New York's Freedom Tower to depend on RFID

The concrete base of the 541 metre Freedom Tower, being built on the site of New York's former World Trade Centre, will be embedded with RFID tags to make sure it's setting properly and can sustain the pressure of 14,000 psi the tower will exert. Monitoring the temperature of setting concrete is nothing new, but doing so …

[Anonymous Coward]

Not meaning to cause offense

But isn't it a little ironic to call it Freedom tower, when its suppose to commemorate an incident that has spawned so many reductions in freedom.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious

will the "Freedom" tower be black and have a giant eye that shall read both your mind and soul installed?

[Lee]

Battery powered?

so... will they be broadcasting constantly, or only when they receive a *ping*. I wonder what the so-called _RF_Sensitive's_ will think of that? That' gotta be a lot of transmitters.

I put on my tinfoil coat and hat.

[stuntman]

Surprised RFID was for the concrete..

I was expecting to learn that "freedom" tower would require RFID in your arm (or head/whatever) to enter it.

As is often said, the Americans dont get Irony. Land of the free....

[Tom Willis]

@Not meaning to cause offense

Called the Freedom Tower becuse of its height: 1767ft celebrating the liberation of the oppressed peoples of America from the damn Brits. Presumably it will open on 4th July too, just to rub it in.

And of course, RFID is a total respecter of personal freedoms so it fits. Good use for the technology though, IMHO. Always thought that mesh networks of tiny sensors would be a technological wet dream and a civil liberties nightmare.

(We all love Paris in the Springtime...)

[Alan Carter]

Would you like Freedom Fries with that?

Will Freedom Tower have a restaurant? If so, will Liberty Cabbage be served?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_cabbage

[Ash]

Surely with enough power output...

... you could induce current in a distant circuit?

Maybe they should team up with the "Tan in 60 Seconds" weapon brigade.

[Alex]

Pity...

Seems a waste to me, can't be cheap since they are using (as far as I can tell):

http://www.identecsolutions.com/fileadmin/user_upload/PDFs/product_sheets/i-Q32T_V1.1_Eng.pdf

I wish they would push along WSN technology a bit, would serve this application much better. Good luck with that 100m read range in concrete!

Alex.

[alistair millington]

@Tom Willis

I heard about the height and date link but thought not even the americans are that stupid, to rub it in to the only (stupid enough) ally in the world they have left.

I would have called it "target" tower, every nut job and zealor the world over will be after it.

I bet some bookie somewhere is doing the odds.

[Andy Barber]

@ Tom Willis

\pedant

Spring starts on 21st March

\off pedant

[Ken Hagan]

@Tom Willis

"Called the Freedom Tower becuse of its height: 1767ft"

I bet you noticed the typo just after you hit the "Post" button. :)

Rather more to the point, if you think they chose the name after discovering that it was 1776ft high, then I have a bridge to sell.

"...celebrating the liberation of the oppressed peoples of America from the damn Brits"

I think you'll find that it is Osama's fundamentalist thought police who are the true targets of the freedom reference.

(As an aside, I don't know of anyone in Britain who finds 1776 offensive. We lost, but we won in 1812 and rather more to the point have kissed and made up since then. In fact, the really surprising thing about the Empire is how we have managed to end up on friendly terms with so much of it.)

[Mister Cheese]

Structural weaknesses?

How will the inclusion of all these RFID tags affect the strength of the concrete?

[Rui]

@Alistair Millington

I bet the "freedom" tower will be wanted as much by the "so-called-terrorists" as the twin towers were...

[b166er]

Spring

\uberpedant

Andy, can you tell me at exactly what time Spring commences on the 21st March?

Is this if you are standing in Greenwich and would it vary if you were anywhere else in the world? ;~p

\off uberpedant

[Anonymous Coward]

@Tom Willis

"celebrating the liberation of the oppressed peoples of America from the damn Brits"

Which particular oppressed peoples of America might you be referring to?

You surely can't mean the various native peoples of America whose freedom - an in fact entire civilisations - the colonials took away, bit by bit, forever.

You also surely can't mean the natives of Africa who subsequent colonials took freedom away from by dragging them chained into slavery in the "land of the free", and whose decendents arguably haven't yet entirely got back.

Also you can't mean the countless other more modern colonials who the system of democracy seems to be designed to shit on.

[Andy Barber]

@ By b166er

I don't do Astrology any more so I no longer use an Ephemeris, so I can't tell you the exact moment. Google it.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Would you like Freedom Fries with that?

Funny that the Americans never had Freedomburgers, what with the Hamburger being named after Hamburg, Germany. The Germans also staying out of the Iraq war...

[Anonymous Coward]

@@Would you like Freedom Fries with that?

I thought the hamburger got renamed the beefburger and the frankfurter renamed the hot dog. They were subtler changes in names because people weren't doing it to be pretentious grandstanders.

[heystoopid]

Welkome

Welkome to the New Union of the Soviet States of Amerika !

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom tower?

Screw that. I'm going to build the Elite Tower, which will be 31337 feet tall.

[Dennis Price]

@Tom Willis Re: Anonymous Poon

The Euros were responsible for importing slaves into the new world.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/slavery/index.cfm

"Beginning at least as early as 1502, European slave traders shipped approximately 11 to 16 million slaves to the Americas, including 500,000 to what is now the United States. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, slaves could be found in every area colonized by Europeans.

