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Innovative Uses of RFID Tags
Roland Piquepaille writes "When your newspapers write something about RFID tags, it's almost always about Wal-Mart or how these tags are threatening our privacy. But they often miss the important innovations brought by this technology. For example, in Florida, RFID drives highway traffic reports on more than 200 miles of toll roads. Or take DHL, which is tracking fashion with RFID tags on more than 70 million garments in its French distribution center. Elsewhere, in Texas, 28,000 students test an e-tagging system which promises better security for them. And what about RFID tags which could prevent surgical errors and have just been approved in the U.S last week? So, what do you think? Are these innovations promising a better future for us or not? For your convenience, this overview contains the essential details from the different articles mentioned above."
Not to mention the possible side effects of having a radio transmitting from inside a human body for long periods of time.
First of all, there are two kinds of RFID chips, the active kind, that contain a power source and constant transmit and the passive kind that only activate when they are around the reader.
Most of the tags in existance today are passive models, they are cheaper and have a virtually unlimited lifespan. They are powered by either a electric or magnetic field (depends on unit frequency). These models DO NOT CONSTANTLY TRANSMIT and would be unlikly to cause any problems to humans unless they were read a lot (1000+ times a day).
The active kind are unlikly to be used alot around humans do to cost. The battery installed into them means that they usually only have a lifespan of around 5 years, and would have to be replaced then. Chances are after a cycle or two of battery usage, whatever the tag was doing will be replaced by a better technology.
Medevo
Can anyone point to technology that religion embraced in its infancy? I really would be interested.
The Printing press
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Spam is bad. Rfid has nothing to do with spam. The only difference to using RFID to help spam is that you'll be getting targetted ads. But it has nothing to do with Rfid. Perhaps you should think about which chemist you go to if they send you spam.
Can anyone point to technology that religion embraced in its infancy? I really would be interested.
The most obvious would be the printing press, in Europe (not just Western Europe--all of Europe). Markedly different from the acceptance of the printing press in other areas, such as Islamicate Ottoman Turkey. A distinction which, imho, has a lot to do with religious acceptance and usage of the technology.
Technology embraced in it's infancy? Other than the printing press?
Anything having to do with construction (building churches, etc), communication (radio, tv, the internet) and transportation (bussing those seniors in for Sunday Mass).
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Well, here's an article for VeriChip, which is implantable, and stores a persons health information, and is wirelessly writable.
Here's another about an implantable GPS system, currently the size of a pacemaker, but the inventors believe it can be shrunk down to as much as 1/10th the size.
And, one last one about Wal-Mart, tracking customers using RFID "from company headquarters some 750 miles away".
So yes, RFID can do those things, and IS doing some of those things now.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
I also work for a timing company that uses ChampionChip. And one thing that the above poster would agree with is a chip alone is useless, you need some sort of database or software to relate the chip to usable data.
This is a major issue that people seem to forget about with RFID. A passive RFID chip can transmit just a serial number, but what does that mean? If I take my Mobil Speedpass and pass it over the ChampionChip system it reads it, sure, but otherwise it's useless data. There is no way the system can know...'oh. that's Jim's Mobile Speedpass' For this to happen all RFID systems would need to be linked together, and share all data.
It is capable for some passive chips and active chips to store data, but the reader would need to know what type of data it was receiving, and what to do with it. So some of these tin foil hat scenarios are just not possible.
This is actually part of a research project going on at the University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering department.
For those who don't know, he posts a lot of rehashed news on his blog and then by some act of god (or Benjamin Franklin) gets his stories constantly posted to Slashdot, which gets him massive ad revenue.
I recommend that nobody visits the links in the story to deprive him of this ad revenue.
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