"With Radio-Frequency Identification a thief with a scanner could get an inventory of household items, then hit the best houses." All the better for our household, then, in fact they'll probably ignore the whole street.

The problem with accumulating wealth is worrying how to keep it all. I dont have a lot of things worth a lot of money, and I leave my front door open, and I live a contented life.

why is it always said that with this type of checkingout and paying for items there will be no 'lining up' or queue-ing? won't we all be lined up or queued waiting to checkout our items (selfservice yet again)? the line-up process will occur whether we have a checkout person to scan our items or we do it ourselves, surely ... jas

No Jocylynne, you just wheel your trolley through the exit.
You probably would have to have a card that recognises you and
knows your credit card number etc.

Good for you Sofisu. Affluenza is the root of most of todays social and economic problems. The grass is definatly not greener.

Im not rich and I dont want to be. Every rich person I have known was scared and fearful and hateful in case some poor person ripped them off. A lot of them were also mean and spiteful as to become rich they had to make others poor. Not a nice way to live.

Forget about tagging jeans and everyday items, it's people that should worry about being tagged.

This would be the true end of individual freedom.

Under the guise of "never being lost again" or being identified for innocuous medical purposes, you'll also have all your movements tracked plus those you may associate with. Walk by a crowd demonstrating against the government and you may end up in trouble.

This type of gee-whiz technology article is an absolute motherlode of "things to pick holes in"?

"A RFID tag can be as small as a grain of sand... unlike a bar code, the details can be read from a distance, even from a satellite."

A tag as small as a grain of sand being read from a satellite? Not a chance.

"with RFID tagged goods you will be able to determine the quantity without having to open the box and you will eliminate counting errors"

Actually, you'll only be able to count the number of RFID tags. And if they are "as small as a grain of sand..."

"If you are a high value customer walking into a bank branch, you shouldn’t be surprised if a bank employee comes up to you and says “Come this way sir, no need to line up with the general riff-raff”."

If I'm a "high value customer" I wouldn't see the inside of a bank branch from one year to the next.

"By placing an RFID tag on your postage item, you could then enter the address via an online portal with the RFID number."

You have a far greater faith than I in both the infallibility of the reading technology and the ability of a "postage item" to withstand transit damage. Licking a stamp and writing on the envelope may be primitive, but it has an intrinsic reliability factor far higher than any RFID alternative.

"Imagine taking a pair of jeans into the clothing store’s change rooms to try them on when over the speaker you hear 'Why not try the Acme brand of jeans'"

That would be appalling sales technique. Why stock non-Acme jeans in the first place?

"It will not be too long before Governments start to install RFID readers along roads to measure your speed."

Along with compulsory RFID tags in cars, perhaps? It would take a techie mate of mine fifteen minutes to come up with a spoiler for that idea.

RFID is not the next Big Brother, just a very useful technology, when applied to some specific areas.

They use a simpler technique to measure your speed anywhere.
Cameras just read the number plate.
They have been using it check truck speeds and rest times on Hume
Highway for some time over some hundreds of KM.
However anything along those lines in the future will probably use
something like the Singapore system with a transponder under your car.
It makes two way communication easy. Slow down !

The new Medicare card will have a chip for medical information.
It could even manage your ration of petrol when that happy day comes.
Swipe your medicare card at the servo counter and it deducts your
purchase of litres from your yearly ration.
Oh well, Big Brother is not just on Ch 10.