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Australia's Geekiest Man
An anonymous reader writes "Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick? Computerworld has a story up about the outgoing Linux Australia group president's hacked home, in which just about anything from watering the lawn, to opening his blinds, or checking the mail can be controlled through a software environment. Jonathan Oxer is an electronics and coding whiz who apparently has an RIFD tag implanted in his arm that opens his front door, and his front gate is hooked up with gigabit Ethernet — able to tell him when someone enters the property or send him a virtual email or sms to say he has real mail. Apparently the iPod Touch has just inspired him to begin linking all his little hardware hacks together into the one single, software controlled handheld touch device. I wonder if Steve Jobs ever thought the Touch would end up being used this way?"
How long until this gets hacked?
What exactly is a virtual email? Can the system send him one when he gets a real email too?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
So a good EMP is the only way to keep the people who kidnapped you out of your house?
very touching story... i wonder why he hasn't hooked up a moisture sensor to her gfriend yet? She doesn't have one? that's just sad...
What sort of emergency do you have in mind? No home security will deter a determined malicious threat from entering, but a gadgetted up house you could fully control with a device that fits in your pocket, could create enough of a distraction to escape.
>>Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?>>
I can think of a number of reasons.
1. You can give your key to a trusted associate, for example to housesit or run an errand for you. Giving your arm to a trusted associate is computationally intensive, destructive, and irreversible.
2. You can, for the cost of less than one hour's salary, revoke the key tied to a compromised lock, and then issue a new key. If unforseen circumstances should cause the RFID lock to require revoking, well, bad news bears...
3. Key/lock devices are well understood, hardly ever fail due to them having few moving parts which are almost never in operation, and are robust against almost all unforseen environmental conditions (i.e. power outage). Arm/RFID reader interfaces are poorly understood, by necessity have to be polling constantly, and are dependent on several fragile systems to maintain the key requirements that you be let into your house promptly any time you desire and that unauthorized users be rejected 100% of the time.
4. You have designs of ever having a romantic relationship. ("Honey, I know preparations for the wedding have been a bit busy, but we'll have to schedule your surgery sometime this week...")
5. A diligent attacker attempting to compromise your lock/key interface has no reason to attempt to compromise your shoulder/arm interface with a hacksaw.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Perhaps it's the world's way of telling you that you should get a job and live normal hours like the rest of us - then you won't be up when the Australian stories get posted.
For all those who are about to make wisecracks about this dude, by all means go ahead.
Just pause for a moment and admit to yourself that you were thinking what language *you* would be scripting the curtains with.
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
Got an implant.... now that shows you're into it.... or at least it's into you!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Every time I read a story about people implating RFID tags into themselves as a means of "keyless entry", it always reminds me of that scene in Demolition Man where Wesley Snipes pulls out the warden's eyball so he can get past the retinal scanner in the Cryoprison.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
"I would guess most of us are in the hope/dreams stage"
I for one am well past the "take the cheque and fuck off" stage, I've survived the "working single dad" stage and the "middle age disco heart attack" stage. I think the "indifferent old fart" stage is next, I'd ask dad but he's in the "surprised to be alive" stage and mostly just grins like a child.
Go away, I don't have a lawn!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm not uber-rich yet, but when I get there, I want my minions to have RFID tags as well as silver lycra bodysuits.
It's a style thing.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Considering a few years down the line ...
I think Google might have had a good point calling their platform 'Android'
Even without having met him, there's one thing I can tell you about this gentleman with absolute certainty: He does not number among his friends anybody with a warped sense of humour and knowledge of the term "induction field".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You can mock all you like, but how many times has a building that they were occupying had an aircraft crash into it since the implantation?
Does that help the gate open/close faster?
This is still MY basement !
Your mother
I wouldnt implant myself with any of thoe things either - I'd get someone else to implant them in me.
I agree. In Barcelona, where I live, the VIP clients of Baja Beach Club have the option of having a chip implanted in their forearm so that they can enter the club without having to stop at the door (not a moment to waste! I have to go dance in my swimming trunks a-right now!) In this case, I think brainlessness rather than geekiness is to blame.
Does it really happen THAT often you go to the pub for a few pints and comeback so drunk you've lost all your possessions?
Yes.
A good EMP is all it takes to lock you out of your own house..
"Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?"
/joke
Because you'd like to attract women at some point?
stuff |
but you could just have a regular old key as backup. It's just a theory, though. Like evolution.
And gravity.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
On a worringly frequent basis, often without clothing, with inexplicable knife wounds or covered in leaves.
I have proof that my girlfriend is wrong.
I am not Australia's geekiest man!
www.purevolume.com/martyd
Shhhhh! Do you really want to give the movie studios any ideas and then have to sit through "Home Alone Version 4.0"?