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New US $20 bills Released, Colors & Layout Change
JayBonci writes "CNN is running a story with the newest advances in the original copy-protection arms race, a new US $20 dollar bill. From the article, specifically color and different number arrangements as an improvement over 1996's "Big Face" dollar bills." Little off the norm for Slashdot, but it's interesting since computers have vastly simplified forgery.
While making fake ID's, trying to change grades, view financial info all sound interesting to at least try, forging money has never even interested me. i wonder why that is?
New play money!
Are they brazilian-looking?
is the next story for today, "How to use your Linux machine for forgery?"
:(
This is off the norm, with the decline in jobs I don't see too many 20s!
--------
Free your mind.
Send them to me and I'll dispose of them in an environmentally safe way.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Holy crap, redesigning bills every 7-10 years? What the hell are they thinking?
When the current $20 bills came out, I heard of people having trouble using them, because apparently a few people somehow didn't hear that new bills were being released so obviously thought they were counterfeit. The current bills are pretty obvious, though, now that everybody knows about them. Now they're saying there will be subtle changes every few years, so in another decade there will be like 4 different versions of the $20 bill, ALL LEGAL. If you saw a fifth version, which was counterfeit, would it be obvious to you?
Yeah, they're including new security features. That's cool and all, but how often do people really check them? Sure, on a $100, people check. On $20 they usually don't. They still go by appearance and texture, just like they always have.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I've always been in favor of having a hologram on our currency. It seems to be an effective way to curb counterfitting. Without a change of the shape and surface area of the bill (ie. a clear patch with a hologram), just changing the colors on a bill is more of a nuisance than a deterrent.
100% Insightful
You can find some better pics here.
If they change them any faster, You'll be able to make your own and pass them off as the latest, newest , most non counterfitiest $20.
Eschew Obfuscation
I can finally use all the colors in my ink-jet cartridge.
Best Windows Freeware
It's about time the U.S. has updated their bills, but I don't think that this is enough. Take a look at British Money to see how difficult you can make it for a counterfitter. Big watermarks, multiple color dyes that penetrate the fibres of the paper. The old U.S. bills you could bleach a $1 bill clean and print a $20 dollar bill on it, and nobody would be the wiser.
Ironic that the most precious thing a nation could have would also be the cheapest.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
I've worked in the financial world for a bit, and I'm always surprised by how bad most counterfit bills look.
95% of the time, counterfeit bills are accepted by people who don't seem to notice that while the bill corners say $20, George Washington is in the center. Or that they're printed on normal grade paper.
I'm sure the government is making the change to the $20 for "big time" counterfeiters, but it seems like most of the time it can be prevented on the retail level by people just using their heads.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
they haven't changed the size?! Why is it that no blind people have sued over this?
Isn't it about time that different dollar bills start coming in different sizes? Isn't it pretty standard for counterfeiters to bleach a small denomination bill and print the image of larger ones? Different sizes would at least make this practise a bit more difficult. That doesn't stop forgery in euro-land, but it does make it just a bit more difficult. I thought that holographs would be pretty effective, but in day to day commerce nobody looks to closely. The best way to make sure that your bills are genuine is using ones that are really unpopular. Last weekend was the first time that I saw a 200 Euro bill. And that was one and a half years after the introduction of the currency.
Hank! White!
This is obviously a hoax.
"Dennis Forgue" is the anti-counterfeiting expert they interviewed?
Treasury has given these companies material they can use to update bill- acceptance devices, but nothing they can spend or use to make counterfeit bills.
This gives it away. Everyone knows that the Treasury department gives vending machine companies the master engravings.
If this were a real article, why didn't they interview the real experts
And what is up with the ugly guy holding a stick?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
That money is far too colorful for me.
As long as the name doesn't change it's A-OK: immagine the dollar being called the "Amerio"...
I'm color-blind, so to me it's still a green black.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
http://www.moneyfactory.com/newmoney/flash/interac tivebill/index.cfm
Not only are they all different colors, with holograms and different sizes, but they also have a raised pattern on each bill, a tiragle, square or circle. I understand why tehy cant change the size of our bills easily, but a raised pattern on the bill would be easy.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Any idea why they chose a color that makes it look like someone left the bill in their laundry with some bleach? I was hoping for something that looked *good* not faded. Oh well.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Heres a mirror!
It looks strikingly similar to the canadian dollar or the old british pound.
IN the UK we are about to roll out a massive scheme whereby we don't use our signature to validate our bank card/credit card transactions, we use a PIN number instead.
I guess the days of innocence are passing, my concern is that the general public is going to be the ones that get hurt and the criminals will carry on regardless.
Have you ever handed a cashier a note and had them examine it with an expert eye to determine if it was real or not? Obviously if you hand someone a piece of monopoly money, they're going to know right off the bat that it's "not real". But if I hand a clerk at Subway a counterfeited 20$USD, nobody is going to know it until the bill falls into the hands of someone who's paying attention. By then, it's covered with finger prints. Now this will make it more difficult to make similar-looking currency, but I don't see how it solves the problem.
Join Tor today!
In Japan for years now, not only are the coins and dollar bills used in different colors (for easy glances to see how much money someone has), but they are of different sizes and shapes that make the coins recognizable by the blind. The 10,000 Yen bill is the longest, while the 1,000 is the shortest. Even the 5 Yen coin has a hole in it to separate it from the other coins (yes, this also goes back thousands of years to the Chinese "cash" coins).
Seeing as how all American bills are of the same size, I imagine that it must be slightly frustrating for a blind person to trust someone they don't know to be completely honest about money and take $5 instead of $50. Unfortunately, I can't see the Treasury Department putting some sort of Braille marker or other deliniating factor into future money production.
--Chag
Moves like this reak of the Sopranos. The same people that make vending/coin change machines also make lottery ticket distribution and numbering systems and slot machines!!
If the vending industry were smart they'd be lobbying for money readers REQUIRED to accept cash at retail that would authenticate bills and serial numbers OR going to plastic/mark of the beast I suppose would solve the whole thing ;)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Haven't the technology for making perfect copies of dollarbills been know for the better part of half a century?
Look at australian dollars, apparantly they are the hardest to copy in the world. Also sweden has been pretty successfull with their new ideas for protecting money. Using all kinds of tricks with metal in the bills, uv-print, watermark, special paper, relief and on top of everything very complicated print
process.
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
This will be a boon for counter fitters.
"Don't be an ass, it's not counterfeit, it's the new twenty that just came out this fall."
All a counter fitter needs to do is come up with a bill chock full of security features and start spending it like there's no tomorrow. As people get used to the new bill every few years, it will become commonplace.
Remember the story of the person who passed a $3.00 bill with Bill Clinton's face on it? All they could charge him with was failure to pay, since he hadn't really counter fitted any money.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I told him he was all horrible and evil for doing so - but I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same.
Schnapple
With socialization of just about everything in the US on the horizon, it's just one more step until the US becomes another European country. Stupid looking monopoly money is yet another loss of credibility.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
When they released the new $10s (which was not long after the new $20s), I had several places where I used the new $10 give me the change as if I had given them a $20.
I think it happened 3-4 times within a week or so, I'm pretty sure I netted at least $40 off of that.
Some of the Rumanian lei-bills (at least the 10000 bill) are quite difficult to counterfeit (with a standard pc). They have a hole covered with transparent plastic (which also has some kind of watermarking). I don't see why anyone would counterfeit lei though, since the 10000 bill was worth 50 cents or less when I visited Bucharest.
At the behest of the FBI (or maybe it is the secret service since counterfeiting is their purview) all color photocopiers in the USA embedded a watermark with a unique serial number identifying the copier used.
For some reason this fact is not well documented, but here is at least one reference(pdf) in an IBM report from 1998. See the section on tracking.
This can be a problem for cheap counterfeiters (well-equipped ones won't have a problem either acquiring a copier on the blackmarket or using a modified one) but it also can suck for whistleblowers making copies of documents. If the copier used can be identified it makes it that much easier for a vengeful company/government to identify the whistleblower and take "corrective action."
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
American paper currency has always been a joke to the rest of the world. Because it is so easy copy. Other countries have made much better attempts at stopping this. With holograms in their notes, thin metal wires and chips.
This will have massive repurcussions, I predict.
Hookers, most of whom don't/can't read the papers, will not realize that this new currency is valid. There could potentially be huge fallout if the brokers on Wall Street cannot get their BJ's because their 'business partners' won't take their cash.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Probably everyone has already seen this. But it's worth posting... I hope it can also be done with the new bills.
Simple origami
More on it
reason defies logic
Umm. 15 seconds is the MAX time a credit card terminal should take to authorize a transaction (including dial-time which should only be once if you have a lot of customers in a line). Do they really think people are going to spend that amount of time, PER BILL for each customer?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
The last update of the bills made them look like Monopoly money. Now, they're just plain ugly. Come on, I mean: peach !?
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
in europe, many stores, kisoks, etc. have purchased small uv light detectors, especially after a flood of fake 50 bills. the interesting thing is that washed bills of any denomination usually fail this test. at one point i had carried a 50 that i had been told was fake by my bank for six months. i went to another bank and asked them about it, they told me that it was real, and then took me downstairs to while they checked it with the 100,000 machine they have. they also explained that there are very simple tests for checking a bill; they have little ridges stamped into the bill that can't be washed off and are very difficult to fake.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
Nice to see the US finally catching up with Europe...
