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In Brazil, Trees To Call For Help If Illegally Felled
Damien1972 writes "The Brazilian government has begun fixing trees in the Amazon rainforest with a wireless device, known as Invisible Tracck, which will allow trees to contact authorities once they are felled and moved. Here's how it works: Brazilian authorities fix the Invisible Tracck onto a tree. An illegal logger cuts down the tree and puts it onto a truck for removal, unaware that they are carrying a tracking device. Once Invisible Tracck comes within 20 miles (32 kilometers) of a cellular network it will 'wake up' and alert authorities."
Fell Alert! (0:30)
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Life Alert Bracelets have unlimited uses !!
so when a tree falls in the forest we will know if it makes a sound.
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/how-to-for-emp-weapon-stunningly-accessible/
Why do they need to be recharged in a year? Simply checking orientation with a microcontroller in deep sleep the rest of the time shouldn't take that much power.
You could just drill the tree and put it inside.
So many bad jokes in my head. They are clogging my brain so much I can't get them out...
Why is Snark Required?
Elegant solution to a complex and difficult situation, made possible by technological advance. This is progress (and what slashdot is all about)
elliot....
...and gets his hundred bucks to ignore it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The tree has already been cut down. All they can do is arrest the guy who is transporting the tree (low down in the business probably). All the bosses of the illegal tree fellers need to to is restructure their business a little, or probably buy a metal detector.
well, it's better than "First Post!"
Ripe for plenty of gags...
Humour aside, this is a good use of technology, and much needed. I've seen what happens when deforestation is left un-policed (it doesn't take long for a developing nation to clear one, given the amount of money that it can generate). Seeing what's left of the 'Amazon of the southern hemisphere' as they call it in Borneo, was very sad. Less than 2% is left, and you can imagine the natural habit that's also gone. Not to mention the global impact on climate. The next 30 years will be a challenging time imho - unfortunately, the required action will no doubt after things have really gone downhill, as is usual when government and regulation is involved (e.g. someone has to die before safety regulations are improved).
Logging trucks in the rain forest will now be equipped with cell phone jammers.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
They won't use an EMP or anything, they will just buy and install a GPS jammer on their trucks. The Tracck will call home but it will have no idea where it is. Truckers already use them in various parts of the world to bypass rules about how many miles they can drive in a day. This came to /. attention some time back when driving by airports was causing airliners to make hands on landings rather than automated ones on a regular basis.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Based on the weakness of the signal strength and the low cost of GPS jamming equipment (>$69 for something that actually works) how secure is this solution? Beyond that would there be significant electronic signature to detect such devices considering the lack of background interference? Is there such thing as a long distance metal detector? Not knocking progress, just interested.
Imagine what would happen if a precocious ten year old with enough skills to hack together a protocol droid out of junkyard parts or capable of building a pod racer decides to build a scanner to locate the invisible scanner hidden inside a living organism... It could happen? Right?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
... trees illegally fell you?
Apparently the people proposing this sort of thing lack the imagination to understand how many trees are in the forest.
Even if they only tagged a few trees like this figuring to seed the forest with trackers there is still the problem that this is easily hacked against. Anyone who's spending the money to cut illegal trees and haul them away (very expensive) will simply hire a good hacker to hack the trackers before the loggers hack the trees out.
then the middleman has to get the chainsaw out.
and how likely is that?
the problem is that they have to ramp up the punishment for the little guy.
fines and arrest haven't worked.
shoot them dead, summary justice.
if that doesn't work, throw the families (profiting from the crime) out of their homes.
if that doesn't work, then don't let logs get sold.
There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas.
-- Rush
Have gnu, will travel.
If no one is in the forest, do trees actually fall? Because until you've answered this question with an affirmative "yes", your question doesn't even make sense.
Note that the fact that when you go into a forest and find trees which look as if they had fallen is no proof that they actually did fall. That's true even if on your previous visit they have still been standing.
Quite right. Perhaps the trees were tired and needed to lie down.
If no one is in the forest, do trees actually fall? Because until you've answered this question with an affirmative "yes", your question doesn't even make sense.
Note that the fact that when you go into a forest and find trees which look as if they had fallen is no proof that they actually did fall. That's true even if on your previous visit they have still been standing.
Quite right. Perhaps the trees were tired and needed to lie down.
Are the trees there if nobody looks?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If a tree is felled in the forrest, and no one is at the office to hear it, does it still call for help?
Maybe, but it's not uncommon for animals and parasites to bore into trees, most can heal such damage adequately.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Anti-logging activists used to drive railroad spikes into trees - they were invisible enough to destroy the large, expensive blades in many lumber mills, I suspect a cellular beacon would be much smaller. Then again I imagine metal detectors are quite effective against either threat.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Until you realize all the illegal loggers have to do is carry a micro-cell with them that can fake authorized cell tower access, and then when the device activates, they can triangulate it back to the source, remove the tracking device and continue on with impunity.
Seems like a good idea, but it'll only catch the stupid criminals and only until they learn better.
This has been a big problem for decades. I often thought those governments didn't give a damn. Maybe there is hope for us as a race after all.
In the global struggling economy, my first question would be who's paying for this? There's a cost for the devices, someone to install them, fix them, maintain them, plus the cell service. I don't know that this would be very high on my priority list in terms of new projects to get funded. I'm sure it's a great project with good intentions, but is monitoring trees really something we need to be spending money on right now?
The whole thing is going to be moot soon anyway. Someone will come up with an invisible track detector which identified the trees that are tagged so they can be avoided. Trees and forests have the very handy tendency to be devoid of metal, so a very sensitive metal detector is all you're going to need to detect these things. I wonder how they managed to get this fact by the review board...