Gorilla Alert
The "neighborhood" 600 lb gorilla is moving around, again. Keep an eye out lest ye be trod upon. "Wal-Mart is expected to throw its weight [...heh] behind RFID (radio frequency identification) technology at the Retail Systems 2003 industry conference in Chicago on Tuesday."Now RFID is a nifty little system whereby the contents of a carton or pallet of merchandise can be tracked from manufacturer to shelf without being opened and sorted piece by individual piece. Each item has its own little smart chip and its own identifier. Saves time and time = $. Good, eh? Mostly. But stores like WM think of their 'customers' as shoplifters-in-waiting. Therefore they put the tags in the actual merchandise, itself, instead of in the packaging which could be ripped open in the store by shoppers just looking to get away with something. When a customer does the unexpected and actually buys an item, the register removes the item from inventory but does *not* remove the RFID tag from the item. Saves even more time and $ as they have neglected to install a device to turn off the little things before you leave the store. They can't be seen, like the big plastic magnetic deterrence tags used today. Why bother? Everywhere Mr. Legit goes, he is a walking data base for the readers at the door of every store.
Probably paranoid. But I’ll link to it…
Posted by Andrew Cory on 06/10/03 at 05:48 PMIn debate, that would be called “slippery slope”, lots of speculation, and not much else…
Posted by Matt on 06/10/03 at 07:51 PM
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