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Microchips Now In Tombstones, Toilets, & Fish Lures
Hugh Pickens writes "Steve Johnson writes in the Mercury News that microchips are going into a staggering array of once decidedly low-tech items — from gravestone markers and running shoes to fish lures and writing pens. In the future, 'where won't we find chips?' asks analyst Jordan Selburn. 'The answer is pretty close to nowhere.' For example, one company sells a coin-size, stainless steel-encased microchip for gravestone markers that tells the dead person's story in text, photos, video or audio histories, which visitors can access by pointing their Internet-enabled cell phones at it. The company says it has sold thousands of 'Memory Medallions.' There's AquaOne Technologies, who sell a toilet containing chips that automatically shut off the water when it springs a leak or starts to overflow, but Japanese company Toto goes one better with an intelligent toilet that gathers health-related data from the user's urine. Pro-Troll puts a chip in its fish lures that 'duplicates the electrical nerve discharge of a wounded bait fish,' prompting other fish to bite it."
condoms? I'll leave that to your imagination.
Pro-Troll puts a chip in its fish lures that 'duplicates the electrical nerve discharge of a wounded bait fish,' prompting other fish to bite it.
Hmmm, I seem to remember hearing about this gimmick and also hearing that it varies in effectiveness with the bigger fish being a little bit more responsive (although I wish someone would bust out some statistics so I know this isn't snake oil).
...
Anyway, my point is that I was unaware this used either an integrated circuit or microprocessor (which is sorta what I expect when someone says "chip"). Took a peek at the patent they reference on their site (which was last updated in 2007) attached to their "Echip." What you got there is closer to a mechanical device that generates an electric field via a piezoelectric crystal inside an electrically conductive sealed rigid container.
Am I missing something? Did they update their product? And if so, what on earth do they need an integrated circuit for on something that is just a tiny voltage generator? To my knowledge, it has no power source other than the crystal inside the container. Did I miss something here or is pickens stretching to sell the Echip as more than it is? I think the marketing name took hold of the submitter and editor here
My work here is dung.
Unmanned mowers: Belrobotics of Belgium offers a computerized mower that autonomously trims lawns. It's equipped with a sonar system so that when it approaches an obstacle, it slows to a point where it makes "very slight initial contact," and then turns away. The mower's blades can't inflict serious wounds, the company insists, and pets get so used to it they "consider the robot almost as a companion."
They've had these for quite a while now. By previous boss, who retired and moved to Florida about five years ago, had one when he was still working.
The pen mentioned in TFS seemed dumb, until I RTFA. Now I want one!
Free Martian Whores!
The same technology that is used to give a decent bidet clean and check the urine for problems can be easily used as evidence for job termination, or even probable cause for search warrants should it find certain chemicals in the pee stream.
As an avid fresh and saltwater angler, I can say right now that the 'microchip' in the lure is a long line of 'gimmicks' that will catch no more fish than any other 'gimmick' like that, such as the 'Laser Lure'. Yes, Virginia, it has a laser diode in it that lights it up when underwater; and it's even touted by professional angler Mike Iaconelli .
Fish respond first and foremost to the environmental conditions that induce them to feed, followed by sight, scent and vibration. There are other factors as well, such as 'matching the hatch' (meaning that your lures better be very close in color, size and shape to the forage in the area), weather, and yes even the phase of the moon to a certain degree.
I don't know about the other items, although the memory module for the headstone doesn't seem to be a bad thing;
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
On behalf of myself and the rest of your distant ancestors, I'd like to (sorta) apologize for the huge pile of steamy and unintelligble shit you're going to be stuck with having to untangle, if you ever figure out what an RFID tag/chip was. You thought DRM was bad? Hah! good luck with this one, campers.
You're going to see these little critters everywhere, in everything, and not know WTF they do. No, we're not doing it to screw with you... well, not overtly, anyway.
Either case, with a little luck, maybe you'll figure it out. We're sorry about the migraines it'll create anyway.
(...what, you say nobody will be able to read this by that time? Feh - /. will still be around by then, no sweat. It'll be in the crusty-but still-running server powered by grits. Hot grits, to be precise. And uname -a on it will *still* cough up a version 2.4 kernel.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Right.
Whoever defiles my tombstone with a fucking multimedia display bothering bystanders by my life's story I'll fucking haunt forever!