The big story is the ongoing preference that money traders are showing in using the euro. The dollar used to be number one currency in the world, now it's number 2 behind the euro. Some countries and many firms around the world have stopped using dollars to pay creditors and are only using euros instead. If this trand continues the dollar will be worth less and less. Hell, we may see a dollar to dollar exchange rate between Canada and ther US someday! You know you're going downhill then!
The last time a new $20 was issued, the Mexican counterfeiters had a high-quality bill within a week of the release. Anyone care to venture a guess as to how long it will take the Mexicans, Iranians and other folks to have the new bill in production?
Today's helpful hint: With the right halogen-based solution, you can strip the ink from crisp new one dollar bills and end up with genuine currency paper, complete with the colored threads.
You meant: A little off the norm for Slashdot
Dropping the article negates the meaning :)
Color backgrounds? Great, the idiots are trying to make real money look like monopoly money. Geez, why in the hell would the do that? Our money looks like a legal document. Now, they're going to turn it into tacky trash like the pieces of worthless paper other countries spew-out.
Date: May 12, 2003
Re: New version of $20 bill
Dear Treasury Department (cc to Bureau of Printing and Engraving):
The new release of the product looks ok. I think it still needs some work, though. There are some additional features that I would like to see in the upcoming $20 bill v. 2.3 beta release:
1. P2P sharing
2. Centerfolds (!) (note: not Andrew Jackson - think modern, maybe Denise Richards)
3. Self-generation (try making paper from those Wizard's Apprentice broomsticks)
4. Encryption, so that only I can use my bills
BTW, please, please do implement a "software activation" thingy. That would be really lame.
Respectfully,
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Is it just me or the guy on the 20$ bills look like he got hit by truck?
This currency will be hacked and on Kazaa by tomorrow! Money wants to be free!
The administration is currently hijacking the Iraqi oil in an attempt to stop this trend, but it doesn't look good in the long run. The occupation costs, and long term ill-will that results from Pax Americana will eventually take us out, in a similar manner to that of the Romans, who's history we seem to want to repeat.
--Mike--
What kind of stupid ass moderators modded this up to 5? Weak.
No.. but they are edging more towards looking like canadian bills (or even euros). Seriously though, I've always found that one the problems with American money is that it is too hard to tell the denominations of the bills apart at a glance. If they are going to start using different colors on different bills, good on them. Or they could go even one step further like the Euro and have different denomiations be slightly different sizes. I know this sounds wacky, but imagine trying to use American cash if you are blind.
Also... the article mentions 2-dollar bills. Since when have the States had Twos? We (Canada) got rid of ours almost a decade ago and the states is just starting to make them now? talk about behind the times. Or is that a joke?
lysergically yours
Ameridollars(c) sponsored by Sony(tm) Playstation(tm)?
What goes on NintendoBucks?
Damn them and their evil black collektivist souls!
Quick Martha, git me my gun!
(soapbox)
What I wanna know is, when are they going to phase out the dollar bill? The Sacagawea dollar coin went the way of the Susan B because they kept printing singles. Coins have a pocket life of 30 years, compared to 3 for bills. If we're gonna spend the time and money in a coin let's actually make it work.
(/soapbox)
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
The treasury puts out all these new bills to try to foil counterfeiting, but leave the old bills in circulation for another 5 - 10 years.... OK, I cannot make a new $20 bill -for now- but those old style $100s can still be made.
Next we are going to see the govt try to limit the extent in which publishing technology can go.
Excuse me, but my printer says that it needs another ream of paper. Then off to the Porsche dealership.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear to be bright. Until you hear them speak.
... no matter how new it is, what color it is, or how much hot air backs it. It's nuts. At least if they are going to use bogus fiat currency, use the mint, don't make the bills part of some private for-profit bank that can charge "interest" on them and make everyone indebted to them on bogus pretenses, then carefully control the supply based on PRODUCED WEALTH as an aggregate, tangible total, not on some vague debt/credit schemes.
It's the mother of all government scams. I think IIRC this is the third time the US has used phony money, the previous two times failed eventually after ripping people off and letting the crooks skedaddle.
Representative Ron Pauls efforts, a good quick read
BTW, Alan Greenspan, BEFORE he became chairman of the private "federal" reserve bank mega conjob, was totally against phony fiat money. totally, and he articulated a lot of good reasons why. Funny how someone's values change once they get bribed off and put into a position of extreme power, isn't it?
One of the things that surprised me with the latest version of our Canadian bills was that braille is used! (Bank of Canada - currency - accessibility features)
...
I do wonder how well the braille stands up to the wear-and-tear such bills would go through during the normal lifetime of paper currency
YS.
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
Look, we're even falling against the Canadian Dollar..
--Mike--
...is why there is no recall on older bills? What's to stop me from ignoring the new bills and just forge a 10-year-old bill without the embedded strip, etc. and stamp '1993' on it?
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
the "young Elvis" twenty dollar bill.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
First thing I thought when I saw the new bill was that it looked like a European currency bill. Anyone else see the resemblence?
Question everything.
They have to print a unique serial number on each one, anyway... well, why not a barcoded serial number? You've seen the "Where's George" website... well, as part of Total Information Awareness, why not equip every cash register with a scanner that relays the serial number to a central database, and as soon as the same serial number is seen in two places at the same time, zap!
Yeah, yeah, yeah... not very good... how about get some _creative_ suggestions for ingenious, wonderful, complicated technical fixes?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Always thought that bank notes should go to plastic instead of paper. A lot more durable and a lot more difficult to counterfeit. A few countries now use them.
If you look closely at the reverse side, you'll see duct tape and plastic sheeting on the windows of the White House.
Is Ronald Reagan really replacing Andrew Jackson on the next version?
"counter fitters"
Aren't they people who work on your kitchen?
Most banks and stores that detect counterfeit bills do so using a special marker that leaves a particular mark/color on a true bill and nothing/or another special mark on fake. It's the reaction with the cloth-based real bill.
Since most stores use this method (banks will already know better), it will remain true for the new $20 (just as it has for the 1997 $20 and the legacy $20s.)
Even still detection mechanisms simply are in place to keep honest people honest. They are a deterrent. Successful counterfeiters can always find a mom and pop shop to accept their close-to-the-real thing design.
Ayup
A little Googling turned up this article in December's Business 2.0 about counterfeiting and terrorism... interesting for the background into several counterfeiting technologies.
"For every right, an equal responsibility..."
If they'd just take Jackson off the twenty, I'd be happy.
If you're not aware, this is the guy that was responsible for deporting many of the native americans to Oklahoma. You might recall that the Cherokee were pretty well "integrated" into society at the time, and they did what any other wronged group would do: they sued in court.
And won. The Supreme Court ruled that "the laws of the state of Georgia 'can have no force' within Cherokee boundaries."
This fine president, who we honor by putting his name on our money, said "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"
What a fine example of our American politics.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
The more features you put in a bill, the fancier they get, and that seems to me like more work to detect a counterfeit. How many stores actually have the time to spend even 15 seconds checking every $20 bill? Buy something for $41, pass 3 twenties, get $19 back ... is the clerk really going to spend 45 seconds checking those bills? No way can they do that every time, all day, all year, and be any good at it.
Plus, changing them all the time, now there are several different kinds in circulation, more things to remember to look for.
I'd like to see a good study done of different bills and how much they are counterfeited. You'd have to make allowances for how desirable the different currrencies are. I am not convinced that all these doodads really do any good.
Infuriate left and right
Australia has been using plastic notes for years. These notes are much harder to forge they have a transparent section and a translucent dual sided motiff incorporated into the design to aid forgery identifcation. And that is just for starters, other benefits include that the notes last many times longer (and hence despite the higher cost to produce they save the treasury loads), they go through the wash just fine (and you can even have them in your board shorts whilst surfing without fear of being unable to buy a pie for lunch). They don't really tear (they do but its much harder to get started on the rip) and are generally much more durable. They look kinda weird even for Australian currency, and the one drawback is that IIRC they are a bit more difficult to handle if you are manipulating lots of cash manually.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Here's the webcast of it. It's about a half hour long, and in WM format.
Some folks I know of here in Ottawa have a nice little device for blind people to read paper money.
"Oh God help us. We're in the hands of engineers."
What problem is solved by adding another new design?
The two previous designs are still legally in circulation. Since they were / are apparently counterfeitable (is there such a word?), adding a new design does nothing to make the older designs un-counterfeitable.
Unless the older designs of currency are de-monetized, new designs do not solve a problem. (Older readers with military service may remember the MPC[1] script coversion days[2].) Yes, eventually almost all paper money will wind up being captured by banks and turned in for destruction. But it takes years to remove most of a type of bill and the remaining copies are still legal money. So the older patterns are still vulnerable.
[1] MPC - Military Payment Certificates. See google or eBay.
[2] Script conversion days - A twenty-four hour period during which all personnel were required to exchange their MPCs for the same value in a new series (new colors, new pictures). At the end of the conversion period, old series script was worthless and had value only as a colorful curiosity. Failure to exchange meant that you lost. No excuses, no make-ups, see the chaplain.
Why is John Lithgow on the $20 bill?
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
My thought is this, and I'm surprised it hasn't floated its way to the top of the modded posts already:
Of what use is a new anti-counterfit bill if they don't recall the old, easily counterfitted ones? Counterfitters won't even try to adjust to the new bills if the old ones are still in circulation and legal tender - there's just no reason to.
That green slime had it coming.
I bet when NAFTA finally goes to a single currency they'll be smart and avoid the Amerio name.
