Oh, Big Brother is real, I just thought maybe RFID wasn't His way. NYC just saw reported that its 3/4 $billion "first responder" wireless radio system is such a boondoggle the city tried to sell it to Northrup Grumman and lease it back, but "at least" the Department of Transportation is using it to monitor cars by imaging their license plates and databasing them. The sell/leaseback attempt would have gotten Northrup to lease the same system to other private users. So Bloomberg created a wireless citywide surveillance network that doesn't protect us, but is a platform for private interests to track us all, in realtime video indexed to our government files. The only part that doesn't make sense is that the military contractor isn't taking Bloomberg up on the deal.

As for my own wireless sensors, I'll probably try Zigbee. I'd be happier if there were a way to upgrade the stack in a year or two with 6lowpan or something more open than Zigbee, but it seems the OTA upgrade would kill the remaining batteries. If only there were a $2 thermocouple recharger that could harvest ambient heat faster than the radio/MCU kills the battery, it might be OK.

And then maybe we could get some parity in watching the watchmen.

Thanks for the reality. At least that condemns to fiction the panopticon dystopia where The Man tracks us all in the streets with 3D RFID locators against the swarm of RFID tags in the products and clothes we wear/carry.

The Digi Zigbee sensors are "ready to go", but need more parts to be complete, right? A temperature sensor node would need at least the $17 DIP, PCB, battery/holder, enclosure. Final cost is going to be something like $25, right? Any chance that in qty 1000 that will be under $10 by say 2015?

All those thousands of dams and many other public water "reclamation" and distribution projects across America make our version of "capitalism" a funny one very similar to socialism.

And then the tornadoes carving through. Eventually a new Grand Canyon. Think of the tourist dollars! :P

Water used to make a product that's shipped isn't at all necessarily water that's shipped. If the water is consumed in place but not included in the product it's not shipped. So claims that "virtual water flows across borders" is BS.

Likewise water that's used along its natural flow path, and cleaned (enough) to return it to its original destination, is impacting only in the place where it's diverted. When we put a factory on a plot of land we disrupt that land, and we're willing to accept some deletion from nature. Nature is very resilient, and not all diversions and conversions of it have unacceptable consequences.

We do go too far, and we do waste far too much. But exaggerations like these don't do anything except discredit the already difficult efforts to require management of what we use.

Show me Democrats saying "cell phones cause cancer", not "we want to study whether they do". That's science. So is the opposition to GMO crops, which science shows is risky to at least species integrity and possibly human health, as well as the economics of dependency on a corporation for crop reproduction. Nuke power has more than science showing its risks: read the headlines sometime (without a lobbyist "interpreter"). And organic food's ecological benefits are also science, as is the science of the poisonous alternatives.

You're just another Republican who thinks that saying some familiar words when it's your turn to speak means you're right, simply because you can't listen to anyone else.

The horn is made of hair. It appears that the horn was previously hair that either delivered a survival/reproductuctive advantage, or was at least no hindrance. Some random mutations along the way more or less gradually caused the hair to behave more like a horn.

You should look into how evolution actually works. Most examples of it are are either solved or clear when actual biology is applied.

Nonsense. Republicans are very publicly opposed to teaching fact that Earth life evolved to its present state, often proudly declaring that god created it instead and that's what should be taught at least as authoritatively as fact.

The statement that Democrats seek to prevent evolution from happening is too stupid to rebut.

You're just a Republican, willing to say anything to defend your tribe, no matter how shallow and unbelievable.

This is all very interesting. Do you think that my RFID scenario, where the tags are immobile and read by immobile readers, can get to 99% reliability? If the tags and readers are installed in places they're reliably read and then left there. If the readers have to read tags through drywall, studs and maybe cinder block, across up to 30 meters? How about also through concrete floors? Across up to 100m?

There's probably not a lot of use for that scenario with static tag values. But with dynamic tag values, if they're installed in the right place, they could be a cheap one-way sensor network. If they work.

If not, what's the chances that Zigbee will cost under $20 per sensor within the next couple years? Under $10?

Who made the generics?