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Tinfoil hats to retail with RFID tags?

All the latest from El Reg's post bag

Letters: Paranoia and malicious code filled our inboxes to bursting this week. It seems like every day there are more mini-outbreaks, or major ones to report, and the debate over how to handle to situation has gone on for so long that our weary security vulture, John Leyden, has started dreaming about MyDoom. Perhaps he needs a protective hat?

Re: Advice from AV vendors follows a familiar pattern: block executables files at the gateway, don't open unsolicited email attachments, update AV signature files and wear a regulation tin-foil hat.

Surely the Reg Store is selling such?

We were thinking about it, but products are not quite ready. Until then:

Hello John,

I saw your article on viruses and got a couple of things for you:

Foil deflector hats can be made using plans available on Zapatopi.net

Marvellous. The ideal gift, in fact, for our next correspondent, who writes in about RSA shows RFID tag blocker:

Presumably, to prevent garment RFID tag reads after purchase, RSA will provide full-body brown paper bags with fashion clothing.

Doesn't sound too shabby an idea.

Jon

Maybe we are not the ones who should worry:

Just wait till someone gets hold of one of RSA's little blocking devices and plugs it into a more powerful transmitter.

You then have a rather nice denial of service tool. Imaging dropping them amongst the jumpers at Marks and Spencers.

Nick

Check this out for a good link: viruses are similar to bugs, and ants are a kind of bug, and this story is about how Ants could help to decongest networks. Seamless.

Hi.

In your article "Barging ants solve network congestion":

They discovered a pragmatic approach: faced with a blockage, an ant will simply barge the other out of the way, forcing it to take an alternative route. These were *French* ants, I assume? Hell, they should have just studied French pedestrians. Or motorists. Or Metro users. Or farmers. Or nuclear scientists...

Regards,
Jim Keir

The parallels between humans' and our six-legged friends' behaviour are not confined to the French:

As an incredible as this may sound, it is pretty obvious to those of us living in Saigon. Vietnamese traffic follows this exact same policy.

In general there are no real traffic rules here. The result is that everybody goes everywhere at the same in all directions in all lanes and at all different speeds (Grandma walking with a cane cross traffic with semi-truck bearing down in fast lane).

And it works. Everyone just pushes for themselves and some how everyone gets through. Both shocking and amazing, and just as true in humans as in ants.

-Damon

To sum up then: We are Borg. Resistance is futile. ®

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