Barcodes: The Number of the Beast

writes "The concept of UPC barcodes on packages at the grocery store is a little pedestrian these days. Much creativity has gone into the use of barcodes for many more applications than originally conceived (don't worry -- no Cuecat diatribe here!). For example, Scott Blake uses barcodes to create large, mosaic works of art. Andy Deck has reinvented classic literature with Bardcode which will stream the entire works of Shakespeare to you as barcodes. If you do nothing else, check out Art Lebedev, a group of Russian artists that manipulates photos to reveal hidden bar codes (The nod to Abbey Road in New Beatles By Robert Dyomkin is especially appealing to an ex-scouser like me). "

Boomzilla continues: Barcodes were first developed in the railroad business to keep track of which cars went with which engine. The barcodes were imprinted on the side of the railway cars. The barcodes on each car could then be read together to compile information on that particular grouping; what station they came from, where they were headed, etc. thus automating the process of marshalling. When the business world realized how well this system worked, these railway barcodes evolved into the UPC system with which we are all familiar. To really be able to take in the wonder that are bar codes, check out the excellent FAQ created by Russ Adams and an article from the BBC.

Coming full circle, the clever folks at Bekonscot Model Railway in the UK have utilized barcodes at every turn of their expansive system. For example, an MP3 player is driven off barcodes attached to trains. The trains are announced before they arrive and when they are leaving, stating their destination, route and at what stations they will call.

Want a barcode of your name?

Comments

Barcodes for DVDs Games CDs Video Games

[muscleman706]

Mediachest.com lets you scan in the UPC's and ISBN's on the back of DVDs, Games, CDs, and video games and keep track of your collection. You can even use an CueCat to do this.

http://www.mediachest.com/

Barcodes go open source!

[Anonymous Coward]

!

RFID

[Ayanami Rei]

Even cooler than barcodes is RFID. You don't even have to aim to get it to scan correctly. The only problem is the printers that you let you arbitrarily mark the tags are expensive; about $1000, whereas barcodes can be printed on anything with black ink.

BUT!!... optical scanners are expenive ($250 and up). Yet you can get a RFID USB reader for about $60. It comes with a few premade tags. You can buy pre-signed RFID tags for less than $1.00 each, and a sheet of them can usually be run through a printer; then you could have barcodes AND RFID.

We're considering using such a system to do inventory control. Fun!

Re:useful at last

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

At the grocery store where I shop, they put removable UPC codes on the large items like 25# bags of dog food so that you can peel it off to hand the cashier, rather than loading it on the conveyor and watching them try to flop it around to get the UPC side facing the laser and then dragging it quickly enough over the sensor to register. You could theoretically peel the lablel off of the generic dog food and load your cart up with Alpo, but that would be illegal.

OT: "Abbey Road"

[MeerCat]

It is, of course, Abbey Road not Abby Road and they are alive and well and still playing games with the famous photo (and have a webcam pointed at the zebra crossing so you too can see loads of tourists getting nearly run over while trying to re-create that photo). Plenty of geek technology there too, for anyone who's into serious playing around with analog and digital sound recording and manipulation.

Disclaimer: I do have links with people there, and yes it is a nice place to hang out (it's still the best place to record the soundtrack for big movies such as Star Wars, LoTR, etc).

Re:Barcodes have 666 encoded on them?

[delta407]

Standard UPC bar codes consist of a set of lines to mark the start of the code, the left hand part of the code itself, another set of marker lines, the right hand part of the code itself, and a third set of marker lines:

True, but there's an important distinction. This only applies to UPC-A, not to other forms of barcodes such as Code 39, Code 128, interleaved 2 of 5, Codabar, etc. (I'm pretty sure it doesn't even apply to UPC-E, for that matter, but I'm not certain.)

To say that every barcode contains 666 is somewhat misleading.

Re:Barcodes have 666 encoded on them?

[rabidcow]

Each number in a UPC barcode is represented by 4 stripes. White/black is irrelevant to the number itself, the barcode has to alternate black and white, and the right half is inverted (or the left depending on your point of view)

Data is encoded not in the color, but in the width of each bar. There are three (I think, maybe four) bar widths, narrow, medium, and wide. Three narrow bars and a wide one represent a 6. If there is no wide bar, it is not a 6.

There are four narrow bars on either end, and five in the center for synchronizing the scanner to the code. You wouldn't interpret the start, stop, and parity bits on a serial port as data, would you?

Re:Barcodes have 666 encoded on them?

[Keith Russell]

Now, the encoding scheme is complicated, but... Hence every UPC bar code has "6...6...6" built into it.

Um, no.

