An ID Number for Everything 391
jon323456 writes "Put this in your privacy pipe and smoke it. According to news.com, MIT researchers have cooked up a new barcode that has enough dataspace to include a unique serial number for everything. And in combination with RFID tags...."
96 bits??? (Score:5, Funny)
So could any coder who cut his teeth on machine language.
We need to stop teaching Perl/Python/Java as a first language. Make the uber-generation deal with opcodes and registers. Assembler will put hair on your chest boy!
The point is, bits aren't cheap. If we're going to set standards for their allocation, let's let somebody who knows what they're doing do it. Yes?
Re:96 bits??? (Score:3, Informative)
Org? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:96 bits??? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, those so called 'researchers' at MIT are nothing but frauds. We need people who know what they are doing. We need experience. We need expertise.
I say we ask Ballmer. He'll help us out.
Re:96 bits??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Example: IIRC there are less than 256 countries in the world. One possible IPv6 allocation is an 8-bit country code field embedded in the 128-bit address, leaving 120 bits for each country to address devices. And then in the US, for instance: 6 bits for the state field, 8 bits for the county field, 8 bits for the city field, still leaving 98 bits for addressing *per city*. A similar example holds for 96-bit barcodes.
Re:96 bits??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Uniqueness is not enough.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:96 bits??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, for a while. Back in the 70's, I'm sure they figured that 12-bit barcodes were plenty. According to the article, they're now starting to run out.
It's called thinking ahead: Design a system that will last at least twice as long as you think you'll need. Yeah, 64 bits is incredibly huge. They're talking about serializing every product made by every company with a unique id. So say we plan on it lasting 100 years. That's still like 184,400,000,000,000,000 unique id numbers, per year (64bit). Actually, that does seem pretty damn excessive.
But who knows - maybe there will be other uses for this space as well. Using a few bits to encode sizing/weight information, color, hazards, if it's flamable, disposal instructions, etc, to allow simpler devices to read it without having to link to a database somewhere. A good example of this is the licence scanners some bars use: they swipe your drivers licence, and it shows the info encoded on the card, and they compare it against the info printed on the card. It doesn't link back to a database to verify anything, its just a simple device to help prevent fake id's. Same sort of thing could apply here for shipping purposes, and probably lots of other things, too.
It's a lot easier to just use 96 bits now, than switching to 64 now, and then having to switch to 96 again in a few (or many) years.
Barcode? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Barcode? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Barcode? (Score:2, Interesting)
You read that right. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You read that right. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it is worse than that. It takes all those PhDs to figure out that you can count really high if you just keep counting...
Re:You read that right. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow this is pretty dumb.. slow news day? (Score:5, Funny)
wow stop the presses.. thatis revolutionary..
oh wait I got an idea.. lets use 128.. or better yet 1024!!! we'll never need to make a new standard for thousands of years!
woooo!(ric-flair like woooo)
Re:Wow this is pretty dumb.. slow news day? (Score:2, Interesting)
I was thinking "Passcode"... Dude it's a key why not use it as the ultimate key. Hack hack got nothing on me.
Now with 512k you'd have not just enough room to ID everything but enough room to breath.
Made it tight enough and someone will enter random codes just to get results.
And then there is the mistakes.. accadentally using the wrong code. It would be better if a defective ID tag gave an error than a false result.
Re:Wow this is pretty dumb.. slow news day? (Score:2)
Re:Wow this is pretty dumb.. slow news day? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow this is pretty dumb.. slow news day? (Score:2, Insightful)
That might not sound very significant but it is.
Re:Wow this is pretty dumb.. slow news day? (Score:3, Informative)
Current UPC barcodes use only digits 0-9 so they are only 10^12 in range, which is a lot smaller than 2^64, or for that matter 2^96.
My question is whether they are still stripes or use 2D coding (I am assuming 2D, unless they use compressed printing and or improved 'variable width' scanning units).
Barcodes are a series of wide and thin transitions (or heights as in postnet) which in certain combinations of multiples of transitions represent numbers. The stripes themselves may e
Confusing article. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bit of a "Duh" if you ask me. Of course it has to be done, but this is pure implementation territory: it doiesn't affect the privacy issues on bit.
Mind you, I do wonder what the delta cost on the RFID chip of moving from 96 bit to (say) 128 bit - or even 256-bit. While I agree that these things are going to be produced in trillions and therefore millionths of a cent add up, I would have thought that most of the cost was constant per unit - slicing, packaging, testing etc.
