMCA, Patriot Act and so on too.
And the malware writers, hackers and spammers are sure helping too - "We" "need" a Global Gov, Court and Legal system to handle cross border problems like this and inconvenient nations who refuse to kowtow - (freedom fries are a beginning symptom). Centralisation + Globalisation of everything. Single point of failure.
I'm not saying it'll all happen the way I mentioned - I'm no prophet. But it sure looks possible soon.
Not even sure I should be writing all this here, but it should be pretty obvious to those who are preparing the Beast's throne anyway.
You want to cheer this stuff on go ahead. Remember though, if you're not careful you might even be cheering the wrong stuff on too when the day comes. Maybe with a fake smile on your face just in case the Beast notices. Maybe you'd have to do what a German guy did and carry large parcels under both arms all the time so as not to have to salute. Not sure if that saved anyone's lives (other than his), but it's hard to fault him.
"Know Your Religion"? Well what do you really believe? Sure lots of fundies are pretty stupid, but Christianity is not just for the totally stupid. e.g. I'm only stupid most times and not all the time.
[1] Naturally the Govs will say only the "Bad People/Terrorists" won't agree to the "EULA". The real security people know what a lie that is. But hey didn't a bunch of people try to introduce IDs after 9/11, despite the hijackers having valid IDs? Eventually enough people will believe or allow them to do it.
I had thought that the status of US Currency as "Legal Tender For All Debts Public and Private" would help us by at least providing a constitutional basis for refusing such a requirement and continuing to use cash.
r ights/bankingmoneyorfinance/illegalitylegal.shtml
However a bit of checking revealed that not only does Legal Tender not have a constitutional basis, it is actually probably unconstitutional from any reasonably strict reading.
One of the first references I found (no vouching for cred.) http://www.libertyhaven.com/regulationandproperty
points out that the first Supreme Court decision went against its constitutional status, and the second ruling for it was by a court by Grant and containing a significant overturnable error.
Thus, my read on the bottom line is that, for now, the Legal Tender laws are officially constitutional. Even though these laws are questionable, it is in the govt's interest to support them, and so they will remain constitutional for now. However, when the govt sees it no longer in its interest to maintain cash as Legal Tender, it would not be all that hard to overturn. So, this potential requirement for RFID implants to replace cash is actaully more of a risk than we might have first thought.
Any more detailed or accurate info available?
I'd have to say that I think that's the direction in which we are almost certainly heading at this point, but we're not quite there yet. Since we aren't quite there yet there is still time for us to prevent ever getting there IF large groups of us realize the potential problem and exert whatever power we still retain as citizens in a rational manner. As for the idea that we must choose between living in a police state or one of insecurity, that is a dangerous slope to cross. Remember what Ben Franklin [think that was the one] said about folks who would trade freedom for security -- that they'd neither have nor deserve either.
If in your estimation sounding the alarm is suicidal then I guess that's what you'll think I am -- and you might be right.
Someone, anyone, help me out here. It will not be that long before anonymity will be IMPOSSIBLE given that rapidly decreasing computing/sensing costs are going to enable a broad array of biometrics to be deployed at low cost. Some have been mentioned before, but face recognition, body typing, retina scanning, hand geometry... on and on
So why get creeped out? You're only one database and a bunch of cheap sensors from being automatically and immediately identifiable.
1- Which Bible? Do you include revelations?
2- What version?
3- What language?
4- From what language?
The original Bible, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, of which the current versions in those languages are quite accurate copies and of which there are many more or less accurate translations in a number of languages. Specifically, "the Bible" does not mean any random translation X with all its translation and copying errors.
And note, there ARE contradictions. There are statements that can't possibly be seen as true by any reasonnable person. The flood, the earth on four pillars... come on! And of course, the classic "earth is 4000 years old".
I guess you are talking about this:
"He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD'S, and he hath set the world upon them.", I Samuel 2:8 (KJV).
If you read the context, you notice it's part of the prayer of a woman named Hannah, who is human, humane and therefore prone to err. Also you underestimate the biblical people if you think they can't talk in a figurative sense. When they do, it's usually clear from the context, as it is in this case. Contrast to
"He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.", Job 26:7 (KJV).
I for one believe in a young (say <10000 years old) earth. It's all quite explainable scientifically if you don't start from the assumption that everything had to start from nothing and evolve gradually (e.g. specification by devolution).
If you go around saying/writing such silly things as this apparent contradiction being due to my inability to understand them, you must think I'm a moron.
I don't think you're a moron. I think you're just a victim of a clever deceit. Satan is so powerful that none of us would have any chance of escaping his webs if it weren't for Christ.
Fair. I stand partially corrected. :)
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
It sounds Good Till
Some makes a scanner. Steals ID codes, then Sells clone chips. becuase everyone knows their code can never be broken.
Applied Digital Solutions are marketing the VeriChip as the world's only implantable ID technology.
BS. There was a company trying to market this (a year or so ago) type of technology as a medic-alert bracelet replacement.
Objectively why should the parent post be flamebait?
;).
Looks like a devout atheist was moderating the parent post
The VeriPay service is one of several the company has launched to promote its product. Applied Digital has positioned its microchip as an anti-kidnapping device (VeriKid), emergency ID system (VeriMed) and as a way to control access to secure buildings (VeriGuard).
VeriScaryGamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
that Steve Martin used to be funny and a valuable contributor to the popular culture instead of a Huckster for the mega-wedding industry.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
I've always wanted to see the day where if I owe someone five bucks I just hold my credit card/check card to theirs and transmit 5 bucks from my account to theirs. Obviously there would be a little more to it than just holding it to the other's card (otherwise that would be a pretty easy way to be a pickpocket), but you get my drift.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
Any decent translation from the Greek and Hebrew will do. God wrote the Bible in such a way that you don't need PhDs in Greek and Hebrew to get the message. Its not about every word being translated exactly. Any decent translation will give you all you need to know to make an educated decision.
Those AREN'T contradictions. Those are misunderstandings on your part. Please show me where the Bible says the earth is 4000 years old. Again as I've said, if you are looking for errors and not looking to understand the message, you will see contradictions that do not exist.
I don't think you are a moron. You sound like you are simply regurgitating humanist propaganda that you have not truley examined for yourself.
I do have a B.S. degree in Biology and I have studied the Bible in depth and therefore I am making informed decisions as to what I believe having weighed both sides for myself.
You seem to imply that because the Bible seems to contradict science, it must be wrong. Again this is different from the Bible contradicting itself. As a scientists I know that Science != Truth. Scientists are not unbiased. They have agendas and often use science to manipulate others.
Unless you think you're being funny mentioning "_bloody_ prerequisite" you obviously need to read the Bible a bit more with less biased eyes, sure the the returning of the Savior is a good thing. But the coming of the Antichrist is not. There are lots of other bad things that will happen around then too.
Sure. And I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the implementation of the technology. Hell, on the Political Compass scale, I'm two clicks shy of being as Libertarian as the Dalai Lama.
