Slashdot Mirror
Counterfeiting With High Resolution Inkjets
Makarand writes "Thanks to the availability of low cost high quality inkjet printers, crooks
are now able to
produce currency indistinguishable from the real
banknotes, at least under dim lighting conditions like that in a bar or a nightclub.
The term "digifeiters" is being coined for counterfeiters that use
cheap high-resolution printers to produce fake currency. Unlike costly color xerographic copiers that come inbuilt with features
to detect security details on banknotes and stop currency copying, no cheap printers
come with such feature. An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries." I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.
Was when they visited the photocopy place and tried to copy dollars, then tried to pay the copy guy with their printed money. Ahh, I miss that show.
Go for plastic bank notes like australia. They work well... They even have clear patches you can see right through.
...printing currency on cheap printers so you can afford assemble a Beowulf cluster of them!!
Try counterfeiting those.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
They can't duplicate the time-worn faded near-illegibility of real currency. Just be on the lookout for crisp bills.
The coolest voice ever.
I'm not sure about you... but I'd certainly notice if the texture or "feel" of a dollar was off. Aren't they printed on an almost clothlike paper or something? I notice the difference between that and normal printing paper easily. So where are these people getting that style of paper, and does it change the quaility or ability to print... or are bar tenders and the such just stupid and don't realize?
...
Good job not knowing how to use fucking html!
I'm surprised they can turn a profit, what with having to spend $80 to replace jammed ink cartridges every three minutes.
How is this news? Ink jet printers have been cheap for years - they've gotten better and cheaper, but I doubt a new ink jet printer would make it any easier to counterfit currency than an ink jet printer bought two years ago.
It seems to me the texture is the difficult thing to copy. You can't photocopy a bill onto regular paper and pass it off as legitimate, not because it looks wrong, but because it feels wrong.
And of course, this is why new bills are being introduced with difficult-to-fake security features. How are you going to get something as simple as a watermark with an ink jet printer?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
In real life, a friend here counterfitted bills and did bills that were no longer in circulation so the store owners couldn't tell.... he got away with tons
And this was a bubblejet 5 years ago...
Kind of scary what you can now make.
On a lot of checks when you make photocopies of then you can quite clearly see the VOID marked on the check so you know it is a copy (for your records). Using software with those drivers making the void or watermarks appare help you will your documentation. Because if you print out a copy of the scanned check you may try to resend it (thus wasting cash) or try to cash it twice and get in trouble. For keeping proper records these features are quite usefull.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Have u heard about the guy that tried to counterfeit a 6 dollar bill? that didn't go well...
Great Atrocit
The big thing about currency isn't the image so much as the ink and the feel of the cloth. That's not paper, it's linen, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a supply of convincing stock. The ink, while less of a factor, still contributes to the gestalt of cash - it affects the smell, and doesn't wash off when exposed to moisture.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Come on, Beavis and Butthead tried that many many years ago.
I mention this because this could be the next step for inkjets (if it hasn't been done already!) with all the privacy concerns that entails.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I know of a case where someone got away with passing fake bills, but was later apprehended when security tapes were reviewed.
greetings earthlings
what the ???'s are...
1. Quit job.
2. Complain about Cowboyneal option missing.
3. ???
4. Profit....
(Yes it was horrible...)
I dont like it when people think about what I think (say). Rather I try to make them think like I think.
Its like the RIAA said you can't hope to stop it or work on an alternate method, so make printers illegal!
Currencies that have hologram components to them. They're [the holograms] are incredibly difficult to counterfeit(you won't be manufacturing a good facsimile on your home printer), plus they look really cool. On that note, Singapore easily has the coolest banknotes that I have ever seen.
It doesn't matter. The $50 and $100 bills are the same size and material as a $1 bill. Bleach a $1 bill until you have nothing left visible but the raw material, then print a $50 or $100 over it.
Bingo - instant profit.
At least with U.S. currency, there are more issues than just he appearence of the bill. A big one, for example, is the material. If you printed out a set of nice new bills on standard copier paper, nobody would believe for a second that it was a real bill, low lights or no. There have been counterfiters who have bleached out low value bills, such as ones, and printed higher values onto them, like twenties, but I'm not sure how well your average inkjet printer would feed the cottony paper used for bills.
I'm no currency expert, but I would imagine there are a lot of issues like this that aren't effected by the gross appearence of the bill for both U.S. and other bills.
Narrative
Last year, someone went into a convenience store in rural Michigan, and bought a candy bar. They paid for it with a $200 bill with George W Bush's face on it. The clerk gave the customer about $199.30 in change without a problem.
I think it was the manager who first raised the question about the validity of this bill later.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Of course, with printer manufacturers producing beauties like this, it's no wonder people can get away with things like this.
And from the Treasury: Currency FAQ From PBS: Anatomy of a Bill: The Currency Paper.
I'm no counterfeiter, but just curious as to how these copiers would detect currency? Do they actually recognize that currency is being copied and prohibit the operation, or add watermark stuff like "void". How could the copiers recognize every currency in the world, especially with updates, etc. being made to them?
Is this a legal requirement by the USA or something for copier manufactuers?
Seriously, why change equipment that everybody has to use, just because the US doesn't want to print decent banknotes?
Is this the incentive for the US to change it's currency? Most countries change their notes eventually anyway, so maybe America should consider doing it sooner rather than later.
The UK has that fancy bit of shiny foil woven into the paper that is easy to spot, and Australia uses polymer notes with transparent windows in them (these last longer than paper too). There are lots of alternatives available that a simple printer could not copy.
OTOH, as Bruce Schneier pointed out in Secrets and Lies, sometimes the cost of addressing the problem is more than the cost that the problem causes you. :-)
"An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries." I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.
...
I don't think it'd make any difference for printing software. The only software that would be likely to sport anti-counterfeiting is the firmware in the printer itself.
Anyhow, good luck to make a piece of software that detects fake banknotes, and even if it did detect fake dollars with 100% accuracy (fat chance), I'll just print fake Irakian dinars and off I'll be to the currency exchange counter. No wait
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
In the US at least, the ink is 'raised' on even a new bill -- one only has to feel it to see. It would be impossible to replicate that with an inkjet.
another vulnerable group would be strippers ..er... hand to them.
since they don't exactly have the time to inspect the bills that you
A more positive idea would be an electronic exchange/barter 'currency' widely used that would replace the centralized fiat paper money system we have now. This would have a lot of benefits, not the least of which would be to create more wealth for the common man and move power away from the centralized banking system.
Not a lot of work seems to be being done on this,
although it is clearly within reach now. You could even barter your open source programing skills to businesses who needed special features.
I remember discussing this idea online on usenet 7-8 years ago, and having someone from the federal reserve saying it would never work, so the idea itself seems to have reached the ears of the banking system. Its a shame no one seems to be putting much work in it though. There were a lot of mastercard online debit and electronic cash systems going up before the dot.com bust, but none really set up with a barter system backing in mind.
pope is the antichrist. catholic pedophile priest scandal: http://home.fuse.net/gospel
I like the nice veiled suggestions put forth to slashdot geeks from time to time. I suppose I can buy that color laser printer now, it'll cover its price in no time.
Banknotes should include security features that cannot easily be copied. In short, they should build notes that would cost more than its value in fabrication, should it be made fake. There are see-through sections, tiny cutouts, plastic parts, different materials, thickness, ink and smell that should really differentiate bills even in low-light conditions. Its much better than rigging drivers or chips to detect bills, which I'm sure I can bypass simply by laying the bill diagonally and cutting out the result appropriately.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
print it on glossy photo paper, not on cheapo recycled office paper.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They were xeroxing nickels.
The spent 25 cents for each xeroxed nickel.
