Perhaps, but I can think of MANY things that should never be said publicly.
Under any circumstances? Even the oft quoted example of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater has at least one instance where it's warranted: when the theater is on fire. Absolutes are rarely reasonable.
This argument can be used to justify anything from virtual kiddie porn,
Child pornography is illegal because it harms actual children, the ones appearing in the pornography. Whether virtual child pornography is harmful is completely unrelated to why real child pornography is illegal.
to teaching kids about sex at a *very* early age (ala southpark), to putting goatse on PBS.
First, I am not claiming all content on television is suitable for children. Second, adults are offended by these words and are insisting they not be exposed to them.
First, they're just words. Then, they're just images. What next? They're only hypnotic suggestions?
Your engaging in a Slippery Slope argument. My argument was concerned entirely and exclusively with words. I said nothing about either images or hypnotic suggestions. At least with images the argument could be made that it is the ideas they convey that are offensive. Not so with these words.
So, "Mommy what does f__k mean?" or worse is not considered harm coming from a 4 year old who happened to see the wrong TV show?
"It's an impolite term for two people making love, dear." If they're old enough to ask, they're old enough to know.
Is your discomfort at seeing someone else decide to write f__k instead of the alternative also a superstition?
My discomfort is from the obvious hypocrisy of believing "f__k" is somehow not obscene when the word is quite obviously represents is. It merely reinforces the idea that it's the specific sequence of letters that is offensive rather than the idea it represents. So, no, there's no superstition, just exasperation at irrationality.
So they can't say s__t and f__k on public television or show titties.
This harms no one.
I can't give out bank account or credit card numbers on the internet or distribute viruses and I don't pretend that's abridging my freedom of speech.
Unlike this.
People who are offended by certain words are offended by them because they were taught to be and for no other reason. It is an irrational, entirely emotional response. They are offended by the words themselves and not the ideas they convey.
Proof: 1) There are other words which mean the same exact thing which are not considered offensive (fuck == sex, coitus, intercourse; shit == feces, crap, dung).
2) They are still offended by the words even when they are not used to convey the supposedly offensive ideas ("That's fucking brilliant!" == "That's absolutely brilliant", "Oh shit, I fucked up." == "Rats, I made a mistake.").
These people are holding others responsible for their inability to deal with the reactions they have to these words (strictly, the specific sequence of letters). To take your example, writing "f__k" is okay but typing out the word "fuck" is not even though the first is readily recognizable as the second.
It's blind superstition and people refuse to recognize it as such. It's time to grow up.
Now what's the basis for believing this is feasible? Oh, that's right... you read it on the internet. Well, it must be true then.
"Don't believe everything you read" does not mean "believe nothing you read". I've done research. I've found the best evidence I can. You, however, have given only your opinion and not backed it up with a single, independently-verifiable reference short of insisting I spend $4000 on an experiment which won't, in the end, prove anything useful.
The fears are "tin foil hat" fears because there isn't any solid evidence out there suggesting that these devices are capable of doing what we fear.
I have presented some evidence to support the idea that it might at least be possible, yet you continue to argue that it flat out isn't and never will be and refuse to back up your claims. And you accuse me of ignoring the evidence.
And if you have any further questions, you can e-mail me; my address is there for you to use. I'd be happy to talk about what RFID readers can and cannot do there.
If you are going to ignore my evidence, if I am not allowed to question the claims you make nor expect you to provide references for them, I have little use for any further conversation about it with you. No hard feelings, but it just isn't productive.
Yes. You are claiming that you can't possibly scan RFID's without the carrier knowing you have. Your specific reasoning was they don't have the range necessary (which started at "a few inches" and became "a couple of feet"). You are also claiming that any RFID reader capable of reading passive tags at more than a few inches would noticably warm the person's skin. I have shown manufacturer data claiming the range of passive tags can be as much as ten feet. You have shown nothing except to claim that manufacturer data is unreliable. You have also yet to show that the reader would warm the skin of the person being scanned except for some specious reasoning based on a misunderstanding of how microwave ovens work. Neither of these is asking you to "prove a negative." By your reasoning, the statement "one plus one does not equal five" is not provable.
You have no evidence,
I have provided evidence to which you have only responded "they lie".
you ignore the evidence when it's presented to you
You have provided none except anecdotes based on personal experience which nobody can verify. That's not evidence.
and you're not going to bother yourself to procure it.
I have seen, and shown you, evidence supporting my claims. You have shown me no evidence supporting yours. It is not up to me to prove your argument for you.
It's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to do per-item in-store tracking.
Yet the very site you directed me to claims to meet WalMart's standard.
