Sunday, December 31, 2006

Saddam Execution -full footage



We could have used him to wash our septic tanks.

Looks like this link has the ORIGINAL 3gp from phone.

Monday, December 25, 2006

Soda+Sugar=FAT UGLY KIDS



Drinking lots of soda and juicy drinks could make kids obese, says a new US study. The finding comes from a study of 154 girls seen every two years since age five by Alison K. Ventura and other researchers at Pennsylvania State University.

By age 13, 14 per cent of the girls already showed high risk of developing metabolic syndrome—a cluster of ominous risk factors that indicate a person could be headed toward heart disease, stroke, or Type 2 diabetes. These girls were at or near the danger level for three metabolic syndrome risk factors—big waistline, high blood pressure, and a low level of good HDL cholesterol. Their parents tended to be more obese and to have more obesity-related health problems than other parents. Indeed, the high-risk girls gained more weight—and gained weight faster—than other girls.

However, the only significant difference in their diet was that, at young ages, they drank more sugary beverages than other girls. “We found the highest risk group was consuming more servings of these sweetened beverages at age five to nine, compared to other groups,” Ventura was quoted as saying. “At the later ages it was more soda, but in the earlier ages it was things like 10 per cent fruit juices, sports drinks, and flavoured beverages with added sugar.”

Olive oil help prevent cancer


Adding plenty of olive oil to your diet could protect you from cancer, suggests a new study. Olive oil contains a number of compounds, called phenols, which are believed to act as powerful antioxidants. Scientists led by Henrik Poulsen at the Copenhagen University Hospital looked at 182 healthy men aged between 20 and 60 from five European countries.

They found that those who had 25 millilitres of olive oil per day had reduced levels of a substance, which indicates cell damage. The scientists added either virgin, common or refined olive oil to their diets over two weeks. At the end of the study, scientists measured levels of the substance, which indicates oxidative damage to cells, called 8oxodG, in the men’s urine.

Oxidative damage is a process whereby the metabolic balance of a cell is disrupted by exposure to substances that result in the accumulation of freeradicals, which can then damage the cell. The men were found to have around 13 per cent less 8oxodG compared with their levels at the beginning of the study. “This data may explain why many cancer rates are higher in northern Europe than the south, where olive oil is a major part of the diet,” the scientists said. “Although this study suggests that olive oil can reduce DNA damage that could lead to the development of cancer, more long-term research is needed to confirm these effects,” Anthea Martin, science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said.

Elephant killing man-Caught on tape




This type of behavior is usually cased by provocative actions from human beings.As such,elephants are very calm and intelligent animals.Family bond between elephants is well known of. Keeping elephants in captivity, under bad conditions is the only factor that leads to such horrible behavior[apart from diseases ] like this. [Elephants have been successfully domesticated in Indonesia and South Asia for business purposes]

Friday, December 01, 2006

USING RFID: MAJOR PROBLEMS AND ISSUES

There are many issues in using RFIDs - each of which will need time and focus to resolve:

* Tag choice and affixing method (some tags are not readable through liquids)
* Reader/Tag interaction - acceptable reading distances can be up to 2m (7 feet)
* Antenna design and spacing - where are the antennas in relation to the package
* Rate of movement and quantity of tags - readers use special anti-collision software to identify different tags in their viewing area
* Choice of Middleware - the software used to manage the flow of data from readers and integrate with back-end systems
* Integration into the Global EPC database structure, using open source systems such as Savant to link to the "home" database for the product
* Integration into existing back-end management and inventory systems
* Sheer quantity of data if every item is tagged - puts pressure on databases and network components

RFID Frequencies

125 KHz to 148 KHz

This frequency range was the RFID industry's first, since the early 1980's. Typical applications include:

Access Control & Security
Identifying widgets through manufacturing processes or in harsh environments
Ranch animal identification (ISO 11784/11785)
OEM applications


Tags are made of a hard copper coil and eeprom chip then packaged into a housing appropriate for the application.

Tags can cost from $1 to $75, highly dependent upon quantity and packaging. The more robust a Tag is, the higher its cost. Less expensive Tags are typically flimsy and will not survive harsh environments. Custom Tags, the tooling of eeprom silicon wafers specific to an application, can result in a Tag price of 20 to 30 cents, in quantities of millions.