Gray Code

[j0hnfr0g]

Now, the encoding scheme is complicated, but it just so happens that "0101" if treated as data on the left hand side would decode to the digit "6".

It appears that the encoding is Gray Code, where successive numbers only differ by one bit.
Hence:
0000 = 0
0001 = 1
0011 = 2
0010 = 3
0110 = 4
0111 = 5
0101 = 6

Re:Gray Code

[ScoLgo]

Umm... shouldn't that read...

0000 = 0
0001 = 1
0010 = 2
0011 = 3
0100 = 4
0101 = 5
0110 = 6
0111 = 7

Besides which, barcode != binary, (per se). Please see this page for a table that explains the layout of a UPC-A barcode.

Oh, Puh-leeze!!

[ScoLgo]

This is obviously FUD. From the FAQ link above...

Is there a hidden 666 in bar code?
NO! I get this question asked at least once a week. What people really mean is "does UPC found on grocery products have a hidden 666 (mentioned in Revelation 13:16 in the New Testament)?" People have thought that the three guard bars used to specify the start, middle and end of a UPC bar code looked like the bar code sequence for a "6" found in the UPC symbol table. You can find a copy of the symbol table on the UPC/EAN page. These guard bars are not "6" and carry no information. Even if you don't believe that guard bars carry no information and insist on applying the code table, you have to determine whether the digit is on the left side or the right side of the symbol. That's because the sequence of bars and spaces are different depending on whether the digit is on the left of the symbol or the right of the symbol. The LEFT guard bar would have to be smallest space, smallest bar, smallest space, WIDEST BAR in order to be a "6". The guard bar on the left is actually space of undetermined wide (left side digit must always start with a space element), smallest bar, smallest space, smallest bar. That sequence of bars and spaces is undefined and is not a "6" even using the table. The middle guard bar is not on the left or the right ('cause it is used to divide the symbol), so it is undefined by the table. UPC is just one bar code symbology out of over 300 others. The bar code on the backs of some driver licenses, for example, is not UPC and has no guard bars at all. Much better "marks of the beast" would be finger prints, DNA typing, or plain automatic face recognition. These are all "source marking" (marks put on during manufacturing) approaches and are far more cost-effective. "No Hidden Sixes in the UPC Barcode" by Robert Harris of Southern California College / Vanguard University is good explanation.

Please try again Mr. AC troll...

Re:Oh, Puh-leeze!!

[mav[LAG]]

Much better "marks of the beast" would be finger prints, DNA typing, or plain automatic face recognition.

Indeed. The main problem with the Mark of the Beast is that people want to yank it out of context into today's society; seeing 666s behind every bush, worrying about credit cards, tatoos and all kinds of nonsense. But the original recipients of the letter (the Christian Church scattered throughout the known world somewhere around 95 AD) would have known who 666 was. In those days, as in some societies today, it was popular to add the numbers formed from the letters in your name and make a total. So for instance, some Roman graffiti has been found which says "I love her whose name is 545." Hard for us to extrapolate but doubtless the young lady knew :)
Which brings us to 666. Apart from being a numerical pun (a man's name that represents a being impersonating deity but falling short), John's readers would have known that you get 666 when you add the letters together of "Nero Caesar." In Greek it adds up to 666, in Latin it comes to 616. 616 appears as a variant reading in plenty of the original manuscripts of Revelation which adds quite a lot of weight to this theory. Apocalyptical literature is hard for us to understand today but in those days it was an effective way of painting a picture using symbols and metaphors, all the while making its meaning known to those who were familiar with it. There is nothing in Revelation that would not have been unfamiliar to early Jewish Christians, steeped as they were in the old Testament. And the message they get from that passage is: "you're suffering terrible persecution from a man who thinks he's God. You all know who I mean. He is just a foreshadowing of all corrupt and evil leaders who will persecute the church throughout history. But ultimately you will overcome."

Re:Barcodes have 666 encoded on them?

[delta407]

Yes, but can you explain why books I buy at Borders bookstores have UPCs on stickers that they put over the UPCs that come preprinted on the book?

Possibly. First, it may not actually be a UPC that it is covering -- it could be EAN-13 or some other type. Second, even if it is covering a UPC, it may not be replacing it with UPC. Borders may use their own internal barcoding system.

Third, a fair number of manufacturers don't always obtain a valid block of UPCs, they just print with a number that they hope to be unique. (It's actually quite common to have collisions in any reasonably large store.) Thus, the retailer may have replaced one UPC with a different one to ensure that both items were uniquely identifiable.

Are they hip to this whole number of the beast thing and looking out for my immortal soul or what? :)

Oh, it was a joke. ;-)

Anyway, if they actually replaced one UPC with another, you'd still have 666 (if you want to call it that) on your book.