Pictures
The President on the $2 bill is Thomas Jefferson.
Why? Because you lack desire to have the Secret Service busting your door down?
I had a sucky sig.
And have a widely accepted $1 coin so we can get rid of the $1 bill.
The US might then be on the way to having a modern currency.
Does that mean they'll be producing a new Deception Dollar?
http://www.deceptiondollar.com/
Seriously, though, the US could do worse than differentiate its different bills more clearly. Almost every other country makes it clearer (different sizes, very different colours) which can make it tricky for tourists. Australian notes (plastic, bright colours) are great, purely because they go through the wash and come out the other side. But I don't have to count large piles of the slippery things...
it's not about the karma, it's about the whuffie
HAHAHAHA! You Americans are doomed by your idiocy!
Those vapid, empty eyes, the mouth hanging open 90% of the time... for sure SHE would never notice if money was counterfeit or not.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Dude,
"Are they Brazilian looking?" is a reference to the great Simpson's episode where homer is kidnapped by Brazilians, and when they get the ransom money, they look at the greenbacks, and note that they sure look like serious financial documents, and then remark something like "Hey, our money is pink and purple" "Yeah, our money sure does look gay"
So there you have it =)
James
US$20 XP.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
A friend of mine recently came back from a trip to New Zealand. Their currency is made of a plastic film instead of paper. It cannot be torn. It has areas that are transparent. I don't recall any texture features, but it probably had them. The main point was that the material was easy to recognize, and very difficult to fake.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
http://www.thelouisvillechannel.com/lou/news/stori es/news-20010130-161443.html
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
You don't work for Bank of America do you? I remember hearing that same story when I first started there. I remember looking at the book of funny money and laughing soo hard at some of the crap that got passed off as legit.
My favorite counterfit was the one that had 2 different denominations depending on which side of the bill you were looking at.. $100 front, $20 back. hahahaha...
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
Gold?
Hammer of Truth
1) SUBTLE color it much harder to counterfeit than it it were monopoly money colored.
/. personna, eyes and ears closed shut, mouth wide open.
2) You are woefully unaware at the sheer strength and power that the look of an american dollar has both in the US and elsewhere, and of the effect of changing just the look of the bills wholesale overnight would have.
But thanks for promoting the typical
We run the web infrastructure for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing on our DataHost platform. Starting about 2 hours ago (when the unveiling press conference ended) we've been sustaining over 20Mbits per second of traffic. As I look at the monitor now, we're doing 33Mbits/sec. Most of the traffic has been US-based, though we expect an overnight surge as Asia wakes up. Gotta go back and look at histograms now - Bolivia just took a keen interest in the new $20 note. Don't forget to stop by the BEP store (http://www.moneyfactory.com/store) and pick-up some neat collectibles (though, nothing with the new twenty until later this year). All the info on the new twenty is at http://www.moneyfactory.com/newmoney.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
It's the $22 bills that are "fake"!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In Sweden they got the following security features in bills. Listed with introduction year.
- multicolor (1800)
- watermarks (early 1900)
- microprintings (1950)
- security strip (added aprox. 1970)
- Ultra-Violet markings (1980)
- holograms (added 2000)
That and special papers that have a very special touch to them make it very hard to counterfeit any swedish bill.
So the USA are very late in money security.
So I understand that the US dollar bills are the most counterfeited bill in the world.
Collection plate a church. THanks George Carlin.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
This will be a boon for counter fitters.
Firstly, I think you mean counterfeiters, not counter fitters - counterfeiters forge money, passports, designer clothes, etc but counter fitters fit counters. OK?
Secondly, issuing a new design of bank note clearly cuts down on counterfeiting and opportunities to commit monetary fraud in several ways:
1. The new design is different from the old one.
Thus, any plates, etc a counterfeiter has for the old note are useless once the old note has been removed from general circulation. This also applies to all the counterfeit notes out there too.
2. A new design takes time to counterfeit.
Granted, today's hardware and software has speeded up the traditional counterfeiting process (Photoshop, Illustrator and QuarkXPress coupled with the best printers will work wonders), but the fact remains that being able to successfully reproduce a bank note's aesthetic appearance is still time consuming and expensive. Obviously, if you're good at it, money's no object because you'll be able to print your own...
3. New designs incorporate tougher security measures.
Watermarks, magnetic strips, even holograms can be used to make notes harder to forge. These features cost treasuries money to incorporate but they cost counterfeiters even more (per bill) to duplicate. Most will mimic some features but not all, making detection possible to anyone who's vigilant enough to care.
4. New note designs promote consumer vigilance.
Seeing something different reminds consumers that bank notes can be forged and subconsciously encourages them to be more alert to the possibility of receiving counterfeit notes. Ever checked your speed after seeing a police car? It's the same thing.
5. New bank notes are successfully introduced and old ones replaced every day.
Just about every country on the planet retires old designs in favour of new, more secure ones on a regular basis. The people in those countries don't have any problems with new bills leading to more rather than less fraud, so why would the opposite be true in the US?
I live in the UK and all of our notes (£5, £10, £20, £50) have undergone at least one redesign each in the last twenty years and there's never been one occasion where a new note has led to more fraud. The same can pretty much be said of the rollout of the Euro notes throughout most of the EU, which was the single biggest rollout of paper money ever.
Again, unless you're suggesting that the average American is too dumb to take care of their own money, why would there be a problem?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
On this page, the mint encourages you to "View, download or print glossy images of the new notes" from this pdf!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Little off the norm for Slashdot
Actually, it comes up every once in a while.
Have you read my journal today?
I've seen on PBS that US Treasury in the 1970ties has sold Money press machine to Iran to prin new Iranian notes. Iran than figured out that it was more profitable for them to print dollars than...whataever they used in Iran in 1970.
Now we get pretty money like other countries. :)
Found a great website for pics of paper currency from around the world. My personal fave has to be Netherlands 50 Guilder note, sunflower and bee. Makes U.S. paper money look downright ugly... http://aes.iupui.edu/rwise/notedir/mappage.html
pot.kettle(black);
2002-04-11 04:41:10 Counterfeit currency tech kills the green metaphor (articles,news) (rejected)
Note: grousing about rejected submissions is Offtopic and usually gets moderated that way. It happens, don't take it personally.
yeah, yeah, yeah... grumble, grouse...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There are lots of time when cash is more convenient (not to mention paranoids who don't like to leave a paper trail of their purchases). When I'm at a club I where I might get a drink from 4 different bartenders during the course of the night I don't want to have to dig out a card and sign a receipt or punch in a pin number every time.
A cashier makes, say 6$ an hour to stand around and cash people out all day, not to mention deal with asshole customers.
When I was working as a cashier, if someone told me to look hard for counterfeits, I'd reply with the finger.
So their boss/company loses some money if the bank doesn't accept a counterfeit that they didn't see. Ces't la vie.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Obviously not. You would never make an error in the course of your day to day job, because you sir, are perfect. By the way, i believe the A in Java is lower case.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
1. Draw money on computer 2. Print money 3. PROFIT!!! wait a minute, that was too easy...
Different banks in the UK are allowed to produce their own notes. It's especially noticable in Scotland where there are 3 banks allowed to print their own notes and, yes, you can still get a 1 pound note.
s h.htm
Example:
http://www.thebanknotestore.com/briti
As a Scot, sometimes this is a pain, the further south you travel the more difficult it becomes to spend Scottish notes. They are strictly speaking, not even legal tender, they are simply accepted on the basis that the banks issuing them are trusted.
http://www.scotbanks.org.uk/notes.htm
On the whole, people pick up new notes fairly quickly.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
What if you were to print the value of [value-of-the-bill]>Government_GPG_key>bill on the bills instead..... ... ... ......... on the otherhand. that's pretty easy to forge. damn.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Youre going to tell me that my 20 year old dollar bill, issued with the full faith and trust of the governemnt, is no longer good? Gee, what a quick and dirty way for the government ot make money. "WEre sorry sir, despite the fact that we promised it would be good forever, you missed yesterdays cutoff date for trading your bills. Theyre wastepaper. Thank you for paying off part of the debt" Yeah. Like this wouldnt shatter the economy, as i and most other people switch to gold and euros as my currency of choice.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
So, to give you all something to bicker about, I wonder if this means we should go to coins only, and start minting $100, $50, $20, $10, and $5 coins.
Pros:
they can't be counterfeited (or at least it's much harder, correct?)
machine sorting is easier
last longer
that cool jingle in your pocket
will accelerate use of debit cards
Cons:
Form factor - need a coin purse, not a wallet (correctible? credit-card shaped & sized coins?)
Heavier
More expensive to produce (but really, how bad can it be if pennies are coins and $100 bills are paper?)
How big would a $100 coin be anyway?
Will accelerate use of credit cards
Thoughts?
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Dennis Forgue, an anti-counterfeiting expert
Has anyone else noticed that this anti-counterfeiting expert's name rearranged spells "u forge"?
..then you could download the new (cracked) design files 2 weeks before they release the "original".
Don't forget that in Britain (and many other countries) bills of different values have differnt physical sizes.
This statement can't be underestimated. Bleaching $1 notes and using the very same bleached ink to reprint the clean note as a $100 is one of the best methods of creating forged bills in the US. After all, you're using exactly the right paper and exactly the right ink, which is half the battle.