The costs of the individual tags,
Which are falling as the technology progresses.
the health risks posed by the long-range readers,
which you have yet to show any evidence of other than mentions of disclaimers in manuals that I have no access to.
the unpredictability of the environment, and the mere physics of the damned things aren't likely to make such things feasible, even for noble causes like shoplifting prevention and knowing when to restock bubble gum.
First of all, the very idea that someone is attempting to do it is worthy of discussion, regardless if the technology is capable of it now. Second, that the technology is not capable now does not mean it won't be in the future. The time to raise the concerns about the technology is while it's being designed, not when it's already been implemented.
The RFID industry is full of a lot of hype right now, and organizations like MIT's Auto-ID center are fantasizing about what the technology might be able to do for companies. Only very recently have companies like Delta and Wal-Mart actually begun to try the equipment out to see how well it actually performs, and you can expect that it most likely will not do everything people want it to do. Underneath the hype, the stuff just really isn't that cool.
I have no doubt it's over-hyped. Most new technology usually is. But it might live up to some of its claims. If the tags can be read at a distance as small as 5 feet, it can pose a privacy problem. They may never be cheap enough to put in every single product, but they may be cheap enough to put in most things. They are most definitely capable of being individually identifiable. There are concerns. Writing those concerns off as impossible simply because the technology is not yet up to the task is incredibly short-sighted and naive.
Microwaves work by bombarding a target with radio waves. Radio waves excite certain molecules, especially oil and water molecules, which then heat the rest of the target.
It takes roughly 3 BTUs of energy to heat one pound of 70 dF dry air to 80 df and roughly 10 BTUs of energy to heat one pound of water from 70 dF to 80 dF regardless of how you do it. This is physics. Microwaves simply allow you to heat the water faster, but it still requires the same amount of energy. But in the case of warming your office, the water warmed from the microwaves will then have to transfer the heat to the air, so the effect is the same. A 4 Watt transmitter is not going to make your office noticable warmer.
I encourage you to verify my claims.
First of all, I don't have $4K to lay out for a scientific experiment solely to satisfy my curiosity even if I would get it back later. And even if I did, all it would prove is that this particular reader does or does not exhibit the problems you claim it has. Secondly, it's your argument, you back it up. All you would have to do is point out a reference that backs up your claims. If you aren't willing to do this, then I can't take your claims seriously.
Meanwhile, if everything you say is true, then the technology is absolutely incapable of doing what WalMart wants to use it for, which so far no one else has mentioned.
The whole idea behind a microwave oven is that it heats up water and oil really quickly with very little power. 500W will get a cup of water near boiling in a couple of minutes. It works by sending microwaves at you.
They are 30KW electric resistance heaters, but it doesn't matter. Heat is heat. Microwave ovens don't make things hotter with less power, they make things as hot faster. That's the whole purpose behind them: speed, not efficiency. It still requires the same amout of power to boil that water but a microwave can do it faster because it is transferring its energy directly to the water rather than to the air or the container first. There is a slight gain in efficiency, mostly due to a reduction in heat loss, but not enough to make a real difference.
Now I'm not using 500W and I'm not inside an oven, but sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours a day with 4 Watts is enough to feel a difference.
Your lighting, computer monitor and you produce more heat than 4 Watts ever could. If your office is getting warm, it's not from the reader unless you have a thousand of them operating continuously at once. Otherwise, you've discovered the solution to all our woes: a device that puts out more energy than you put into it.
Those antennas are really hard to miss; they're four feet tall and stand on both sides of you.
And look identical to the anti-theft systems in use today that just detect the metal strip. People are already used to seeing them and likely can't tell them from RFID reader antennae.
Would you like a real-world example of passive RFID that already exists? Keycards for security.
I have one. It's ten years old. It's also designed on purpose to require you to put your card very close to the reader to prevent people from accidentally opening the door.
The tag readers I worked with all worked about the same way, although they did slightly better since I had the benefit of a controlled environment -- but they didn't do great, particularly in the presence of more than a dozen tags.
Even if they don't work well now, it's still not proof that they never will. And none of this precludes the cost of active tags falling to where they are a viable option for the same uses.
But I've said this all before, and you didn't believe me then, either -- and why should you?
Honestly? Because you've done nothing to back it up. If you want to convince me you have to give me more than just "because I said so".
On the other hand, you have product brochures (the last bastion of corporate veracity) to back you up.
I never claimed they were the end-all and were unquestionable. But published manufacturer specifications, even if a little embellished, are a much better source of information than some random Joe on the internet. And, no offense, but I don't know you from some random Joe. You could be lying out of your ass and I wouldn't know. Science requires people provide evidence to back up their claims and none of the evidence I've seen supports your position. No, none of it is irrefutable, but you've shown me nothing to say otherwise.
You're going to have to back this up. If a 4 Watt transmitter can noticably warm a human being, I would be very interested in knowing how since I routinely install 30KW heaters in spaces to do exactly the same thing.
It takes a certain amount of watts to transmit a signal over a certain distance. The reader has to transmit more than an order of magnitude more than that for enough to be absorbed for the tag to send.
Nobody is disputing this. It does not however, especially since you haven't quantified anything, prove it can't be done. But, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the equipment needed to scan an individual at a couple of feet is too big to carry around. So what? There are plenty of other methods of acquiring the information without the need for the reader to be portable.
You'll need multiple antennas to get the whole body in range as well, or the large standing antenna pairs like they have at the exit of your local Home Depot.
Oddly enough, this is exactly the kind of configuration most people who criticize RFID tags are concerned about: WalMart (for example) scanning the RFID tags you are carrying as you enter the store as well as when you leave. If any one of them was purchased in the store (or another WalMart, or any other store that shares data with them) with a credit card or any other personally identifiable method, they now have a record of when you entered and when you left, whether or not you purchased anything, and you likely wouldn't know. Even if you did know you were being scanned, you have no way of knowing what information about you they have or how long they keep it, and no way of preventing it. That makes it surreptitious. That's what people are concerned about. It's looking less and less like "tinfoil-hat" paranoia.
I understand that. The point is the difference in power between being able to read a passive tag at 10 feet and cooking human flesh is several orders of magnitude.
And that by necessity means you either need a VERY powerful reader, or a very short range.
Here's a reader that can read up to 2.5 meters away (roughly 8 feet) on 4 Watts of power. While it's not quite 20 feet, it's certainly more than a few inches and looks like it could fit in a shoebox.
Granted. Large objects like tires and refrigerators will be harder to find the tags.
They can also be embedded in the soles of work boots or in the lining of a handbag where, even if you can find them, you can't remove them without destroying the item.
"This" is designed to promote retailers' adoption of RFID. I am someone who has actually tried to get the bloody readers to read the bloody tags without getting bloody baked, all the while nervously noting the warnings on the reader's instructions saying "BE NINE INCHES AWAY FROM THE ANTENNA!"
That your scanner doesn't work does not prove it can't be done. 900MHz cordless phones have been transmitting much, much farther without cooking anything in between. There are 900MHz baby monitors which will transmit, through walls, from one end of the house to the other and even past it without harming the baby that's in the room. If they can't read RFID tags at a distance of ten feet now (which I suspect they can based on other manufacturer's data) it's not because of the limitations of the radio signal.
Knee-jerk responses have been known to pop up on Slashdot from time to time. Microsoft sucks. Since when have all responses to articles been on-topic?
My issue with the post was that it was deliberately mistating the opposition's argument in an effort to discredit it and paint people who hold that opinion as irrational and paranoid. It did little more than say "you people believe all RFID tags are evil" which is clearly not the case. In essence, he was complaining about the noise from the party next door before the party even got started.
This also isn't the first RFID article to appear on Slashdot where people have discussed the civil rights issues involved.
Assuming that all articles concerning RFID tags are about privacy violations is as irrational as assuming all uses of RFID tags are privacy violations. That he did assume people would claim there were privacy violations means he doesn't understand what the concerns about RFID tags are. My aim was first to educate him or, failing that, at least show others that the opposition to RFID tags is not irrational as he claims it is. In the greater scheme of things I'm making the point that he (and others) should actually listen to what the other side is saying before ranting about how wrong they are.
The ones I've seen are about a quarter-inch wide and four to five inches long. Do you really think you're going to have trouble finding a tag of that size?
If it's buried in a tire or something else you can't get to easily, yes, it can be very difficult to find. And even if you can find it it might be impossible to remove without destroying the thing it's attached to. Especially if it's printed directly on it.
Reading the tags from further than a few inches away requires very high-powered antennas, and you're probably not going to stand around waiting while some guy stands around with an antenna, slowly cooking your body while he tries to read the RFID tags in your clothes.
So the reason for the tin-foil-hat comments is that even the concerns you do list are pretty far-fetched.
They aren't as far fetched as you would have people believe, but that doesn't change the fact that he didn't even let anyone voice their concerns before calling them paranoid. If he even knew what their concerns were, it would be obvious that they don't apply here.
Let's get this straight people - RFID tags are not the devil.
Let's get this straight, not every story about RFID tags is condemning their use.
Do we really have to see EVERY story about EVERY use of RFID tags in the world?
This is a tech website. This is a story about tech. Nowhere in either the summary or the article is there any mention of privacy concerns.