After they got a bunch, they raggedly tore the extra paper from around their fake paper "nickels" and tried to buy candy from the clerk.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Sort of related: HP now offers invisible ink for inkjet printers viewable only under UV or IR light, intended to print stuff like tracking barcode on financial documents without customers noticing them (so shred all your junk mail, not just stuff with visible account numbers, since you don't know what might be printed invisibly on it). Maybe that's another way they can surreptitiously tag the output of color printers. Your printer specs say the inkjet print head has 48 dots? Have you ever actually counted them? Maybe they'll add an unannounced 49th dot that squirts invisible ink on the paper, and a tiny amount of invisible ink in a secret chamber of every cartridge. Yeah! That's the real reason the govt wants to extend the DMCA ban third-party inkjet refills, so they can keep tracing printer output back to its source! Tinfoil hat time... :)
From Anna's News Clippings
"A woman was charged $2.12 at a Diary Queen drive-through in Danville, Kentucky, and she was given $197.88 in change for her $200 bill. In case a clerk might not know that a $200 bill isn't legal tender, this taped-together bill was clearly marked as a 'moral reserve note' and featured George W. Bush's portrait. The White House picture on the bill's back has yard signs reading 'We like broccoli'and 'Rooms not for rent'. Police were notified as to the woman's presence shortly after she left. They do not consider the bill to be a counterfeit one."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.
This point should be moot - it's not GimpPrint's (or GimpPrint's authors') responsibility to enforce the legality of what you print. This is just like DRM telling me what I can or can't do with music I own - or that I created, for that matter. If GimpPrint (or any printing software) came to have such a feature, it would either be boycotted or forked with the restrictions removed. Not because of any desire to do illegal stuff, but simply in the name of freedom and to avoid anything remotely DRM-like.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
"Go for plastic bank notes like australia. They work well... They even have clear patches you can see right through."
This is a great idea that has future flexibility. As the Ozbuck becomes worth less and less, and it costs more and more to make them due to usual inflationary issues, they can just make the holes larger and larger to save money (sort of like with the economics of swiss cheese).
Eventually, sometime around 2030 or so, the bills will resemble rectagular rings.
To slow down counterfeit bills (about 1 in every 10,000 bills is a counterfeit). The US treasury will be releasing new bills this year. And every 7 years.
Having caught people using counterfeit bills from working in nightclubs and restaurants, it is starting to become a problem.
Here is a link:
new $20 dollar bills.
TruePunk | Games
My store went from no counterfeits to getting 4 fake $20 in as many weeks. Then I got a UV lamp that beeps if something reacts too much under the light. It can be defeated, but that requires more effort than clicking print and lining up both sides of the page.
Since we started using that, we have stopped almost $150 in counterfeits. Not bad for a $40 lamp. In the two years that it has been in place, the bank has not found anymore counterfeits in our deposits.
One would think that a nice dim area where these bills are easier to pass, that a UV lamp would be even more useful since you could see things like the UV emblem that is on canadian money or the red fibers.
The inkjet printer can't duplicate ANY of the security features of a modern banknote...
Saying the printer is at fault for some bar getting a fake bill is absurd.... until that printer can reproduce the: threaded strip, watermark, 2 tone ink, and feel of the paper, it's not a threat. This is someone wanting to pimp their new technology based on a campaign of fear.
Sure, you can bleach $1 bills, and print on those... but really, this is NOT a big problem.
The funny thinga bout currency counterfeitting... as the number of fake bills caught in an area rises, people start looking more carefully.
If there are just a few here and there, it's not a threat.
If we shift our economy to Wonkadollars, there are a couple of considerations:
Do we need to give them a hard candy shell so they melt in your mouth, not in your wallet?
What about the problem of sneaky counterfeiters using Ex-Lax to make fake Wonka dollars? Again, melting in the vicinity of the rear of the pants is a problem.
De La Rue has been working with computer firm Software 2000 on an anti-digifeiting system, which modifies printer driver software to recognise data patterns indicative of banknotes from many countries.
It's not that hard to crack software.
Unlike costly color xerographic copiers that come inbuilt with features to detect security details on banknotes and stop currency copying, the cheap printers come with such feature.
So both the costly and cheap printers have these features? What's all the fuss about then?
I once tried to trick a guy with one of those inspirational message fake twenties that are sometimes lying around. He didn't even look at it and he said, "That's not real money" and dropped it.
I had been fooled until I looked at it, but I doubt I'll be fooled again-- fighting counterfeits is an eduational issue.
*Feel* your money. US money in particular feels different that most paper you can get your hands on-- in fact the paper US currency is printed on is legal only for the purposes of printing money.
Train you wait staff/cashiers to give every piece of currenc a little squeeze and they'll know instantly whether it's real-- regardless of lighting conditions.
I've yet to see this one, but I know it happens. People will bleach the ink out of a US $20. Then print a $100 on it. $75 profit. Even has the nifty nylon strip still in it!.
"There's actually an artist that "creates" currency artwork, not resembling real currency at all. But, he goes to places and "buys" (barters) for things with his artwork that actually ends up selling for thousands of real dollars."
Hmmm. That would be a great excuse in court for the counterfeiter who is very bad at what he does. "Your honor, these don't resemble real money, right? I'm an artist! Back off!"
I try not to, but I can't resist this time.
It seems that out dollar has been gaining value for quite some time, while the US is going broke faster then the Soviet Union did.
I'm not Seth.
Why did Saddam have dollars instead of euros?
Our money is used to control the world economy. Monitary supply is watched extremely closely by the fed. By keeping our money consistant it makes all those illicit activities good to do because the money never "expires".
Could you imagine a columbian drug czar or saddam going to the bank to exchange their 1/2 a billion dollars?
This is how we tople governments. Money.
Greed is good. -Gordon Gekko
The article is referring to british pounds. This may not work as well with US dollars.
I don't recommend finding out.
I'm not wasting precious ink on counterfeiting !!
NZ bills have see-through embossed plastic windows and last time I checked my Lexmark I didn't see a cartridge that would replace paper with clear embossed plastic. Maybe the US should just make the face bigger. Yeah...that should do it.
...when the first hi-rez color copiers came out in Japan (1990?)...took a month or two for high quality fake YEN bills to show up on the streets. All the copiers were then promptly equipped to detect whenever you put a bill in them and tried to make copies.
Not that anyone was discouraged from finding ways around that, however...
In Malaysia, back on 1997 there are both counterfeit $1 coins and $10 notes. The coutnerfeit $1 coins is so popular that the central bank stop issuing $1 coin now.
Back to the $10 notes, I have receive one in year 2000, after taking a change from a grocery store, where the teller sneak in the $10 notes with few others $10. A perfect counterfeit from inkjet printer, with a gray color insurance mark. Now, the central bank issue $10 notes with more shinning "insurance marks" .
Posted anonymously to not karma whore, and, well, for obvious reasons.
For about five years now I have been in the counterfeitting game. Using nothing more than an Epson printer, teslin (a special paper that does not tear, and bonds to laminate very well), and laminates with holograms (easily made using a hacked gold interference cart), I can produce fake identification cards that will pass every test up to destructive (not including having them run against the DMV database).
After a while, creating fake IDs was child's play...nothing new here, time for me to move along. I learned how to create fake checks with nothing more than a laser printer, specialized check stock, and specialized MICR toner. When combined with the fake IDs, it took only a few minutes of work to illicitely gain hundreds of dollars.
Unforunantly, this method has become more widespread, so it was time to move on. Now, using an offset printing press, a magnetic encoder, and an embosser, I can create fake credit cards in a matter of a half hour or so. Go to the store, swipe for a few laptops, and sell.
This said, I have NEVER counterfeitted money because all of these methods are just so much easier. Why bother having the Secret Service breathing down your back for that, when you can just utilize the same techniques to make large amounts of cash?
Point being: most people who utilize fraud for a living do NOT make fake currency, and those who do have much better equipment than described. I'd worry about stopping identity theft, which is all too easy to perform.
I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.
Don't worry about it, I'm sure GimpPrint will pick up on the "Evil Node" all on its own.
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
They'll fix the counterfeiting problem like they fixed CD's by making the money not work anywhere.