Re:Wow this is pretty dumb.. slow news day? (Score:2)
Did you remember to file for a patent?
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
In related news, this move pissed the hell out of the MIT researchers who developed the so-called "Everything Barcode", which they claimed had enough dataspace to uniquely indentify everything. Said one reasercher, (off the record): "Man, did this come as a surprise. I mean, we made space for every single atom in the entire friggin' universe in this barcode system, but did we think about Quarks and Leptons! Argh! We'll have to go back to square one on this. Give us another two years, and we'll find a number so big, that
Even the tinfoil? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Even the tinfoil? (Score:3, Funny)
And we wants this why? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't remember anyone complaing about not having enough barcodes etc...
Re:And we wants this why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And we wants this why? (Score:2)
Re:And we wants this why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Admittedly you could have more bars to compensate.
Re:And we wants this why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Moving to 14 digits will mean 100x more possible barcodes.
Moving to 14 bits from 12 would mean 4x as many!
I'm unimpressed with this invention because in the 70's barcodes encoded around 40 bits of information at near zero cost apart from using some space on the label
and in the article is says that the cost is currently in the 5c to 10c range per device
Re:And we wants this why? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is true, but eventually, in maybe 10 or 20 years, the 14 digit codes will also run out. The people at MIT understand the costs of upgrades, so they figure why not do it only once.
Second, they ramble on about "labeling every can of coke" but they never mention how much it'd cost to label a 10c can of coke.Yes they do. They mentioned that MIT is working on reduci
Gillette (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gillette (Score:5, Informative)
Lets see (Score:4, Funny)
hosts... minus 2 for the broadcast and the network address. Um...No thats not right.. damn cisco.
You forgot something. (Score:2)
Actually, it's minus three. You forgot to allow for the Evil bit.
Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
An ID on every car axle? (Score:2)
Re:An ID on every car axle? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, imagine how awful it would be if every car had a unique identifier associated with it. You could be identified wherever you go by anyone with access to the right equipment.
Ever heard of a license plate?
Re:An ID on every car axle? (Score:5, Funny)
The VIN is truly unique; no two cars have the same number. They are unique amongst a common manufacturer, and unique amongst all automotive manufacturers. Every car, truck, minivan, SUV, etc. has one of these numbers, often written in multiple places, and oftentimes PHYSICALLY STAMPED in the material of the car so as to prevent fraud (it's illegal to remove this privacy-infringing device!)
These numbers are not protected at all; they're prominently displayed on the dash of all vehicles equipped with them, so that anyone simply walking past your car can look in and record the number. From it, they'll know what manufacturer produced your car, the car's series, its body style, engine type, emissions, what model year it is, what factory it was produced in, and on top of that, A SIX-DIGIT UNIQUE IDENTIFIER!
This problem has existed for decades, and few people actually know the evils that lurk inside! This must be stopped! Stand up to your car manufacturers, tell them you WILL NOT BUY another vehicle from them until this travesty is corrected!
(Peace out, yo.)
Re:An ID on every car axle? (Score:3, Insightful)
If your car's whereabouts were tracked and stored in a database, there's the chance the employere could find that their employees are interviewing, which customers are shopping around and where, etc. What if you were recorded simply driving down a street within minutes of a crime committed by someone else? What's your alibi? There were no witnesses to the crime other than the database, of course.
Isn't there only about 10^80 particles? (Score:2, Funny)
Damn those nerds... (Score:2)
Same technology to *fix* CD's (Score:5, Funny)
Take a felt tipped marker. Make one of the lines thicker.
Problem Solved!
Did I just violate DMCA?
Re:Same technology to *fix* CD's (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Same technology to *fix* CD's (Score:4, Funny)
Applications in lost good recovery (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Applications in lost good recovery (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Applications in lost good recovery (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Applications in lost good recovery (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, I'm gonna say "not bloody well likely" to that. A few years ago when my car got broken into, my cellphone, digital camera, PDA and CD player were all stolen. They all had serial numbers, which I had documented, and I gave the info to the police. What happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just because it has a unique ID labelled on it (whether it's a number or a barcode or a hologram or anything else!), doesn't mean you can recover it any easier.
Hell, doesn't pretty much everything have a serial number now anyways? Yeah, so what if my couch might have the same serial number as my computer monitor; I'm still not going to confuse the two.