One other unfortunate side effect of having notes that are all the same size is that blind and visually impared people have no way of easily differentiating between denominations. Ie, there's no way they can tell if the "$20" that they've got back from a cashier as change is really a $1, as they're the same size and feel the same too.
Obviously, this isn't a problem if your notes are of different sizes and/or that are easily distinguishable through touch (via metallic foil, etc).
Although changing to notes of varying sizes would be of great benefit to the America public, it's unlikely to happen any time soon. Why? Well, big business is against it, especially those that have a lot of money invested in keeping the status quo - nobody wants to have to go through the expense and inconvenience of replacing and/or updating ATMs, ticket and other vending machines, etc if they can possibly avoid it.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
...could you please make the $20 bill worth more? k thx.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
So, the entire US economy is dependent on the government prventing people from publishing small bills that are backed soley by small bills. It's incredible that everyone's motivation to show up to work is those little pieces of paper. It's a wonder such a system can be stable. Even savages have enough sense to use shells or other objects that have a use as a store of value.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Drat! They're really making it hard for us time travelers aren't they! How am I suppose to go back to the 80's to sell them future technology when no one will take future money?
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
It's usually so dark in strip clubs that the strippers don't notice. Only bring one or two though, or you'll get caught.
I actually know someone who did this in college. A couple of photocopied $20s on regular paper, crumpled many times, then folded up. He didn't get caught, but I really wouldn't want to get caught passing a fake bill in a strip club.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
...the chip in the back of my head.
I think it's great that the new bills can be picked up by the govt's secret sensors and every transaction traced by the police, but the dang things aren't compatible with the chip the CIA put in the back of my skull.
I would hate to have to get an upgrade. I hear the new chips by homeland security have bulky transceivers and mess with your mind.
I REALLY hate it when they do this. I work in a casino, and we have to update the bill validator firmware in every one of our slot machines every time they come out with a new bill design. It gets very expensive and time consuming. The treasury says they are "working with companies in the vending, gaming and public transportation industries to help them adjust their currency-reading devices to accept the new bills." What they mean is they are telling the validator manufacturers what they need to change in the firmaware. They aren't helping to cover the expense of updating my machines, nor are they helping to pay for the re-education of the cashiers. /rant
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
That would be DRM, Dollar Restriction Management.
I am pretty sure that Microsoft is working on this already, but their method is to just own all the money. Own it all!
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Am I missing the point or would be making the bills a different size the easiest way to kill this practice stone dead?
This practice has been common in the UK for as long as I can remember with each different note being a different size and in recent years colour.
It just seems that clinging on to the sacrosant colour is holding back security for the larger donomination notes.
currency
I wonder if these relatively rapid changes to U.S. paper currency are a reaction to the fact there is now another paper currency vying for dominance -- namely the Euro. I believe that the vast majority of counterfeiting of U.S. currency occurs outside the U.S. and if the Euro is considered more secure in this regards it could be a serious threat to the dominance of the U.S. currency throughout the world. If this is indeed the case, it is in our (the U.S.) best interest to react to real and perceived vulnerabilities as quickly as possible and the American public had better get used to these kinds of changes to the revered greenback on a regular basis. As always, competition is a potent catalyst for change.
Pre-euro Dutch money was the absolutely silliest money on earth.
;-) get your hands on some of those notes.. They are very purdy! Did I mention silly?
Check out these babies (the top ones are the newest you should be looking at;
10 guilder note
10 guilder note 25 guilder note 50 guilder note
100 guilder note
250 guilder note
1000 guilder note
If you don't have much time, just check out the 250. The newest notes feature almost exclusively abstract images, raised ink as well as different levels of height in paper (quite distinguisable by hand, or even in daylight), LSD induced colors, barcodes, microprints of poems, and no image of any identifiable person whatsoever!
Really, click on those links, and if you collect money (who doesn't?
I was sad to see these wonderful notes go the way of the dodo with the introduction of the euro.. The euro is even a weaker currency (the guilder was linked to the Deutsch Mark, one of the hardest currencies in the basket).
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
what is the low end shopping list to print your own passable $20 bills with your pc?
i have seen photocopiers that do an excellent good job. but i assume that i cannot go to dell.com and get buy a system that will work can i?
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
One of the most secure "currencies" I've seen are casino chips. A counterfeiter would have to be incredibly skilled to create anything similar to some of the chips that Chipco and Paulson Gaming produce today. These are the chips that you see most-often at any major casino around the world. Not only is the chip material nearly impossible to duplicate, the counterfeiter would have to have some *very* sophisticated equipment to duplicate the dye and printing that chip manufacturers are able to accomplish.
As an owner of a set of Chipco chips, I can also attest to the fact that they are very durable and easy to clean, which should mean that we wouldn't have to make so much new currency each year just to replace the currency that gets worn out.
Why don't we all start using chips and plaques (the rectangular chips that you see used mostly in high-roller rooms)?
Five Dolla Moddy-Moddy?
The bills in circulation today are "Federal Reserve Notes" not backed by gold or silver, but The Constitution of the United States of America says:
... make any Thing but ..."
"Section 10
No State shall
gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;
Therefore ALL U.S. currency in circulation today is counterfeit. So, changing design and color won't stop the chief counterfeiters!
A few years ago, I was working out in Ghana (Africa), and I was struck by the fact that the highest-denomination banknote was only 5,000 cedis (around $2 at exchange rates back then). This struck me as an inevitable consequence of the high inflation experienced by the country. However, one of my local friends pointed out a secondary factor.
The banknotes currently in circulation in Ghana were printed by the Royal Mint, in the UK. As well as the 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000 cedi denominations, a large number of 10,000 cedi notes were printed. They were shipped out to Ghana in two maritime containers - the huge bastards you see on freight ships.
Unfortunately, one of the containers went missing, probably due to collusion between local crime gangs and corrupt officials. As a consequence, the Government were unable to issue the other container-load of notes. Hence the absence of anything larger than a 5,000 cedi note in Ghana.
Just imagine if the theives had been able to spend the 10,000 cedi notes. Anyone know how many notes you can fit inside, say, a 20-ft container?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The economists have figured out that by changing money more frequently, more people will get employed and the GNP will increase proportionally. I knew Greenspan was in on this!
There must be a new conspiracy in the making.
See if you can find the next planned disaster. It's fun for the whole family.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
And the subtle changes thing is nothing new. I mean, the Sackopotatoes dollar coin was apparently put in place to phase out the $1 bill, and before they refaced the $10, they put the security strip into it. As far as the dollar coins, I myself prefer them to $1 bills anyway - I don't have to fart around with trying to convince the farebox on the bus that the bill I feed it is a one, rather I just drop the coin in and go along my merry way. But I digress.
That they're making Yet Another version of the US $20 bill is kinda cool, but let's go with a standard and stick there for a bit. Better yet, let's reface ALL paper currency, conspiracy theories be damned.
This sig no verb.
Do they still smell like cat piss?
Why paper? Polymer notes last longer, are much harder to damage, and are much more difficult to counterfeit. Also, adding extra anti-counterfeiting measures such as transparent windows, micro-print, and watermarks is simple.
Why so much green? All the US notes are green, which makes distinguishing between denominations take longer than it should. If the notes were coloured, only a quick glance would be required to check denomination, especially for people with vision impairment.
To speak from my own experience in Australia, it's been all polymer notes since 1990. Each note is a different colour and length, doesn't rip, and is terribly difficult to counterfeit.
I'm just surprised this new $US20 isn't polymer. The technology works - why not use it?
Yeah, we really want to make sure we don't slashdot CNN.
They do recall older bills. The Fed Gov. will recall bills from all banks, so all new cash given out will be the new bills.
Eventually MOST money goes through a bank. Over time, little original bills will exist.
What does the Gov do with the current bills? They burn them of course... Big heaping pile of burning money. Must be emotional to watch that happen...
- Jeff
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
I was in a coffee shop about 3 am one Saturday when this kid tried to pay for his coffee with a fake ten (This is in Canada, the land where Moose rule).
The fake was easy to spot, printed on smooth paper on a colour ink jet printer - what made me laugh was some of it had got wet and the ink had run...
We called the cops and the kid disappeared.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Check out the security features of Swiss money.
Swiss Bank Note Series
In addition to the colour changing ink, fine print, security thread (actually not really considered security, it just makes the note more recognizable in machines) and a watermark of a famous or important Swiss person, they have
That is serious forgery security. Then again, judging by its recent monetary and foreign policy the U.S. is getting a little tired of a strong currency anyway...
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
before the euro with its flashy pseudoarchitecture, germany even had gauss on the 10-mark note.
why do the americans always do presidents? i maybe can understand this in a representative monarchy like the uk, but...
One person not recalling an American $2 bill suddenly makes all Canadians uneducated and pompous?
By the standard that you sanctimonious saddam-loving jerks set, yes.
Replace him with Harrison, and make the bill out of special paper that disintegrates after thirty days.
-Stephen
http://taco.com/reb/2bill.html
On the back I can still read that we trust in God. Well, I am not so sure I share these supersitious beliefs. Does that mean that I am not an American or that I should not use the bill? Tor
I'm not up on the details of this particular story, but Bill Clinton $3 bills were a common novelty item during his presidency.
the newest advances in the original copy-protection arms race
yeah, right... i'm sure copies will be available on Kazaa any day now.
a.c.
Now you know why even grocery stores are minamizing the number of cashiers through automation. We have those voice-prompting, touch screen "scan n' pay" machines were the customer scans their groceries themselves. The machine even has a built in scale, and a bag turnstile. It accepts all forms of payment and you feed coins and bills into a slot. Four machines managed by one cashier in front of a terminal. I'm certain there's equivalent technology for other products as well.