..like, for instance, Norwegian ones (see http://www.norgesbank.no/english/notes_and_coins/n otes.html for more on those) which has real securitymeasures like holograms and 'mother of pearl'-effect on it. Good luck trying to copy or scan that, 'cuz it plain can't be done without very, very specialised equipment. In fact, a while back I wrote up a short piece on Norwgian money for one of my american friends who were comming over to visit, and since he wondered how they have apperantly managed to scan it at http://www.norgesbank.no/english/notes_and_coins/c ounterfeit200kr.html , I gave them a call and asked - and was told that that picture was made out of a "number of scans at various angles blended together". For some reason they didn't want to give me any more details on how to achive that efect...
Sorry for not giving proper links, but I seem to have misplaced my little 'cheat-note' on how to write that bit of code...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
This was the thing I read on it.
I worked in a bar in Peru for a bit and fake Peruvian notes there were a big problem. (Relatively of course - not too much non-local forgeries I shouldn't think!) You could tell through the feel but mostly they would wear away along a centre fold in a way quite different to real notes. We had a checker though so whatever the age of the note the serial numbers would show up black on the fakes and florecent on the real deals.
This topic came up in a story in the New York Times magazine today. This is otherwise an interesting article about a white racist who was actually black, but after ending one stretch in prison he ended up back there again after trying to pass a phone $20 at a Dunkin' Donuts. Aside from not being a dimly lit location, there was a cop behind him in line to help when the cashier refused the bill.
We should be expecting to find water spots on all bank notes resulting from people dropping water on them to see if they're from inkjets.
"Yeah! That's the real reason the govt wants to extend the DMCA ban third-party inkjet refills, so they can keep tracing printer output back to its source! Tinfoil hat time... :)"
Printing is one way you can get around copyright/trademark restrictions.
Consider the simple example of Disney. They want to get a cut every time you buy a Mickey Mouse T-Shirt, and they crack down on unauthorized knock-offs. Now, there is nothing stopping you from scanning a pic of Mick and printing it to iron on to your T-shirt. This is just a simple example. There are many other ways to "enjoy" printing copyrighted materials and pictures like this.
With the DMCA, it is conceivable to curtail this. Imagine if each image produced had a digital value ID based on how it looked. When you print anything, the image would go through a section of the printer driver that would boil your image down to a value ID, and this would be checked through the Internet against registered ID's to see if it was close.
So, when you try to print that cool Wolverine picture (scanned from a comic book or movie ad in a magazine) to hang on your wall, you get an alert "Printing aborted. Attempted unauthorized printing of copyrighted material detected".
Far fetched? Yeah. Far off too: I think it would need much more bandwidth and a more ubiquitous Internet. However, if some of the worst predictions about the DMCA come true, I think "they" would eventually want to stop "ability to scan and print anything you want without copyright holder's permission".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I think a wide spread issue of this ability to reproduce bills would be a problem if they were good enough to fool change machines.
I know the local gas station accepts bills in their outdoor machines, let alone do it your self carwashes that provide coins for change to use in the machines, though some are switching to tokens rather then quarters. I've never tried something I knew was counterfit, but i'd imagine that, given that these vending machines use scanners to identify a bill, i'd think they'd be easier to fool.
Further more, small time counterfitting is less likely to raise an eyebrow. A $20, $50, $100 will be looked at most carefuly... where a $5, or a $10 isn't going to be considered as much of a threat.
While I wouldn't want to buy, let's say a car, with quarters, they are indeed legal tender, and no human is going to argue about a quarter being counterfit, and quarters don't have any serial numbers to boot.
This is what i'd be concerned about, a flood of sub $20 counterfit currency.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
How is this possible? Anyway, I called the bank; they said they would take it back and do the paperwork. But they would -not- reimburse me the $20! Cheap bastards! (kidding) ;-)
Perhaps using silver coin, or small amounts of gold, or gold-and-silver combonations would help stop counterfeiting crimes. Lead-to-gold conversion was proved impossible, since atoms are exactly conserved and can not be copied like paper money.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I think, as with most crimes requiring some skill and thought, there will be those who attempt to "digifeit" to see simply if they can. (Sound familiar?)
....Bethanie....
Then again, there will be those who won't even try it simply because it's illegal.
In Canada we have holograms embedded into all bills 20 dollars and up. While some crooks have indeed gotten away with glueing on fake holograms, anyone with half a clue could tell simply by touch that the bills were fakes. Then again, from my experience people arent checking bills too throughly at busy nightclubs.. I am sure in a single night at the ones around here you could pass at least 1G in fake 20s without a problem at all.
"A few months ago I got a bogus $20 from an automatic teller machine."
That wasn't an ATM. It was just a booth containing an inkjet printer. It was set to print out whatever you ordered.
About a year ago, I counterfeited some "red money" and spread it around my middle school campus. My stupid teachers didn't think it could be done since the money was on red paper, but it took all of about five minutes to produce a perfect master copy on a white sheet of paper. The project was ruined, needless to say. I had serious problems with it, though. I'm glad it failed.
"Unlike costly color xerographic copiers that come inbuilt with features to detect security details on banknotes and stop currency copying, the cheap printers come with such feature." The problem with long senentences is that the author often forgets what they were trying to say by the time they reach. (I think the submission should read "the cheap printers come with _NO_ such feature")
Comment removed based on user account deletion
NZ Currency ;)
Sure some people complained it looked like Monopoly money at first, but they have shut up now
I don't live in the US.
Recently I had to purchase some US cash for an upcoming trip to the States. My first reaction to seeing US bank notes for the first time was, "that looks like monopoly money".
Having the notes all the same size, and in a monocrome colour scheme is just asking for this sort of thing.
(New Zealand bank notes are coloured, and printed on plastic paper).
Gold, it's a lot harder to conterfiet. And when you do, it's radioactive.
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
There still is plenty of old, easy-to-counterfeit money in circulation. It's still legal tender.
Meh.
Taco and friends need to read this book.
Answers to a few questions.
Doesn't the paper feel different? Yes, but there are a lot of idiots here.
Don't the bills have security strips that are different colors? Yes, but who carries a UV light with them and even if they did there are a lot of idiots here
Where can I get that type of paper? It's actually made out of denim, so if you have enough time for trial and error you can actually make it out of your old jeans - $25 pair = at least 100 bills after you master the technique. (look in kids books on how to make paper out of newspaper - similar technique)
In conclusion, my solution to this is do away with money. Make everything free. Then, the morally poor will be the "poor people" and those with high standards will be "weathy people." Everyone would actually have a chance in life and it would be their fault if they blew it. Plus, Microsoft would be open source.
You could be a cockeyed.com reader
If not, I suggest becoming one.
"..the clerk told me that I would not be able to pay for the copies with my fake money. Disappointed but understanding, I paid with a counterfit check."
We've got tons of graduates of the Americorps program, they're dumber than rocks. The clerk likely never handles money in her personal life, she's got her "Bridge" debit card issued by the Family Incineration Agency.
I wonder just what law was violated here?
As for the technical aspects. Take a look at the "big head" notes. Their is microprinting on the lower left side of the portrait. This microprinting is so fine, that light reflecting off of them scatters making it impossible to make a clear copy. In addition, there is multi-colored ink on one of the 5/10/20/50/100 numbers in the corners. And there is that pesky watermark. Oh, and ink from inkjets runs like there is no tommorow. A sweatty person couldn't pass those notes.
All in all, the penalties for counterfitting and the risk of getting caught are too high.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Almost like printing your own money....
/smacks forhead
Hey!? Wait-just-a-moment.
doh!
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
This would not happen or be possible if gold and silver were still used as legal tender instead of printed paper. Last time I checked the alchemist still are losing and the physists don't have a cost effective means for forging gold or silver.
Like so:c oins/counterfeit200kr.html'>Security features on the 200-krone note</a>
<a href='http://www.norgesbank.no/english/notes_and_
Only without the annoying space slashcode insists on mangling the post with.