My point is that from the standpoint of a fundamentalist Christian (using the sweeping stereotype), this should be great news. Or at least a step in the ultimately right direction.
As for me, I'm not sure how the whole thing is supposed to work. I'd far rather take my chances with putting a bullet in the anti-christ than waiting for Jesus. Unless I can get the Pay-per-View rights.
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
So for now when I'm being mugged, I'm not really worried about some punk chopping my hands off! I just can't wait for this lovely invention to hit the market. We live in truely delightfull times...
OK, so the premise here is that at the end of it all, we'll find salvation. However, leading up to that point is a whole lot of pain, suffering, enslavement, and general unpleasantness. I don't that even fundamentalists are looking forward to the beginning of the end so much as they are saying "at the end, things will be good for those that believe."
It's like having a genetic disease/infection that requires major surgury. You're possibly going to lose some important parts, almost definately suffer some pain and indignity, but in the end you'll be ok (or at least better off than with the disease). You know it will strike somebody in the family, but you'd rather it didn't catch the bus at your generation.
The RFID tag makers are (somehow) spurning on the fundamentalists, so anyone who expresses concern over the implants will be made fun of and derided as "one of those religious wackos".
--- Ban humanity.
If you really believe that these are unavoidable profecies, then what is the point in protesting?
Tor
Fundamentalists said the same thing about the barcode 20 years ago. I work in a library where we implemented barcode technology in, umm, 1983. Several people demanded that their names be dis-associated with any barcode because that was clearly the sign of the beast as foretold in the Bible. Thus they could check out no books, thus remaining ignorant, which, I suppose, was the whole point of the exercise.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
In fact they already have devices that do this, but they are not (yet) implanted. They are called ankle transponders and have been used as an alternative to prison. Have a look at this or this article.
Worse, in the near future, you probably won't even be able to hide your cash transactions. RFID tags embedded in bank notes are on their way. The EE Times reports that in Europe it's planned for 2005.
Oh, but how will they know who I am when I spend tagged cash? It's pretty simple, by one of the following methods:
- You took the money out of an ATM and the ID numbers were logged
with your name during the withdrawl.
- You had your mobile phone with you, which pings the local cell.
- Got the money from someone else, but it's detected because
(the currently faulty) facial recognition software attatched to
the video camera in the shop (or streetcorner) where you made
the purchase.
- The passivly track cash moving through the city, just like they
track the people.
If you want a quick overview of where we're headed with RFID have a look at this article.Technology is amazing, and the current convergence of computing power, large databases and tiny radio transponders even more amazing. I don't know about you, but I also find it pretty scary.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
No, the number of his name is the 666 bit. Now, find a barcode with a 6 in the number. Look at the bars directly above it. You'll notive that the bars used at the start middle and end of the barcode are the same as the one for the six, only longer. 666, get it? Not that I believe all this apocalypse shit, just an interestic bit of trivia for you. heres a more in depth examination for anyone interested.
Walk into that bar and voila!!! This mark has A1 credit and a line of credit that can finance his or her abduction!!
Not for me...
no, you can "put it in your forhead" by remembering a pin number instead :)
I for one, DO NOT welcome our antiChrist overlord.
Sean
No Exceptions for anyone, ever.
Obviously, they won't go for that, so why should I?
--Mike--
I cannot help but think this is going to be a major security problem if it is implemented. If you thought bored teenagers (and worse, actual malicious crackers) wardriving for open wireless networks was bad, just wait until thieves with RFID scanners are standing at busy street corners and bus stops emptying your virtual wallet.
Of course, one would think that such a scheme would be implemented with a PIN or some other kind of password, but then, what advantage would it have over a debit card? I don't know about you, but the only time I don't have my debit card with me is when my pants are off (and call me prudish, but I kind of insist on my debit card not being a prerequisite for having my pants off), so a subdermal RFID debit chip is really not going to offer me any convenience unless -- as no doubt they ultimately plan -- the only authorization required for dinging my account is to have some pasty-faced clerk smacking a button on his cash register.
And if you thought changing cell phone providers was painful, wait until you change RFID bank networks! Ouch!
Oh wait, of course, the idea is that the banking community will adopt a common scheme with RFID chips acting as -- drum roll, please -- de facto universal identifiers. Mark of the beast if you're into neolithic supersition, or the long arm of warrantless, unaccountable federal law enforcement if you live in the modern age.
More benignly, if an order of magnitude more annoyingly, wait until commissioned salespeople can discreetly perform a pre-authorization on your RFID to see how much they can shake you down for. Does your car salesman seem to have an almost uncanny sense of how much he can screw you for? Does your down-on-his-luck buddy always seem to get a better price on goods and services than you do? Welcome to the brave new world of commercial information awareness.
Thank you, but I'll pass. I like my cards dumb and my chips in PCBs.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Apart from the odd wierdo, most people get completely creeped out by this kind of thing.
That's describes circumcision pretty well, too... so I suggest we do the implantation shortly after birth. Problem will be solved in a generation.
(And NO, I'm not suggesting the two operations be done at the same time)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
1) The fact that anyone using this has a uniquely-identifiable RFID tag that can be scanned by anyone at any time. Personally I'm not all that paranoid but I just don't want a society where everything I do involved broadcasting "I 2934208209348230 am here!" to anyone and everyone. While it's true that the Government can track most of my financial transactions now I don't really want to make it that much easier for them, for my bank, my credit-card company, my parents, etc. to follow my every financial (and physical) move.
2) How does this work with the modern financial market? Most of my aqquaintances make use of more than one form of payment on a day-to-day basis. Most of us have at least one bank account, credit card, and use at least some cash. I at least do this partly from convenience (who wants to sign their name all the time) and partly from necessity (not all stores take plastic or cheques).
How would this work with that? Would eveyone whyo uses it be forced to draw from a single account or to use some brokering service to select. I.E. do I give them a finger and then say "cheque" or "Mastercard?" Or do I give them a separate finger, hand, etc for each source.
It would seem to me that: This would only work with such a hybrid system or else the financial community who depends upon competition for their products would be devastated.
It also seems to me that this will never become "the way to pay for everything" unless the federal government mandates that everyone use it. If not then all the small shops who only take cash now will just stay with cash. Or WalMart and Target will so come to dominate the market that noone shops at small stores anymore. Given that the Small Business Administration (A branch of the U.S. Government) has had to sure other parts of the government to stop some anti-small business policies this isn't that unthinkable.
3) Lastly, am I the only one who thinks that the pictures attatched to the wired story resemble "the bug" from The Matrix (the thing that they stick in Neo's stomach).
There are several stories in the bible in which God killed off entire cities and he's supposed to be the good guy? Guess I'll be taking my chances with the devil then.
