Thursday, March 13, 2003

Ten minutes' electricity no longer "too cheap to meter". Chinese coin-op cellphone charging stations -- which charge $1 or so for ten minutes' juice -- are coming to a mall near you. Link Discuss (via Gizmodo) [Boing Boing Blog] 7:34:25 AM    comment []

Slashdot | Benetton Clothing to Carry RFID Tags. An anonymous reader writes "Clothing manufacturer Benetton has announced that they will begin embedding RFID tags in clothing for inventory control purposes. You can read more about this at SF Gate." morcheeba adds more information: --- "EETimes is reporting that Benetton will be embedding a Philips RFID chip into the label of every new garment bearing the name of Benetton's core clothing brand, Sisley. The 15 million chips expected sold in 2003 will allow monitoring of garments from production to shipping, shelves and dressing rooms. The I.CODE chip (tech info) used in Benetton's labels will include 1,024 bits of EEPROM and operate at a distance of up to 1.5 meters. RFIDs look like they would be extremely uncomfortable in some Sisley clothes." [Privacy Digest] 7:32:38 AM    comment []

EE Times - Clothier Benetton adopts Philips' RFID technology for 'smart' labels. PARIS -- Philips Semiconductors' RFID chip will be embedded into the label of every new garment bearing the name of Benetton's core clothing brand, Sisley. Philips said Tuesday (March 11)) it sewed up the design win with European clothier Benetton through close work with LAB ID, an Italian system integrator. Philips estimated that it will ship 15 million RFID chips, based on its I.CODE ICs, to Benetton in 2003. [ ... ] Since I.CODE ICs are embedded into garment labels, they would remain attached for the life of an each piece of clothing. As the use of RFID chips moves closer to consumers, some worry about privacy issues raised by the tracking capabilities of RFID technology. Duverne said standards groups are looking for a uniform way to "deactivate" the RFID function after clothes with smart labels are purchased by consumers. The I.CODE chip used in Benetton's labels includes 1,024 bits of EEPROM and operates at 13.56-MHz carrier frequency. It can be operated without line of sight up to 1.5 meters. The label requires no internal power supply. Its contactless interface generates power and the system clock via the resonant circuitry by inductive coupling to the reader. [Privacy Digest] 7:32:05 AM    comment []

California kleptocrats auctioning airport confiscata on eBay. Some California airports donate the nation's confiscated pocket-knives to thrift shops, but now the State of California is working with the Oakland and Sacramento airports to auction the confiscata on eBay. So far, $16,281 has been made selling objects taken from passengers at Oakland and Sacramento airports -- the only ones in Northern California to participate in the state program. Among the oddest items confiscated and sold were at least three circular saws, hatchets, curtain rods and a little girl's baton, said Robb Deignan, spokesman for the surplus property disposal program, a division of the California Department of General Services. Also sold: 5,364 pocketknives, 350 pounds of scissors, 594 corkscrews and 309 leatherman tools. "Surplus property disposal program," man, that's gooooood bureaucratese. Link Discuss (via Schism Matrix) [Boing Boing Blog] WTF!  I can just see it now, "Uh sir, We need to take that laptop from you.  We feel we could get a lot for it on ebay, err, I mean, We deem it a security hazard."  I think it is good they are trying to make some money here, but there has to be a better way. 7:30:46 AM    comment []

RFID tags in Benetton clothing. Benetton is buying 15 million RFID (radio frequency identification) tags to attach to the labels in their clothing as an anti-theft measure. People are freaked out (again) about privacy issues, but the reality (at least today) is that the range of RFID tech is too short for someone to drive by your house and scan your closet. Still, it does make sense to zap the tags out of commission once items are paid for. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 7:28:09 AM    comment []

Azeem digs up an essay by Paul Saffo on information overload and new organisationional structures, written 14 years ago, to make a case for generalists. We are in a pickle today because we are trying to manage 21st century information overload with 19th century intellectual skills. For example, we still prize the ability to recall specific information over the skill of making connections among seemingly unrelated information. We have become a society of specialists, each knowing more and more about less and less.   One of the important antecedents was the introduction of the printing press. Prior to the Gutenberg, memory--the ability to recall tomes--was the over-riding metric for scholarship. When printed books meant recall was less valuable, literacy being a more potent skill. Saffo postulates a similar shift with the now familiar consequences in organisational structures, work behaviour and machine-to-machine conversations. Azeem goes on to postulate that organizations do not value generalists for three reasons: specialization of processes, an educational system that creates them and the threat they pose to specialist managers. Overcoming the organizational inertia that reinforces specialization may well be the largest barrier to advancing our capacity to process information.  Institutions are powerful things.  But so is the flow of information.  Take education for example, which is on a path of convergence of diversity.  Convergence of disciplines is where real innovation and discovery occurs.  Never before has the barrier to sharing and accessing information across disciplines been so low, and as a consequence, fields like social network analysis have become reinvigorated.  The falling cost of information processing has also increased the amount of quantified analysis in every field.  Most social sciences are rapidly converging with economics and even hard sciences.  Educational programs stem from research and the definition of fields of study, offering more inter-disciplinary educational paths. Innovation springs from intermingling diversity.  Commercial organizations will continue to value specialists to assure competence and deep discovery in given lines of research.  But like the trend in education -- stove pipes and protectionism will fall.  The costs are minimal and the risk of exchanging information is minimal compared to the rewards.  The design challenge is systems that support both generalists and specialists without creating information overload to empower their collaborative discovery and gradually dissolve their distinctions. [Ross Mayfield's Weblog] 7:27:33 AM    comment []

Benetton embedding RFID tags in clothing. The San Francisco Chronicle online reports that some clothes sold at Benetton's stores will have RFID tags embedded in the labels. [Smart Mobs] 7:26:36 AM    comment []

GPS spawns fears of "Geoslavery". CNN reports on Jerome Dobson's concerns that GPS technology may be hazardous to personal liberties. Dobson is president of the American Geographical Society. "Geoslavery" is a good word for describing one of the biggest downsides to smartmob technology. [Smart Mobs] 7:26:24 AM    comment []

Al Franken. "It's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the whole world." [Motivational Quotes of the Day] 6:45:00 AM    comment []

Iraqi drone revealed. There had been a lot of furor about a supposed drone, capable of spraying biological or chemical weapons over U.S. troops, which was discovered in Iraq recently, and which the Hans Blix didn't mention in his U.N. report, but burried in a big report. Sounded like a smoking gun, and Colin Powell presented it as being very dangerous. But here you see it on the picture. It is essentially a large model airplane, which is controlled from somebody on the ground who has it within visual range. Meaning, it wouldn't be able to move more than max 5 kilometers or so around. And it doesn't exactly have room for any fancy weapons. Another embarrassing non-story. Story here [Ming the Mechanic] 6:39:54 AM    comment []