BTW This is part of the reason the recession will be harder. Even the low-wage, skill jobs are shrinking.
That is the special message for those of us who have alien mind control blocking sunglasses.
PS: This is a joke. If you don't get it watch the 'B' movie They Live.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
Here's another fun idea, while we're on the subject of circulating currency--how about getting rid of the penny and rounding everything to the nearest nickel? Another poster mentioned jingling coins being annoying--aren't pennies the epitome of a valueless annoyance?
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
I don't know what kind of commentary it is when the US desides to redisign currentcy because of electronics.
I'd immagine that if people didn't feel as if they had to forge and what not to survive these mesures wouldn't be implimented.
On the other hand if they make it to color complicated (ie needing a computer to generate or at the bery least very skilled craftsmen) forgeries might become simpler as human nature is to pass off slight variations of neusances in "real" bills as age, sun bleaching or Greenspan.
Actually $2 bills have been around in the US for a long time. Sometimes when I need cash, instead of using the ATM I go into the bank and ask for $40 in $2 bills. I give a few of them to my kids.. it wows them every time!
So there were actually two major printings of $2 bills in the recent past, and I cant remember the exact years right now, but every $2 bill I've ever had has either been printed in 1956 (I think!) or in in 1996 (a rough guess again). Sometimes I get a stack of brand new, in sequence, 1996 (?) bills. The banks clearly haven't used up their $2 bill stash.
This new bill could potentially cause a whole slew of problems for bill collecting machines like change machines, ticket dispensers, and even those soda machines at amusement parks where the sodas are $4 a piece ( i only mention this because those were the only coke machines I ever saw that took 20's)
I wonder if these bills are going to be reverse compatible with the old ones.. like the quarters were when they redesigned them.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
The same faces in the money every time? You know, they already died a long time ago.
And also, is it really PC to praise god in the money?
Or they could make different versions of the bill, some would say "Happy Hanukkah" and the others would praise Allah et al or so.
Just my EUR 0,017, wich is something like $0.02
I just went down to the change machine here at work and broke a $10. 8 Sacs and 8 quarters...a alot better than having 40 quarters in my pocket.
Plus the Vending machines don't spit them back out.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
That could be fun.....
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
Yeah, man, you really showed him...
I think that carrying around currency is outdated. How much of what you buy these days do you actually pay in cash? I use direct withdrawl for my car payment. When I pull up to a gas station, I'll use the pay-at-the-pump feature with my debit card. The only thing I need cash for is for buying a double-quarter pounder with cheese value meal or maybe a can of Mountain Dew from the vending machine.
Electronic forms of payment are becomming more prefered among vendors. And as a consumer, you should prefer them too. In 7 to 10 years, we should focus our attention on making electronic payments more secure and not finding a color scheme that is difficult to print out on an ink-jet.
Coins and bills are for collectors. Its 2003 people... we're supposed to have flying cars by now!
There's no place like ~/
But
(a) it doesn't play my wicked awsome OGG files
(b) it isn't open source
I'll pass thanks
Why not just track the money? You need: 1. A camera looking over the shoulder of the cashier and 2. A database tracking each serial number.
I believe it is well within our image processing capabilities to pluck the serial number off a bill in real time.
Once you've captured the number, you can check for duplicate numbers, invalid numbers, stolen numbers, etc.
Of course this won't prevent you from getting a counterfeit bill in more informal situations, but it would seriously clamp down on the ability of bad guys to pass cash at stores.
There might be some privacy concerns, since the combination of till surveillance + regular video surveillance means that the store knows who has which bills. However, the government already knows the serial numbers on your Treasury bonds, and I haven't heard anybody complain about that.
I certainly like the idea of tracking money better than the oft-proposed alternative--tracking people.
The only barriers to this are setup cost to the retailer and getting the government to maintain the database; but in areas with a counterfeiting problem it might be worth installing, and maintaining a DB probably wouldn't dramaticly increase what's being spent on anti-counterfeiting now.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
According to "The Art of the Steal" the use of a UV light or a special "pen" is a waste of time. The "Pen" relies on the PH of the paper, and dusting the bill with any number of inexpensive chemicals will alter the PH to pass the "Pen" test.
UV lights are a similar waste. The factors they test for do not really help determine if the bill is real or not.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
As soon as all these bills are in circulation and counterfeiters are making tons of the OLD, non-secure, or not so old and not very secure, and even the NEW bills the average person will be so pissed that they will stop carrying cash and relying more on creditcards or ANY digital payment system available. if that happens the use of cash will quickly diminish.
.. you have to differentiate between the concept of "money" and produced "wealth". You are correct, anything can be made "money" and used, especially at gunpoint and by inertia. the difference is, when your "moeny" is backed by a tangible, it cannot be inflated or deflated arbitarily. it can't be scammed or conned or disappeared or created by trickery. It's (precious metals now) also by far and away the oldest, most used and most "trusted" human currency, all the way back to pre biblical times. And you may still rest assurred, the very high level dudes on the planet still "trust" it. They just don't want you peons to use it, that's all, but they sure do. Don't believe me, go up to any big bullion holding bank and ask for a free sample of their worthless or near worthless precious metals.
They want you to keep using that counterfeit crap they print up, sweet deal for them! they can create boom/bust cycles, get you sucked in on credit, act all pious, the good times are rolling! Then WHAM, lower the boom, create a "depression", and walk away with your wealth for "pennies on the dollar". They just have to make sure they don't get too greedy, have some years in between their scam cycles,especially their larger ones, so people won't revolt against them.
How many factories or farms raptured away into the ether during the so called "great" depression? Zero, that's how many, just title in huge numbers got transferred up stream, all "legal". How convenient for them. Whoops, they also confiscated the gold back then, what a coincidence!
I would support a return to the original US monetary idea, but carry it a step further, to make the true monetary supply reflect produced wealth. I would recommend something along the lines of a monetary supply, that is not only backed and represented by precious metals at the top,those would be the representations called "money" as in coins, but by the top 100 commodities traded the previous fiscal year. These are quantifiable tangibles, produced wealth, verifiable, useful, and real. Those commodities could evolve around society's evolution and business. The supply itself could still be paper for day to day trading, or you would have the option of using the coins for the higher level currency, something durable and that can last. More than likely the coins themselves would become very valuable, with the ability to rise in value as humans work and produce wealth, sort of "interest" in a way, but not inflationary and 'borrowed into existence". The coins themselves raise in value, and the digits aren't as important, ie, example, it wouldn't matter if your 300 grand house now as represented in FRN's only "cost' 30 grand in "real" tangibles based money, or 3 grand for that matter, it really wouldn't matter, you'd still have the house,and no "new" money could be "borrowed into creation", it must represent true *produced* wealth, which is either grown, mined, or combined into a manufactured product. That's IT, that's what "wealth" is. "Money" is different, and eliminating the fraud potential with eliminating fiat currencies is a worthy goal, IMO.
I think keynesian economics and fractional reserve banking are just an absolute scam and lead to huge profits for people who have no moral claim to them other than through force of co-opted government arms and highly advanced shucksterism. It is a huge theft-by-deception,I mean really huge, it's buncoism on a grand scale. If you go back and research the passage of the federal reserve 'act' you will see how incredibly sneaky and bogus it was when it was voted on, because at the time it was reviled. If it worked in the long run we wouldn't be having governmental "debt", it would be impossible almost to even contemplate that, ie, you would find it impossible to "spend" that which you do not have. If fiat currencies had actual lasting value, then so could artificially high "stock" values, after all, it's essentially the same thing, a piece of paper or electronic entry that gets called as "worth" such and such when it is not in a
Only the rich will be seeing the larger denominations.
6% announced unemployment and much higher in other sectors.
Enjoy the stuff while you have it.
Don't forget the one trillion dollar bill!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Dear Citizen of The World,
Thank you for your interest in our money. We, the people of the United States, have recieved your criticism. However, we like our money the way it is. If this is still unsatisfactory to you, perhaps you could send all your ex-patriated currency back (then we won't have to print so much). Once again, we'd like to offer our deepest appologies for being so powerful that our currecy became the defacto standard.
They'd just started issuing the new $20 bills and while I'd had a bunch of the old ones, at least one poor tourist had nothing but the new bills. The shopkeepers down in Nuevo Laredo were giving these poor people fits because they thought that the tourists in question were trying to rip them off with fake dollars.
It took somewhere around 10 minutes or so of arguing with the people, usually with something like 2-4 other American tourists trying to confirm the fact that the "new" money was legit to convince the shopkeepers.
And the changes are stupid, really. Leaching can be caught visually, but considering that the stores out there just use those stupid pens to check whether it's counterfeit or not, a leached bill will pass at least a couple of times. These changes will give the criminals pause for maybe a couple of months while the bills get into circulation.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'd like to see one. Could anybody send me just a couple of them so I could see them?
The problem is that 15 seconds is about 14 more seconds than your average counter jockey is going to spend looking at the twenty you just handed over. I can see taking that sort of time to verify a bill if it's a 100, but so many "yuppie food stamps" (crisp 20s, fresh from the ATM) get spent that it wouldn't be difficult to pass off a decent fake. It wouldn't pass muster with a Secret Service agent, of course, but if it can pass a cursory glance by the clerk, it'll go right in the drawer with its legitimate siblings from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Intrestingly enought, european money seem to be more focused towards making it hard to copy as well as making it easy to see if it's a counterfeight. Many of the ideas used in the swiss note is used in Norwegian banknotes as well:
- Portrait watermark and security thread. When the banknote
is held up to the light, you can see the security thread,
a dark line bearing the text Norges Bank.
- Fluorescent print on the front. In addition, a narrow
strip on both sides of the foil stripe will light up in
ultraviolet light.
- Intaglio print, meaning that the print is slightly raised
(try that on a inkjet...)
- Foil hologram stripe
- Snowflake with a hidden N, tilt the note to
spot it
- Mother-of-pearl effect, tilt the note and marvel at the
changing colours
- A register mark on both sides of the banknote. If the
banknote is held up to the light, the mark will be
completely filled and the ornament will appear
symmetrical.
- When the banknote is exposed to ultraviolet light, part
of the print as well as small fibres in the paper become
fluorescent.
- Microtext hidden in parts of the design.
I like the idea of a raised section for the visually impared thought.. lets hope that comes in the Series VIII notes... which should come about 2015 or thereabouts.As for your last comment... without saying anything more on the issue, I think the avrage US citizen is up for a rude surprice one of these days. Suddenly, their money is worth a lot less...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
If they'd just take Jackson off the twenty, I'd be happy. If you're not aware, this is the guy that was responsible for deporting many of the native americans to Oklahoma.
OK, we'll do that. Just name a president that is without flaw or a disputed reputation, and we'll use him.
-Waldo Jaquith
What's the oldest bill you have in there? Mine's a series 1995 $1. Sure, you might get a series 1934 $5 once in your lifetime, but the graph of year vs. number of bills in your wallet is very heavily skewed towards today.
So, the problem will take care of itself in the normal old-bill destruction process over a number of years. You can get a bag of a thousand shredded dollars at the Treasury Dept. gift shop for $1 in a comemorative plastic bag.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
America already has very difficult to counterfeit money with all these features, including DNA fingerprinting. Check out Liberty Dollars
BTW, they're inflation proof and just plain look cool.
I do believe that the color ones are the only copiers with this lovely "feature".
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
the two dollar bill is the denomination used in strip clubs. err... not that I'd know
Slightly off topic, but I rememember watching a PBS show where this artist drew a near perfect copy of one side of $100 note (only lot bigger), then walked around stores asking if he can "buy" goods with his "money". Anyone remember the name of the show?
Most banks and stores that detect counterfeit bills do so using a special marker that leaves a particular mark/color on a true bill and nothing/or another special mark on fake. It's the reaction with the cloth-based real bill.
Unfortunately, this method isn't fool proof, either. Some counterfeiters will take a real $1 bill and bleach it till the ink is gone. Then they have a nice blank to run through the ink-jet printer, turning it into a $20, $50 or $100 (or whatever).
The feel of the paper is real, and it will indeed pass the "special marker" test. The stripe down the middle (assuming it has one) is still there, but probably reads the wrong information. Very, very few people squint long enough to read it anyway.
In short, you now have a largely passable counterfeit bill, and the "special marker" test won't help you to detect it.
Most banks and stores that detect counterfeit bills do so using a special marker that leaves a particular mark/color on a true bill and nothing/or another special mark on fake. It's the reaction with the cloth-based real bill.
:-)
I like the way South African money is protected. It has a lot of different features, but IMO the best one is the fact that the bill looks completely different (and very pretty) under ultra-violet light. I have been to many a small store with an ulta-violet light mounted over the money tray in the till. Zero effort counterfeit bill checking!
American money is incredibly easy to counterfeit compared to many of the currencies I have used. It's also really stupidly designed. South African bills are all different sizes and colours depending on their denomination, and they are marked in braille too. This makes it really easy to identify a note in bad light, or if you are blind. They are easier to seperate in your wallet too. It also cuts down on the number of times you pay someone with a 10 when you meant to use a one.
It's funny that some Americans call the new notes "monopoly money", because that's what American dollars look like to us.
---
Is there an X as well?
What a dull design. I don't understand why America never tries something a little more radical with their money. Australian money has a much better design overall. Their bills appear to be made of a plastic or paper/plastic hybrid. They also have a clear portion which would be much harder to counterfeit. But I think the best feature of Australian bills is that the actual physical width of the bill increases with the value of the denomination by about 5 mm per bill. That makes it so much easier to tell ata glance what value your bill has without needing to actually read the numbers. I, for one, would love to see the old fashioned greenback go the way of the T-rex.
Un-news
Looks like we peaked at over 50Mbits per second at 2PM EDT. At that point, traffic was over 1000 hits per second.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Sounds right. Most laundry detergents have UV brightners in them that cause your clothes to fluoresce hence making them brighter. Currency paper is not supposed to fluoresce. Common paper fluoresces. In fact, it's much harder to make paper that does not fluoresce.
From the article : The $1 and $2 notes will not change.
When's the last time they actually printed a $2 bill? ANyone? I think the only person who still thinks they're a viable monetary note is my grandfather, who still plays poker with fifty cent pieces.
Seriously.
I, for one, am very sick of all this changing currency. I run a laundromat and depend on a bill changer. If the currency changes then I must pay almost $1000 for a new bill reader to accept the new 20s. The bill reader does not make me money, it is just the cost of doing business. Every time our stupid government decides to change the currency, that's more out of my pocket and into the pockets of the damnable changer manufacturers.
He's also responsible for setting up the Federal Banking system, which is a large reason for why the dollar has become a stable and respected form of currency.
So maybe it does make sense to have him on the currency after all.
Yeah, he was hardly the finest president. He was also hardly the worst... as with many great leaders he was very controversial.
What a fine example of our American politics.
A pretty accurate example, actually. This made him pretty popular with the Georgians, and most politians of the time would have done the same.
The Supreme Court ruled that "the laws of the state of Georgia 'can have no force' within Cherokee boundaries."
They also ruled, iirc, that the Cherokee Nation did not have the right to be heard in the Supreme Court.
"Where's the Swastika, and the words "America Uber Alles"?"
Why a flamebait? Mod this up! +3: Funny
First of all, the average person doesn't know real from fake. With all the 'new' versions of bills floating around, what does a real one look like..
It will only serve to let more counterfeit bills pass, or legit ones be refused.
Sure they get caught back at the federal bank level, but by then, who cares.. the counterfeit did his job and is long gone.
Plus why not just copy the old bills, they are going to be accepted for many generations to come around the world... why even bother faking the new ones and waste the energy?
The 'look' of money was consistent, represented stability ( be it real or perceived ), and should NEVER have been messed with.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
ANd hook it up to the Mr. Fusion, well have gold a'plenty in no time.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
First they try to stop us making 'back ups' of our music and videos (for personal use of course), then they make it even harder for us to make 'back ups' of our money.
Thats just stupid
-- http://www.spran.co.uk (America doesnt exist)
http://dave1010uk.blogspot.com/ - the st
As old paper money and coins wear out or become damaged, the Federal Reserve banks collect and return the old money to the U.S. Treasury. Paper money is shredded and burned into mulch, and coins are sent back to the U.S. Mint for melting and recasting.
When the Treasury produces new paper money and coins as replacements, they ship the currency to the 12 Federal Reserve banks, which then put the cash into circulation.
i got this from siainvestor.com; there was much info like this to be had. i have also seen a TV show about this. aside, i bought a pen with a shredded $100 in it from Washington DC a number of years ago as a souvenir for maybe $1.29.
neopets.com
I you haven't ever seen it done before, fold a twenty in a certain way and there is a striking similarity in the image to what the burning WTC looked like. I suspect that in the next revision of the currency you will see nothing like that.
If you want to see this weird coincidence, go the following link and follow their instructions. Yes Yes the site is a little strange, but it is still rather interesting.
http://www.twin-towers.net/20_bill1.htm
Gold?
[ Printer-friendly Version of this Article ] ... Yes, that's from the CNN article.
We have some of the most distinctive currency on the planet. The green and black bills we print are recognized everywhere, in part because no one else is willing to print currency quite that ugly. If you quickly flash a mess of bills from most countries in front of someone, they would be unable to identify the source country. It's just a patchwork of bright colors without any key identifying characteristic. Flash some US dollars and the heavy green markings instantly identifies it.
By being (basically) one color and using the needlessly closed and old fashioned design, we end up with currency that just looks evil. When you look at a good ol' US greenback, you know you're looking at the root of all evil. You have to respect it, in much the same way you might respect a court summons. It's dark and gritty, suitable for underhanded bribes and black market deals. When you frame the first dollar your business earns it remains an ugly green mark on your wall, no one will confuse it for some piece of nice art, it evokes the blood sweat and tears that went into starting the company.
Adding more colors is a mistake. So is opening up the design (Jackson is no longer imprisoned in a bubble). Our currency is starting to look open, friendly. This is an insult to our bill's heritage as something that looks evil and is widely identifiable.
Keep our money evil!
Search 2010 Gen Con events
This will probably only work if you have a phone book from one of the cities that have federal reserve banks. Now, telco official phonebooks have blue government pages and yellow private corporation pages, you'll need to look both places.
Find the federal reserve bank in the blue pages, see if it's there. If you follow the normal alphabetical listings, it should be above say FEMA in the directory? Notice it's not there. Try the IRS-not there. Try bureau of engraving-not there. Try to find it in any blue pages government listing, look everyplace if you want to, it should be there if it's a government agency, correct? Blue pages, government listings?