At .30 a share. Right after 9/11/01 it shot up to like 1.80. I just bought some more at .35
Stuff like this is enevitable. It makes sense and I think it will make everyone's life a lot simpler. However, the potential for abuse is there, just like with anything. Yes, it's turning you into more of a machine, but so is using the internet, etc. You don't think people are tracking your movements on the 'net???!
People who get paranoid over this stuff need to realize it's already over, it's already done. The world has changed. Now it's either keep up or get left behind.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
- You can't loan a friend ten bucks.
- Your ID can be duplicated, stolen or zeroized.
- You can only buy from someone who can process your ID.
- Your purchasing info can be used against you by police, courts and government agencies.
Given all that, then what's with the geek's heart going all a'flutter over digital cash? Furthermore, why do the geeks seem to think that all physical cash will be replaced?I hope for the sake of this article, the term "replace" was used to indicate "some instances" of replacement in space and time, and not "all instances".
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
that will probably leak and have to be removed.
So by that time, i will switch to sand pecks and
have the rfid thing removed also.
Lord Gate, save us from Evil and gives us our daily task....
"The avalanche has already started. It's too late for the pebbles to vote." - Kosh
...before I even consider allowing any such implant. I'll go live in another country first!
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
The ultimate goal of the cashless society has always been to eliminate anonymous transfers. It's cuts down on crime in a very Panopticon way. If you're paranoid that someone could always review all of your purchases, you're less likely to make ones which will be disapproved of. This works well both as a tool of law-enforcement and of jack-booted oppression (see "law-enforcement").
It will happen one day. It is inevitable. I'm just hoping not to be alive by the time that comes around.
they don't want to die or see the world end. There are not many people that anxiously await the coming of the Lord - they are too busy living and enjoying their life, only stopping long enough to bug others around them, trying to make sure other people are worried about the end of the world. When they see or hear things like this, it gets them scared because they honestly don't think it will, or want it to, happen during their life. The point is: there are constantly things that can be intepreted as being close to the end of the world...probably the point...people will always think it is happening soon and then it will happen when they least expect it.
SHUT UP YOU SINICLE CHRISTIANS!!! Why don't you see it these microchips as better security for all. And how many of us have forgot our wallets? with these chips you'll never forget your money again. Anyone who has a problem with these chips I suggest they get a life. Because this is the just the start of microelectronics. 20-30 years time you will not be able to see any machines because there going to be nano size. So you chrisitians better get on the band wagon before its too late.
Anyway, there's an espression known as having your cake and eating it too. These Christians may moan about the prophecy but the fact is they believe it. They believe the mark of the beast is inevitable and secretly welcome it knowing that it brings the apocalypse, and hence fulfillment of Revelations and the second coming, one step closer.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Get your chips off me - you damn, dirty, computer!
Heh. Don't have to. The first talking vending machine I saw was in a campground in the Poconos, about 30 miles from any civilization. And the frigging thing was telling me how happy it was to have been afforded the privilege to vend me a soda. Douglas Adams must've been spinning in his grave, and he wasn't even dead yet.
I think if I started getting ads played to me in the mall that that would cement it. The End Times Would Be Here.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Maybe you're just an earlier type of human.
Good call.
-kgj
-kgj
Don't stop at using implanted chips just for cash. Make sure they provide a convenient storage for your favorite music. We need not fear the mark of the beast. The RIAA will put a stop to these.
Isn't this just a rehash of the ID Chip Spoof from a couple years back? It seems very similar.
Of course, I can't get to the referenced site because it's long since slashdotted...
It just shows that you can make 666 with anything!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At this rate stores will stop taking cash at some point: "You want me to take this peice of paper? It might be forged. I'd have to make change. You'll have to go to the cash-only register. This is such a hassle!"
I have as much desire to put a RFID chip in my arm as I do giving Radio Shack my phone number or getting one of those supermarket discount cards....
OPT ME OUT.
Actually, we welcome the Return of the King.
So does most of Slashdot.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
This is what has always puzzled me: Christians believe in an end-times myth which ends in good things for them, and they always try to forestall it. The point of a prophecy isn't "these things will happen unless you guys can somehow stop it," it's "these things will happen." Anything else isn't much of a prophecy. So for Christians, when the bad shit in the Bible starts going down, they should just sit back and relax, right?
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If you believe in this, it's okay with me. But please don't bother me with your evangelist conspiracy theories. There are more severe things to worry about than myths in an ancient book which have been used for centuries to prophecise that 'the coming of the anti-christ', 'the armageddon' (inser favourite end of world here) is just around the corner.
Couldn't a thief simply have a RFID reader in a public place, and collect all of the IDs? Then they could use an active RFID tag to transmit the ID, and use it like a stolen credit card. It would be easier than stealing cash/credit cards, and hard to track. They would need some sort of password system, I think it would still be quite insecure.
You don't have to be a fundamentalist to learn something from the Bible.
Your right arm symbolizes the effort you put into things. Your forehead, just as it does now, symbolizes the things you're always thinking about. Thus the law of Moses required, for certain religious observances, that the believer actually strap passages of scripture to their right arm and forehead (and put them in the front door of their homes). It's a pretty overt reminder to them of the principles that should be influencing their thoughts and actions. (And not too unlike the modern practice of wearing clothing that says "No fear!", "Eddie Bauer" or "Budweiser" in huge letters for all to see).
The mark of the beast is the same concept - followers of the antichrist (think of him as a collection of all the ideologies that are harmful and destructive) will always have his principles on their minds and influencing their actions. And they'll require everyone else to do so as well, as much as they can. Revelations makes a lot of references to trade and commerce, so it's worth considering that those might be major tools of an Evil Overlord(tm).
Especially considering that the law of Moses has so many provisions against ruthless business - believers were required to take care of the poor, loan to those in need without interest (usury), and weren't even allowed to accumulate lots of land (it all reverted to the original owner periodically).
And if you don't get too distracted by the literalists (which most Christians aren't), you can see that the Bible's pretty acurate on this count, whether or not you believe in Jesus. When I was in grade school, kids told me explicitly that the reason I wasn't popular was because I didn't wear the right brand of clothes. Many people give up families and personal relationships because possessions and money get in the way. People starve because of greedy and corrupt governments.
So the Bible's a pretty remarkable predictor of human tendencies that have stayed the same over thousands of years. Want to spend your time thinking about philosophy and developing relationships with your friends and family? Well, in *this* society you're going to have to put a lot of effort into making a lot of money before you can expect that kind of leisure.
--Just the place for a snark!
I'm sitting here getting teary-eyed. I believe you just reminded me that God is with us. Thank you. I know this sounds stupid, but I'd given-up my faith for "scientific thought." I've tended to ridicule (in my mind) those that believe, brushing them off as morons, or low-brow. In fact, I grew up savagely religious, and by all means, God fearing. When I was 16 (I'm 31 now) I wanted, more than anything, to be a member of this completely hokey christian singing group after seeing them at one of our Lutheran youth conferences, which I travelled to Minneapolis from Chicago to attend. I don't even remember there name now, LOL the only thing I really remember about them is that one of the girls was fantastically hot, and that one of the guys was named Rusty Dick (just try growing-up with that one)!
