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Longer Bar Codes Coming in 2005
D_Fresh writes "The same thing that's happening to phone numbers is also happening in retail. The NYT (blahfreeregnotreallyblah) has a story about longer bar codes which will be required for U.S. retailers by 2005. Apparently they're running out of 12-digit codes and need to add a digit, but the code rework for this is non-trivial. Some shortsighted chains *cough*Kmart*cough* may be caught with their pants down in late 2004, since some scanners will simply crash if they scan a 13-digit code they can't handle. Enjoy your :CueCats while they last..."
Adding a digit would add quite a few barcodes, but why not add a couple of digits just in case. Since they already have to rework some hardware and software, would it really be that difficult to take it up to 14 or 15 digits?
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
The move from IPv4 to IPv6 is an instructive example.
Obviously the first thought is why not more digits. Turns out that most of the world already (or always has?) used 13 digits. The result is that companies get pissed when they have to apply for another UPC and all that comes with it just to sell their product from one side of the pond to the other.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Why pick an upper limit? As long as there is some way for the scanner to detect "end of string" (EOS) or whatevertheycallit.
These people need the Software Engineering Clue Stick (unless by off chance there is a real justification that has yet to be presented, but I doubt it unless it has to due with backward compability to an earlier clue-stick-needer-design. Maybe some hardware limit back then that prevented and EOS marker?)
Give them the Y2K award.
Table-ized A.I.
From urbanlegends.com
attributed to NY Times Syndicate
QUESTION: I read in a newspaper that in 1981 you said, ``640K of memory should be enough for anybody.'' What did you mean when you said this?
ANSWER: I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
The need for memory increases as computers get more potent and software gets more powerful. In fact, every couple of years the amount of memory address space needed to run whatever software is mainstream at the time just about doubles. This is well-known.
When IBM introduced its PC in 1981, many people attacked Microsoft for its role. These critics said that 8-bit computers, which had 64K of address space, would last forever. They said we were wastefully throwing out great 8-bit programming by moving the world toward 16-bit computers.
We at Microsoft disagreed. We knew that even 16-bit computers, which had 640K of available address space, would be adequate for only four or five years. (The IBM PC had 1 megabyte of logical address space. But 384K of this was assigned to special purposes, leaving 640K of memory available. That's where the now-infamous ``640K barrier'' came from.)
A few years later, Microsoft was a big fan of Intel's 386 microprocessor chip, which gave computers a 32-bit address space.
Modern operating systems can now take advantage of that seemingly vast potential memory. But even 32 bits of address space won't prove adequate as time goes on.
Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
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People say a lot of things about Bill Gates around here, but I can't remember anyone accusing him of being stupid. Many things I have read about people meeting him mention that you get a feeling that he's the smartest person you have ever met (people said the same thing about Clinton). As he says in the quote, anyone who works with a computer would never ever say that X ammount of memory will be good enough forever. It just doesn't make sense. A much better quote that I believe is real is IBM president Thomas J. Watson's "I think there's a world market for about five computers."
BTW: I can't PROVE that Gates never said the 640k quote. Why don't you show me the original citation that Bill says doesn't exist.
I know this is a huge reply to a stupid post, but it bugs me every time someone quotes the 640k comment as gospel.
-B
Exactly. If these two fields weren't each allocated a static number of bits, the assignments could be much more efficient. Manufacturers that only make a couple of products would get a large mfg number and a few bits for product codes. Manufacturers that make many products would get a small mfg number and a larger number of bits for product codes. Similar to IP network classes.
I work for a coupon company and we are on the Universal Code Council (UCC). One of the members of the UCC sits in the cube next to me. I can confirm; the first 5 digits are per manufacturer and are called a Product Family Code. What's worse, for easier accounting and administration, some manufacturers have more than one Product Family Code; for instance, I believe Nabisco has quite a few.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
I don't know why I should believe this statement. Not that I have any apriori reason to disblieve the big G, but his rebuttal is itself internally inconsistent:
First he says:
No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
and then, almost immediately after that he says:
These critics said that 8-bit computers, which had 64K of address space, would last forever.
So, what are these critics if not involved in computers? Goat-herders? Washer-women by the riverside? Spirits of the material world?