Read ranges are typically inches to several feet.

Although Tags can be placed on metal and imbedded into metal with some loss of performance, the KHz spectrum is the most adaptive to a metal environment. No RFID Tag can read through metal.

13.56 MHz

In an effort to lower Tag cost and address applications of high quantity Tags usage, the 13.56 MHz solution was born. At this frequency, a Tag's coil need not be made of hard copper wrappings. The coil can actually be a printed ink on a paper like substrate which than has an eeprom added to it. During the mid to late 1990's, 13.56 MHz was the vogue technology that many experts saw as a path to addressing high quantity applications necessitating low Tag costs. Typical applications include:

Library books
Laundry identification
Access Control
OEM applications


Typical Tag costs range from 50 cents to $1 unpackaged. Tag prices can dip to the 20 cent level if custom eeprom silicon can be committed to by the user.

Read range are typically inches to several feet.

Metal poses a serious source of interference and loss of performance. Mounting Tags on metal can pose very challenging. The

advent of 915 MHz technologies and new manufacturing capabilities at the 125 KHz spectrum have lowered the anticipated explosion of 13.56 MHz as an accepted technology, however 13.56 MHz will always have its niche applications especially in the OEM market.

915 MHz

Since the early 2000's, 915 MHz has been all the rage, the vogue technology of frequent press bringing the RFID industry into a global limelight, the epicenter of development efforts and dollars. Tags at this frequency also need not incorporate a hard copper coil. Coils are also much less difficult to manufacture versus 13.56 MHz and 125 KHz, which is not its only advantage. Hundreds or even thousands of Tags can be identified at the same time, a term known as anti-collision, at much greater distances, 10' with a single Reader Antenna and 20' between two Reader Antennas. Although Tag costs can be lower also even at the most moderate of quantities versus 13.56 MHz and 125 KHz, there continues to be much debate as to whether the industry can deliver a sub 10 cent Tag. As of this writing, Tags in moderate quantities can be purchased for 50 cents and quantities into the millions can be purchased in the 30 cent range.

The primary application envisioned is supply chain tracking. The ability to identify hundreds of objects on a pallet through dock doors from manufacturing to warehouse to delivery at a retail level spells huge ROI in terms of wasted dollars in inventory, wasted sales due to lack of inventory, and the hands free/human free automation of identifying what is where.

There will undoubtedly be more applications in the future that 915 MHz can address, like airline baggage for example, there is one chief disadvantage to 915 MHz, the interference of liquids. A Tag that normally reads at 10' will exhibit range of almost zero when placed in the shirt pocket of a user. Why, the liquid in the human body. Although a UHF spectrum, the same deficiencies as that of the microwave spectrum are present.

Active Tags at 433 MHz and 2.45 GHz

Active Tags possess a battery thus powering a Tag with greater energy and signal strength and achieving greater distances. Tag costs are higher, $20 to $70, primarily due to the additional discrete electronic components necessary and the low quantity of Tags demanded by applications. Typical applications include:

Highway toll Tags
Identification of private vehicle fleets in/out of a yard or facility
Asset tracking


Read ranges are typically 30', however custom systems can read hundreds of feet to 1 mile although these types of systems are not commercially marketed.

Having a battery, Tags do possess a finite life, 5 years typical.

Metal poses only a nominal interference factor.

RFID Competing Technologies

RFID evolved as an attempt to provide a better alternative to bar code labels used extensively in products tracking. RFID thus has many inherent advantages over barcodes.

Radio contact as required in RFID does away with the need of direct line of sight as required in bar codes. Moreover, with the capabilities of both read/write over the conventional read only, and the ability to store data and place RFID tags inside packing or embedding within products provides usage of RFID with many unique advantages.

Given these advantages the question may arise why then RFID tags are not ubiquitous despite Wal Mart~Rs mandate that its top 100 suppliers should put radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on all pallets and cases they ship to its distribution centers and stores.

The answer lies partly in the hue and cry surrounding the privacy issues related to the RFID and partly in the high cost of RFID tags as compared to bar code labels. But with efforts already on to counter the privacy threats and to reduce the cost of RFID tags, it should not be long when we will see RFID starts displacing bar en masse.

