Common Sense 101 - Engineering - December 16, 2012 Edition

Recommendations

Info

Common Sense 101: Engineering Rodin could make even a lump of clay look sexy. “The Age of Bronze”—not that this copy is actually made of bronze. The original, however, was also made of plaster. It was so lifelike that an article in “L'Etoile belge” claimed that it had been cast from a live model. No, it wasn’t. This one is located in the " National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Photo by “AgnosticPreachersKid”, Wikimedia Commons. Page 60
J 30. It’s a Steal ust about everything can be stolen: a fact well known to—well—thieves. So why aren’t engineers making an effort to address this problem? Obviously I’m not talking about things that are too cheap to be worth stealing, let alone worth bothering to recover if stolen. But anything that retails for more than, say 50 bucks is surely a candidate for an RFID chip imbedded into it which would uniquely identify it. What would be so hard in embedding such a chip into, say, every laptop, tablet and cell phone? In fact, with anything retailing for more than a few hundred bucks we could go even farther, and have the chip periodically send out a signal saying “I’m stolen!” (or something like that), or else stop the gadget from working unless it’s in the proximity of another item the owner always carries, and with which it must be in constant RFID contact. So if a fence tries to sell the stolen item, it either wouldn’t work, or it would drive the buyer mad with its incessant whining. That would be huge disincentive against people stealing it. When it comes to things that are much more expensive, such as vehicles—cars, trucks, motorbikes, boats, aircraft and the like—in which each part can be worth a few hundred bucks or more, we could implement an even better strategy. We could have a computer chip embedded in each part, like in modern credit cards; and the vehicle’s Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) could be encoded into each chip. Each chip could even have GPS trackability, which the owner could activate remotely via cell-phone or—in the near future—via satellite. At start-up, the vehicle’s drive-by-wire computer would check every chip in every part of the vehicle to see whether the VIN encoded into all the chips matches the vehicle’s own VIN; and if any part doesn’t have a chip—or if there is a part whose chip doesn’t have the correct VIN encoded into it —the computer would simply not allow the vehicle to start. So it would become pointless for a thief to steal the vehicle for its parts: if stolen, they could never be used. To prevent thieves from manufacturing their own chips and installing them into stolen parts, each chip could be encoded by the manufacturer with a secret “Chip Identification Number”—let’s call it a “CIN”—which would not be the same as the car’s VIN, and which the vehicle’s computer would also be required to recognise in order to allow the vehicle to be started. If the entire vehicle were stolen, the customer could, with the help of a password known only to himself or herself, activate the GPS tracking devices embedded into the chips, so as to easily and rapidly locate the vehicle, and contact the police with its location. (The police wouldn’t know the owner’s GPS password, of course, in order to safeguard the owner's privacy.) If a vehicle needs a new part or parts, the dealer selling the part(s) would encode the chip in the part being sold with the VIN of the vehicle into which it is intended to be fitted, using a PIN (Personal Identification Number) known only to the dealer; and at the first re-starting of the vehicle with the new part in it, the owner would be required to activate this new part’s chip using his or her own separate PIN, known only to him or her. Then the part would have the vehicle’s VIN permanently and irreversibly encoded into its chip. As a result, it would be next to impossible for a thief to install new parts into a stolen