Initially, English colonists relied on indentured white servants, but by the late seventeenth century, faced with a shortage of servants, they increasingly resorted to enslaved Africans. Three distinctive systems of slavery emerged in the American colonies. In Maryland and Virginia, slavery was widely used in raising tobacco and corn and worked under the "gang" system. In the South Carolina and Georgia low country, slaves raised rice and indigo, worked under the "task" system, and were able to reconstitute African social patterns and maintain a separate Gullah dialect. In the North, slavery was concentrated on Long Island and in southern Rhode Island and New Jersey, where most slaves were engaged in farming and stock raising for the West Indies or were household servants for the urban elite.

The American Revolution had contradictory consequences for slavery. Thousands of slaves freed themselves by running away. In the South, slavery became more firmly entrenched, and expanded rapidly into the Old Southwest after the development of the cotton gin. In the North, in contrast, every state freed slaves by statute, court decision, or enactment of gradual emancipation schemes.

During the decades before the Civil War, slave grown cotton accounted for over half the value of all United States exports, and provided virtually all the cotton used in the northern textile industry and 70 percent of the cotton used in British mills. The slave South failed to establish commercial, financial, or manufacturing companies on the same scale as the North."

Get your facts straight, Anon Poon!

(hell, you Brits were drug runners too - re: The Chinese Opium War - thus your hands are dirty (worse than America's, especially before the sun had set on the Brittish Empire.)

[Ropata]

@seasonal pedants

some of us live in the Southern hemisphere, you insensitive clods!

[James Pickett]

Typo

"to make sure it's setting properly"

I think you mean settling properly. If they can't tell whether the concrete's set, then I don't hold out much hope for it reaching anything like 1776 ft...

As for the terrorists, I have only one thing to say - Building 7. (It fell down without any help from an airliner.)

[Derek]

@Andy Barber

Astrology? Spring? I think you have that confused with astronomy?

For the record, spring,2008 will happen on March 20th, at 01:49am

[Steve Roper]

And the obligatory Orwell reference

Like others here who noticed the Orwellian lie inherent in the name of this monument: I see I'm not the only one who heard the name "Victory Mansions" echoing hollowly behind the sound of "Freedom Tower"! And no doubt, like Victory Mansions, it will have telescreens (or at least cameras and mikes) in every room and patriotic posters in every hallway...

[Pierre]

@ dennis price (and others)

Actually the african slaves were used as an alternative to south-american ones, who didn't adapt well to the healthy climate of cotton fields. Get your facts right, as you would say!

@ Mister Cheese: why do you think that battery life is limited to 6 years? That's the time all these nasty little waves will need to turn the surrounding concrete into dust. That's also the time needed to suck up all the oil in Iraq. Then another "Freedom" invasion will be needed... I bet a picture is beginning to form. All that is carefully planned, what were you thinking?

[Herbys]

Why the tower

The tower is a horrible project, and calling it the Freedom tower is ironic, since that thing is a demonstration of the fact that americans have renounced to the freedom of having the towers they want where they want them.

Just rebuild the Twin Towers.

http://www.twintowersalliance.com/

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans wouldn't know true freedom if...

...it got out of it's SUV, waddled over and poked them in the eye.

[Donald Best]

Freedom?

First of all this [quote] Americans wouldn't know true freedom if... [/quote] is coming from a country that in one city (London) has one camera for every 4 ppl in it; and you "claim" you are free!! ROFL...

Second, yes I agree that Americans have given up many freedoms in the past years all in the name of "national security". Being ex-military, I am all to aware of the "freedoms" that have been sacrificed in the name of security.

Third, Yes I think it is a shame that the American public will allow the tower to be called Freedom tower, as a) it has NOTHING to do with what it is replacing b) has nothing to do with WHY its replacing another building and c) is probably the best name they could have come up with to be ridiculed by the rest of the world. Personally, I would have prefered it to be named something more appapro for the fallen civil servants, tower workers that lost their lives, or just let some big business pay for the right to have it named after them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fast forward a bit

The Freedom Tower was closed today after the discovery that several thousand corroding batteries embedded in the concrete are causing a chemical reaction that has begun to weaken the concrete.

[James Pickett]

Fair point

"coming from a country that in one city (London) has one camera for every 4 ppl"

And coming soon, ID cards!

Personally, I'm having nothing to do with biometrics until they introduce bioimperial...

[Anonymous Coward]

@Donald Best

You do realise that Britain consists of more than just London, right? Londonistan is... well... a blot on the landscape. The M25 is just there to keep Londoners in London. And we have to carry passports to go into London for starters. Or so I've been told :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

And I thought....

The M25 was there so Londoners had somewhere to park......

[Steve]

Re: @Donald Best

"You do realise that Britain consists of more than just London, right?"

In fairness, there's no way he could tell that from our media - I'm doubtful myself sometimes.

[Peter Scott]

Spring

In Ireland, we started Spring on 1st Feb!

[Risky]

@James Pickett

If you'd take off the tinfoil hat there, perhaps you'd like help out with the TWENTYFIVE MILLION US DOLLAR I need to shift. I need to finally find someone who will belive that I am the executor of the estate of the late Nigerian Oil Minister and I reckon you sound like the one.

[Anonymous Coward]

dont they use reinforced concrete?

With steel bars kinda like a Faraday cage?,

perhaps the cables were a better plan. Paris what would she do?