Now try the yellow pages, the private commercial listings.
This should help clarify what is actually lawful and what they claim is lawful, constitutionally speaking. Just naming the printers is not quite enough. If acme print shop prints a daily newspaper on contract,and gets their fee, and delivers the papers to the newspaper where they distribute it at a tidy profit, is it the newspapers property, or the printers?
Why have 20s at all? Perhaps only 5% of my life's cash flow is in cold physical cash with the rest in non-cash transactions. And I see others card everything- a hamburger, smokes, a movie ticket.
Anonymous small cash hasnt caught in the States yet, but many Euro cities use smart-cards for everything. That is probably the future.
Isn't it a little odd that the picture of the new, harder to counterfit, $20 bill needs to have "specimen" tacked on to it?
The most popular/stable currency is always the one with the biggest counterfeit problem. Once a currency gets commonly used in a foreign country, it's a ripe target for fraud, because those people are less able to detect the fakes. If the euro gets internationally respected at that level, it'll be massively faked too... in non-euro countries, where crappy fakes will be accepted.
Looks like it's time for a Photoshop on Fark.
Only fives on up. Really, go check.
I don't know about the counterfitting issues here but I can tell you that my wife, who can only make out the colour of a bill and nothing else due to blindness, will welcome the addition of different colours to different denominations.
Try to imagine a world in which you do not know the value of the notes handed you in change until you can find someone you trust to tell you what those values are.
When we live in Europe my wife doesn't have these kind of problems as teh back notes are differednt colours for diffent denominations.
There's nothing appealing about Denise Richarards
There are lots of appealing things about Denise Richards - her tits, her ass, and her "mouth hanging open 90% of the time."
If you need convincing, you can check out her tits:
- Here and
- Here
You can rest assured that I have check the links thoroughly. I will consider the site to be slashdotted in advance. If this post isn't a "+5, Informative" then nothing is.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
1st guy buys a magazine with a hundred dollar bill and gets $95 in change. Second guy in suit comes running in two minutes later, flashes fake FBI badge, and holds up a picture to the cashier of the guy who just bought the magazine. "This man has been passing passing counterfeit money in the area. Have you seen him?" "Yeah he just bought a magazine." "Did he happen to pay with a hundred dollar bill?" "Why... Why yes he did about two minutes ago!" "May I see it? Hmmm. Yes it's counterfeit. I'm going to have to confiscate this for evidence. Which way did he go?"
We have a $1 and $2 coin already. We're getting a $5 coin, too, unless something changed.
This means at any time, I might have ~100-200g of change on me. Having heavy pockets gets old fast, and digging through fistfulls of change is a PITA. I'm going to resort to carrying around a moneyback on a rope soon. It'll double as a self defense tool against muggers - I'll brain you with my bag of money. Hahaha.
It'd be cooler to see disposable electronic cards of some sort.. they don't cost too too much and can be made as anonymous as cash. Although, you do have the electronic tampering issue without a clearinghouse of some type. That'd be bad. I have a theory that all these coins are supposed to deter people from using paper money..
..don't panic
That explains why the girls at our club consider the Americans such royal cheapskates.
The going rate for G-string donations on this side of the border is $5-$10 Canadian. That's about $3-$7US at the current exchange rate.
I suppose it might be because the $2 coins are impractical for this sort of thing. They tend to fall out, and I'd imagine they'd be wickedly cold if they didn't.
more coins or smart cards?
Being called a dork on Slashdot must be like being called the retard in special ed.
By the way, one thing I didn't realize was already in the current money design is the face watermark. I just looked at a current design $50 and realized that I could see Grant's face on the right side of the bill as a watermark. (looks in wallet) Yep, Andy's face is a watermark on the $20 too.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
No, the old ones are not replaced, they are still valid money, and every 20years is hardly every day. Plus the note in question has been replaced in 1996 so the new one would be 7 years.
Any old Canadian bills in circulation that go through a bank here in Canada are taken out and replaced. Paper money doesn't last too long in circulation anyhow as it wears out and needs to be replaced. Using banks to remove old bills from circulation could easily start to flush out counterfeits of old bills as even if they can make a (near)perfect copy, they will be one if a few sources of 'new' old bills entering circulation. After eliminating known legitimate sources (By trading in old currency) your are left with interesting and fewer sources and statistics does the rest. The big offenders get caught because of the disruption they create is big enough to attract them notice. About that other point that the money is still legal, yes however, Sitting on money for no reason in not economically rational as there are guaranteed (some by government) better then inflation interest options. As for the policy, as a consumer the transaction is fluid through the various upgrades to the money (here in Canada). I myself support this and similar policies as it is a effective non-invasive way with by which law and order can be strengthened and maintained. If and only so long as there is no trade off freedom vs security is not the choice easy?
I recently travelled to the US from New Zealand and found the money a real pain. Kiwi money is plastic and all different colours and sizes. Over here you simply look at the edge of the notes in your wallet to see the correct colour and fish out that one. While in the US I had to remove the notes from my wallet first so I could read the numbers. As a tourist this made me feel uncomfortable about doing public transactions, not being one who likes to 'flash the cash'.
I worked on note vending machines at the time of our change from paper to plastic money so I was one of the people invited to the Reserve Bank to see the features of the new money. We where given real and counterfeit US money and asked to tell which was which, it was impossible to tell to the untrained eye. Then we where shown some of the methods used to try and counterfeit the Australian currency, which uses the same technology as ours. At was funny to see bits of paper with holes cut in them for the clear window etc. They also showed off some ideas they haven't used yet. One was a clear window at each end with printed lines that create an interference pattern when the note is folded in half. I also saw what happens if you over heat the plastic notes, they shrink ! But don't worry you have to get them real hot to do that. On a practical note (no pun intended) you need to look at static handling for new plastic notes in note handling machines or else the stick together.
People tend to spend change quicker than they do bills, especially here where change in meaningless. Having $5 and $10 coins would mean an instant boost to the conomy where people will be spending mor ein little increments than they think they are.
I can only imagine what they will call the currency when Africa get a free trade sone...
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
The strong survive.
... since computers have vastly simplified forgery.
;-p
Now I know what all those signs make money using your home computer taped to light poles and signs were going on about
Sounds like GW.Bush.. who will one day grace your doorstep with brownshirts and jackboots for your
sad lack of vision.
Jackson set up the federal bank? Or not. From "A Time Line of the National Bank", Jackson vetoed the National Bank's recharter in 1832.
Lastly, I think that in retrospect, the deportation of the Cherokee (and the thousands of deaths incurred during the process), despite a Supreme Court Ruling in their favor, slides down that hill from "controversial" to plain out and out "wrong"
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
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Being from Europe, I still have a couple of older $1-$50 bills lying around. When I come to the US in, say, a few years, will these bills still be accepted by stores or will I need to exchange them for newer bills?
where's all that Karma?
You'd think the Sacagawea coins were as heavy as old silver dollars the way people have been talking about the massive amounts of change they'd have to carry!
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
I don't know about you, but if I saw a stripper with a bulge under her panties, I'd leave the room pretty quickly.
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
i love the header animation on the website. it includes braille! i tried reading it, but i guess my fingers haven't developed that sensitivity.
to paraphrase Ken Huffman,
"This website is best appreciated on a tactile monitor."
- a.c.
- Print some pretty pictures and tell everyone I'll store their gold which they can later retrieve
- Forget the gold, just give them the paper.
- ???
- Profit!!!
Man I wish we were back on the gold standard!First, realize that counterfeit US currency is a much larger problem outside the US, for joe average. I live in Central America.. and seeing counterfeit bills is much more common. It's not like you see them every day, but if someone hands you US cash, especialy $100, you look very carefully. I've seen people who receive the odd counterfeit bill right from the bank.
It's not to absolutely prevent counterfeitting, but to make it easier to detect fakes. So if the bank hands you a stack of new-style 100s, it's easier for you to inpsect the bill than it is for old ones.. both because they are less worn, and becuase of the newer features. I've seen a counterfeit 100 that fooled several bankers.. it ahd everything, the 2 tone ink, watermarks, the embedded black thread or whatever it is, etc. If you compared it side by side, you could see it was wrong.. the watermark face was too fuzzy, the embedded strip wasn't clear enough, the 2tone ink wasnt' quite the right color, and the serial number was slightly wrong in color, and the paper didn't quite feel right.. but despite all that, you could easily convince yourself it WAS real.
IF someone handed you a stack of bills, and they were all old 100s... you are going to be suspicious. You are going to study carefully whether they are real or not. If I get a stack of 20s out of the machine, and one of them is oldschool, I have a more careful look at it.. something I woudln't do if they hadn't changed the printing. Doubly so if it's a 100.
It's not as rampant in the US because people are interrogated for passing counterfeit currency. Here, if someone passes one, the store or bank just says "this is counterfeit" punches a hole in it, and gives it back to you. Unless you were, say, trying to pass off a big stack of them, the cops aren't even called... it's no big deal, it's a fact of life.
If you walked into walmart with a bunch of 20s that don't feel quite right, look old and beat up, and are the old style, you can be sure that it's more likely someone will take a close look at them than if they were the newer ones and felt the same. And then you'd go to jail.
As for "printing as much as you destroy", now you are talking about a whole different issue.. the amount of cash in circulation is a meaningless number, other than meaning "do we have enough cash to conveniently let our economy work". The actual money that exists and cash in circulation are two very different things.