In summation:
Thank you for reminding me why I loved God so much to begin with. I'm seriously crying.
Thank you for posting such an altruistic and sincere thought here. Slashdot can be a harsh place for such honest emotion.
Science and God do not have to be mutually-exclusive, I feel like I can have faith again.
BTW, my sig is from The Simpsons, in the We Love You Marge episode, Homer sends Flanders a note to keep him away from Marge's party.
put the what in the where?
Actually, we welcome the Return of the King.
So does most of Slashdot.
Hehe, I would mod you funny if I didn't post to this discussion already. I'm glad someone has a sense of humor in this sober discussion. Guys, get a clue. It's technology, not some mumbo-jumbo Nostradamus|Bible|End of the world crap.
You want to be a good Christian? Do good deeds in your everyday life. Wishing/hoping for some holocaust/wartime times is not a Christian think to do. People will die in such a time, you know? And as a Christian you should never wish anyone to die, not even enemies. Quite the opposite, work for some understanding instead.
Gee, when had all these religions go so wrong about basic ideas... And why is it even discussed here?
The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
shit if this and the 2012 porficies are right im gonna die before im 21 (fuck no drinking for me) god as great as h is must be worried ill get drunk and screw something up. oh well *opens and tsing tao and drinks it down* there now that over with *runs around screaming were all gonna die* oh well thats my rant anyways im a christain and i dont mind gays does that mean im going to hell *think i sawe will and grace so im gonna goto helll* NOOO!!! it wasnt even that good anyways well i still think biometerics with voice alnasys would be good but whats wrong with a good old credit card (people used to get heavey wallets now you just wont be able to use one hand)oh and wake up people the end times are soon (i am a techie a avid christain and i dont goto church) ah well bye *zips out the door*
Now I can just grab a kids arm and forcibly swipe it past a pop-machine whenever i'm thirsty...assuming he has money flowing through his veins.
[Please sign here]
Janet Reno!
Such a paragon of compassion and maternal tenderness.
Democian or Republicrat, polar sides of the same corrupt coin.
But at least we think we have a choice, not like those deluded other countries!
If I was to kidnap a rich girl for ranson, I could care less if I carved out a chip from her arm when I know I can get 3 million dollars. I'm sure the parents would want the rest of the body back.
[Please sign here]
'Cause if they don't, they'll goto hell!
There's no place like ~/
So basicly God is planning a mass murder again? And you people want to spend eternity with him???? There are several stories in the bible in which God killed off entire cities and he's supposed to be the good guy? Guess I'll be taking my chances with the devil then.
Again, it's the choice of the people. People *choose* separation from God, not the other way around. God loves you whether you like it or not.
Here's one way I look at it: would you rather live in a mansion in a city whose streets are of gold, or would you rather be tortured endlessly for eternity?
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
"Hey, you wanna go grab a drink after work?"
"Can't, I'm broke."
"What? You've been working all this overtime, how can you be broke?"
"Oh, no, I mean I'm 'BROKE'. I degaussed my monitor this morning and my RFID overloaded."
"Man, I hate having to get surgery everytime that happens, I wish they'd just invent some kind of card we could carry around."
"Yeah, me too, either that or maybe little pieces of paper we could carry around saying we have so much credit. We could then just barter with the pieces of paper."
"You mean make money out of paper?"
"Yeah. Exactly."
"Weird."
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
> Do you have any idea how offensive you sound?
Not at all, actually, unless you're desperately looking for it.
He's not saying "the suffering of others doesn't matter" - that's totally in your head. He's saying "of all the terrible, terrible times in human history, the end times will be even worse, so why would I possibly want to look forward to that?"
You sound irrationally biased against Christianity, which irks me because I like to see rational thought. Closed-minded fundamentalism is bad, whether it's Christian fundamentalism, anti-Christian fundamentalism (you), or any other kind. Closed minds lead to open wars.
Okay...
:)
/.!)
First, UGW/RWX... user, group, world/read, write, execute. The universal access mode is 777, not 666. If the mode is 666, it means that no one can execute the file with that mode.
binary decimal english
100b (4d)means read only (no writing or running)
010b (2d)means write only (no reading or running)
001b (1d)means execute only (no reading or writing)
101b (5d)means read and run, but no write
110b (6d)means read and write, but no execute
011b (3d)means write and execute, but no read
111b (7d)means full access
The mode is given in decimal for User, Group, World, so that 777 means anyone can do anything to the file, and 000 means no one can do anything to the file. 700 means user can rwx it, but no one else can do anything (saving, as always, root). 754 would mean that user can do anything (7d), other group members can read and execute it, but not write to it, and that the world (outside the group, user(owner) and root of course) can only read it, but cannot write it or execute it.
666 means anyone can read or write it, but no one can execute it, (except again, root, the superuser, also sometimes refered to appropriately in this case, as God.)
I am pretty sure that's all right, I may have slipped up on a detail here or there, but basically that's what that all means.
So... back onto topic, I feel RFID implants are badwrong, or b'dong if you will, because:
A- Unneccessary
B- Eliminates annonymity ('cept on
C- Potential alergic reaction/infection/rejection
D- Would allow the authorities (boo! hiss!) to track the whereabouts of all citizens. Sacrifice freedom for the two seconds it takes to whip out a credit card? Are you HIGH??
E- Cost
F- Lack of security
G- How's that "golden" (like that fooled anyone!) dollar coin replacement for the dollar bill working out? If you're in Denver, and your driving to Phoenix, how often will you see a sign telling you how many more KILOMETERS it is to your destination?
H- "I don't want a red one, I want a blue one that flashes pink, can I get have one of those?"
I- "You'll plant that chip in ma ahhrm after I plant this double-ought buck in your a$$!"
J- "IT'S THE DEVIL!!!"
K- "Well, M$ RFIDOS has just been hacked again for like... the fiftieth time... this morning..."
L- "It's burning me! Get it out! Get it ouuuuut!"
M- "Okay, I took two, but I still don't feel anymore convenient"
N- "Oh I'm sorry, is that your RFID ringing or mine?"
O- "Okay, the captain would like to ask, before we slam into the ocean at 600MPH, who was using the cellphone? Oh, you have an RFID. Nevermind.
P- "Warning: The RFID tag in your arm contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects and other reproductive harm"
Q- "No, I swear on my mother! I was taken abord their spaceship and they implanted... oh GOD! They got you too? You're... ONE OF THEM!"
R- "In a party-line vote, the house passed a resolution requireing all RFID's and silicone breast implants to be removed from Americans arms, buttocks, etc., by not later than 30 October 2004
Need I go on?
Z
The post by 'Beatles Forum' is correct: Revelation is about things that have taken place after 70AD, things that are still going on today, and things that are yet to come. For eg: Revelation mentioned an army of 200 million soldiers - there weren't 200 millions *humans* at the time Revelation was written.