RFID Security

Through RFID In the near future, every single object will be connected to the Internet through a wireless address and unique identifier, was quipped by the global head of life science and consumer product industries at Sun Microsystems Inc.

Certainly feels impressive, and let me just help your imagination by setting a perfect scenario.

You are sitting at your home watching television on a Sunday afternoon, and you know that your television is connected to the internet. Your couch, table even your dining set is connected to the internet. That is great for the automation!? Now, imagine your shirt, jeans, even your undergarments connected to the internet! It is only a futuristic setup, but the privacy implications of RFID are equivalent in any application of RFID.



The basic privacy concerns associated with an RFID system is the ability of ubiquitous tracking of anybody without consent. And with RFID tags getting smaller and smaller, it is now even possible to hide tags in such a way that the consumer may be unaware of the presence of tags.

For example, the tags may be sewn up within garment, or molded within plastic or rubber. To the extent that researchers have already developed tiny coded beads invisible to human eye that can be embedded in inks to tag currency and other documents, or added to substances like automobile paint, explosives, or other products that law enforcement officers or retailers have a strong interest in tracking. Researchers say that the technology should be ready for commercial use in 3-6 years.

In summary we can note the following ways in which RFIDs can be used to bypass personal privacy:

* By placing RFID tags hidden from eyes, and using it for stealth tracking.
* Using the unique identifiers provided by RFID for profiling and identifying consumer pattern and behavior.
* Using hidden readers for stealth tracking and getting personal information.

With all these privacy concerns, there is bound to be some effort to thwart such attempt at privacy and maintain the popularity of RFIDs. Researches at various places have yielded the following methods of avoiding above-mentioned attacks.

* RSA Blocker Tags: These tags are similar in size and appearance to RFID tags, helps in maintaining the privacy of consumer by ~Sspamming~T any reader that attempts to scan tags without the right authorization, thus confusing the reader to believe that there are many tags in its proximity.
* Kill Switches: Newer RFID tags are being shipped with a ~SKill Switch~T, which will allow the RFID tags to be disabled. Thus a consumer will be given an option of disabling the RFID tag before leaving the store, thus avoiding the possibility of stealth tracking and profiling.

RFID Applications

There are two main area of applications, defined broadly as proximity (short range) and vicinity (long range).

Long range or vicinity applications can generally be described as track and trace applications, but the technology provides additional functionality and benefits for product authentication.

RFID enables greater automation of data collection process. Most companies spend considerable effort in knowing whats in their warehouse. RFID will help them dig deeper and much more easily, tracking to the detail of even each unit, long after it has left the factory or warehouse.

RFID allows all this data to be transferred securely. Companies use independent suppliers, data from each of them can be carried on tags and uploaded to the Company's central system.

Imagine the control that the Company will have on a product's life cycle. The creation of sucesses and defeats can be better understood. There have been numerous instances when companies had to recall the entire product due to a fault in a minor component. Imagine the costs involved in recalling a whole car for a mistake in the AC system! RFIDs can make such recalls much more focussed.

There would be better data about post production performance. A car could have individually tagged components. Data could be collected everywhere, accident sites, repair shops, even the garage.Even inside the factory, tags could enable faster and focussed fault tracing.

The Just in Time(JIT) practice followed by many companies, where components are used when they are delivered and delivered just before being needed, can lead to out of stock situations. RFID will eliminate the problem.

The eventual aim of RFID in retail and manufacturing ~W eliminate the intermediary. A perfect supply chain would require no distribution center. Products would be delivered directly from the factory to the retail center.

Some other areas where passive RFID has been applied in recent past are:

* Person Identification
* Food Production Control
* Vehicle Parking Monitoring
* Toxic Waste Monitoring
* Valuable Objects Insurance Identification
* Asset Management
* Access Control

Short range or proximity applications are typically access control applications. Some main areas are:

* Access control
* Mass transit ticketing

RFID Standards

Standards are critical in RFID. Be it payment systems or tracking goods in open supply chains. A great deal of work has been going on to develop standards for different RFID fequencies and applications.