Your links:
Some Norwegian Banknotes
Security features on the 200-krone note
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
"she's got her "Bridge" debit card issued by the Family Incineration Agency."
Is it good like a Player's Club card at Soaring Eagle Casino?
cheaper printers
But if they any good at what they do they could afford a more expensive printer.
This is an intentional move to stave off deflation. The problem is this administration has the biggest crock of shit plan for the economy since regan.
I always wondered why Bush called Reganomics (aka Trickle down economics) "voodoo economics" and when he became president implemented the same dipshit plan? I guess the payoff he was getting was better than the payoff by helping the american people.
Oh since you missed my point, the dollar may change in value but for the long term it is the safest investment for the people I described. Where was the euro 20 years ago? How about all those new bills? The old ones are still valid. That is the point, not the "value" but the fact that the money is still "valid" is the point of storing money in USD.
Stupid economic policy is what is leading to the weaker dollar. That is to supposedly increase exports of goods and "stimulate the economy" as President moron says. However, the bigger fear is deflation, which is why you get the double talk that they are for a strong dollar but don't care if it declines.
When the government gives 400 million in tax cuts to the rich to "stimulate investment" just remember that that 400 million would have been spent in it's entirety by the government. How much do you think the already rich will spend of that 400 million? 50% 25% 15%? Who knows?
Every poor dipshit in my state votes republican then bitches when we get less money from the federal government. Morons.
A question that comes to my mind is how much it costs to print a note with all these features and how long the note will last. I can imagine this being cost effective for very high denomination notes, but the cost may be prohibitive on lower denomination notes.
fucking hell, do it right, make the money more secure, its not hard, we did it 10 years ago.. and im sure they make plastic in that lovely green colour you americans seem to love so much
its like making the bike seat my comfy by wearing silly damn pants instead of fixing the damn seat. (thanks mr adams).
DRM, the stupid answer to any sufficiently simple question
dms0
-= world leaders choose world leaders not us, not a democracy, not a revolution! =-
Hmm... Let's see. You live in Lake Havasu City, AZ. Looks like you go to Lake Havasu High School (http://www.lakehavasuhighschool.org/).
It looks like your principal's name is Mark Van Hoorst. It seems his email address is mvanvoorst@havasu.k12.az.us.
Maybe you shouldn't be bragging about your mis-adventures online, eh?
BTW - I didn't email him; that's beneath me. But someone else might I suppose.
For those too damn lazy to actually copy/paste the links:
n otes.html
c ounterfeit200kr.html
http://www.norgesbank.no/english/notes_and_coins/
and
http://www.norgesbank.no/english/notes_and_coins/
printer manufacturers would just DMCA lock their printers and only allow digitally signed palladium enabled drivers to print things that are not currency of the country where the printer is sold.
... I've seen this month. Considering it's the end of the month, that says a lot.
"Your printer specs say the inkjet print head has 48 dots? Have you ever actually counted them? Maybe they'll add an unannounced 49th dot that squirts invisible ink on the paper, and a tiny amount of invisible ink in a secret chamber of every cartridge. Yeah! That's the real reason the govt wants to extend the DMCA ban third-party inkjet refills, so they can keep tracing printer output back to its source! Tinfoil hat time... :)"
As someone who's worked on peinters there's no secret chamber, or 49th dot. The firmware I doubt however, not because it isn't possible, but because it isn't economical on consumer equipment.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
WHatever happened to the good ole days and the fun and exciting world of off-set Litho or even a silkscreen?
Sure not everyone has the facilities, but you can carry off a more "heist" for less than the cost of the average high quality printer...
Not to mention the extra snazzy-ness of custom ink, knowledge of paper with cloth content, and OIL based perm. inks which won't run through your fingers while trying to pass the stuff off...
Printmaking..It's an art!
Not the printing forged money is ok, but I don't want my printer "deciding" what to and not to print. What's next, printers "deciding" not to print documents they deem as anti-government? Or not printing images they deem as pornography?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
The fakes are indistinguishable from the real thing, even by experts. (No surprise, they're made by experts.) Maybe Syria has a harder time, now, disposing of them, with its smuggling routes through Iraq interfered with. (Closed? You must be kidding.) Who knows how much is being printed in Russia? Dollars are very popular there.
It didn't take long at all to start copying the new bills, which is why the U.S. is going to another design already. You probably have some Syrian bills in your pocket right now. Take a look and see if you can spot them.
Meanwhile the Treasury is harrassing an artist, J.S.Boggs, for drawing funny money by hand and exchanging it for face value. Your tax "dollars" at work.
Real easy to determine if it's an inkjet print out: lick your finger and smear it on the paper. If it smears, it's a fake.
(Of course, you wouldn't want to put your finger back in your mouth after you smear it on that stranger's twenty, but there's simple solutions to that.)
Brazil's new 20 Reais note has a plastic insert. Very hard to counterfit. This would defeat the "too dark to see decent though not perfect copies" copies.
A lot of people don't like it though, feels different, doesn't fold the same.
A few nights ago, some friends and I went downtown to a "gentlemen's club." I was suprised I found that 2 of the 6 one dollar bills I was holding glowed white under the club's black lights. I showed my friend, who checked his own dollar bills and he also held a fake. Next time you're in a dark room with a black light, check your bills. You may be suprised at what you find.
dms0
using dubya-speell2003(c)
-= world leaders choose world leaders not us, not a democracy, not a revolution! =-
If 100 dollar bills are physically larger than 50's, and 50's larger than 20's and 20's larger than 10's and 10's larger than 5's and 1's smallest, it'll be kinda tough to bleach the bill and print a larger bill on it. Come on China has been doing it for years. But the US wouldn't wanna be like china would they?
"http://www.bartercard.co.nz/"
"Who run Bartercard?"
"MastercardBlaster run Bartercard"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries.
Who cares, the buisness is in printing fake IDs for high school students.
"You spelled colour wrong
It's better without the u which is never pronounced. The 2nd o is not pronounced, either, but we're working on that.
The word is spelled lose, not loose . You fucking idiot.
Based on the cover, the book could be titled: "Goatse - the Novel"
"Just as well GWB did invade, because there was obviously no time to waste on diplomacy"
No time to waste? Diplomacy had been tried for more than 11 years.
"You leftist green commie, how dare you suggest that GWB wants Iraq's oil"
Only a leftist green commie would think so, since the plan from the beginning was to take the oil from Saddam and turn it over to the Iraqis.
"To get rid of all those nasty weapons of mass destruction he had stockpiled, the missiles poised for strike, the chemicals ready to unleash and lets not forget all that Anthrax he used to fight off the invaders!"
We can't forget them. At this time, it appears likely he shipped them to Syria at the last minute.
"That's because $100 Canadian isn't enough money to buy a candy bar"
That is how the Americans were able to lure away J.S. Guigere and Wayne Gretsky for about $180 each. It amounted to $13,000,000 Canadian at the time.
Wow! Try clicking on the "Security features" :D There must be really high rates of :)
:D Pretty good :D Cool cool.
link on the pages for the 200- or 100-note.
Like, that's a whole lot of security features!
counterfeiting in Scandinavia!! Okay, just
joking around as I suppose that would not
be true with the fairly low crime rates
and everything.
Btw, for anyone wondering; I just checked
that a norwegian 200 krone note is worth
about 30 american dollar, and a 100 krone
note is, uhm, 15.. d'uh.
security for a 15 dollar note, and that
without making it all plastic!! Mother of
pearl effect.. LOL
For several months, I worked in a bank cash vault (Fifth Third Bank, Toledo OH USA) and noted some things.
... but then again, in handling coin, I soon learned to listen to the distinctive sound of silver tinging against the cupro-nickel normal coinage in the sealed bags.
(There was one false alarm that turned out to be Eisenhower dollars.)
... I can only conclude that this is because that these are generally places where the lighting is more dim, lots of small transactions take place, and frankly, where the environment is busy and loud.
Counterfeit 20s (and some 10s) showed time and time again in their deposits.
