Newsletter Archive

The Internet 800 Directory - http://www.inter800.com
The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter
This issue is for Friday, January 23, 2004
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Table of Contents
01.Open Book - Part 2 RFID Tags
02.Who cut what, or, what cut whom?
03.Tip Of The Week
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*01 Open Book Part 2 RFID tags

Last week, I wrote about how easy it was to track our private lives by
following our credit card receipts. Several readers suggested that it
might be time to switch to cash. While on the surface this seems like a
good idea, using cash on some purchases is begging to be examined. If
you don't believe me, try buying a plane or train ticket with cash. If
it's a one-way ticket, you'll be lucky if they just search you. Today,
using cash still gives some degree of privacy, but for how much longer?

There is a new technology on the horizon and if we don't oppose its use
as a surveillance device, it could eliminate individual privacy as we
know it.  In the next five to ten years, everything we buy or use could
be embedded with RFID tags.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags are a consumer goods tracking
system that couples radio frequency (RF) identification technology with
highly miniaturized computers to enable products to be identified and
tracked at any point along the supply chain. RFID utilizes a numbering
scheme called EPC (electronic product code), which can provide a unique
ID for any physical item.  EPC systems essentially assign a unique
number to every single item created making them uniquely identifiable
through their own EPC number.  This new system is intended to replace
the UPC bar code used on products today.

Once assigned, the RFID tag in or on the products would transmit the EPC
number.  These tiny tags are going to be somewhere between the size of a
grain of sand and a speck of dust. Many companies are planning on
building tags directly into their products during the manufacturing
process.

Receivers will be used to pick up the signal transmitted by the RFID
tags.  It has been envisioned that a global network of millions of
receivers could track this signal along the entire supply chain all the
way into your home. This would enable companies to determine the
whereabouts of all of their products at all times.  Some experts
envision a time when the system will be used to identify and track every
item produced on the planet.

Hitachi Europe has developed an RFID tag as thin as a human hair ,and
the European Central Bank is working on embedding these tags in Euro
banknotes by 2005.  This would allow money to create an electronic
trail. In other words, the obscurity that cash affords will be gone.

If unchecked RFID will allow companies to monitor our live in ways we
have never dreamed possible.

Chuck Arning at chuck@inter800.com
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*02 Who cut what, or, what cut whom?

I just cut my finger and my thumb on a Cuisinart blade while trying to
wash it.

Now that's not something that will hit the front page, even in New
Mexico, but it struck me as a logical parallel to several conversations
to which I have been a non-willing participant the last couple of weeks.
They both involved incidents in which somebody had been wronged or
misunderstood by someone else.

Years and years ago, I was a Boy Scout.  Proudly I achieved the position
of Life Scout, three merit badges short of Eagle (for which my mother
never forgave me), and I just lost interest.   Nonetheless, during my
days as Counselor at Camp Don Harrington in Palo Duro Canyon, I was
allowed to teach things like knot tying, archery, bed making, and
cutlery (or something like that).

One of the things I remember well is that I saw a lot of little guys
slice off a piece of their finger with a knife or hack into their foot
with a hatchet.  Almost every time they blamed the knife for being too
sharp or the hatchet for bouncing off the wood because it was too dull.

See where I'm going?

A knife, a hatchet, a saw, or a Cuisinart blade is just a tool.

Regardless of bad dreams instigated by movies involving Jason versus
Freddy Krueger, tools really just don't jump up from where they are
laying and cut one's throat.

But, it seems in those conversations that I heard the last couple of
weeks, that must have happened, cause none of these people were doing
anything to anybody else until the anybody else did it to them.  They
were just lying there in their container.

The Cuisinart blade didn't cut me.  I cut my hand on it.

I also put it back in its container, with respect.

Steven Jackson - sjackson@inter800.com
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Tip of the Week

Getting back to where you were.

When working on a large document in Word, you sometimes you just have to
stop and come back to it later. You know the kind I'm talking about -
one of those really long, several day undertakings.

When you reopen the document, your cursor sits at the very top. Then you
have to scroll all over the place trying to figure out where you left
off. Try hitting "SHIFT - F5", it will transport you to the position
your cursor was at when you last saved the document.

If you have any tips or shortcuts that you think the readers of this
Newsletter will find useful, send them to chuck@inter800.com

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