RFID standards deal with the following:-

* Air Interface Protocol - The way tags and readers communicate
* Data Content - Organizing of data
* Conformance - Tests that products meet the standard
* Applications - How applications are used



The way the world has gone about developing the standards is a bit complex. There are two major and somewhat conflicting organizations into the business - ISO and Auto-ID Centre (now handled by EPC Global). Without going too much into the conflict, we'll review the standards proposed by both these organizations.

Tags are required to be disposable (manufacturer may not get the tags back from the retailer to reuse it). Hence, the primary mission for any standard developer is to make the tags low cost. It should operate in UHF, as only UHF delivers read range needed for supply chain applications. And since the goods are needed to be tracked as they move across the globe, the standards must be open and globally accepted. There should also be an accompanying network architecture, which would enable anyone to look up information associated with a serial number stored on a tag. The network too needs to be based on open standards.

EPC standards for tags are the class 0 and class 1 tags:

* Class 1: a simple, passive, read-only backscatter tag with one-time, field-programmable non-volatile memory.
* Class 0: read-only tag that was programmed at the time the microchip was made

Class 1 and Class 0 have a couple of shortcomings, in addition to the fact that they are not interoperable. One issue is that they are incompatible with ISO standards. The new EPC standard ~V Gen2 is designed to be fast tracked with ISO standards but for some disagreements over the 8 bit Application Family Identifier (AFI).

ISO has developed RFID standards for automatic identification and item management. This standard, known as the ISO 18000 series, covers the air interface protocol for systems likely to be used to track goods in the supply chain. They cover the major frequencies used in RFID systems around the world.

The seven parts are:

1. 18000~V1: Generic parameters for air interfaces for globally accepted frequencies
2. 18000~V2: Air interface for 135 KHz
3. 18000~V3: Air interface for 13.56 MHz
4. 18000~V4: Air interface for 2.45 GHz
5. 18000~V5: Air interface for 5.8 GHz
6. 18000~V6: Air interface for 860 MHz to 930 MHz
7. 18000~V7: Air interface at 433.92 MHz

RFID Technology and Architecture

Before RFID can be understood completely, it is essential to understand how Radio Frequency communication occurs.

RF (Radio Frequency) communication occurs by the transference of data over electromagnetic waves. By generating a specific electromagnetic wave at the source, its effect can be noticed at the receiver far from the source, which then identifies it and thus the information.

In an RFID system, the RFID tag which contains the tagged data of the object generates a signal containing the respective information which is read by the RFID reader, which then may pass this information to a processor for processing the obtained information for that particular application.

Thus, an RFID System can be visualized as the sum of the following three components:

* RFID tag or transponder
* RFID reader or transceiver
* Data processing subsystem

An RFID tag is composed of an antenna, a wireless transducer and an encapsulating material. These tags can be either active or passive. While the active tags have on-chip power, passive tags use the power induced by the magnetic field of the RFID reader. Thus passive tags are cheaper but with lower range (<10mts) and more sensitive to regulatory and environmental constraints, as compared to active tags.

An RFID reader consists of an antenna, transceiver and decoder, which sends periodic signals to inquire about any tag in vicinity. On receiving any signal from a tag it passes on that information to the data processor.

The data processing subsystem provides the means of processing and storing the data.

RFID systems can also be differentiated based on the frequency range it uses. The common ranges are Low-Frequency (LF: 125 - 134.2 kHz and 140 - 148.5 kHz), High-Frequency (HF: 13.56 MHz) and Ultra-High-Frequency (UHF: 868 MHz - 928 MHz).

Low-frequency systems have short reading ranges and lower system costs. They are most commonly used in security access, asset tracking, and animal identification applications. High-frequency systems, offering long read ranges (greater than 90 feet) and high reading speeds, are used for such applications as railroad car tracking and automated toll collection. However, the higher performance of high-frequency RFID systems incurs higher system costs.

Introduction to RFID

The following series of post is related to RFID. Hope this helps you.

A quick review of contents on this RFID tutorial is here:

RFID: THE REAL WORLD SCENARIO

Of all the things that radio frequency identification technology was supposed to do for retailers--simplifying inventory management and supply chain issues, for instance--creating a new type of theft wasn't one of them. But that is exactly what could happen, and a German information security consultant can prove it. Consider the following scenario.