(It was particularly amusing to contact the customer about the debit, since it seems some of them expect the bank to simply replace the bill with a real one.)
... of course, it was a washed out line and that more than anything told me it was counterfeit.
... bills go through a lot, and you can't just go by the hue.
I've seen bills that have been dyed ... light green, dark purple, things like that.
It happens.
Firstly, silver coinage is very much out there, even to the point that a handful of silver Kennedy half dollars can be found in a single deposit from a department store (there was even a Franklin half in one batch). Perhaps people just don't notice silver coinage even in high-volume retail
Secondly, fake twenty dollar (US$20) bills are being easily passed along in bars
It could also be that the criminal element that does the counterfeiting is native to the bar-going crowd.
I have inspected these fake 20s in some detail. I noted right off the bat the "obvious" difference: the overall hue of the bill is off just enough to be suspicious. It is a little darker, and either slightly more yellow, brown and even a tiny bit purple. So it is easy for me to believe that these bills can be passed off in a darker environment.
The texture of the bills was OK, surprisingly. It could be that the paper was run through a washing and/or brushing mechanism to more simulate the cloth-y feel of a real bill. As for the microprinting
P.S. A final note about hue
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Now you see the fact of this old saying!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Funny how my XP install always tries to print a watermark that my printer software can never find. Doesnt happen on Win2k, Mandrake or any other operating system I've ever used....
At least the ink off my bubblejet thing does. Renders it useless for printing meeting minutes and agendas because we nearly always have at least a glass of water each and the printouts get used as coasters. That lovely wet washed out watercolour effect. So you wouldn't need a special pen to test, just a water sprayer or a wet finger.
I wonder if you could make fake aussie notes using transperancy film. Someone did get into trouble once for trying to pass off a friend's copy of a note out of pencil and paper as money. That was when we still had paper $2. I think the person who made the copy, even though it was only one sided, got into as much trouble as the idiot who tried to spend it. Not entirely rational law enforcement.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I think that would make a great plot for a caper movie -- pulling off a big heist of real currency paper from Crane & Co.
I've recently started working in a restaurant, and as such handle a fair deal of cash. I have to say, I've never bothered to check currency to see if it's real. I know in some department stores it's required for the clerks to use a counterfeit-detecting pen on anything over $20, but this is certainly not the norm.
The problem is that you can do a fairly lousy job, especially if you're giving me a wad of various bills to pay for your dinner. (ie, if you give me a bunch of $5's and $1's, I'd just throw them all in the register, most likely not even looking at them one-by-one.)
Machines exist for 'counting' money (at extremely high rates) that automatically check various security features. Suppose cash registers started having an interface to this -- you'd stick the money in, and it would automatically undergo security checks.
By the way, am I the only one who isn't too convinced that the new bill styles will be effective? The old ones will still be accepted, and if they're easier to forge, why wouldn't I just forge one of those? Frequently changing their design won't really counter counterfeiting (heh, no pun intended there).
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Uhhh... Nope.
Telus doesn't accept cash in BC. Someone actually _sued_ them based on the whole "legal-tender-must-accept" basis, and was awarded $1.50 in damages (the cost of paying the bill at a bank).
I also remember someone going through AirCare here (emissions testing) who tried to pay with a bag of pennies, and the RCMP ended up being called, and pointed out that while they did have to accept Canadian tender, that $24.oo in loose pennies was pushing his luck. IIRC, AirCare decided to accept them if they were rolled (apparently co-incidentally timed to the arrival of a news camera crew), so the guy and a couple clerks rolled them all.
since the plan from the beginning was to take the oil from Saddam and turn it over to the Iraqis.
"Like dayiick chayyneey, of halaliburtion" -- Dennis Miller
as long as it still has that new greenback smell, who cares :)
Just pondering.
... don't do real money. Go for casino chips or some other "meta-money."
This way, you'll get the casino goons and maybe the state gaming comission afer you, but it sure beats the secret service.
...for "eating the profits".
Xerox already has such a thing in their copiers.
-- Leeeter than leet
In Canada you could do Canadian Tire Money. Everyone knows it and spends it. It's pratically as good as real money and it should be 'easier' to copy. Too bad the largest bill is a $5.00 and if you had a wad of them you'd be highly suspect. More likely you'd need to copy the 10 cent and 25 cent bills. Lotta work.
get any "third party" refiled Lexmark Printer cartridges to work.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
The New Iraqi Dinar
Free Iran
Xante has a printer that will easily print onto polyester plates(at a little over a $1 a plate) @ 600 dpi. I would imagine one could create some rather nice counterfeit bills with them. The opnly down side is the printeres cost about $7,000 a piece.
Just curious if the anti-currency measures could be defeated by printing elements of the currency at different times. Just print a little bit of it, rewind the paper, print a different part of it, etc. Break it up into small enough chunks, and how would the printer know the difference?
"Derp de derp."
most amateur counterfeiters get caught
cat
Have we not overlooked the obvious? Why do we need $1000 bills when everyone has debit and credit cards? In fact, I can't remember the last time I've used a hundred dollar bill (hint: my salary is more than a hundred dollars a month).
As counterfeiting becomes more sophisticated, the need for high value currency has diminished. Sure, we should keep 10 dollar bills and maybe even 20 dollar bills. But in this modern age of technology, there is absolutely no need for anything more.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Anyway, on May 19 or so the US unveiled their new currency. Check it out.. I doubt those printers can reproduce that--at least not 7 years from now when that bill becomes the dominant one, and our printers have increased in detail and specifics ten-fold. Oh well, people break the laws so why keep passing them. Hell, why do we even prosecute them--its our money keeping them in jail during their 'rehabitation.'
If someone has mentioned this or posted these links I'm sorry--I didn't catch them in my drunken stupor. Happy Memorial Day United States!
porp
only need 10 minutes of printing of these bills to satisfy my lifetime supply of lap dances.....
my blog
They have since the last redesign. It is on one of the corner number (lower right?) it changes color depending on the direction you view it from.
So much for that idea.
What good are any of these features when the recipient of the bill doesn't even look at it closely?
1. Forex is short for foreign exchange.
2. There are three major global currancies now that the Euro group got behind the Euro. The Dollar, Euro and Yen. The British Pound is a smaller but still important global currency. The dollar is still has the largest foreign holdings, mostly thanks to oil trade being dollar denominated, asian currency holders, things like Euro-dollar accounts, and criminal activity (which still usually takes place in dollars. For a currency to be weakening it should depreciate against all three, however, most of the smaller currencies are directly or inderectly linked to one of those three currencies (mostly the Dollar or Euro).
3. Following the removal of the gold standard worldwide, most currencies trade on a floating market, meaing that unless the government takes careful action to prevent swings in the currency, its value is determined by market transations. While it used to be that speculators drove trading (George Soros made his early billions by breaking the London central bank) today the vast majority of transactions is related to either foreign investment or imports and exports. Complete speculation: The increase of the Euro is likely the result of large foreign investment portfolios moving into Europe and out of the US. Some of this is Saudi Arabian, and driven partly by politics, and some of the trading is driven by Eropeans who are chasing yields. Our large trade deficits are typically made up with foreign investments in the US, which was one of the main reasons the dollar remained so strong throughout the 1990s while trade deficits remained at very hight levels. Now that foreign investors are realizing that they might not get outsised returns from their US investments, they are beginning to look for investments in other regions. Economics is pretty self regulating, the weaker dollar will make imports more expensive, and exports cheaper which should reduce the trade deficit, assuming the investment change is not temporary.
4. A falling currency benefits people who borrow from foreigners (if the fall is unexpected) and exporters. A rising currency benefits those who loan to foreigners (if the rise is unexpected) and importers or tourists, who travel to the foreign country, but are effectivly importers. Exporters benefit from falling currency in the following way: Lets use Ford and Nissan as the example companies, when the dollar falls relative to the yen, Ford, who still pays most of its employees in dollars, can now sell a car in Japan for the same Yen price and reap more dollars after the currency transactions. However, when the dollar is rising, Ford's dollar value of a Japanese sale, is lower and they still have to pay their employees in dollars.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
If you want to complain about a dime just be glad the British got rid of their system...
