> When will these futurists understand that I don't WANT my refrigerator to
> talk to the grocery store - EVER!
*You* don't want your refrigerator to talk to the grocery store.

Ah, but the grocery store *really* wants to talk to your refrigerator, and they'll pay quite a bit of money to make that happen. After all, they've paid quite a bit of money before, and look how well that turned out.

A little bit of perspective: Few industries had as successful of an IT quid pro quo--for a *gigantic* initial capital investment in laser scanning hardware, earth-shatteringly large savings were realized. http://www.lascofittings.com/BarCode-EDI/bc-history.htm has more information, though I can't find the *fascinating* article I originally read.

Food sales is not a high margin business; any extra profit per item gets magnified by the vast volume they push. Their historical culture is more aware than perhaps any of the value of technology. It's not surprising that they'd back food technology in the face of deep consumer distrust and doubt; barcodes were a painful deployment too.

The difference, I think, is in ownership. Supermarkets *owned* the checkout lines, but they don't own your refrigerator. When you go into a market, you play by their rules--when the food comes into your house, it plays by YOUR rules, even if you don't want to throw the milk out the *day* the date hits.

Given inflation, the only way for a supermarket to remain profitable is to raise the price, reduce the cost per ounce, or reduce the usefulness per sale(in other words, put less cereal in the same sized container, forcing people to come back more often for a reload). Cost/Ounce is probably about as low as it can go--farmers all over are going out of business, leaving only large conglomerates with negotiating power remaining. Usefulness/sale is lowered by a refrigerator reminding you that the due date on the milk has expired--as you've prolly noticed, milk tends to last a while past the due date--imagine if the milk self destructed("for your safety"), why you'd have to go back and buy more sooner. And if your private eating habits are sold to the highest bidder...you're paying more to eat the same food.

The parallels to the music industry are fascinating, even if you can't Napster your cereal. How much public demand is there for intelligent refrigerators? More than there is for music that destroys itself on a whim.

Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky, CISSP
    www.doxpara.com