Re:Applications in lost good recovery (Score:2)
True, but it does mean that if the item is recovered, the police have grounds to give it back to you. I think the police in my town still come around to the elementary schools and give a talk about bike safety, and how kids should have their parents take the bicycle down to the main police station to get an ID stamped on it and have that ID assoc
Re:Applications in lost good recovery (Score:5, Insightful)
You, person #825765.983.9782.2987634 have hereby been fined $500 for littering. Coke can #178246.886.1235.783553 was found on 29-8-2005 in an area not sanctioned for waste disposal. Bank and customer records show that you purchased the aforementioned can, therefor the fine is yours. This fine can not be contested as our Object Tracking Database is infallible. Have a nice day.
Never mind that some homeless guy fished your can out of the trash and dropped it later.
Re:Applications in lost good recovery (Score:2, Interesting)
As many reading this, I imagine, can speak to, it hasn't done a great deal of good in recovering their cars.
-H
Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
Get your requests in early! (Score:2, Funny)
IPv6? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IPv6? (Score:2)
but how does one telnet to a molecule, that's what I want to know.
Number the RFID tags! (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm. If everything can have a unique ID, and an RFID tag to go with it, then my cunning solution is to insist that each RFID tag has its own unique ID (and tag) as well. Privacy intrusion defeated by the power of recursion!
UPC is redundant...IPv6 is here (Score:5, Interesting)
Knee Jerk (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe the things that I smoke in my privacy pipe is my own freakin' business- that never occurred to you now, did it?
RFID can do that (Score:3, Informative)
The ghost of Bill Gates... (Score:2, Funny)
--MIT, 2003
OIDs (Score:2)
http://www.alvestrand.no/objectid/
Love to Tag'em All (Score:2)
Can we pick serial numbers? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Can we pick serial numbers? (Score:2, Funny)
"Everything" changes with the culture (Score:2)
Rich area of pop-cultural history, examples like this. "All the grains of rice in the world" sure sounds like a lot. When people want to describe a huge expense, they often stack one-dollar bills "to the moon and back" a certain number of times. (If they want to diminish a similarly huge cost number,
This could be called... (Score:5, Funny)
MIT Everyware [slashdot.org], perhaps?
And a distributed database to track it all. (Score:3, Insightful)
To have any useful application, those codes would have to be linked to transactions and locations.
Imagine trying to update the transactions and locations of just every can of Coke sold every day.
Manufactured
Shipped from the manufacturing plant
Received at the warehouse
Shipped to the store
Sold to the customer
Simplistic article (Score:5, Informative)
UPC-A barcodes are 12 digit long. There are many many other types of barcodes, including 2D barcodes that can hold up to 1K of data on them. They just have to pick another type of barcode, like CODE128, for consumer products and declare it the new standard. No need for revolutionary changes here.
Look in the SUPPORTED_BARCODES file in the cuecat driver [easyconnect.fr] archive to see how many 1D barcode types already exist.
OK let's have some fun here (Score:2, Insightful)
But if you are not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about
Tell that to the Cubans who simply want to loan books to their friends---oops
A little over-the-top with the sales pitch (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. Completely wrong. If you have ever worked for a major retailer, you will come to understand this reality.
ID's are not a panacea. You have to have a system of control and accountability over your inventory that makes use of a unique ID and checks itself constantly, forcing correction.
So what happens.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Particle Level (Score:2)
I hearby claim first bar (Score:3, Funny)
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Privacy? (Score:3, Funny)
Old, old, old (Score:2)
To be fair, I higher density 1D bar-code that can be reliably read would be useful to a whole lot of industries, but it's just not revolutionary.
Re:No more inventory counts (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll always have a need to do a physical audit.
Re:No more inventory counts (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No more inventory counts (Score:4, Funny)
Unless, of course, that your whole business is the warehousing and distribution of RFID tags. If that's the case, you're probably just about set.
Bar codes better than RFID (Score:2)
Database (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey, Microsoft, maybe you'd like a shot at this one? Then everyone would be happy knowing that there data may not be secure, but when it crashes (not if), we all get to start over.
Privacy (Score:2)
I know there is the potential for this to be misused, but to be honest, I don't think the potential is much worse. If a big bad tracking company is going to follow me, I don't feel any worse about them knowing that I bought this specific can of Coke rather than just a can of Coke.