12 pence to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound. Non-decimal! Too bad they didn't make a 16 somethings in a something, or else British geeks would be well on their way to learning hexadecimal....
You might have been able to remember that, but add in crowns, guineas, ha'pennies, florins, crowns, farthings, sixpence, thruppence, tuppence, angels, and more, all of which Britain has had at varying times, until 1971 when they made it sensible.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
"If you're a counterfeiter and you can't fool an iodine pen, you should consider going into another line of crime."
I would recommned congressman.
I know that when I worked in a fast food place, we were required (Although most didn't do it) to use these markers on the twenty dollar or higher bills that came our way. I'm not clear on how they worked, but the bill's paper type, ink type, or some combination of the two cause it to make a black mark, whereas if you used the marker on regular paper, it was clear. (Or was it the other way around? It's been a while) It seems that this sort of thing could easily defeat inkjet bills in the situations mentioned above.
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
But will it pick up on the Evil Bit?
..take over the banknote factory some night/holiday and produce as much notes You can.
Then destroy evidence of serial numbers and run !
OK, the Governement etc, now know that there are illegally produced notes out there but they cannot do anything to identify them !
Mundus Vult Decipi
while I agree that CNN is a terrible channel, FOX is even worse. But then, getting unbiased information via TV in the US is nearly as hard as it was in the USSR anyways.
i haven't seen any injet printer mint coins, have you? Maybe pieces of paper with ink smeared on them isn't a good idea nowadays.
one of the things i like about greenbacks is those little threads they put into the paper. Putting RFIDs into money-intended paper could work. A cocktail waitress could keep a transponder in something the size of a ring. Put a red/green led in it along with a teeny RF emitter. She picks up a wad of bills and the ring flashes red.
One of the things I like about British money is you can put down a handful of coins and it's real money. US coinage pretty much peters out after quarters. Pity the gold dollar coins never caught on. We could use a two-loony coin, too.
If the bank timestamps its transactions at the teller and has good surveilance equipment, can't they get a picture of your face?
Do you fence your goods for cash? That can pose a risk it seems? Resale by Ebay seems like a good alternative I guess however.
How easy was it to learn about printing the magnetic info? This seems the key to the credit card fraud.
This counterfeiting problem is just like the CD/DVD copy-protection problem: it's a technology race, with the crooks always a few steps ahead of the law.
The only way we've got a chance of preventing counterfeiting is to finally switch from paper money to digital transactions. Rather than hand over a $20 bill for my lunch, I wave my PDA/cell phone combo thingo in front of the cash register and it automatically deducts the price of the lunch from my account.
Of course that opens up a whole lot more security issues and a different set of crooks come into play, but we don't have to keep modifying our printer drivers!
Um ... Bugger.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
The little security strips with the denomination amount on them is non-reflective... IE, simple scanning techniques don't pick them up. Just a tidbit I picked up on the History Channel... so close to TNN where I watch TNG reruns.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
A scary vision indeed. The really frightening ideas are hard to implement, though. My printer could hide a serial number and someone who gets a printout, and suspects me of having originated it, could get another printout of me and compare the hidden serial numbers. The printer itself couldn't include my IP or anything, though. If you want to hide this information in the hardcopy, this has to be done in the printer driver, so the abvious choice for paranoid people are reputable open source printer drivers. Then again, if the printer hides the watermark itself, it would be much harder to detect. If actual pixel data is changed on the PC, these changes can often be uncovered because the original image data can be reconstructed (hard if the original is a photo on some unknown harddisk, easy if it's a reproducable Word document). But the printer could introduce tiny variations in the speed of the printing head that would like ordinary fluctuations/irregularites. Well, maybe.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
Why would anyone admit to counterfeit? If caught in the act just say you got it from a Mcdonalds down the road and you are a victim. Never carry more than a couple counterfeit bills on you, and put them in your underwear incase a cop searchs you after your 1 counterfeit bill fails. if you do get caught, play dumb. Don't confess. You are innocent until proven guilty. Make them prove it.
It's not as profitable as you think...
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Why would anyone admit to counterfeit? If caught in the act just say you got it from a Mcdonalds down the road and you are a victim. Never carry more than a couple counterfeit bills on you, and put them in your underwear incase a cop searchs you after your 1 counterfeit bill fails. if you do get caught, play dumb. Don't confess. You are innocent until proven guilty. Make them prove it.
The article is talking about the hideously insecure British banknotes (although *my* printer doesn't print the holograms the new English notes have), not American notes.
Perhaps they are counterfeiting Scottish notes (which aren't legal tender anywhere, but some people accept them as money). Since ordinary RBS notes were designed in 1987, I imagine that they might be somewhat easier to copy (especially the famous one pound notes).
One disadvantage with plastic notes is that riffle counting them is next to impossible. I always find that two will always stick together if they've got similar creases in them, slowing down the counting speed.
The best way to count plastic notes is to group them into little piles of $100 and then count the piles. if you've got too many little piles, then group the piles in to meta-piles of $1000 and so forth.
So, these bills are indistinguishable from real bills, except when they're not?
You keep using that word... I don't think it means what you think it means.
Handelsblatt reported friday the European central bank negociates with Hitatchi to put chips on the Euro notes. The chips would be 0.4mm thick and carry a 38 digit serial number.
From my local newspaper:De chips zouden amper 0,4 millimeter dik zijn, en dus dunner dan een bankbiljet. Ze zouden uitgerust zijn met een serienummer van 38 cijfers dat enkel leesbaar is met een speciale scanner. Op die manier kan de authenticiteit van het biljet worden gecontroleerd. De chips zouden op grote schaal worden geproduceerd en rond de 7 á 8 eurocent kosten. Een woordvoerder bij de ECB wou het bericht niet ontkennen of bevestigen.10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
In Europe all banknotes have a strip of metallic/holographic material on them. Even in dim lighting conditions, this should be perfectly visible and is relatively difficult to copy (at least not with regular copier machines/inkjets).
I've never seen plastic notes, but they probably feel different from paper ones? Printing liquid on plastic should be pretty hard with an inkjet, has anyone tried this?
If bank notes can be realistically counterfeited with simple consumer electronics, it sounds to me like the notes are obsolete.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents
1.comment out the if statement.
2.recompile GimpPrint
3.???
4.Profit!!!
and i thought i would never post one of those.
4800 dots per inch?
that is of course only a marketing spec, like a "total peak-music power" of 160W on a pair of PC speakers supplied from a wallplug transformer.
A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.
I remember I once tried to scan in some money (no, not to counterfeit it -- didn't have a magnifying glass, and I wanted to check out the owl on the dollar bill, up close), and some of it came out really "wavey" to describe it best. The blank space that has the pattern printed, looked like a bunch of sin/cos curves next to each other. Is this because of the scanner driver or could it be because of built in counterfeit protection, into the dollar bill?
SuPz.orG
The Federal reserve print notes at will, if they can do it without having gold to back the currency why cant everyone join in?
My cousin is currently in jail for this crime.
He was spend over $10,000 per month on ink cartridges. The `special` paper was very easy to get ahold of, so don't let that fool you. This was not a `small-time` operation either. There were 4+ print-houses setup in 2 cities. Each warehouse had more then 40 printers.
He made $10, $20, and $100 notes. Canadian currency has a little psudo-holographic square in the corner. He just used a simple little green/gold foil glued onto the paper to overcome this level of protection. The cops finally caught him after he owned the following: 2 Ford Mustangs 1 20' boat 4 Jet-ski's 1 Lincoln Navigator SUV 4 Houses (and he bought them all with cash)
To say he made millions would be an understatement.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Yeah, I know the article is about printing your very own currency. I'm responding to the smart remark at the end of the headline on /..