Why don't you guys hold off until someone, somewhere actually does something Orwellian with the technology before you spurt the hackneyed, luddite, anti-RFID propaganda?
Why don't you hold off on complaining about hackneyed, luddite, anti-RFID propaganda until someone actually posts some?
You might want to try understanding what people are complaining about before you assume the argument will be made here.
Most of the concerns I've read about the use of RFID tags have been about:
1) Persistence - the tags last as long as you have the item they are attached to and can be difficult to find or remove. Not an issue here. The article states in the very first sentence that the tags are disposable. They are also likely to be mounted in a clearly visible manner.
2) Surreptitious - the tags can be read without the knowledge of the person holding them. Not really an issue here because the tags are attached to baggage that the customer is not going to be carrying with him.
Do try to understand the issues before you discount them as "tinfoil-hat ideas".
Went back and read it; configuring that clusterfuck is even worse than I suspected.
This configuration is not that hard for anyone familiar with Linux. The article gives you very clear steps to follow. In addition, there are various tools available to make it even easier. That you don't understand it doesn't mean their target audience won't.
That's two too many, as far as the target audience is concerned.
Netfilter is part of the linux kernel and doesn't require a separate installation. As for the other two, the entire unix philosophy is build small tools that do one thing well and connect them together. If someone doesn't like Squid, they can use another proxy server without ditching Dan's Guardian (or the other way around). It's called choice. It's a good thing.
Not that it matters; they'd probably already lost most of their target audience.
Their target audience is mostly parents who are already running Linux. The "hoops" (that you admit to not reading yet feel the need to criticize anyway) they have to go through are little different than configuring any other Linux app.
You miss my point. People are saying, "So encrypt your mail". That's fine for your outgoing, but not your incoming.
You miss my point. The consequences of someone sending you something unecrypted through email are the same as someone sending the same information on a postcard. You can't control who sends you what on a postcard anymore than you can control who sends you unencrypted email.
So what if Joe Blow sends you an unencrypted email, and (for various reasons) you don't have your own Email server, but use your ISP's instead? You're screwed.
No more screwed than if he sent it to you on a postcard...
That was my point. The OS that we're talking about is Windows. It's made by Microsoft.
That was kind of my point in my original comment: the telco blocking calls to certain countries to prevent this kind of fraud is a hack to make up for the lack of proper controls in the operating system.
"The OS" is Windows. So they'd only put this in new versions, and you'd have to upgrade to get it. Then they'd have it disabled by default to begin with, since it could confuse people. Then in a service pack, they'd do a security rewrite, and have it enabled by default.
Well, if you implement my suggestion in the worst way possible, of course it will fail. My comment was not meant to be technically complete. But if you want to get into it, the access to the comm port would have to be controlled on the driver level allowing the user to give applications permission to use the device. It need not ask every time access to the port is requested. Access could be set up beforehand or on the fly and the question need only be answered once for every application. You could even have options for "Always", "Just this time", "Not this time" and "Never". Of course all this relies on not allowing just anyone to overwrite the drivers (which, arguably, should have been part of the OS in the first place).
But people would find it annoying that they have to click every time they go online, so they'd disable it anyway.
If they disable it, then it's their own fault if they get a large phone bill, but at least they'd have the option, unlike now.
You'd need a hardware solution,
Providing access to the hardware is what the operating system is for. That's its job. Controlling what applications have access to the hardware is ideally suited for the operating system.
How bout they focus on educating the public about malware instead?
It seems to me a dialog box generated by the OS when an application tries to access the serial port would go a long way towards preventing this. I mean, doesn't this whole scam rely on the modem dialing out without the user knowing?
While what you are saying is a possibility, this still does not show a direct link from GWB to possible banning of Moore's films.
I never claimed there was a direct link. In fact my point was that the indirect link made it possible to acheive the same results without violating the First Amendment.
In fact, his latest film has a big hit at NYC, so I don't think that you should worry about people not being able to see it.
When I wrote my comment, it hadn't been released yet. All I said was that there was cause for concern, not that there was definitely something wrong happening.
You're right. Six Sigma doesn't know what it's talking about when it comes to quality. I'm sure they've never really thought about the whole defect issue. Instead, we should read a very general dictionary to find out what a word means in ten words or less because all words in a particular specialization only have one meaning.
The words "zero" and "defect" existed in general usage long before Six Sigma and others started using them together to mean "not bug free". How they chose to define them in their particular usage does not change how most people interpret them.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps, but I can think of MANY things that should never be said publicly.
Under any circumstances? Even the oft quoted example of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater has at least one instance where it's warranted: when the theater is on fire. Absolutes are rarely reasonable.
[Just because] ...you can say a thing, doesn't mean you should.
There is a world of difference between saying you should not say a thing and saying you should not be allowed to...
This argument can be used to justify anything from virtual kiddie porn,
Child pornography is illegal because it harms actual children, the ones appearing in the pornography. Whether virtual child pornography is harmful is completely unrelated to why real child pornography is illegal.
to teaching kids about sex at a *very* early age (ala southpark), to putting goatse on PBS.
First, I am not claiming all content on television is suitable for children. Second, adults are offended by these words and are insisting they not be exposed to them.
First, they're just words. Then, they're just images. What next? They're only hypnotic suggestions?
Your engaging in a Slippery Slope argument. My argument was concerned entirely and exclusively with words. I said nothing about either images or hypnotic suggestions. At least with images the argument could be made that it is the ideas they convey that are offensive. Not so with these words.
So, "Mommy what does f__k mean?" or worse is not considered harm coming from a 4 year old who happened to see the wrong TV show?
"It's an impolite term for two people making love, dear." If they're old enough to ask, they're old enough to know.
Is your discomfort at seeing someone else decide to write f__k instead of the alternative also a superstition?
My discomfort is from the obvious hypocrisy of believing "f__k" is somehow not obscene when the word is quite obviously represents is. It merely reinforces the idea that it's the specific sequence of letters that is offensive rather than the idea it represents. So, no, there's no superstition, just exasperation at irrationality.
So they can't say s__t and f__k on public television or show titties.
This harms no one.
I can't give out bank account or credit card numbers on the internet or distribute viruses and I don't pretend that's abridging my freedom of speech.
Unlike this.
People who are offended by certain words are offended by them because they were taught to be and for no other reason. It is an irrational, entirely emotional response. They are offended by the words themselves and not the ideas they convey.
Proof:
1) There are other words which mean the same exact thing which are not considered offensive (fuck == sex, coitus, intercourse; shit == feces, crap, dung).
2) They are still offended by the words even when they are not used to convey the supposedly offensive ideas ("That's fucking brilliant!" == "That's absolutely brilliant", "Oh shit, I fucked up." == "Rats, I made a mistake.").
These people are holding others responsible for their inability to deal with the reactions they have to these words (strictly, the specific sequence of letters). To take your example, writing "f__k" is okay but typing out the word "fuck" is not even though the first is readily recognizable as the second.
It's blind superstition and people refuse to recognize it as such. It's time to grow up.
Now what's the basis for believing this is feasible? Oh, that's right... you read it on the internet. Well, it must be true then.
"Don't believe everything you read" does not mean "believe nothing you read". I've done research. I've found the best evidence I can. You, however, have given only your opinion and not backed it up with a single, independently-verifiable reference short of insisting I spend $4000 on an experiment which won't, in the end, prove anything useful.
The fears are "tin foil hat" fears because there isn't any solid evidence out there suggesting that these devices are capable of doing what we fear.
I have presented some evidence to support the idea that it might at least be possible, yet you continue to argue that it flat out isn't and never will be and refuse to back up your claims. And you accuse me of ignoring the evidence.
And if you have any further questions, you can e-mail me; my address is there for you to use. I'd be happy to talk about what RFID readers can and cannot do there.
If you are going to ignore my evidence, if I am not allowed to question the claims you make nor expect you to provide references for them, I have little use for any further conversation about it with you. No hard feelings, but it just isn't productive.
I'm making a claim?
Yes. You are claiming that you can't possibly scan RFID's without the carrier knowing you have. Your specific reasoning was they don't have the range necessary (which started at "a few inches" and became "a couple of feet"). You are also claiming that any RFID reader capable of reading passive tags at more than a few inches would noticably warm the person's skin. I have shown manufacturer data claiming the range of passive tags can be as much as ten feet. You have shown nothing except to claim that manufacturer data is unreliable. You have also yet to show that the reader would warm the skin of the person being scanned except for some specious reasoning based on a misunderstanding of how microwave ovens work. Neither of these is asking you to "prove a negative." By your reasoning, the statement "one plus one does not equal five" is not provable.
You have no evidence,
I have provided evidence to which you have only responded "they lie".
you ignore the evidence when it's presented to you
You have provided none except anecdotes based on personal experience which nobody can verify. That's not evidence.
and you're not going to bother yourself to procure it.
I have seen, and shown you, evidence supporting my claims. You have shown me no evidence supporting yours. It is not up to me to prove your argument for you.
It's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to do per-item in-store tracking.
Yet the very site you directed me to claims to meet WalMart's standard.
The costs of the individual tags,
Which are falling as the technology progresses.
the health risks posed by the long-range readers,
which you have yet to show any evidence of other than mentions of disclaimers in manuals that I have no access to.
the unpredictability of the environment, and the mere physics of the damned things aren't likely to make such things feasible, even for noble causes like shoplifting prevention and knowing when to restock bubble gum.
First of all, the very idea that someone is attempting to do it is worthy of discussion, regardless if the technology is capable of it now. Second, that the technology is not capable now does not mean it won't be in the future. The time to raise the concerns about the technology is while it's being designed, not when it's already been implemented.
The RFID industry is full of a lot of hype right now, and organizations like MIT's Auto-ID center are fantasizing about what the technology might be able to do for companies. Only very recently have companies like Delta and Wal-Mart actually begun to try the equipment out to see how well it actually performs, and you can expect that it most likely will not do everything people want it to do. Underneath the hype, the stuff just really isn't that cool.
I have no doubt it's over-hyped. Most new technology usually is. But it might live up to some of its claims. If the tags can be read at a distance as small as 5 feet, it can pose a privacy problem. They may never be cheap enough to put in every single product, but they may be cheap enough to put in most things. They are most definitely capable of being individually identifiable. There are concerns. Writing those concerns off as impossible simply because the technology is not yet up to the task is incredibly short-sighted and naive.
Microwaves work by bombarding a target with radio waves. Radio waves excite certain molecules, especially oil and water molecules, which then heat the rest of the target.
It takes roughly 3 BTUs of energy to heat one pound of 70 dF dry air to 80 df and roughly 10 BTUs of energy to heat one pound of water from 70 dF to 80 dF regardless of how you do it. This is physics. Microwaves simply allow you to heat the water faster, but it still requires the same amount of energy. But in the case of warming your office, the water warmed from the microwaves will then have to transfer the heat to the air, so the effect is the same. A 4 Watt transmitter is not going to make your office noticable warmer.
I encourage you to verify my claims.
First of all, I don't have $4K to lay out for a scientific experiment solely to satisfy my curiosity even if I would get it back later. And even if I did, all it would prove is that this particular reader does or does not exhibit the problems you claim it has. Secondly, it's your argument, you back it up. All you would have to do is point out a reference that backs up your claims. If you aren't willing to do this, then I can't take your claims seriously.
Meanwhile, if everything you say is true, then the technology is absolutely incapable of doing what WalMart wants to use it for, which so far no one else has mentioned.
Are these 30KW microwave heaters?
The whole idea behind a microwave oven is that it heats up water and oil really quickly with very little power. 500W will get a cup of water near boiling in a couple of minutes. It works by sending microwaves at you.
They are 30KW electric resistance heaters, but it doesn't matter. Heat is heat. Microwave ovens don't make things hotter with less power, they make things as hot faster. That's the whole purpose behind them: speed, not efficiency. It still requires the same amout of power to boil that water but a microwave can do it faster because it is transferring its energy directly to the water rather than to the air or the container first. There is a slight gain in efficiency, mostly due to a reduction in heat loss, but not enough to make a real difference.
Now I'm not using 500W and I'm not inside an oven, but sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours a day with 4 Watts is enough to feel a difference.
Your lighting, computer monitor and you produce more heat than 4 Watts ever could. If your office is getting warm, it's not from the reader unless you have a thousand of them operating continuously at once. Otherwise, you've discovered the solution to all our woes: a device that puts out more energy than you put into it.
Those antennas are really hard to miss; they're four feet tall and stand on both sides of you.
And look identical to the anti-theft systems in use today that just detect the metal strip. People are already used to seeing them and likely can't tell them from RFID reader antennae.
Would you like a real-world example of passive RFID that already exists? Keycards for security.
I have one. It's ten years old. It's also designed on purpose to require you to put your card very close to the reader to prevent people from accidentally opening the door.
The tag readers I worked with all worked about the same way, although they did slightly better since I had the benefit of a controlled environment -- but they didn't do great, particularly in the presence of more than a dozen tags.
Even if they don't work well now, it's still not proof that they never will. And none of this precludes the cost of active tags falling to where they are a viable option for the same uses.
But I've said this all before, and you didn't believe me then, either -- and why should you?
Honestly? Because you've done nothing to back it up. If you want to convince me you have to give me more than just "because I said so".
On the other hand, you have product brochures (the last bastion of corporate veracity) to back you up.
I never claimed they were the end-all and were unquestionable. But published manufacturer specifications, even if a little embellished, are a much better source of information than some random Joe on the internet. And, no offense, but I don't know you from some random Joe. You could be lying out of your ass and I wouldn't know. Science requires people provide evidence to back up their claims and none of the evidence I've seen supports your position. No, none of it is irrefutable, but you've shown me nothing to say otherwise.
Quick cooking, yes. Warming, no.
You're going to have to back this up. If a 4 Watt transmitter can noticably warm a human being, I would be very interested in knowing how since I routinely install 30KW heaters in spaces to do exactly the same thing.
It takes a certain amount of watts to transmit a signal over a certain distance. The reader has to transmit more than an order of magnitude more than that for enough to be absorbed for the tag to send.
Nobody is disputing this. It does not however, especially since you haven't quantified anything, prove it can't be done. But, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the equipment needed to scan an individual at a couple of feet is too big to carry around. So what? There are plenty of other methods of acquiring the information without the need for the reader to be portable.
You'll need multiple antennas to get the whole body in range as well, or the large standing antenna pairs like they have at the exit of your local Home Depot.
Oddly enough, this is exactly the kind of configuration most people who criticize RFID tags are concerned about: WalMart (for example) scanning the RFID tags you are carrying as you enter the store as well as when you leave. If any one of them was purchased in the store (or another WalMart, or any other store that shares data with them) with a credit card or any other personally identifiable method, they now have a record of when you entered and when you left, whether or not you purchased anything, and you likely wouldn't know. Even if you did know you were being scanned, you have no way of knowing what information about you they have or how long they keep it, and no way of preventing it. That makes it surreptitious. That's what people are concerned about. It's looking less and less like "tinfoil-hat" paranoia.
Those items have ACTIVE TRANSMITTERS.
I understand that. The point is the difference in power between being able to read a passive tag at 10 feet and cooking human flesh is several orders of magnitude.
And that by necessity means you either need a VERY powerful reader, or a very short range.
Here's a reader that can read up to 2.5 meters away (roughly 8 feet) on 4 Watts of power. While it's not quite 20 feet, it's certainly more than a few inches and looks like it could fit in a shoebox.
Granted. Large objects like tires and refrigerators will be harder to find the tags.
They can also be embedded in the soles of work boots or in the lining of a handbag where, even if you can find them, you can't remove them without destroying the item.
"This" is designed to promote retailers' adoption of RFID. I am someone who has actually tried to get the bloody readers to read the bloody tags without getting bloody baked, all the while nervously noting the warnings on the reader's instructions saying "BE NINE INCHES AWAY FROM THE ANTENNA!"
That your scanner doesn't work does not prove it can't be done. 900MHz cordless phones have been transmitting much, much farther without cooking anything in between. There are 900MHz baby monitors which will transmit, through walls, from one end of the house to the other and even past it without harming the baby that's in the room. If they can't read RFID tags at a distance of ten feet now (which I suspect they can based on other manufacturer's data) it's not because of the limitations of the radio signal.
Knee-jerk responses have been known to pop up on Slashdot from time to time. Microsoft sucks. Since when have all responses to articles been on-topic?
My issue with the post was that it was deliberately mistating the opposition's argument in an effort to discredit it and paint people who hold that opinion as irrational and paranoid. It did little more than say "you people believe all RFID tags are evil" which is clearly not the case. In essence, he was complaining about the noise from the party next door before the party even got started.
This also isn't the first RFID article to appear on Slashdot where people have discussed the civil rights issues involved.
Assuming that all articles concerning RFID tags are about privacy violations is as irrational as assuming all uses of RFID tags are privacy violations. That he did assume people would claim there were privacy violations means he doesn't understand what the concerns about RFID tags are. My aim was first to educate him or, failing that, at least show others that the opposition to RFID tags is not irrational as he claims it is. In the greater scheme of things I'm making the point that he (and others) should actually listen to what the other side is saying before ranting about how wrong they are.
The ones I've seen are about a quarter-inch wide and four to five inches long. Do you really think you're going to have trouble finding a tag of that size?
If it's buried in a tire or something else you can't get to easily, yes, it can be very difficult to find. And even if you can find it it might be impossible to remove without destroying the thing it's attached to. Especially if it's printed directly on it.
Reading the tags from further than a few inches away requires very high-powered antennas, and you're probably not going to stand around waiting while some guy stands around with an antenna, slowly cooking your body while he tries to read the RFID tags in your clothes.
This says you're wrong.
So the reason for the tin-foil-hat comments is that even the concerns you do list are pretty far-fetched.
They aren't as far fetched as you would have people believe, but that doesn't change the fact that he didn't even let anyone voice their concerns before calling them paranoid. If he even knew what their concerns were, it would be obvious that they don't apply here.
Let's get this straight people - RFID tags are not the devil.
Let's get this straight, not every story about RFID tags is condemning their use.
Do we really have to see EVERY story about EVERY use of RFID tags in the world?
This is a tech website. This is a story about tech. Nowhere in either the summary or the article is there any mention of privacy concerns.
Why don't you guys hold off until someone, somewhere actually does something Orwellian with the technology before you spurt the hackneyed, luddite, anti-RFID propaganda?
Why don't you hold off on complaining about hackneyed, luddite, anti-RFID propaganda until someone actually posts some?
You might want to try understanding what people are complaining about before you assume the argument will be made here.
Most of the concerns I've read about the use of RFID tags have been about:
1) Persistence - the tags last as long as you have the item they are attached to and can be difficult to find or remove. Not an issue here. The article states in the very first sentence that the tags are disposable. They are also likely to be mounted in a clearly visible manner.
2) Surreptitious - the tags can be read without the knowledge of the person holding them. Not really an issue here because the tags are attached to baggage that the customer is not going to be carrying with him.
Do try to understand the issues before you discount them as "tinfoil-hat ideas".
Went back and read it; configuring that clusterfuck is even worse than I suspected.
This configuration is not that hard for anyone familiar with Linux. The article gives you very clear steps to follow. In addition, there are various tools available to make it even easier. That you don't understand it doesn't mean their target audience won't.
That's two too many, as far as the target audience is concerned.
Netfilter is part of the linux kernel and doesn't require a separate installation. As for the other two, the entire unix philosophy is build small tools that do one thing well and connect them together. If someone doesn't like Squid, they can use another proxy server without ditching Dan's Guardian (or the other way around). It's called choice. It's a good thing.
Not that it matters; they'd probably already lost most of their target audience.
Their target audience is mostly parents who are already running Linux. The "hoops" (that you admit to not reading yet feel the need to criticize anyway) they have to go through are little different than configuring any other Linux app.
Is it ignorance, or it is fear?
It's fear based on ignorance.
You miss my point. People are saying, "So encrypt your mail". That's fine for your outgoing, but not your incoming.
You miss my point. The consequences of someone sending you something unecrypted through email are the same as someone sending the same information on a postcard. You can't control who sends you what on a postcard anymore than you can control who sends you unencrypted email.
So what if Joe Blow sends you an unencrypted email, and (for various reasons) you don't have your own Email server, but use your ISP's instead? You're screwed.
No more screwed than if he sent it to you on a postcard...
That was my point. The OS that we're talking about is Windows. It's made by Microsoft.
That was kind of my point in my original comment: the telco blocking calls to certain countries to prevent this kind of fraud is a hack to make up for the lack of proper controls in the operating system.
"The OS" is Windows. So they'd only put this in new versions, and you'd have to upgrade to get it. Then they'd have it disabled by default to begin with, since it could confuse people. Then in a service pack, they'd do a security rewrite, and have it enabled by default.
Well, if you implement my suggestion in the worst way possible, of course it will fail. My comment was not meant to be technically complete. But if you want to get into it, the access to the comm port would have to be controlled on the driver level allowing the user to give applications permission to use the device. It need not ask every time access to the port is requested. Access could be set up beforehand or on the fly and the question need only be answered once for every application. You could even have options for "Always", "Just this time", "Not this time" and "Never". Of course all this relies on not allowing just anyone to overwrite the drivers (which, arguably, should have been part of the OS in the first place).
But people would find it annoying that they have to click every time they go online, so they'd disable it anyway.
If they disable it, then it's their own fault if they get a large phone bill, but at least they'd have the option, unlike now.
You'd need a hardware solution,
Providing access to the hardware is what the operating system is for. That's its job. Controlling what applications have access to the hardware is ideally suited for the operating system.
How bout they focus on educating the public about malware instead?
It seems to me a dialog box generated by the OS when an application tries to access the serial port would go a long way towards preventing this. I mean, doesn't this whole scam rely on the modem dialing out without the user knowing?
Most people don't read this sort of discussion, as it's targetted towards developers.
If there is no confusion among developers what "Zero Defects" meant, then why was the article specifically explaining, to developers, what it meant?
While what you are saying is a possibility, this still does not show a direct link from GWB to possible banning of Moore's films.
I never claimed there was a direct link. In fact my point was that the indirect link made it possible to acheive the same results without violating the First Amendment.
In fact, his latest film has a big hit at NYC, so I don't think that you should worry about people not being able to see it.
When I wrote my comment, it hadn't been released yet. All I said was that there was cause for concern, not that there was definitely something wrong happening.
There is also this.
You're right. Six Sigma doesn't know what it's talking about when it comes to quality. I'm sure they've never really thought about the whole defect issue. Instead, we should read a very general dictionary to find out what a word means in ten words or less because all words in a particular specialization only have one meaning.
The words "zero" and "defect" existed in general usage long before Six Sigma and others started using them together to mean "not bug free". How they chose to define them in their particular usage does not change how most people interpret them.