For those of you have been around CAD and manufacturing systems for a while ...
We may have a new use for all those old flat bed plotters. Many of these old plotters (Wild 10 comes to mind) the pen can be replaced with a cutter head. It would only be another small step to have a map carved right into that steak.... Will the real mad cow please stand up #%!* -----Original Message----- From: Bill Thoen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 06:53 PM To: MapInfo-L Subject: MI-L GPS'ing Mad Cows News here on the TeeVee tonight was talking about a Ft Collins, Colorado company offering a new product that scans retinas of cattle, recording both the scan and the GPS location of the cow. The retina scan acts as a unique Id (even for clones), so the information can be uploaded into a master database, and voi-la! You can now get instant access to find out where the cow was born, what it was fed, and where it moved around the world before it was, um... "processed" into meat products and other assorted gobbets. Precision agriculture? GPS? Ft Collins, CO? My first thought was that it had to be the next cool idea from our own Red Hen Systems, but no... Ft Collins is full of high-tech ag businesses. This new upstart is called Optibrand (http://www.optibrand.com), and the retinal scan idea was the company's alternative to the traditional (cow painful) technique of red hot iron branding. Add to this idea a wireless connection to a central database (with scan image as a unique beastie id and a GPS location) and the day's not far away when you can swipe your PDA over your next order of Col. McBucket's chicken fried blasphemy to decide if you're going to eat it or not. Well, probably it won'y be quite like that, but it does beg the question, "What can you do with GIS if you could track and map the movements of mad cows, pigs and chickens?" Of course, to those who know, the words 'mad' and 'chicken' are sort of redundant. Especially roosters. - Bill Thoen --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 9724 --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 9727