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Don't you get so smug either, my 2 Euro coin is worth about two of your 1 dollar coins which nobody can find anyway and my 2 pound (UK) coin comes to about three of your earth dollars (after completion of US world domination, may not apply in all juristrictions).
I do however like the aussie plastic money as you can go swimming with a pocket full of notes and still be able to use them to load up on VB when you finaly pull yourself out the water (in fact I suspect this is the real reason they have plastic notes) If you carried the same value in those 1 aussie dollar coins you would not float.
Maybe you live in interesting times
As a United Statesian (what is Estadounidense in English?) growing up in South and Central America, I always preferred US money for its value, but the local currencies for their appearance. US money is so boring and uniform, though it's usually pretty clean (that is, lacking dirt). Also, US coins all being round is boring. In Suriname, we had square ones.
Just print 18$ bills. Any uninformed clerk will gladly exchange those for six 3$ bills of three 6$ bills.
Euro's have a hologram on them that is impossible to photocopy or print. It come out as a burining hole with the reflection from the scanner light.
50 Dollar notes are useless. Most places won't take them.
Dollar and 5 Dollar coins would be usefull.
If a bar has no system in place to detect countfit bills, they deserve what they get.
Pretty much every bar I got checks anything over a $5 dollar bill to see if its counterfit or not, it only adds like, 2 seconds tops to run it under a light while getting change to see if its real or not.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
What about SiGe? Almost as good, much easier to fabricate, and much easier to use in mixed processes (i.e. a silicon wafer with a small region of SiGe process material for the high-speed analog stuff).
It doesn't much matter what you can do with an inkjet printer. You won't get anywhere close to what is being done professionally, in mass production.
That might be the case now, but that's what they said about CD writers in personal computers. Printer quality is going to get higher and higher over the next five or ten years, and they're right to try to tackle the problem as of the now, before it starts to be a major problem.
What a great idea to redesign currency every 7 years, at least for the counterfeiters. I don't know what the new bills look like, or any of the other permutations they've released recently. Nothing like flooding the brain with a bunch of different designs to keep the identity of what is a "real bill" in question.
Josh Woodward
Isn't one of the problems with security software and hardware to prevent the copying of currentcy, that it is assuming that the purpose is to conterfeit. Admitablely, a lot of people who copy bills are either counterfeiters, or are just curious, how good a copy the printer can make(and my decide later to use it to counterfeit because it looks good). There are some useful reasons to copy currentcy. For example you may be a travel agency, and want to show your clients what the currency should look like so they don't get riped off. Or you are training clerks, for example in Canada, so they know what American bills should look like. Or how about the person who has came back from a vacation with several large denomination bills, and is really only interested in having the look of the bills not actually tying up his money in some foreign currency. Do we not have the right to possess freely available images?(after all it's not the image your 'buying' when you exchange currancy but the associated value in the country your planning on going to). It reminds me of some open source companies who try to sell their documentation instead of the code. Here's the code and it's free, aren't we great!? Now pay us, so that we let you figure out how to use it. Still trying to make a buck, just moving the billable product around from the software to the instruction manual!
MMmmmmmmm Organized Crime!
South African money is printed with both normal and ultraviolet inks. People that are worried about counterfeit cash have a downward looking UV light installed at the base of the cash register. They pass the bill under the light on the way into the till. As a bonus, it works especially well in bad light conditions.
:-) . The only money I had ever seen that looked anything like them before was the money that comes in those Monopoly games, with a monochrome background and a single colour ink.
Under UV light the real bills look very different and very pretty. A shop owner showed me some printed bills that someone tried to pass once. Under the UV light, they glow pretty uniformly. The difference between a real note and a counterfeit is huge.
I think American dollars have to be the easiest bills to copy I have ever seen. My first thought when I saw them was "Are these people serious!?"
---
You post on Slashdot? You must be a hacker. Now we'll let you off this time with a warning, (and perhaps a sound beating), but next time we'll flip a switch and suspend your money 'privileges'.
A world without physical cash is a bad, bad, bad idea. And it's coming, thanks to all this low-level anti-money propaganda. (And yes, it's deliberate.)
The silly checkout girl at my local grocery store boasts with pride, "I don't even care if I've known the customer for two years. I turn away at least two or three cash transactions every shift. I don't even care if the machine says its real. If it looks even a bit fishy to me, I won't accept it. --I even had this one old guy whine at me that he got the bill from a bank machine. I don't care. I just turn them away. I'm just doing my job."
Great. We've had color inkjet printers and color copiers for a decade now. But teenage twit girls are suddenly going all Hello-Kitty-Nazi-Cash-Enforcer now?
Silly checkout girls are exactly the kind of nitwit who'll survive the next decade without ending up in an American gulag. --Because they're easy to program and they do exactly as instructed by the ephemeral whisper which percolates through culture from the truth-manufacturers at the top of the paranoid control pyramid running America today.
Effective manipulation can be achieved in three ways;
The way to deal with it? --In America, use older installations of propaganda against the enemy.
Spend cash, and explain to people who try to stop you that only Communists would favor a cashless society. (When the subject doesn't grasp how or why, cite the, "Do as you are told, commrade, or we will turn off your bankcard," example. Then wave a flag or something.)
Horrifyingly lame, but amazingly effective. We're dealing with sheep here, folks, and there's a war on. (The people caught in the 'Matrix', even as you try to free them, are working for the enemy until they are free.)
-FL
I take it most of you do not go out and drink in public, otherwise you would know that counterfeiting is not as easy in bars as you think.
There are counterfeit pens out there that when a line is drawn on a bill, if it's real it will turn light brown and if it's fake it will turn black. It doesn't matter if there's a lot of transactions or poorly lit conditions - the pen will tell.
If a bar does not use this low-cost method of security and gets stung with bogus bills, it really is their fault for not protecting themselves.
No, it's just because we're all such filthy rich capitalists, here. We like our big fat wads of money to be nice and even.
You know what?
Translation:
And you missed out groat: 4d, abolished before 20th century, doesn't convert directly into decimal without lots of decimal places (i.e £0.01666666...)
Oh, and shilling was aka bob: 1/- == £0.05. Thus a florin was more commonly called two bob.
Those were the days... the changeover was on 15 February 1971. I was old enough to be intrigued, but my suspicions were confirmed when I went to the sweet shop: conversions had all been rounded up, so I was worse off :-(
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
Magicians that do tricks with money work right on the edge of legality. Defacing currency is illegal if you attempt to pass it off.
If you get a batch of new notes, it's likely that the serial numbers will be consecutive. On US currency, the green ink used for the serial numbers can be erased quite cleanly with a regular pencil eraser. So you take two consecutively numbered bills and erase the last digit of each. Now it appears you have two bills with the same serial number. Spectators generally don't know how many digits are in a serial number and thus won't notice that it's short. You can burn a bill right in front of their eyes then produce the substitute for a startling illusion.
There are lots of gaffed coins out there, too. Craftsmen start with real coins and modify them, so they're not counterfitting. Inexpensive ones look good. Expensive ones are uncanny. The trick is not to spend them accidentally. :-)
It was not money though, but it's very hard to get the colors right when they use colors that are blacklight sensitive (bright yellow, orange, green). The printer cartridge of my printer can't produce those, empty cartridges would be the solution (you'd have to fill them up yourself with a custom ink), but I couldn't find them for sale online (anyone knows where?) for my hp(just companies that buy your empty ones).
To finish the story, about a month later I got my parking permit, so I didn't had to resolve to such desperate measures.
The idea is to create banknotes that can not be reproduced, by no one, be it the original producer or counterfeiters. To achieve that, take colorless lacquer with tiny pieces of reflecting foil in it. Print a strip onto each banknote with that lacquer. Make a digital photograph of the strip and store the photo together with the serial number of the bankote.
No banknote produced that way can be reproduced, because for doing so, one would have to arrange hundreds or thousands of pieces of reflecting foil such that they are oriented in the very same way as in the original, so that they reflect light in the same way.