ON a side note... coming from a place where US currency in bad shape is not as accepted.. the newer large-face bills actually end up with the face getting rubbed off where the bill is folded much quicker than the older ones. IT's kind of annoying, because here, a bill in bad shape is not always accepted, as ultimtaely the US banks that take currency from foreign banks reject currency in bad shape.
Yes, old notes are valid money. BUT you forgot, or don't know, that cash circulates... bills eventually, from banks, make their way back to the Fed, where old ones are destroyed and new ones issued in their place. That's what he means. You will find many less old bills in circulation now than when they were first issued.
Furthermore, the reason YOU don't care about counterfeit bills is because you live in a country where counterfeit bills are extremely rare (The US). Counterfeit US currency is MUCH more of a problem outside the US, where a HUGE portion of the US cash in play exists. Over 1/3 of US bills are outside the US.
Counterfeitters who are in it for "the fun of it" are not the ones to worry about. It's those who pass off huge amounts of fake bills that are at issue, and as the number of old-style bills in circulation goes down every day, and the number fo new bills goes up, having any significant amount of old style bills used in a transaction gets mroe and more suspect, and people will look at it closer and closer.
If it was good enough to be given to you, it is good enough to spend, except if you spend that fake $100 at the wrong place, you'll end up spending the afternoon with the police, and if they find that you KNEW it was fake, you'll be spending a lot more time with them. I guarantee after the first time you lose a few hundred bucks due to counterfeit bills that you "didn't think to check closely", you'll see it in a different way.
If you try to, say, deposit them in a bank, and the bank realizes they are fake, you don't get your money, or your bills back.
is this story related to the fact that saddam husseins son 'withdrew' 2bn in US Dollar notes from the bank in Baghdad 2 days before the US troops got there. Apparently the cash withdrawal weighed 22 tonnes and was taken away in farm vehicles. no doubt found its way to a swiss bank... it amazes me that so much money could be there in cash. what were they selling? rd
'cos if they sued, what would they get paid in?! They'd have to sue but ask for the settlement in Euros!
Regarding easy forging, always remember that MS Excel became the No.1 spreadsheet over Lotus 1-2-3 *because* it was easier to copy.
So what does that tell ya? Eh?!
What do you think that chances are of Jackson being in the classic "Buddy Christ" pose?
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
In Australia we have multicoloured currency printed on a polymer (plastic) substrate. It feels totally different to paper and there hasn't been a successful counterfeiting of it yet. Our biggest problem is people trying to pass forged US bills.
As soon as drugs and prostitution are legalized.
Your bill would have to be pretty damn good to fool the change machine.
Most businesses that can make lots of change are wise to laundering, and take steps to prevent it.
THe way counterfeitters make money is by selling counterfeit dollars in bulk to someone else for so many cents on the dollar.... nowhere near face value. Like, to a drug dealer, or anyone else into the underworld who is in a better position to launder it.
How does this affect Blind people?? They often can only figure out what note they are holding by its physical features.. have they changed?
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Fake US currency is a much larger problem outside the US than it is internally.. if you go to a foreign country with a currency pegged against the dollar, or a place where the dollar is accepted generally, you will find people inspect the bills much more carefully, and are more knowledgable about how to detect fakes than your average american clerk. Don't make the mistake of thinking they know less about it than you do. They often won't accept bills if they are too beat up, even if they appear real.
You general don't check all your 20s, especially if they are all in the new format. If it was a roll of old 20s, battered and beaten, you might check them very carefully, as even the fact that they are all old format raises a flag.
"Carter quarters." A boon to vending machine operators throughout the late Seventies owing to the carelessness of the spending public.
Actually, someone deployed one of the Sacajawhatsis dollars at the low-stakes poker game two weeks ago, and it drew suspicious stares when it landed in the pot. I recall quipping that someone must've been to one of the local Indian casinos recently.
"When will people learn that SIZE DOESN'T MATTER.
(My shrink makes me say this 50 times every morning. Or until I stop crying, whichever comes first.)"
If you want to make your shrink cry? Write him a check for a small amount. Then when he complains say "SIZE DOESN"T MATTER".
"Look at all the pink and purple"
"Our money is so gay"
BASE Conflict for Quake 3
I was suprised I had to read down so far to see anything about Australian currency, considering it was the first country in the world to use entirely polymer notes for all its money. Here are the notes as we use them.
Imagine getting mugged and having your finger or thumb chopped off. I'd rather have some type of removable object that needs secondary comfirmation. I know the existing debit card fits into this, but it has to be free to use to be widely accepted. I hate to pay to spend my money.
Being called a dork on Slashdot must be like being called the retard in special ed.
What, you're expecting people to know their history? Benjamin Franklin wasn't even president, but nobody seems to question his presence on the $100. It's not that I don't agree with you, it's just that this issue has "lost cause" written all over it.
Wouldn't it be nice if we did currency by the bitwise operations used for subnetting?
Then instead of these damn eight 1's I have in my wallet, I'd have $255.
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
>>Little off the norm for Slashdot, but it's interesting since computers have vastly simplified forgery."
The first major remake of the 20 dollar bill was supposed to prohibit forgery, yet forgery increased, probably due to counterfeiters capitalizing on the newness of the bills.
Many stores now use the gold detector pens. Those pens actually work sometimes, try them on different papers.
I have worked as a cashier and these bills look worse than some pictures printed off a computer.
In fact one method of counterfeit detection is to look for the ink runs, the glitter ink that comes of, misalignments, poor quality paper, etc. The others methods are on that chart showing an absolutely perfect bill, but if I follow the chart they are all counterfeit.
Forgery prevention through quality mismanagement is just plain wierd.
Oh, and they stink too, the smell is just nauseating. A rather poor showing by printers of the most collected product in human history.
ObURL: The mysterious link between the 20 and 9-11
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Australian Currency
Great pics of our Aussie currency. Also includes info on the people on the notes.
The Dutch had a few barcoded banknotes until the Euro replaced them. If you're interested in ordering some for your own economy, the Dutch printers Joh. Enschedé will do them up for you. As they say "The use of bar-codes . . . gives a banknote an unmistakable contemporary feel."
butt ugly.
If you liked the silly old guilder notes don't despair. The designers of those crazy Dutch notes had to look elsewhere for work when the Euro came in and they found it in Hong Kong; unfortunately their design for the HK$10 note, interesting as it is, looks nothing Chinese and everything Dutch.
New Zealand changed to Decimal Currency ( Dollars and cents from Pounds etc ) back in 196?
/. needs a spellchecker. )
Back then the Bills were Different Colours and Sizes
( one Brown , Two Purple, Five Orange, Ten Blue, Twenty Green, Fifty Orange, Hundred Red )
for someone like me who didn't see lots of 100s or 50s it was easy tell everythign but those two apart
the 1 was the smallest bill the 100 the bigest,
this mean that bleachign a $1 you can't reprint it into anything else.
NZ recently (ie in the last 10 years) Changed to Plastic Money with See-through Windows in the same sizes and colours
you still can't Print plastic with seethrough windows on your inkjet printers.
I wonder to myself how much the company that makes the textile/paper for the Greenback pays in donations to political parties.
switching would mean only Large organisations / countries could counterfiet , and there is nothing stopping them doing that now anyway.
(
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
Euro notesfor the US citizens who might not have seen them yet...
Swiss banknotes also a favorite of drug dealers... Please notice that they include many security features (like euros) and the 4 national languages (the fourth one is spoken by only 30000-50000 people).
Notice the 1000 (~650 $) francs note, highest bill in circulation in the world. You can buy your car in switzerland and not even look like you have much money in your wallet... These are always carefully checked...
Lastly the new 20 pesos bill from México (third from the top). It's polymer based and includes a little transparent window... Supposedly undestroyable (except by fire...)
If you belive those superstitious proclamations should not be there, you should make this known to your representatives, people in charge of issuing currency, etc.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you try putting yen notes into some color photocopiers, it will produce an all-black sheet of paper!
I don't know if this is built-in to the machine, or something to do with the paper.
I discovered this accidentally while photocopying receipts for an expense report.
shouldn't that be pictures of presidents dead from the neck up?
I'm sure its been mentioned but Oz started switching to them around '94. Those bad boys are great. I recently put $100 through the wash and of course it survived. Try doing that with paper money. When I go surfing now, I can leave my money in my wetsuit pocket instead of leaving it on the beach. I have heard somewhere that Oz money is the hardest to forge (Not that any one would want to copy the Pacific Peso). Why don't the Yanks change to it. Is it because the technology was developed in Oz (I think). Also seeing the Euro was a brand new currency, why didn't they make it plastic instead of flimsy paper.
It just seems a bit silly.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
If the US followed the Oz/NZ route and went with plastic, they wouldn't have to change the design. Just the stuff it's printed on. Then it would still be distinctive but would also be secure.
I'm sure if they did change there'd be people complaining.
'Plastic Money is the first step towards a New World Order'
PS Do Kiwis also claim that plastic money was their idea.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Damn, I'd better print out a bunch before the new ones come out!
The American style is very traditional, still using Ye-Olde fonts and lines. When are they going to change and go with something new? If that poll question said "Do you think the money could look better?" rather than "Do you think this is better than before?" the percentage would probably be the same because everyone would think it is better than the last design already... wouldn't they?
Guess who's next in line to be liberated. I'm sure they've only been spared because of their billions in holdings at certain New York banks. Nevermind 90% of these terrorists are Saudi, Iraq is a much scarier 3rd world country.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
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