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..."

Comments

13? Why not more?

[TheFlyingGoat]

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?

Twelve Digits

[LeftHanded]

Twelve digits ought to be enough for everyone...

Re:Twelve Digits

[Ralph Wiggam]

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.

-----end paste------

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

If only...

[rbgaynor]

...AOL had not insisted on a new barcode for every update of their free CDROM we'd have plenty of numbers left...

Why add only a single digit?

[cporter]

Instead of just duct-taping a single more digit onto the system, how about a real overhaul that'll fix the capacity issue forever? If they insist on using base-10, go to 16 or 20 or more digits from 12, not 13. The extra computing power required is trivial and you can get a capacity large enough to barcode every atom in the universe. If they're going to have to do the systems overhaul anyway, make it worthwhile.

The move from IPv4 to IPv6 is an instructive example.

Depends on the store and the equipment...

[Cutriss]

Some shortsighted chains *cough*Kmart*cough* may be caught with their pants down in late 2004

I used to work in Kmart. Our IBM Type III registers say the following when you scan an invalid barcode - "ERR: Must be between 8-13 digits". With a message like that, once can presume that the registers *are* capable of scanning the 13 digit UPCs...and that it's a back-end (IE - Receiving, distribution, inventory) change that's needed.

Considering that I've not seen a Kmart that *wasn't* using these old Type III's, I hardly say that Kmart is getting caught "with their pants down". They're further along the transition than some other companies that have *no* 13-digit capable equipment.

Re:ISBN's

[gorilla]

Almost all wrong. Most of the ISBNs you've seen start with 0 or 1 because the first digit(s) identifies the language or country that the publisher of the book is in. 0 and 1 are English, 2 is French, 3 is German, 4 is Japan, 5 is USSR, 7 is China, and 8 and 9 are used for the rest of the world. If it's a really small country, then the first 5 digits could be country code, eg 99912 for Botswana. The second portion is the publisher, the third the book, and the last the checksum. With the expection of the checksum, these are all variable length, so for example 0-340-62839-1 indicates an english language book from a large publisher, while 1-56592-528-9 indicates another english language book from a smaller publisher. The checksum is 11-(sum(digit*(10-position))%11), so the the second ISBN is 1*10+5*9+6*8+5*7+9*6+2*5+5*4+2*3+8*2=244, 244%11 = 2, 11-2 = 9.