:) - read the Bible, tell God you're serious, love your fellow man... ]
Revelation is backed-up by the New Testament - for eg: in the gospels Jesus promises a second coming that will be visible around the world, in the letters of Paul, Paul talks about the anti-christ. The references to 7-hills, Rome, etc. in Revelation are correct - they map to Catholicism (whose headquarters is in Rome). Before you dismiss this out of hand, not that the Catholics have their own corresponding prophecy (made in the 11th century) of Rome being destroyed. From the Catholic Encyclopaedia (see third paragraph from the end):
"The last of these prophecies concerns the end of the world and is as follows: "In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End.".
IIRC, we are now at the second-last pope according to the Catholic prophecy.
[Note, I'm not condoning Catholicism - in Revelation God specifically asks his followers to "come out of" "Rome" so they don't "partake of her sins" (remember the massacres in the Inquisitions and the crusades?). If you want to know God, deal direct
Small correction: The last paragraph should have read:
God specifically asks his followers to "come out of" *her* so they don't "partake of her sins"...
("Rome" isn't mentioned by name in Revelation)
A hand gesture or a proclamation of alegence? Casheer: "That'll be $12.95, do you praise Bill?" Buyer: "Yeah" or optionally: Buyer shows casheer hand gesture when walking up with items. Hand facing forward with all but the middle finger up. (strains my hand just trying that)
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
and I'd NEVER get one of these.
Sure, I believe that the Christians got that whole "son of God" thing wrong, but I'm not taking any chances. They might have gotten THIS ONE right.
I'll stick to cash, check, and credit cards.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This elimiates the anonymous purchase.
no it doesn't.
instantly a underground currency will emerge. be it old currency, canadian currency, or whatever there will ALWAYS be a way to get goods without tracking.
do you really think that drug sellers and users will happily switch to the new government mandated tracked purchase system?
nothing will change except the speed that honest people are funneled into criminal activities (2 years in prison for buying bread without approve funding sources...) in order to do what they have always done.
It's rich guys that have no idea as to what reality really is, trying to control people...nothing more.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Excerpt from an interesting article about the whole 666 thing:
Isolated down to the single verse of interest the translated Biblical text in question is: "This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six" (Rev 13:18, NRSV).
The purpose of this study is not to add to the enormous literature about the apocalyptic images and this number. Entire books have been written on this subject[1]. Rather this study will concentrate only on the representation of the number six hundred sixty-six, arguing that to represent it as 666 (triple six) is an error. Such a representation can mislead modern readers towards false interpretations. It is a severely anachronistic representation.
Here's my take on it:
144,000 people will be brought up in the rapture.
Those 144,000 people never lied and are virgins.
Afterwards, the tribulation occurs and people curse God for it. They then accept someone who's against God, and refuse money from those who worship God.
So who are the 144,000? Children to young to speak. Too young to have lied yet. They won't be made to go through the tribulation and the people will hate God for taking them away. Only the truely faithfull will remain faithfull. God will show his powers at that time and people will believe in him. But most won't follow him.
When it comes, we'll know it. This isn't it.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
Few issues that I see.
;)
As technology evolves, so must the chips, and if the chips are implanted, well...how many people really are going to accept a technology that requires surgery every 3-5 years? Every 5-7 years? 7-10? I doubt retailers are going to accept a technology that won't work for at least 20 years or more. So really, the product have to have a lifespan of what, 25-30 or more years to work?
I hope the vulture capalitists who are funding this one are in it for long term...oh wait...that would be agnist everything that makes a vulture capalitist a vulture capalitist.
As for fundamentalist Christians, they could use a little religious apocalypse. It's a healty thing every 666 or so years...
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Remember the Susan B' Anthony dollar? I can just see all the early adopters running around with shinny new RFID tags in there arm that no one has readers for. Honestly if we can't make a secure satelite tv, music, or DVD DRM system what makes them think they can secure this? Like it or not, there is a lot of grey/black market business that depends on cash and anoniminty of cash. I can't see any of those going away, even with digital cash and an audit trail. Those people aren't going to give up money making markets.
Ultimately everyone is judged by an infinitely wise, infinitely just, all-knowing God. Not only does he know what you did, but why you did it.
Don't worry, everyone will get exactly what they deserve.
There will be no plea bargins, no hung juries, no tampered evidence, no legal loopholes. Just perfect justice.
I'm looking forward to the end of the world. Bring it on!
I don't get it. How will a pin help if the machine decides to copy your pin as well? The only possibility would be if your number is given as encrypted and only approved machines can decrypt it. Or something.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about credit cards and pins
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If I was a baby born 10 years in the future, I would hope for a time machine so I could go back in time and force my mother to have an abortion so I would not be implanted at birth.
you have to upgrade? I'd like to see how they address this issue.
http://www.grabthemic.org
"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." ~ Revelation
Actually, the "slaves" in the bible were different then those of recent years. People went into slavery to pay off a debt. Others became slaves for free room and board. Slaves where basically working homeless people.
Believe it or not, women are declared equal to men in the bible. When it says "All men are created equal", it means all mankind, not just men. God has spoken to women many times in the bible, and even had one woman (Debrah) kill the king of an invading army. Another woman, married to a king, helped prevent the Jews from being persecuted.
The bible says women should submit their bodies to their husbands, so they're not led into temptation. (don't withhold sex, or they may be tempted to cheat) But it also says men should submit their bodies to their wifes for the same reason.
It does say the man is the head of the household, but in those days, it was the man that brought home the money. (for the most part) And without some form of declared leadership in the home, there's often be a lot of fighting over decisions. Personally, however, I never see myself as the head of my home. My wife and I are able to agree on what needs to be done without arguing.
btw: I don't believe these chips are the mark of the beast, but I still wouldn't take one. Not until they've been in use for many years without any problems.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
One late night I was bored so I flipped on TBN for a good laugh. There was an extremely bad rendition of the 'end-days' scenario on this movie, but there was a company that brought it all about by deciding that they would build this implantable chip for consumers. My reaction was "bullshit, no one would possibly do this because the market isn't there. I wouldn't get one of these things installed..."
Looks like TBN was right for once...
People use that term very liberally. I thought a fundamentalist was one who emphasised the importance of the basic, fundamental, essential aspects of their belief.
On the other hand, an extremist will take something most consider to be at the edges, or obscure, and act as if it was fundamental.
-- All your bass are below two Hz
Banning cash would be the next great advance in finance. It will have backing from every business, as it will prevent theft. People will like the idea because it will prevent bribery. Think about it, would you steal/accept a bribe if the money went directly to your bank account? No more laundering money, either. If people didn't buy from you, you won't be able to say they did, cause everything will be written down in a database.
And IT WILL BE ABUSED. Yes. Someone will abuse it.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
There's no need for these rfid devices to be physically implanted subcutaneously, with the attendant possibility for medical complications that could arise in a small percentage of such 'users.' Instead, they could just be permanently attached to a stainless steel collar that is welded around each user's neck.
Imagine a world where the only method of purchasing was from one of these niftly gizmos that were to be embedded in the back of your hand. Mark of the beast? Definitely.
Imagine if you or I chose not to use this mark, and we were faced with not having any way to buy food, gas, water or other life necessities.
The US government has been using this technology for decades. Look up MKULTRA, and HAARP if you are interested in which ways they are commonly used.
These chips are not only capable of storing data, but also capable of transmitting neurological signals and frequencies to receptors, which can be hidden in a rock, telephone pole, your cat or dog, or your neighbor.
Essentially, what you think, feel, and experience can be broadcasted.
Likewise, they can also receive signals and turn them into suggestions that your brain interprets.
BOTTOM LINE - THESE ARE BAAAAAD, Mkay.
Reference http://www.raven1.net/ for additional information.
Beware, Be safe, and stay AWAY from these spawns of satan.
So in short it's "follow his rules or die" and in exactly what way does that have any difference with a dictator?
Besides if God plays such games here, why do you think he isn't going to play games on you in heaven?
I'm more careful to lock my doors when we're home then when away. It insures that someone who wants to get into the house won't be able to sneak in quietly, and that's the sort of person you really want to deter.
If someone wants to break in when we're away, they're going to. If they have to break through a door to do so, the damage will probably be greater than what they steal. I know this from personal experience.
It's similar with cars. A thief once broke my window to steal the stereo, which happened to be old, broken, and worth less than half the cost of the window.
The RFID chip is a *device*, universal *device* access is mode 666. That's not a hair, it's the punchline. ...BTW - this was just an observation, not intended to implicate Unix as the "OS of the beast" or anything. ;) ....
.
I was always told it was BCD, but the man page does indeed say octal.
.
.
.
Then again, perhaps the Revelations author does not count the thumb as one of your fingers
A goal is a dream with a deadline
For electronic wallets useability is more important than strict security, ideally you'd have both ...
Make a card with a physical connector for when you want to be absolutely sure a connection cant get hijacked, and wireless for normal use. Also allow a user to commit to payment by just putting his finger on a button if he wants to (you can add finger print recognition even) make requests for pin a user-configuration.
Punching in a pin with very small keys on top of a creditcard sized device is not for everyone.
Considering the bible is written in Hebrew/Greek, and both cultures that used those languages understood under 'the number of X's name' the same concept, namely:
-In both languages numbers were represented by letters in this way alfa =1, beta=2, gamma=3 (same for Hebrew, aleph=1...).
So when one would take an arbitrary string of characters, such as a name, and counted up the numerical values of the letters, one would come up with a number.
But it's a one way function of course, a given numbers has virtually unlimited possible combinations of writing it.
The number of Jesus' name in Hebrew, if I recall correctly, is 777.
So to get the number of the beast's name:
-If it isn't in Hebrew/Greek, convert it.
-Calculate Hebrew number.
-Calculate Greek number.
One should give you 666.
Ascii doesn't count ofcourse, similarily we could use virtually any character encoding and alot of people's name could become 666.
Do wake up. Write(1) foot to /usr/slippers. /sbin/pee -l | /usr/toilet /dev/mouth
mv self-bathroom.
make coffee -cream. Write(1) coffee to
If humans used Unix like computers do.
I'm in no way a Christian fundementalist (I'm atheist), but I sure as hell (it's just an expression, I don't think that hell exists) get freaked out when a paragraph written some 2000 years ago depicts something happening now, even more when it warns about the catastrophic consequences of the act.
We already have a 'mark of the beast' in using a social security number to do just about everything in the US, and that is why there are people (like myself) who have become non-enumerated natural born citizens of the united States of America (notice united NOT capitalized). We the PEOPLE are sovereign NOT the frickin' gov't. This is an outrage to think of having some piece of technology embedded in your body, to go right along with your SSN! Instead of the Mobil Speedpass...it would be like the human tracking device of evil. Yes to have your pet have an ID chip in it is one thing but this!!! This is fuckin' nuts!!!
According to my schedule, we've only got until that expiration date there on your credit card reads 6/66... or about 60 more years. So they'll have to be conditioned BEFORE then! But don't worry -- our marketing and advertising professionals are hard at work turning men into sheep..
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Who the fuck cares what the streets are made out of?
RFID tags have been implanted in North American pets now for years, as they dont get lost like tags do. Usually the glass-encased chip is injected in the loose skin of the neck or behind the ear.
Soooo - will our pets be the first ones able to use this technology freely? How about a pilot project that allows pets to have an allowance and buy their own treats?
549 of 666 comments | yro.slashdot.org
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
Here is one that IMHO is quite profound.
e zekiel_4_3.htm
c a/trinity/jerusalem.html (a follow up which aims to fix a perceived error in the above link)
Background: God repeatedly told the ancient Israelites that if they disobeyed His law, they would be driven out of their promised land. But not permanently. Indeed that happened.
In spring or summer of the year 606 BC (verified historically), Israel lost its independence and the first deportation to Babylon occurred. The prophets predicted that this deportation would last 70 years, and indeed that was the case. A prophetic year in the Bible is always 360 days, not 365.25. 70 prophetic years/69.0 calendar years later, in 537 BC, Israel was allowed to return to their land. But some Israelites decided to stay in Babylon because they enjoyed the pagan life there.
In Ezekiel 4:3-6, it is clearly pointed out that Israel's punishment for this would be 430 years of captivity. The original 70 years were included in this, so we have 360 prophetic years left. Indeed, in the second century BC, Jews had more independence than normal, if not a full-blown kingdom. But, alas, they did not repent and return to God.
In Leviticus 26 verses 18, 21, 24, and 28, it is pointed out that the punishment for any continued disobedience would be multiplied by seven. If you take the 360 years that most of the Israelites were punished for continuing to live in their sin and multiply it by seven, you get 2520 prophetic years, or 907,200 days, or almost 2484 calendar years.
If we add 2484 calendar years to 537 BC, taking into account that there is no year zero, we end up with 1948.
Question for the history gurus: Do we know what happened in the spring of 1948?
Right -- Israel became a nation again, thus ending the number of years of captivity that Ezekiel prophecied -- right down to the season (spring)!
References:
http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/
http://yfiles.com/y3nf.html
http://www.direct.
No thanks to having muggers rip my hand off for my implant instead of just demanding my wallet.
Exactly, maybe he'll get bored and start off all the ridiculous "testing" again. Sounds like just the sort of thing this capricious "god" character would do.
Whoever thinks putting an ID on yourself is some sort of demonic practice leading to the end of the world, or even thinks that it strips you from your originality, is just an idiot. I'm sorry, but such chips are nothing more than inevidable convieniances that will make our world more efficient. Now, granted, I wouldn't want EVERYTHING to depend on some unremovable ID tag. Only some services, and nothing relating to personal security, should use such a device, however I see such a device a useful and needed improvment to our ever-growing interdependant society.