vehicle: he’d have to know both the dealer’s PIN the owner’s as well, and it’s highly unlikely that he’d know both. As a result, a strong deterrent against being stolen would be built into every vehicle, since thieves couldn’t realistically hope to get away with it often enough to make it profitable. Sure it would cost a few hundred dollars—maybe even more—to install the chips and GPS, but since pretty much all vehicles are insured, their insurance rates would most likely go down sufficiently to make it cost-effective all the same. In medieval times books were all handwritten, and therefore hugely expensive: so they were chained down in libraries to prevent them being stolen. Today we have much better technology: we can make our expensive stuff incapable of being used if stolen, and easy to find when stolen! Page 61
Page 1:
Common Sense 101: Engineering Laser
Page 5 and 6:
Common Sense 101: Engineering by La
Page 7 and 8:
T Dedication his book is dedicated
Page 9 and 10:
T The No-Small-Print Warranty he pr
Page 11 and 12:
I Introduction am not an engineer.
Page 13 and 14:
25. Everything should be easy to ge
Page 15 and 16:
E 1. Good Intentions verything shou
Page 17 and 18:
Good Intentions The boom problem co
Page 19 and 20:
T 2. Oh, the Humanity! here’s a d
Page 21 and 22:
M 3. Come Together, Right Now ost t
Page 23 and 24: A 4. Do it Yourself nd when I say
Page 25 and 26: T 5. Get Lost here’s also another
Page 27 and 28: T 6. I Like to Move it, Move it ake
Page 29 and 30: O 7. You C A N Take it With You f c
Page 31 and 32: T 8. Cleanliness is Next to Godline
Page 33 and 34: T 9. The Pyramids here’s an Arabi
Page 35 and 36: I 10. Heirlooms n the old days, peo
Page 37 and 38: 11. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth
Page 39 and 40: I 12. Maintenance t’s simply not
Page 41 and 42: T 13. Coolth he word “warmth” i
Page 43 and 44: D 14. Quark o you remember Quark? I
Page 45 and 46: A 15. What’s in a Name? ctually,
Page 47 and 48: I 16. Something Old, Something New
Page 49 and 50: I 17. The Eliminator kea has a phil
Page 51 and 52: A 18. The Sum of its Parts pparentl
Page 53 and 54: I 19. Don’t be Shy t’s no use h
Page 55 and 56: B 20. K.I.S.S. y K.I.S.S. I mean—
Page 57 and 58: I 21. Deliver Us t bears repeating,
Page 59 and 60: I 22. Easy, Pal! t all started in t
Page 61 and 62: A 23. Play it Again, Sam few years
Page 63 and 64: O 24. Upgradability ne problem Stra
Page 65 and 66: W 25. The Numbers Game hen you firs
Page 67 and 68: M 26. Recycling aybe some day whate
Page 69 and 70: E 27. Cool it, Man! verything shoul
Page 71 and 72: O 28. The Dark Side ne of the worst
Page 73: W 29. Finders Keepers, Losers Weepe
Page 77 and 78: O 31. Check this out! nce upon a ti
Page 79 and 80: Y 32. Autopilot ou know that airlin
Page 81 and 82: W 33. It’s Standard hen you go to
Page 83 and 84: W 34. Waterproof hat could be so ha
Page 85 and 86: W 35. The Rotary Club e often derid
Page 87 and 88: C 36. Friction ontrary to what most
Page 89 and 90: O 37. Wireless f course we all get
Page 91 and 92: O 38. Swiss Army Knife nce upon a t
Page 93 and 94: W 39. Ouch! hat’s up with manufac
Page 95 and 96: T 40. Square Peg in Round Hole here
Page 97 and 98: D 41. Paint Job id you know that a
Page 99 and 100: W 42. Break Down hy do so many thin
Page 101 and 102: O 43. Deterioration ne of the worst
Page 103 and 104: T 44. Corrosion here are corrosive
Page 105 and 106: O 45. Rock and Roll ne of the worst
Page 107 and 108: T 46. R.T.F.M. hat stands, as you s
Page 109 and 110: W 47. Pinch Me hen I was a very you
Page 111 and 112: I 48. Shocking am a fairly good han
Page 113 and 114: R 49. Leaks emember the Exxon Valde
Page 115 and 116: B 50. The Future is Where You’ll
Page 117 and 118: The Future is Where You’ll be Spe
Page 119 and 120: Write or draw something. Be an arti
Page 121: T About the Author he author is a n
show all

Common Sense 101 - Engineering - December 16, 2012 Edition

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?