The Guardian has a nice write-up of the issues surrounding pet RFID tags. They point out the compatibility issues with varying standards and readers, and claim that a bigger market wouldn’t have the same interoperability challenges:
Finbar Heslin, a vet in the Irish Republic who has worked to try to streamline Irish microchipping standards, says part of the problem is that RFID chips have been developed for a different market. “The idea behind microchipping is excellent. The downside is that you’re taking the technologies from the logistics industry and trying to apply them to animals.”
Logistics is a huge market for RFID and so there is a greater incentive to adhere to standards. “But with animals, the RFID market is small, and there are no standards, even across Europe,” says Heslin.
In both Britain and Ireland, the situation has been what he calls “a free for all”, because distributors weren’t licensed and cheap, non-ISO chips were sometimes brought in from abroad.
I’m not so sure about that. Even huge lucrative markets see the same interoperability hurdles and a lack of consistency across vendors. I brought up something similar back in early October 2005 on Schneier’s blog, specifically with regard to the debate in Congress about how and when to upgrade America’s animals.
Somewhere someone is busy designing the next generation of skate-board proof railings and curbs.
The irony I see is that the market has generated overly bland and simple rails and curbs to begin with, which has led to exploration by skaters looking for something challenging to do with themselves.
Had the railings been more integrated and delicately created from the start (e.g. more thought/creativity = more expensive) then they would be less likely to be turned into the very thing they seemed destined for — cheap thrills. Some might think that a quick fix will remove the vulnerability of the lowly hand-rail to the threat of eager kids on wheels, and they’re probably right.
Think about it, though. Would you rather a handrail have the look of “damn kids, these metal poop-strips will teach them a thing or two about respecting property” or something more like “grab me and I will help you be safely on your way”. Come to think of it, should we first look at whether stairs are even necessary or just less expensive landscaping?
The BBC has posted an interesting perspective on the ethanol industry in Brazil. Here’s the key to the article:
More than 80% of new cars now sold in Brazil are equipped to use ethanol as well as gasoline. Both fuels are available almost everywhere, and since ethanol can cost about a third less than petrol per litre at the moment (though the mileage is not quite as good), the home grown fuel is more popular than the foreign import.
Mileage not quite as good, eh? Here’s an idea, mix that ethanol with waste vegetable oil and put it into a diesel engine and watch your average mileage double. I think people get too hung up on a purist vision of the next energy source. Even the biodiesel folks I often meet are “100% veg” this and “pure-bio” that. Let’s face it, the infrastructure doesn’t exist yet (to support biomass energy creation and distribution) and the engines aren’t sophisticated enough yet (to run on multiple forms of energy), so let’s find a best-fit blend that can significantly reduce dependance on insecure sources of energy without wasting any more time. It’s a game to find a new set of trade-offs to replace the old ones, which are no longer sustainable, without falling into another trap of over-consolidation or unsustainability.
Why diesel? Because it was designed from the start to adapt to any form of oil: vegetable, animal, or even mineral. If you marry that together with an electric, hydrogen, or other engine you get a wide variety of options and a far more competitive market.
Curiosity got the better of me and so I held up a bright light to my badge. The internal antennae were readily apparent. RFID it is, I guess. Then I simply peeled the two layers apart to reveal the metal inside. Note the fake smartcard print on the face:
A total of six little lines run around the edges of the badge and end up connecting to a strip just below the Taj image on the right. A tiny slice or pin-prick through these lines would kill the tag without any obvious damage. I wasn’t particularly careful because, well, I was feeling impatient and a bit cavalier. A clean job can be accomplished by sliding a razor gently and repeatedly along the edge of the badge and peeling up the label on the back, then lightly slicing the metal lines, then gluing the label back in place and applying pressure. Of course my badge rarely worked anyway and I refused to take it out of it’s little plastic pouch (when it wasn’t in my pocket) so this is hardly a burning issue. In fact, after several attempts to read my badge on the first day HP actually asked me to type my info into their system by hand…had I been more patient, and the card more reliable, I would have first tried to read the thing and see how the data was stored. Maybe next year.
I also noted that someone left themselves logged into the badge station in the afternoon when there was just one bored guard standing around. That seemed especially sloppy to me and made me wonder if anyone had ducked behind the desk to print their own badges on the sly.