And there is much rejoicing.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
----- I didn't use to believe in Conspiracies... but that before I witnessed the power of the fully operational battlestation that is the Mass Media. The moment when it finally hit home to me that something sinister was going on was watching the Machine resurrect the career of Meatloaf right before my very eyes. Don't get me wrong, Meatloaf seems like a nice guy, but I'm just saying, "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" How does something like that just happen? His career was deader than Julius Caesar and whammo, suddenly, the song is NUMBER ONE! Hose me down with holy water if I get too hot? Are you kidding me? Number one song in America folks. #1. Meatloaf.
And now we've got things far more nefarious than the lyrics of Jim Steadman to worry about, like a friggin chip that goes under your flesh and tracks every single place you might go and whatever it was you bought when you got there and there are people here so throughly manipulated that they root for it because anything that freaks the Bible-believing Christians out can't be all THAT bad, right?
Wake up and smell what they're shovelling down your throat!
A View to a Shill
Andy Rooney shills the Mark to "the greatest generation." Andy Rooney saying "We need some system for permanently identifying safe people. Most of us are never going to blow anything up and there's got to be something better than one of these photo IDs - a tattoo somewhere maybe."
Thank you Number 89, we'll deposit those work units in your account once we bring the Village fully online.
For the WIRED generation, it's Kevin Warwick and his ilk. In an interview with Geek News, the Jaron Lanier of Cybernetics had this to say "I have read many letters and emails about the 'mark of the beast'. Although I do not consider myself to be a beast, if you actually read the passage in the bible [Heaven forbid!] then there may well be something in it! Essentially, it is saying that those who have the mark will be a part of the action, those that do not will be out of it. This could easily become true."
Or how about this one, the DisInfo entry on Kevin Warwick. And of course, the crazed religious paranoia of religious cults who insist that the 'Mark Of The Beast 666' will take the form of microchips planted on the forehead and right hand of the unbelievers may just have a point after all.
For the Baby Boomers, well, let's telecast the Jacobs' Family getting chipped on Good Morning America, the Today Show, Fox News, CNN, TelefrigginMundo for cielo's sake!
Give it to Mikey. He'll eat anything
In the words of Jacques Ellul "the educated man does not believe in propaganda; he shrugs and is convinced that propaganda has no effect on him. This is, in fact, one of his great weaknesses, and propagandists are well aware that in order to reach someone, one must first convince him that propaganda is ineffectual and not very clever. Because he is convinced of his own superiority, the intellectual is much more vulnerable than anybody else to this maneuver..."
I don't see the benefit of an implanted RFID tag to replace cash. You're still going to have to carry a wallet around, unless the plan is a whole array of tags for the driver's licence, pictures of your SO, shopping list, etc. And I don't even want to know how they're going to implant a Durex, even less how you're meant to get it out again in a hurry.
And of course, pickpockets are going to have to start carrying knives.
There must be lots of people with the name 'jack' or 'leo' or whatever. there will be only ONE person called HUMAN_ID_0532134159123843892341 , that's a name that makes you totally unique.
I have a refinement of your idea that's more palatable: Use the person's ID number to generate a more pronounceable first and middle name. Hasn't somebody suggested this in some well-known SF story?
Religiouse loons and luddites aside this technology doesn't make any sense. We should instead be moving to trustless systems, not making our personal information MORE avalible. Even if the sensor needed close proximity how hard is it to walk up next to a guy. Stick a scanner in your pocket at a high enough setting and you can scan everyone you walk near.
Great, now it'll be part of PATRIOT ACT III.
I can't help but find it interesting that the "number of the beast" is also the Unix mode number for universal device access
Whew, thank god I don't have to worry about being executed!
Fnord.
Subdermal RFID microchips to pay for goods?? What the hell? Would that mean that we would all need to carry surgery knifes with us so we can take those chips in and out of our bodies to pay for stuff?
"Hi, I'd like to buy a coke."
"Okay, that'd be 3 subdermal RFID microchip units."
"All right." (rips himself a new one, takes out chip)
"Damn, I only got a 5-unit chip!"
"No prob, here's your change"
"Thanks!" (rips himself another new one, puts 2-unit chip inside)
"Thank you, come again"
"I will... right after I come back from the hospital, I think I just cut one of my arteries" (falls to the ground, unconcious)
Some of us are.
God has become more liberal since than. No more stonings, no more slavery, no more selling your daughters.
;-)
Jesus is the original hippie liberal
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The only assumption science makes is that the rules of the universe have been effectively the same since the beginning. Futhermore, they will always be the same until the end.
If you don't hold these assumptions reasonable, I suggest you stay off bridges and out of multi-story buildings.
Creation Science isn't. That's because you're trying to prove a pre-ordained scenario. Literal interpretation of the bible. They tried this before with Copernicus and it ultimately made the church look like a bunch a jackasses.
The biblical proof for a geo-centric universe is as profound as that of a 10000 year old earth. You are very certain and no amount of research or investigation will deter your faith.
The faith of the scientist is a contradiction. The faith of science is skepticism. Individuals do get carried away, but the community must be swayed by reason and evidence.
Most of all, scientists don't accuse each other of heresy for bringing up new theories. They don't call each other evil and servants of satan (though they can get a little bitchy with their rivals).
Any sufficiently weak argument will almost inevitably be credited to god as a last gasp effort for legitamicy.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
It's called a wakeup call. The wakeup calls that Germans failed to heed eventually built the ovens.
Son, we are building execution machines in Guatanamo NOW. Courtesy of Haliburton. The ovens are firing up, and I am screaming NOW before they get the idea that I would make a nice souffle.
This all is a process. It takes time. But it is easily monitored, if you clean the crud from your eyes and actually watch what is happening.
The FBI now equates protestors with terrorists, as of two days ago. Police are slamming protestors into the ground with no excuses or consequences. "1st Amendment zones" are established to imprison dissenters when the President comes by. We have torture camps in Cuba, thousands of men locked in the dark, we're shipping secret prisoners to really GOOD torturers overseas, we've been looted blind, we've been led into a stupid, useless war... what the HELL ELSE DO YOU THINK GIVES US A CLUE WE'RE GOING DOWN GERMANY'S PATH?
Oh, and yes, I do know they will eventually put me in a file, if they haven't already. And I do know that if it really goes bad, I get to disappear forever.
It's called fighting back instead of giving in. Life, fortune, sacred honor sort of thing.
They came for the trade unionists, and all that.
You don't wait until there is no one left to speak for anyone.
Care to back that one up????
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
But I don't think this technology will take hold for the simple fact that people don't want to have something done to their bodies that isn't necessary...okay so this *will* be a big hit in Beverly Hills, but besides that.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
This is precisely why this dog won't hunt. In the hugely successful "end times" potboiler series "Left Behind" which was ghost-written for Christian author Tim LaHaye, they specifically mention people being "chipped" like cats and dogs and that this would be the Mark of the Beast. If this ever comes out as a consumer product, let alone if it becomes a requirement, there will be thousands and thousands of "Christian Patriots" running to their bunkers and arming themselves to the teeth.