To check whether a banknote is valid, you'd just have to go to the website of the national bank, type in the serial number, look at the stored photo you get back, and compare it to the banknote you have got. Of course the check could be automated with the help of a machine that has an online connection. To make sure you do not get faked photos, you would just have to use a secure (SSL) connection or check the cryptographic signatures of the photos you get back from the site.
The method above would be feasible and relatively cheap. It would take just two more passes in production that can both be accomplished easily by a machine: printing a strip of lacquer onto the banknote and taking a photo with a high resolution digital camera. The costs for storage of the photos would be far less than the value of the bill and even less than the other production costs, I assume (about 1 cent for a 100 KB JPEG image). Retrieval of the photos would be trivial, because they would only have to be accessed via the serial number of the corresponding banknote.
thanks for nicking my sig :-)
--is not to be confused with user #672982 - Bame Flait
"They're legal tender"
They are fractions of legal tender. One can refuse any coinage as payment and require legal tender. Many a tax collection office has refused to accept coinage.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
You can do that sort of thing yourself, too. The simplest form of steganography is to diddle the LSB of one of the colours. Since the human eye doesn't focus well in the blue wavelengths, you would filter the host image to create a 23-bit RGB (887) image and OR it with your one-bit RGB (001) data image. Extracting the data is a matter of scanning the original (if not already in electronic form) and filtering out everything but the blue LSB. The real challenge is determining the best patterns to use to encode your data so that it can be recovered if the image is damaged enroute (as would quickly happen with currency). Like a barcode image, you would want the embedded data to have a large surface area, delimiters, CRCs and have redundant copies distributed throughout the host image.
It's quite simple to figure out how the real world works (in contrast to the bs the republican party spits out).
When everyone can get a job and pay taxes these things happen:
Lower Interest Rates
Lower Crime Rates
Lower Unemployment
Higher standard of living
If the deficit would have been paid off there would have been around a 50% cut in the effective tax rate as well. Stupid ass tax cuts. Why are we cutting taxes when we have a huge debt? It's like taking a pay cut at your job when you have tens of thousands in credit card debt. Stupid.
All the republican party does is fuck the nation as a whole so a few can come out ahead. Simple economics shows when everyone is prospering the rich get richer. When the economy is in the pot (like now) the rich just get tax cuts but their income levels drop as well.
Did you notice the vote that just took place to allow the government to raise 1 trillion in new debt? Fucking unbelievable how pathetic this administration is when it comes to the economy. Lies, lies and more lies. Only the fools believe what they are telling you.
The republican party is one of the most pathetic organizations around. The fact that approx 50% of people in this country buy into the bullshit they are selling just gives me a very low opinion of americans in general (actually it just solidifies my current position that people pay more attention to political commercials than political reality).
There were some rumors a while back that HP printer drivers inserted the printer serial number or some other identifier into color prints...
I know a little about this, and know that it is true but only in a limited way.
You probably know that HP's printing business is a huge endeavor. It sells many models of printers, based on many underlying print engines. Some of those engines are engineered by HP, some are OEM'ed from other manufacturers.
In particular, HP's LaserJet business uses OEM'ed engines. Some of the color LaserJets use engines that were modified from engines used in color photocopiers.
Some color photocopy engines already use an algorithm to dither the yellow toner in white regions to make each copy traceable to the printer. When these engines were used as the basis of making color LaserJets, the dithering feature remained intact.
So, there wasn't a grand conspiracy by HP to trace your prints, it was an artifact of using an existing technology.
There's no such thing as a 1.00 Euro note. You don't get "paper" money until you get to the 5. Euros are not durable. For a currency that's only been around for a year or so, a good amount of the 5s I got when I was living in Ireland were wrinkled and tattered. Just cause they're colorful and have holograms doesn't mean they are hard to counterfeit. Maybe it would be hard to counterfeit a brand new bill, but making a counterfeit damaged bill is always the way to go. As for the different sizes, that does stop the bleaching technique, but IMHO it makes it a pain in the ass to keep everything straight in one's wallet. The result was I would only carry 20s in my wallet. Anything smaller got wadded up and shoved in a pocket. Based on the condition of the money I was getting, it was a common strategy.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
I'm going to have to starch a couple 100's, just to watch the fun. :-)
How to get free food at Taco Bell using a two-dollar bill
You have a very interesting post, and the website you linked to really intregued me... I have to take issue with some of their points:
TEN REASONS TO KEEP THE PENNY
The penny greatly facilitates commerce.
The U.S. Mint produces between 10 billion to 13 billion pennies annually to meet broad public demand.
Oh, the public demand it do they? It's not just because the pennies are legal tender, and the stores LOVE to price things at 99c just to make it seem like you're getting a bargain at under a dollar is it?
Most Americans still "count their pennies."
A recent poll by Opinion Research Corporation found that more than 70% of Americans support keeping the penny in circulation. Not surprisingly, that same poll showed that those with the least annual income found the penny most valuable.
Because of the ill-formed view that with the penny around they're getting things cheaper... but really, what does a penny buy these days? Nothing!
When the economy slows, Americans count their pennies and cash them in. There is a flow of coinage from American homes into the economy confirmed by statistics showing a correlation between U.S. Mint demand for new pennies and the GDP rate.
Um... with such wonderfully backed up statistics like that who could argue... I'm sure the same stats also show that there's a relationship between all notes and coins demand and the GDP...
Elimination of the penny would lead to higher prices.
Prices would be rounded to the nearest five cents, resulting in higher prices. Professor Raymond Lombra, Pennsylvania State University, testified before Congress in 1990 that this "rounding tax" could cost Americans $600 million annually.
It could cost that much, or maybe it won't... Rounding doesn't always work UP, it also works DOWN. Those that can least afford things tend to buy in bulk (At least they should anyway), and so the final cash register price will be a conglomeration of all of those $9.99s etc... until you end up with a bill like $50.42... and guess what? That'll get rounded DOWN to $50.40!
Elimination of the penny will hurt charitable causes.
Organizations like Ronald McDonald House Charities and the Salvation Army rely heavily on donations from the collection of pennies. Recently, the Dallas-based Kindness Foundation raised over $14,400, a penny at a time, for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Yeah, or perhaps people will donate MORE, as the lowest amount they can donate is increased, so they can't cop out by giving only a few pennies... maybe instead they'll give a few dimes..
Abolishing the penny could erode consumer confidence in the economy.
A 1990 General Accounting Office report found people were fearful their money may not go as far if the penny was eliminated because prices would be rounded to the nearest five cents. The report noted this "rounding" made many Americans feel they are being "ripped off" by being charged higher prices.
Well, we can't avoid false views can we... the same 'hysteria' went around Australia for a while when the 1 and 2c coins were removed from circulation, but they turned out to be false fears.
Elimination of the penny will hurt those who can afford it least, the poor and elderly.
Increased prices due to "rounding" would fall disproportionately on those least able to afford it because they make more small cash purchases.
As mentioned above ROUNDING WORKS BOTH WAYS. Geeze... and can we get more emotional in our points people? the 'poor and elderly'... fine work there.
The penny produces a profit for the Treasury.
Seigniorage, the revenue derived from the difference between the face value of coins and the cost of their mintage, produced more than $25 million for the Treasury last year -- from the penny alone.
AAAAAhhh
I think I ahve mentioned this before but everyone should change to plastic notes. They are impossible to counterfeit and they survive going through the wash/getting splashed with beer. They have saved me many times. And for all those people who say that the US currency is unique being green and all, they can be printed any colour you want. Personally I prefer the notes to be different colours so you can easily tell the difference. Also the US really should get $1 and £2 coins. Much better for vending machines than notes.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Starbucks doesn't do that in their home state, Washington. Here in Seattle the tax gets added on to the list price as usual.
Probably wherever you were, coffee isn't taxed. In Washington, food is not taxed, but for some reason Velveeta counts as food, but a Grande Latte does not.
How's gov.au's liquidity these days? :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks