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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."
Last month at the local open source group's installfest, I was talking to one of the compsci teachers from a university. He had recently attended some sort of college fair or something, and someone (MIT?) had set up a nifty display using RFID chips.
You see, they had disguised an rfid reader as a tablet, and embedded rfid things into little plastic discs. On the discs were images representing english, math, etc. Someone tosses a chip on the reader, and a load of information is displayed on the screen about that course. Nifty, nifty...
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
How about putting RFID tags in the end of footballs so that we can finally put an end to that oh-so-exact science of taking a timeout for a measurement?
Seriously! They just toss the ball wherever the ref thinks it should be, and those chains aren't exactly placed perfectly either. How about something that can actually work for once?
E-tagging students to provide them with security listed as a good thing? Roland Piquepaille, get the fuck out, you know nothing of geeks.
College is about drinking, sleeping late, cutting class and still passing because you are smart enough to do it all without getting caught. It certainly isn't about being tagged like cattle and herded from one carefully controlled, spoon fed 'educational experience' to another.
For all you Americans who don't want to suffer crap like that I suggest college in England where attending classes is a decision you make, and the consequences are entirely your responsibility. And to top if off it'll be cheaper (even with flights) and it only takes 3 years not 4 because you don't have to dick around with bullshit subjects just to jump your tuition fees up another thousand bucks.
Beep beep.
I work at a medical device company, and we're implanting RFID tags into the bases of our optical catheters so they aren't used for more than 72 hours. It's a liability thing, but it's just another instance of RFID. We track the product id of the catheter and the base station records the number and records how long it's been used in the body.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
Having a tag inside a body doesn't seem to be the point. I imagine the tag would be in the plastic bracelet they give you (at least in the US, are those things used everywhere?). Anyway, this would eliminate misreading similar names and such human errors. Another good medical use might be having an RFID reader in the surgical instruments tray and tags on all the instruments. Lights or a readout could display when instruments are missing from the tray to prevent things getting left in a patient.
Honestly, whats going on with Michael and Roland Piquepaille? Is the whole /. crew in on it, or is it just Michael whos getting the blow jobs?
It cuts both ways. Back in the 70s and 80s, I recall seeing tons of conspiracy theories about how bar codes could be misused to observe whatever we did in our purchases.
Additionally, there's the whole so-called conspiracy about how "shopping club" members who bought a frequent shopper club card was having vast and horrible statistics collected about how much Mountain Dew, et al, they were purchasing.
Frankly, yes, it can all be used for wrong, but that depends on your definition of wrong. Do you spend sleepless nights wondering if your store is telling evil corporations how much Mountain Dew you drink?
Chances are it's just the caffeine.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
My job is with a company that times races (i.e. runners) using RFID technology. We use ChampionChip products, but there are a couple of similar, up-and-coming solutions (AMB, DAG).
The whole system is really impressive and versatile. We time marathons with tens of thousands of participants (Boston, Twin Cities, Grandma's, Columbus, Indianapolis Mini) and the systems catch 99.99% of the runners. The chips are waterproof (for triathlons) and quite rugged.
Using RFID technology is TONS better than the old methods (tags and/or popsicle sticks, and lots of watching). If any of you has ever had to line up in chutes after a hard race, you'd know what kind of chaos can ensue when someone falls or gets out of line. Anyway, RFID means that runners only have to cross the finish line... then they can pass out as they please.
I hate, err... 'just cannot stand' to get technical... ok, maybe I don't. But let's step back a bit and read what 'the mark of the beast' really is, at the core.
;-)
A unique identifier of a person, used to control behavior (in this case, commerce), and those who refuse the identifier, ergo, the control, are "retired"
The "mark of the beast", in this example, the RFID, is no more evil than the social security number. It is the USE of the number by a larger entity which has been 'evil'. The tattoos on people in Nazi concentration camps were not evil, but the uses of those number were.
It is the question of "good use" versus "bad use" that this forum was discussing.
Secondly, this "mark" has been feared since Nero put his face on a coin and demanded that 'it only' be used to commerce in the Roman Empire. LONG before the SSN. IMHO, the 'mark of the beast' describes a massive database, implying unique ID of all items and all customers, as well as POS communication with the database. Think Walmart on a global scale, gone bad. SSN, bar-codes, customer courtesy cards, RFID and even biometrics all are technologies which would make the envisioned database (and thus the consequences described) more readily implimented. Given the nature of humans, there ***IS*** has a percedent upon which to draw for concern... even fear. If there were not, we wouldn't be discussing 'the good uses' of RFID. They would ALL be good uses.
<sarcasm>But look at the bright side... since you "just cannot stand" people like that, be comforted in the knowledge that if/when that day comes, they will be the first with their heads on the chopping block.</sarcasm>
StarGlider29a
"Gavon's Oxymoron: World Government"
http://www.af2k.com/gavonslaw.asp
RFIDs are a robot sense. They tell robots where and what things are, where to look for them, and what to do when they find them. if find(rfid) and ! if find(rfid) are very convenient directors of robot behaviour.
Not, of course, that robots can run around wholly unsupervised; but with automation to hand for filtering and first-level logistics, all sorts of responsible people like cops, nurses and safety staff can shrug off their robotic chores and get on with making decisions.
We all ought to be playing with this stuff; but the app I really want to see is, nuclear power plants and fuel recycling plants, with every fuel and waste element and every component accounted for. This is one area with universal support for absolute security. We've held off development of civilian breeders for fear of terrorists getting access at some stage of the fuel processing cycle, among other reasons. But turning, say, a 99% safe cycle with 20 critical inspection points into a 99.9% safe cycle with 200 points, 180 automated, is surely not beyond out current means.
Actually, all I see in the article are abuses of the system.
The only one I might grant you as a good thing is tracking students. Not that it isn't an invasion of the privacy of students, because it is, but because as a society we've decided that that information MUST be available on-demand to parents, and if we've decided an invasion of privacy is important the least we can do is do it efficiently.
I'm curious--how is the parent poster so certain that RFID's negative uses will outweigh the positive ones?
~Idarubicin
It's not that people are certain the negative uses will outweight the positives, it's the potential that they will. There's nothing in the law books preventing the abuse of RFID, and while some current laws protect use from a few gross abuses of RFID, the precedents have to be set first. Our personal information is traded and sold every day, usually without our permission or knowledge, and we don't benefit from it, the companies and corporations do. Why should we accept yet another way our information can be taken and stored without having a say in it?
I believe RFID will be abused. How can I be fairly certain? Easy, human history shows a pattern of such abuses. Why will it be abused? Because it can, and there's not much we could do about it.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
TrustE's Watchdog Reports invariably results in a decision of "Issue Handled with no changes necessary to the Privacy Statement nor the Site". They get about a hundred complaints per month, but don't do anything. The last time TrustE made a site change anything was in 2002.
In the early days of TrustE, their seal actually meant something. But they've totally sold out.
There's also the Commerce Department's "Safe Harbor" list. No enforcement action has ever been taken under that.
So don't believe any "privacy certifications" associated with RFID tag use. They're meaningless.
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.
I remember discussing in a history course on the discovery of modern astronomy the progress of science through history. An interesting theory the professor described was on a possible reason why the movable type printing press was not accepted by the more scientifically advanced Muslims at the time. It wasn't because they would not accept the technology of a printing press, but rather that it actually wasn't advanced enough to accurately reproduce their text.
The Arabic script known as Naskhi (IIRC) is very much like cursive. It is not well suited to segmentation for printing on a movable type press. The example we were given was the word for the Muslim God, Allah, would have been broken when printed. It wasn't until later printing techniques were developed that they would be allowable to use with a cursive style language.
My memory of course, might not be serving me correctly... but at the time, I thought it was an interesting turning point. History gets so much cooler when I don't have to memorize 30 random dates and names.
Here's a fascinating application that I came across. This little company is making big waves in the music instrument manufacturing sector. They're doing some cool R&D on tracking technologies that combine GPS and RFID as well.
http://www.snagg.com
Houston Real-Time Traffic Map. It reports on freeways as well as the tollroads. There's electronic signs along the roads informing you of traffic conditions ahead. You can view the signs online, first check the "Message Signs" option in the Map Control box on the lower left, the click a sign on the map to see what its currently displaying.
Never-the-less, this has all the potential for being said mark.
It will be brought to you on the grounds of "now we can keep track of the children and the dog and granny" and "now you don't have to carry cash anymore." "Now we can stop credit card fraud, muggings, identity theft, etc"
It is written, "and he causes all to receive a mark that without this mark they might not buy or sell".(Slightly paraphrased).
The penalty for taking this mark is awful.
As of yet I see no compulsion to take any mark and I can still buy and sell with cash.
But, one would be a fool not see the potential of the rfid system to be used in this way and we are given only one clue so we can tell the mark when it comes "THAT WITHOUT IT WE MAY NOT BUY OR SELL"
No glowing red eyes, no dodgy 666 mark on the scalp, no hell hounds, no occult rituals etc.
I do hope I am wrong. I do not want to starve to death on the sreets. But I will take no chip/mark/implant.
Ever.
Embed a RFID tag in the football and put readers everywhere on the field so that you can get real time 3d tracking of the football.......
And, for Karl, go Seahawks