Also, for those who mention that this would be Attorney General Ashcroft's dream, remember that he, too, is a fundamentalist Christian who believes that the Bible is the Word o'Gawd and that the book of Revelation is CNN from the future. He's not going to let this happen. He'll be more than happy to issue you a card you have to carry on pain of death, or require the use of biometric ID you have to register for on pain of death, but not something that you implant or tattoo. Nuh-uh.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
So in short it's "follow his rules or die" and in exactly what way does that have any difference with a dictator?
Well, the difference is that you could theoretically depose a dictator through bloody revolution, but as God is omnipotent, ain't no one gettin' Him off'a His Throne. So when He says "jump", you'd best be three feet in the air, asking "when can I come back down?"
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Heh. Good thing I'm not Christian. Right?
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
I can imagine, you all know the "hoax" about waking up in a bath tub full of ice, and having an incision (sp?) in your side. Now people will just wake up with a cut arm, and all their info/money/whatever is gone.
I can just imagine the number of sci-fi/horror flicks with this premise. But seriously, who would want to be implatned with a unique identification tag?
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
How about, I give you the finger... and you give me my new cell phone.
Yeah, I'll find the verse and post it here, but it actually is in the bible & Nostradamus predicted it, I'm not looking the stuff up now because it's 4 in the morning and I'm tired, but if I get a chance later I will.
The thing is, the whole 666 thing goes with bar codes, bar codes are assigned certain numbers for each type of good they represent. When the left number, middle number, and right number are all 666 supposedly that'll be the number of the beast, and if you look now, two of those 6s are already in place on certain products
I'm not a hardcore Christian guy, but it is kind of erie how close to truth the bible is becoming, and how close Nostradamus' predictions are coming together.
I wrote code so you didn't have to.
I know we are living in a particiarily virulent era of corporate control, but I hope the general public regards this a fucked up and ignores it.
There really needs to be a law where we can challange corporate leaders to hand-to-hand comabt for inflicting stupid shit on the world.
What convoluted psuedo-logic you speak. To say that we don't live in an increasingly oppressive police-state because people are openly complaining about their rights being violated is just weird. By speaking up and putting our freedom on the line there is still a chance to avoid the fate of actually having an Oberfuhrer Ashcroft.
And I always thought the 9/11 attacks had something to do with US policy decisions in the mid-east. Saying that the prohibition of contact with domestic FBI and non-domestic intelligence-gathering services CAUSED 9/11 is wrong. I won't even give you that they may have ALLOWED it to happen. The FBI knew that people listed as suspected terrorists were taking flying lessons and not bothering to learn how to land, but they chose to ignore the report from their field agent. Incompetence ALLOWED it to happen.
And by the way, WHAT &^$*@ RECOVERY? So we gained 22,000 jobs last quarter - we're still 500,000 in the hole.
Son, we are building execution machines in Guatanamo NOW. Courtesy of Haliburton. The ovens are firing up, and I am screaming NOW before they get the idea that I would make a nice souffle.
I would be a little surprised if this were happening (yet), but not terribly so. Are these metaphorical execution machines or is there something we should know about?
Very telling, however, is that no one asked you to back up the rest of your post.
Also, you forgot to mention people taken off the streets without warrants, locked in prisons without charge and not allowed to speak to anyone. The government won't even say if they are being held or not. I saw pictures last year of mothers outside a prison holding signs with pictures of their sons - just wanting to know if they were in the prison. This was in AMERICA - "land of the free" - and not in Pinochet's Chile.
Anyone who doesn't see that we're all heading down right-wing rat hole is wearing blinders.
If you have an RFID implant the government will be able to track you anywhere you go simply by placing passive RFID scanners on the street. They will also be able to tell who you are walking with and who you know. But this ability isn't confined to implanted RFID tags, they can do the same with any RFID tags in your clothes! So ID#347654-0 shows up at an anti-war rally and guess what, that shirt was sold to YOU, John Smith, at the Eugene, Oregon Eddie Bauer store. (And by the way, why were you in Eugene, Oregon in July 2003?).
Think you can pay for your clothes with cash and avoid it? Nope, all it takes is for you to identify yourself once at any government office or airline check-in counter having a scanner for all your tags to be assigned to you.
RFID tags in clothing is the holy grail of a police state. RFID tags give our government "internal security" abilities that Stalin and Hitler only dreamed about.
.
I hold these assumptions entirely reasonable, at least as long as they concern only things like the fundamental laws of physics and as long as "since the beginning" is defined to mean "from a certain point on" (just like the big bang theory). Yet the concrete evidence based on these assumptions only to disprove the young earth theory and specification by devolution hasn't been found. Furthermore, specification by devolution can give reasonable explanations to a great amount of evidence discovered that just doesn't seem to fit into evolution theory, as well as the lack of evidence for lots of things evolution theory is fundamentally based on and for which evidence should rationally thinking have been found.
There is no such thing as a biblical proof for a geocentric universe. The fact that biblical accounts have been used by Christians to "prove" things like this (and to legitimize lots of wrongdoing) proves only that we Christians are humane and prone to err just as any other people.
I'd like to know, though: what's to stop talented thieves from eventually cutting it out of their arm/whatever, hacking the daylights out of the thing and replacing it... or perhaps even doing it in-situ?
Turkeys south of the Canadian border are an endangered species today....
Think about the last time you deleted a program.
In some respects, a computer program could be considered a living thing, albeit on a much lower level. So would that make deleting a program murder? After all, you created it and it belonged to you.
Considering that God created the universe, and all living things, I think that he has the right to do with His creations as wishes. If some of his creations do things which displease him, he is well within his rights to "delete" them.
People of leisurely moral growth often fail to recognize the difference between killing and murder. Killing, while undesirable, is not necessarily wrong in itself (for example, killing in war or self defense). The sin of murder is committed when one's respect for God sinks so low that they kill the image of God (mankind) for the sake of their own personal desires.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Either that or some enterprising businessman took the idea from the Bible. Kinda hard to say one way or another, isn't it?
Who says the 2 are mutually exclucive?
> > Son, we are building execution machines in Guatanamo NOW. Courtesy of Haliburton. The ovens are firing up, and I am screaming NOW before they get the idea that I would make a nice souffle.
>
> I would be a little surprised if this were happening (yet), but not terribly so. Are these metaphorical execution machines or is there something we should know about?
>
> Very telling, however, is that no one asked you to back up the rest of your post.
Dude, the guy couldn't even be arsed to spell "Halliburton" correctly. Why would anyone think he could back up his ridiculous allegations?
face print, finger print, retina print, and voice print can all be done passively with out your permission and no one has to insert anything into to you. You could just as easily attach a Visa account to your eye print. Don't want a chip, don't get one.