08-03-2021, 03:07 AM
(08-03-2021, 02:04 AM)Einzige Wrote: https://gizmodo.com/home-depot-wants-to-...1847407180
Quote:In n a bid to crack down on organized retail crime, Home Depot is piloting a program where power tools must be activated via Bluetooth at checkout—or they won’t work. It’s a clever solution to deter theft, but it also highlights how technology can sometimes change gadget ownership in unintended ways.
Apparently, power tools are an attractive and lucrative target for retail shoplifters. Earlier this year, a Florida man stole more than $17,000 worth of power tools from various Home Depot stores in the state. A MarketWatch report notes that the Bluetooth tech is on the device itself, not the packaging, so even if a thief was successful in filching the tool, it wouldn’t turn on. Home Depot is also working with other partners on the program and may extend it to other items like smart home gadgets. Business Insider reports that Home Depot has already tested this tech in a few stores, and will now be rolling it out more widely with the aim of eventually introducing it to every Home Depot in the U.S.
The thinking behind adding the extra step of Bluetooth activation is it turns items with a high resale value from an “easy score” to something more troublesome. The other added benefit is Home Depot can avoid having to keep these items in locked display cases.
Many items are now designed so that they must be activated (or de-activated) at a register. Clothing stores have long had devices that ensure that a thief or a buyer of stolen merchandise cannot use the item if one takes it. High-value electronic goods are often held in Lucite containers that display the goods to a potential customer but that can be unlocked for the release of the merchandise in a usable form at the register. Cell phones and refill cards are so designed that the phone or card are unusable unless cleared at the register.
Power tools are valuable, and as such merchandise as electronic gadgets become dirt-cheap, power tools remain valuable. Maybe they can cut through the Lucite cages for a Blu-Ray collection of the entire Game of Thrones or Downton Abbey series. Maybe this could be applied to exercise machines, bicycles, furniture, stereo equipment, or televisions. OK, so you manage to purloin a flat-screen Zenith* TV from a loading dock, and you take it home. So you connect it to pirated cable TV (what else would one expect a thief to use as a source?). So you turn the TV onto a premium channel -- let us say "XXX Unlimited", which is porn (again, what would you expect? C-SPAN?), and you get a message from the manufacturer:
"Zenith Corporation will not authorize the use of this television because it was not properly purchased from an authorized reseller. If you believe that you are receiving this in error, then contact the retailer or on-line merchant who sold it to us or call 1-800-BEC-LEAN. If this item has not been properly purchased through authorized channels, then call 1-800-TUF-LUCK".
Of course, Big Business is finding ways to get people to pay more, as by compelling one to rent a service than to buy software as a one-time purchase or to commit one to proprietary aftermarket products such as printer inks.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.