On the other hand, if my bike is stolen, an
RFID tags attached to PACKAGING not PRODUCT (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not just attach the RFID tags to the product packaging rather than permanently to the product itself. The packaging gets thrown away, not the product. Most of the privacy issues simply disappear. (Other than that someone could run your trash through an RFID scanner, but would still need access to a database in order to determine that that number is a particular subversive book that you should not be reading.)
I'm not saying it's a total solution to the problem of RFID tag privacy. But if tags were affixed to packaging rather than products, most / many privacy issued just go away. (Some remain.) Or have I overlooked something major?
It'll never happen... (Score:3, Interesting)
Make a tag for each one.
Let's say for the sake of argument that the tags weigh 0.01 grams.
Now make all 2^96 of them. You have just created 792,281,625,142,643,375,935,439.50336 kg of tags.
That's a shitload of tags! For reference, Planet Earth has a mass of 5.972e24kg. Your tags would weigh 1/132 as much as the entire planet.
That's less than 1%, but that's still a MAJOR volume of tags. We'd be choking on them. They'd be everywhere.
At 1,000,000 tags per second, how long would it take to manufacture 2^96 tags? 7,922,162,514,264,337,593,543 seconds. That's 2,512,308,552,583,217 years.
Something I hadn't thought of... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Under EPC, every can of Coke would have a one-of-a-kind identifier."
It occured to me that it's quite possible that such unique id's on consumable items could later get tracked back to their purchasers, then automatically impose a littering fine on them if said Coke can is found empty and discarded on the ground somewhere.
I don't really see that as becoming a reality, but it's possible.
Re:Something I hadn't thought of... (Score:3, Insightful)
Tracing trash (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure we'll see a market for microchip destroying devices of some sort for home use if RFID's ever take off in significant numbers.
Re:Something I hadn't thought of... (Score:3, Interesting)
All it would take is a little wind to blow it out of the over-full trashcan it was carefully placed in, or a homeless man to accidentally drop the can on the way to the recycling center.
long long long (Score:2)
Every molecule on earth (Score:3, Informative)
A world that never forgets (Score:3, Insightful)
Databases of this scale are immensely dangerous regardless of what trivial conveniences they allow. These databases can take our lives out of their social context and make us vulnerable to blackmail and extortion by public officials.
These databases also violate the Fourth Amendment. What about a future where law enforcement officials don't even need to step on a person's property to execute a search?
Simply, privacy is fundamentally important and is a fundamental human right. Only when citizens can control their own information, can a proper balance of power be mainained in a representative democracy like the USA. Remember, those who hold the information are those who are truly in power.
With equal accountability? Not likely. (Score:3, Insightful)
Reality is that the likelihood of extortion and blackmail over previous events in life becomes far less likely if everyone is held accountable. Currently the system is built more around how much money one can throw to make things go away.
The sad state of affairs, particularly in the US, is that everyone is expected to live up to a high level of morality, because everyone hides what they've done wrong. When no one can hide what they've done wrong, the system as a whole becomes far less black and white.
The
Did they actually say it? (Score:3, Funny)
A few things I don't understand (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Why the article's title on CNET mentions "futuristic barcode" when the project is apparently in relation to low capacity (96bit) RFIDs or the like.
2. Why it took 5 years to develop. RFID technology is readily understood. Databases are readily understood, wireless communication is readily understood. Prototyping hardware and writing some connectivity software should not have taken 5 years for such a "group". I'm either dissapointed or confused.
3. Why give each tag a only specific serial number that MUST be looked up in the database to ID it. The current barcode mass-grouping is still valid even with more bits. A stripped down database could then be used for off-line reading and you would still know the manufacturer and possibly the product family. For example barcodes starting with "636920" are from O'Reilly; all barcodes starting with "05000" are from Nestle. Isn't that much easier than having NO idea what "aj380dk358fh3k8i" is?
4. Why access a database directly? Why not use the Internet and stanard DNS and HTML/XML? Purchase a domain and make simple IRLs that include the tag info: http://www.taginfo.org/044254 ? The server would see the code, and send back a response containing one of two things: 1: the product information in XML (including a link to more info from the manufacturer), 2: an error. Such a thin HTTP/HTML client could be written quite quickly and be embedded in almost anything. There are already many synconization and caching sytems in place for HTML.
Re:Hey! What is my number? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hey! What is my number? (Score:5, Funny)
-- Homer J. Simpson.
Hahahahahaha (Score:3, Informative)
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Re:WELL....... (Score:2)
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Funny)