The "Memory Medallion" for gravestones is not a microchip, it's a 2D barcode.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Reminds me of the 3 part series that was done on Science Channel called "The year 2050" The first episode was about medical advancements and the wired home, second one was about the wired city with a old 2000's virus like outbreak, and the 3rd was about space.
Had some pretty good insights... One of which was the toilet that would analyse your urine and shoot the report to your health care provider. The guy in the scenario was using fake pee in the toilet to "pass" the screening because he didn't want the health provider to know about his binge drinking [or drug use] he did the night before.
I personally used to refer to a chip as something that contained a couple of gates at least, or has some sort of binary logic capabilities, and relies directly on other components. A 'chip' could not function alone (such as with RFID) nor can a chip be something that you hook something up to to get an ID of a product. A chip would be some little 'black' component with at least 8 wires coming out. Yes, I know that is antiquated, but my experience dealing with these things for 20 years has biased what I think they "are". Nintendo games would qualify in my eyes as 'having a chip'. A computer would have a "chip" which is the processor and of course other components. RFID is not a 'chip' in my opinion because it lacks the ability to compute any logic. Its just an identifier, a silicone bar code. I know others will disagree, but in this day and age, people want to advertise and call anything a chip that has some silicone in it.
I hear that soon they'll have the Internet on computer chips!
Linux
People say my sig is the best thing about me.
So, when will microchips replace bacteria as the most successful lifeform? The certainly have done a good job getting their host (us) to replicate them and distribute them among all the plethora of creations we turn our hands to.
anything that has some silicone in it.
so a porn actress' breasts are chips?
Yo dawg, we heard you like micro-chips, so we put micro-chips in yo micro-chips so you can root while you root
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Is the PERFECT Baby Boomer technology. I mean, PERFECT.
When I die, my tombstone will double as an arcade machine.
If they are at the point of putting chips inside the lure, might as well add a mini tazer,
and stun the fish to stop fighting...would be more practical!
They'll be putting them in computers next!
Off topic, but on a similar note, I used to have a Sony Discman that proudly boasted a "1-bit DAC".
WTF is a 1-bit DAC?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
or use the trough like at Wrigley Field
"Dickenson" does sound pretty incestuous.
If they are at the point of putting chips inside the lure, might as well add a mini tazer, and stun the fish to stop fighting...would be more practical!
Actually there IS a fish taser. More of a remote control for fish, actually. It's based on the reactions of fish muscles and/or nerves to pulsed DC currents in the water.
At a low threshold the fish starts to twich, in a way that turns it to face the positive electrode. At a somewhat higher threshold it involuntarily swims toward the electrode. At a third, still-higher level, it stops swimming, turns over, and floats up, stunned. Turn off the power and in a minute or so it comes to and swims away.
So if you put a central positive electrode in a body of water (with a corresponding negative electrode of pretty much any geometry - though a wide one sets up a bigger trap) the field will get progressively stronger near the fish gets to the + electrode. It will be captured at a distance, swim toward the electrode, pass out when it gets close, and float up to be netted. (You can also make them swim up a pipe and into a holding tank, where the field fades out. They're fine but can't escape because when they get near the exit from the pipe the field forces 'em to turn around and swim away from it.)
And unless I'm mistaken this is right up there with dynamite-fishing in the illegal category, and has been since the era of vacuum tubes.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The headstone devices cannot be allowed for two reasons:
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
If this has ever happened to you know, you know how much damage it can generate, especially if its on the 2nd level of a house and goes unnoticed for any length of time. They could also perhaps increase the tank capacity back to reasonable levels and only use as much water as necessary to appease the water conservation freaks (the residential toilets sold now have jokingly low capacities and therefore weak flushes due to federal laws passed in the 1990s)
Sorry, but the source is in French.
It's solar-powered, autonomous, bluetooth enabled, high-tech tombstone, which can show you the former life of deceased persons as seen through the social web.
And, for the french read, obligatory Boulet reference.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Apparently the Gillette Fusion Proglide razor has a 4-bit CPU in it. What in the name of God it does, I couldn't say.
It's a QR code. and anyone can have a QR code etched into a tombstone making his "product" useless.
And it's a dumb idea. 100 years from now that website will be defunct, and that is what is the usefulness of such a thing would be. Better would be a induction powered transmitter with about 1 meg of storage that is not a flash but a mask rom so it can survive at least 200 years without problems.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There are RFID devices that compute as well. Not those stupid stickers, but much larger keychain style ones.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Correct, those I would consider a chip, but it seems like the general consensus is anything with silicon is a chip. I don't agree.