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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday November 27 2016, @10:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the when-RFID-just-ain't-enough dept.

Walmart has teamed up with IBM, who offers blockchain as a service, in order to create a distributed ledger to track food throughout their supply chain. Walmart hopes that with this ledger they can quickly track any issues such as contamination or spoilage and isolate the impacted product.

"It gives them an ability to have an accounting from origin to completion," Marshal Cohen, an analyst at researcher NPD Group Inc., told Bloomberg. "If there's an issue with an outbreak of E. coli, this gives them an ability to immediately find where it came from. That's the difference between days and minutes."

For a retailer such as Walmart, which serves 260 million customers a week, an efficient tracking system also means the difference between pulling a few affected shipments and needlessly tossing products from hundreds of stores as a precaution.


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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Monday November 28 2016, @06:18AM

    by anubi (2828) on Monday November 28 2016, @06:18AM (#433927) Journal

    My latest experience: Tonight....

    I go to K-Mart. Buy ONE item, a bottle of sodapop flavor syrup. $2. Cash.

    At register, first question from cashier... "Can I have your phone number?"

    Me: "I am not in your system."

    Cashier: "Ok. Do you want to donate to (some charity they are collecting for)?"

    Me: "Not tonight. Just want this." ( handing her the bottle and a five dollar bill )

    Cashier: "Please reject the offer on the screen"

    Me: "What screen? "

    Cashier: "The one right in front of you." (pointing at it)

    Me: "Ok.. that one.. I thought that one was for credit cards. I am not using one"

    Cashier: "You still have to reject the offer. I cannot proceed until you enter your rejection."

    Me: "I do not have my glasses on. I can not read a word on that thing."

    Cashier reaches around, punches the appropriate button, and settles the transaction in the normal matter.

    As far as I was concerned, this was yet another attempt to acquire a tiny amount of information... if they had my phone number, they could trace to me - and I could find myself now on yet another mailing list of beg letters from charities. I am leery of most charities, knowing many of them mostly collect for princely executive salaries. Had this been a credit card, I may well discover I just signed up for some sort of payment scheme.

    Its gotten to where I just do not trust businesses. Stuff like calling something guacamole, but has 1% avocado, a "portion" of the proceeds go to charity, buy this, and we will send you a second one FREE! Just pay separate fee. I do not have time to parse out every business deal for every conceivable way my actions will lead to unexpected results.

    I can only imagine inadvertently signing up for recurring payments to any number of charities or agreeing to any number of things while just trying to authorize payment for an item on a credit card.

    Two days ago, I was in Fry's asking if any laser printers still came with parallel ports. Of course, the salesman looked at me like a hopelessly obsolete old man. I told him I did my taxes and critical stuff on an old DOS machine because I simply did not trust the new ones. He alluded that if I wasn't doing anything wrong, then I should not have anything to hide. I wonder if I started going into unauthorized areas and playing with their cash registers... if that would have changed their mind about privacy.

    It seems a lot of business people seem to think a business license and a cash register/credit card approval process gives them the right to snoop, yet expect their customers to still honor the privacy of their cash register.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]