A would-be scofflaw heads into a grocery store where all the products have RFID tags on them. Rather than paying $7 for a bottle of shampoo, he'd rather pay $3. To make that happen, he whips out a PDA equipped with an RFID reader and scans the tag on the shampoo. He replaces that information with data from the tag on a $3 carton of milk and uploads it to the shampoo bottle tag. When he reaches the check-out stand--which just happens to be automated--he gets charged $3 instead of $7, with the store's computer systems none the wiser.

Lukas Grunwald, the German consultant, says this is not only possible, he's done it. That is, he's changed the information on the RFID tag. He didn't actually steal anything. To prove his point and let others learn about RFID tag security, he's created a free software program called RFDump that is the result of a few years of research into RFID. He presented his findings and announced the release of the software at the Black Hat Security Briefings conference in Las Vegas today.

"There is a huge danger to customers using this technology, if they don't think about security," Grunwald says.

This kind of disclosure--complete with a software release that could potentially be misused--is not unusual for Black Hat, a gathering where IT security pros talk frankly about the latest in computer security problems and how to solve them. But don't put your Luddite hat back on just yet.

Companies like Wal-Mart Stores (nyse: WMT - news - people ) and Target (nyse: TGT - news - people ) are slowly embracing RFID as the next great boost to their supply chains. But they, like most companies, aren't yet tagging individual items, which is what Grunwald hacked at a store belonging to the Metro retail chain. Instead, they are putting RFID tags only on large cases and shipping pallets until the cost of item-level tagging comes down. A Wal-Mart spokesman says there is no price information on its pallet tags.

Albrecht Truchsess, a spokesman for Metro, says the company is now creating item-level tags for three products: cream cheese from Kraft Foods (nyse: KFT - news - people ), Pantene Shampoo from Procter & Gamble (nyse: PG - news - people ) and razor blades from Gillette (nyse: G - news - people ). He also says that since the tags are being tested only at Metro's Future Store, a demonstration project bringing together several new retail technologies, their security isn't strong by design.

"What we're doing in the Future Store is using the RFID tags for smart-shelf applications," says Truchsess, referring to shelves that track what has been placed on them. "And the sort of tags we're using are very basic. It's really just a test right now."

Metro expects it will take ten years or more before all store items have their own RFID tags on a regular basis. "The ones we're using now cost about 30 or 40 cents each," says Truchsess. "More secure tags are too expensive right now."

Pete Abell, an RFID consultant at Boston-based EPCGroup, says that as stores adopt the technology beyond the test phase, any shopper who brought his own RFID reader into a store would likely be detected. Secondly, he says, tags on products would be programmed to respond only to authorized readers. Finally, he says, the industry is working on stronger encryption than what is available now. "Currently there's only 8-bit encryption available, and that is pretty easy to get around," he says. "And in this case I doubt even that was in place."


Introduction to RFID

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a general term that is used to describe a system that transmits the identity (in the form of a unique serial number) of an object wirelessly, using radio waves.

RFID technologies are grouped under the more generic Automatic Identification(Auto ID) technologies.

The barcode labels that triggered a revolution in identification systems long time ago, are inadequate in an increasing number of cases. They are cheap but the stumbling block is their low storage capacity and the fact that they cannot be reprogrammed.

A feasible solution was putting the data on silicon chips. The ideal situation is contactless transfer of data between the data carrying device and its reader. The power required to operate the electronic data carrying device would also be transferred from the reader using contactless technology. These procedures give RFID its name.

One grand commercial vision for RFID is to change the way demand-supply chain moves. In the current almost stone-age scenario, manufacturer produces goods based on forecasts and hopes all of them will be consumed before the shelf life gets them. Good, if the market is consistent. Horrible, if a sudden surge makes the supply fall short and hence everyone in the chain miss on profits. Disastrous, if demand dies suddenly and losses are passed along the chain.

In a not so distant future, RFID enabled stores will monitor the consumption in real time. Shelf will signal the inventory when it needs more stuff and inventory will pull supplies from the manufacturer based on its level of stock.

Simple concept, not-so-difficult implementation and revolutionary results in the pipeline. Thats RFID, in short.