On Sat, 2006-12-09 at 22:45 -0500, Denny Esterline wrote:

> The difference is in the apparentness (is that a word?) of the crime. Right now if you put a shirt under your jacket and walk out, that is a clearly abnormal activity, anybody witnessing it will know what is being done. With these futuristic checkouts, the normal function (as it's been described to me) is to push a whole cart full of stuff through without hesitation. If some/many/most of the RFID tags are 'defective'* how will anybody know? I don't believe scales are a practical solution at this level, there's too many variables on whole cart weight.  
> 
> 
> 
> -Denny
> 
> 
> 
> *'Defective' could mean a lot of things, certainly some type of EM zap could kill them, but so could dropping it on the floor and stepping on it with a hard shoe.

So, putting a shirt under your jacket is considered "abnormal
behaviour", but dropping an item on the floor and stepping on it
isn't? :)

My point is what is considered "abnormal" behaviour will simply change.
The methods of defeating RFID are known, and new methods will be known,
so that just shifts what is "abnormal" behaviour.

On the other side, the former cashiers could simply be reassigned to
walk around the store keeping watch, you can NEVER have to many people
on the floor to help customers IMHO (as long as they aren't too pushy).

As for the weigh scale, that was just a suggestion. Another technique
perhaps is to put an RFID scanner and scale in the cart. The RFID
scanner continuously scans the basket, if there is a change in weight
and no change in the RFID inventory the cart will tag itself as
"problem" and signal the self check-out terminal that a manual check
should happen.

Again, just an idea, I'm just one person and I've come up with two, you
can get the people in the industry will come up with MANY better ideas
then mine.

TTYL

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist