Slashdot Mirror
UK Issues High-tech Stamps
bgood writes: "According to this story on Excite@Home, the UK's Royal Mail has released a series of "interactive" stamps. Included in the series: A scratch-and-sniff stamp, a stamp with a hologram, and another that shows an electrically-charged particle when warmed by finger heat. The stamps commemorate 100 years of the Nobel Prize and Britain's achievements. The Royal Mail describes the stamps here."
Theres been a bit of a hoo-ha about the fact that the accompanying booklet has stuff about telepathy in it.
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http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,
I can guarantee that among the stamps for british achievements, there will not be one for Orthodontics. :)
Mike
Of course, theres no better way to honor 100 years of the Nobel prize and all that genius scientific research then with a scratch and sniff stamp. What's next, fruit scented markers commemorating Picasso?
daed si luap
woof.
Hey - don't forget you get to lick it too.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Hey - don't forget you get to lick it too.
Sorry to spoil a moderately good gag (in both senses of the world) but standard UK stamps are now self-adhesive, i.e. you don't need to lick them, just peel off the backing.
That might not be the case for special edition stamps though, so don't give up hope of getting to scratch, sniff and lick QE2's behind...
Note for non-UK slashdoters. All stamps in the UK must have a pic/silouete of the queens head on to be legal!
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Don't forget the Alan Turing persecution and eventual suicide commemorative stamp, and the cameras on every streetcorner big brother stamp.
I'm wondering when the post offices are going to put spam on their stamps to gain some extra money. ;)
That way you can get a letter from the tax department with the stamp saying "Wanna make $100 fast?" or "Become rich in no time".
42 + 1 = 42
<rant>That's Queen Elizabeth the First of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, aka Queen Elizabeth the Second of England and Wales. If you're going to crown James VI of Scotland as James I of the United Kingdom of England, Wales and Scotland, we'll damn well apply that to her Royal Highnessnessess as well.</rant>
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Doesn't say anything about it being current, or late breaking, or even new news..
Free Mac Mini
At the risk of sounding like a grim, joyless pragmatist, wouldn't the resources of the Royal Mail be better spent improving service and not producing gimmicky stamps? These things have GOT to be significantly more expensive to produce than regular stamps, even in large #s. The collectors must be all drooling over them, but when I use a stamp, I rarely care what it looks like (Christmas stamps are the exception). I have to admit though, the sticker-stamp sure beats the lick & stick any day. My tongue always felt dirty after licking those things...
Freedom: "I won't!"
Look at who we learned to cook from! The French and the Germans! What've you guys ever contributed to world cuisine? Hamburgers that will make your brain explode, blood pudding and haggis! It's a wonder your entire nation didn't die of malnutrition centuries ago! Look... We've got a store here that has 31 flavors of ice cream! 31! Try to imagine that for a moment. You could literally have a different flavor every day for a month! I mean, you guys are always telling us to broaden our horizons, but I bet you had a hard time imagining 31 flavors of ice cream. Didn't you? But listen... in the spirit of international exchange, if you're ever in the neighborhood give me a yell and I'll take you to the store with the 31 flavors of ice cream and get you a triple dip of 3 flavors other than chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
From what I know (please go and cress me 8) :
First stamp ever used was Chinese, a 3 part stamp : one for the sender, one for the office and one for the taker (no Goatse joke !)
Payment was due by the recipient.
Funny thing : People had to write the adress and a commentary on the stamp, to identify themselves...
After some times, people started to "code" the important news on the stamps, allowing the recipient to read the message and refuse the letter, not paying the fee and still having the news 8)..
=> the system got abandonned and they had to wait till 1853 to have another post office 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
No, it's not a waste of money, just like having nice colourful Christmas stamps is not a waste of money, and paying good contemporary artists to design new stamps is not a waste of money. It's something that makes the world nicer and more interesting. I don't want all my stamps to be identical monochrome squares.
Now, what IS is a massive waste of money is rebranding the post office's holding company as 'Consignia' instead of 'post office counters ltd'. That was fucking stupid.
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From my limited knowledge of Royal Mail, these stamps, while valid for postage, wont be widely distributed.
Most people buy their stamps here in little books of between 4 and 10 stamps - these are almost always your standard orange/blue first/second class stamps.
I'll pop 'round to my local Post Office in a few minutes and specifically request some of these special issue stamps, and, with a fair degree of luck, they may have some in stock.
All countries produce special stamps that primarily intended for collection. Indeed, I believe some small pacific island states use stamps as a major source of revenue.
More interesting than Royal Mail producing some funky stamps is the claims that they're about to lay off up to 15,000 workers.
...j
My coworker has a framed wallmount of very expensive and specialized stamps commemorating NASA - some are round, some have holograms, embedded photographs, etc. Some of them are over $30 dollars. This a big money maker for the USPS because those are stamps that no one will ever use.
I wonder if they'll do a crack cocaine scratch'n'sniff stamp?
On the other hand, I'd pay good money (well, CDN$ anyway) for a set of scratch'n'sniff Coffees of the World stamps. Mmmm, Blue Mountain...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Hmmm... . The September 11th tragedies have made me think about all the sick/crazy possibilities that these assholes could use to attack the American public. Are all stamps stickers these days, or are there any "lickers" around anymore? Me thinks it could be one medium for biological warfare in the future. Of course its far-fetched, but someone's got to think about these things, right? What's to stop a group from getting jobs at CVS's across the country and infecting the stamps that pass through the stores with deadly contagions?
Time to put my gas mask back on and head down into the shelter.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
I think you'll find that Scotland simply bypassed QEI. More interestingly, I remember reading that the current heir apparent would be Charles III of the UK, even thought there previously was a Charles III of Scotland.
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E_NOSIG
Brittish achievement,
The height of technology:
Scratch-n-Sniff stickers
are not new. The US has had a holographic franked envelope as well as holographic stamps on a recent space set, AIR.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
FWIW: I've been to London and had some pretty good food there, although the town does not in general agree with me. All in all I prefer mucking around in countries like Austria, which has damn good beer or Romania, where a couple of dollars will buy you a bottle of wine that, if you could find such good wine in the US, would cost $200. Food's pretty good in Austria and Romania too. Many of the low-end American resturants (at least in Colorado) now have this whole hippy thing going on where they don't put salt in anything, so you end up with this incredibly bland crap. I can cook better than many of the chains here, with the the notable exceptions of Wolfgang Puck's and The Cheesecake Factory. If you have one in your area (I think they're both US-Only, Sorry) you should check them out. They'll make you even more insanely fat!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think I'll find that Scotland did not bypass Queen Elizabeth the First, but that the current monarch is properly recognised as Queen Elizabeth the First by the Lord Lyon in Scotland. It's a quirk of the Act of Union, whereby England and Scotland agreed to disagree on the numbering of monarchs. That's why it's no more or less correct to refer to the current monarch as Queen Elizabeth the First or Queen Elizabeth the Second, it's a matter of choice whether you view it from a Scottish or English/Welsh perspective.
Pedantic quirk, but then this is /. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's bad enough that I have to pay to send them back...as if Verizon couldn't afford return postage for their customers.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett