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HP Discusses Anti-Counterfeiting Measures
JohnA writes "While searching for drivers for an HP printer that was given to me, I noticed an article on the front page of hp.com that brags about how HP's R&D department was able to insert flaws into their products to 'deter' counterfeiting. I'm so glad we have HP looking out for us..."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Shit thats terrible. They insert flaws just so we can NOT do things with thier products? Hello, I'm the customer....are they commiting corporate suicide or what? It's like saying, oh we put some holes in your boat - just in case you decide to race against cops they will open and you will sink!
I don't think you need a tin-foil hat to start drawing the dots between Adobe, Jasc, and HP, and coming up with a picture of the government putting pressure on companies to handicap their products like this. It certainly isn't market demand that's motivating them.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
...only outlaws will couterfeit money.
Oh, wait a minute...
At least they're upfront and forthcoming about it. It's they're gamble on if it will affect sales or not, but at least they were responsible enought not to try sneaking it in.
-Trick
"In May 2003 U.S. officials announced a radical new design for the $20 bill that includes several new, confidential counterfeit-deterrence features. These measures include adding light shades of blue, peach and green to the $20 bill as an anti-counterfeiting measure. (Note: The peach bills premiered in October 2003)."
Way to keep the confidentiallity going there HP!!!
they can make crippled products that won't print money, or they can make money you can't print.
I'd think that if the government of any country is having enough of a problem with fake money they should move to digital money. They already do for bank transfers and credit cards, why not go all the way?
- Dan
If you are prototyping circuit boards, and probably if you are doing other kinds of offset-critical printing (graphic arts?), the behavior of purposefully mis-registering the printouts could be a real pain. In these situations, thousandths of an inch do matter.
With queen carly declaring her love for all things drm and protecting the megacorps from the great unwashed masses, one has to wonder where it stops. How long until my printer wont print a copy of a cd label with "adobe" on it? How long until my scanner refuses to scan in the most recent article from "time"? At what point do they stop trying to make my choices for me? This is probably just practice under the auspices of preventing counterfeiting to get things right for upcoming DRM castrated mobos and hard disks. At what point while I stop "owning" hardware I buy and discover in actuality I have license that includes some hardware on the side?
The only HP printer driver I've ever needed was from cups.org. But if someone can tell me why after every print job it spits out one extra piece of paper, I'd be very happy.
The only flaw I've ever had with my printer is that it only prints 4 pages a minute (if you're lucky), hence why I got it for free.
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
...here at the United Counterfitters of North America (UCNA) when I say that we will no longer be patronizing HP for any of their printing products. Crippled products such as this simply don't fit our needs.
That said, HP makes some of the most reliable office printers available, and their printer support is excellent. I've worked on hundreds of HP LaserJet printers in the last couple of years, and they are uniformly fantastic to maintain and repair.
***
Of course, HP isn't going into the currency-printing business...
No, that would infringe upon SCO's business model and IP rights....
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Reminds me of when the Euro came out first, and there were incidents of 'forgers' passing Monopoly money, and pictures of the Euro that had been cut out of the newspaper.
Looks like stupidity knows no nationality.
OK, I'll bite.
The Gov't is putting measures in the money. It takes time. Before teh new muti-colored 20's came out, there were identifier strips inside. One day when I got some cash from teh bank, I got some 50's. I noticed one of the fifties was odd and sure enough, the strip was for a 20 dollar bill.
One of the easiest forms of counterfeiting is to just bleach ink out of hte money and reprint it for a higher denomination. HP color lasers make this easy.
Gotta go...no time to spellcheck.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Not all uses of banknote images are prohibited. For example, a one-sided illustration of a U.S. Federal Reserve Note not between 75% and 150% of actual size is a fair use. Some people have shown how some of the anti-counterfeiting technologies interfere with fair use of banknote images.
How the hell do you make decent counterfeits w/o the polyester paper that bills are made with? ANY half decent cashier can tell paper from a bill by touch, let alone the dozen other easily checked features.
If your store hires people dumb enough to accept 1 sided black and white bills... you have bigger problems.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
I tried to make a copy of a 20$ bill on a cheap HP Officejet G95. It came out perfect, if I where to spend a bit of time roughing it up the result would have been very hard to tell from a real bill. Instead it went into the cross shredder. The point is that most counterfeit bills are not being made in large quantities but by people making one or two fake bills each.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
What if I have a legit reason to copy currency?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
While searching for drivers for an HP printer that was given to me..
HP printers are textbook-example standards compliant. They don't use drivers.
Now, seriously, what were you doing on HP.com?
Do you honestly think that switching to Digital Money is going to stop counterfeiters? All it would do is change the type of people doing the counterfeiting. Suddenly it would be hackers instead of printers. I for one don't like the idea of my money being digital. I just don't trust the technology yet.
seems to me they're acting perfectly ethically and responsibly. Counterfeit currency is a significant cost for many businesses (particularly small cash-based businesses) and the cost ends up being passed on to consumers. Good for HP if they try to prevent their technology being used to facilitate counterfeiting.
It takes a serious disconnect from the real world to see something threatening about this.
In Australia the notes are made from plastic with a transparent section.
It's not something you could make with a scanner and a printer
They said that at certain densities of bank note green the printer changes color bands noticeably. I am an amateur photographer and have recently taken pictures of some interesting fields and other natural settings just after the sun has completely set but still has the surrounding slightly lit. The green in the pictures is fairly dark but not too dark and I wonder if these new printers would print them out looking like it was day light on the grass and dusk everywhere else. The pictures turned out really nice and I intend to do some other similar ones in the future. I currently print with an HP printer, but I can't see getting another HP being a viable option once this printer breaks. A photographer would like his pictures to print as photorealistic as possible without having to worry about whether or not it will print wierd, especially when your in the middle of shooting. This is ridiculous.
Regards,
Steve
P.S. And no, film is not a viable option, especially long term, considering that major companies like Kodak are going to stop selling film.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who buy HP printers don't care about these things.
HP, like most inkjet printer manufacturers, produces printers which have an inordinately high operating cost due to the cost of ink carts and their relatively short lifespan. But does this stop people from buying them?
Absolutely not.
HP has a reputation for producing inexpensive printers and proving good customer service for them. I have an HP Photosmart 1115, and I had a problem with it. No biggie. They fed-ex'ed me a new one with instructions as to how to package the old one and send it back. It didn't cost me a dime and it took a matter of a couple of days to handle the complete transaction.
They can afford to do this because their profit margins on the ink are so high. And since most people don't add up the cost of ink, they don't realize just how much they're spending. They only know that the printer was cheap and they can actually talk to a human if they want technical support.
This doesn't mean I intend to buy more HP inkjet printers. Since I bought the photosmart, I have learned a lot about inkjets, laser printers, and operating costs. I know there are better alternatives.
But we slashdotters are somewhat unusual among humans in that we tend to research what we buy rather than judging products based on plastic color and price tag at BestBuy. We are, unfortunately, a tiny minority. Those who are not like us will continue to buy more and more HP printers and ink carts.
Actually, domestically, due to the sheer magnitude of the US (i'm talking geography, here), we've got tons of machines that read money. Vending machines, lottery machines, atms, car washes, cigarette machines, laudry, post office stamp machines, etc etc etc ...
Literally, we have millions of machines that deal with our money. Retrofitting or upgrading all of them to detect currency correctly would cost billions of dollars.
Already, we've had enough problems with the recent slew of new bills over the past few years. Changing it AGAIN would create more problems. Inluding installing fancy new hardware that can detect the UV ink or phosphorescent threads that you might want to introduce.
This is an example of the US gov't actually trying to save you some money, rather than forcing the entire country into an upgrade cycle.
The article states that counterfeiters turned out 44$million last year. Do you honestly think anyone would spend 100 times as much money to stop that?
One measure used by a scanner to detect currency is to look for five small circles, arranged in a specific pattern. These may be found on certain major currencies, including Euros, Pounds and Dollars.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
The Gov't is putting measures in the money. It takes time.
My favourite part of the article: "Until the 1990s... U.S. banknotes had changed little for decades. Federal officials told the HP team they wanted to keep it that way." (my italics)
And they wonder why they're seeing more and more counterfeit bills...
... is to make the notes so fancy that a color printer cannot reproduce them in any way that would fool anyone. The problem is that US paper currency looks and feels like something printed on plain paper, and is therefore easy to fake. The US could learn something from the Europeans here (take a look at Euro-notes, or pre-Euro Dutch notes for example).
This new "feature" causes a dilemma for the professional photographic community. Image if you will the wedding where the bridesmaids' dresses are in a lovely shade of "banknote green" (quite possible given the wild colors we see at weddings) and that the printer decides that it must put banding in the proof prints, because it might be counterfiet money. Now, imagine explaining to the the bride's mother why the stripes in the pictures are there. Ugh. HP broke their printers intentionally, and it will come back and bite them in strange and wonderful ways.
Yes, what they describe may indeed work great for the intended purpose of reducing the accuracy of their printers under certain circumstances, but the fact of reducing their output quality will sometimes cause user problems which are totally unrelated to counterfeiting. Their software simply cannot be smart enough to avoid the false positives which will most certainly occur.
Soli Deo Gloria
I don't know of a single copier that can copy real money. All these copiers are doing is reproducing worthless pieces of paper that the government tells us to use for money. I'll be impressed when I can use a copier to reproduce my wedding ring.
--Guns don't kill people, abortion clinics kill people.
P.S. And no, film is not a viable option, especially long term, considering that major companies like Kodak are going to stop selling film.
I must have missed the press release where Kodak announced that they were going to stop making film.
Digital might be competitive for 35 mm but plenty of photographers need more than that. Nothing on the market can compete with 6x7 or larger formats.
Kodak will be making film for quite a while.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Until the 1990s, when the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing added new security measures such as a watermark and a security thread, U.S. banknotes had changed little for decades. Federal officials told the HP team they wanted to keep it that way.
That precluded any major changes to the currency itself, including techniques used by some other currencies. The Euro, for example, contains fluorescent fibers and foil features, which cannot easily be reproduced by conventional copiers or printers.
So, the US government is too lazy to fix their "broken" currency? Instead, they compel private companies to fix their problem for them.
Nice.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Talk about getting off topic. I don't know how to stop it directly, but the 4000 series ones I work with (4000/4100) have a setting that allows you to supress error printouts. That squelches the wasted paper.
Are you printing through Novell? I think on our network that's where the problem crops up.
"Counterfeit currency is a significant cost for many businesses"
Oh good, facts without proof. Can I play?
Counterfeiting actually helps the typical small business in that it increases the number and amount of cash flowing through the local economy.
Surprising, and counterintuitively, studies have indicated for years that counterfeiting is mostly a concern of hollywood movies and that in a large economy such as that of the united states, counterfeiting has proven to be so difficult as to be a non-problem.
Do you see how easy it is when you can just make up facts? You make up facts, I make up facts, we all make up facts, and we still have no understanding, just the word of a *lawyer* to shed light on the truth. Please, no snickering from the back row.
It looks like you're scanning some currency. Would you like me to:
- Download the relevant statutes related to currency reproduction.
- Contact the Secret Service.
- Arrange for you to turn yourself in.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
What Canada has done is to use a UV ink design that will readily show up under even the simplest UV light source. If cashier desks are set up with a small UV lamp facing down towards the cash desk, the money simply has to be passed under this lamp and forgeries spotted in a fraction of a second as the UV ink design flouresces quite brightly.
I have yet to see any home printer that can take UV inks, so I'd be willing to bet that the reasources required to obtain one would mostly defeat the purpose of counterfeitting anyways.
Btw, for people who think just throwing money at the cashier and walking away might offer a counterfeitter a way past this, my experience is that for movies, they won't even let you into the seating area at all without your receipt from the cash desk (which means you have to hang onto the receipt for the duration of the film, since you will need it to get back in if you momentarily leave to get popcorn, for example).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Absolutely wrong. Too many times in this age, people are punished for what they MAY do wrong. That is NOT the way it was intended for this country to function.
I really get bent out of shape over this type of lawmaking (DVD/CD encryption, Macrovision, currency detection) are all. I don't care if only ONE SINGLE PERSON is out there using any technology lawfully, then it is wrong to do this. Punish the people who actually DO the wrong thing. Not everyone.
.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
HP is infringing on my rights to backup and store copies of my currency for archival purposes. ;)
This has nothing to do with laws, crimes or punishment.
If HP wants to make a printer that prints all text in piglatin and all images inside out and upside down, they can go ahead and do so. No law says you have to buy or use it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
As far as the offset, couldn't you just offset the image to print on the backside to accomodate for the slight change?
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
I have no problem with counterfeit measures in Abobe or now in HP's product.
That is as long as I know that it is there. My real concern is all the gunk that is inside commercial closed source software the we do not know.
Think the CIA has not placed a few lines inside Windows? I bet you that a lot of the behind the scene actions against FOOS is driven by Government agencies and politicians Not because the like MS or Adobe etc, but because they know that this is the only way to plant "National Security Hooks"
Help fight continental drift.
Bah!
Kids today and their new fangled color laser printers and 9600dpi scanners.
Back when I was a kid we started with two blocks of solid steel, a sharp pokey scrapey tool, and a magnifying glass. Then we painstakingly had to carve away at the steel until we had a matched set of plates, loaded up a super pressure stomper and fed it special linen based paper and uberGreen ink. Took months, maybe a year to get a good rig running.
And we were THANKFUL!
Ever want to see some good old school counterfeiting, watch 'To Live and Die in LA'. Those guys would cut up Carly and use her for fish food.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
We as the consumers and public should not have to settle for purposefullly flawed merchandise. Especially as this could set a rather nasty precident fullly in the manufacturers favor.
When companies introduce flaws into their product as a means to prevent theft, we are the ones paying the price.
This is not the first such "flaw" that has been introduced, remember those audio CD's that were given "flawed" audio so as to make them unreproduceable?
The problem with this flaw is that it is the actual mechanics of the merchandise we are buying. They will be selling a printer that is made to not print as well as it could.
Any one want to challenge this in court?
It's fully in HP's favor and could set precident for many other manufacturers. Down the road this could have serious implications as to the quallity of the technology the public recieves. In effect, rolling back decades of progress and empowerment of the common man. Multi-media and desktop publishing were still very expensive in the early 90's... look at the cost to get into that now, magnitudes of order less. What this threatens is to lock us out of the high-end, and put the power back into the hands of the businesses. This effect will not be felt this year or the next, but in 5 or 6 years.
What I find rather ugly about this is that currency is something that enjoys uncontested proprietaryship in it's manufacture. A few years back they did a massive overhaul, adding special strips woven into the paper fibers, special inks that would last through wear/tear and show up under UV light, a special paper fabrication, and now the color process and microdetialing that has been added to this years 20's.
Why is it that the consumer must pay when our goverment has the ability to alter the currency at will? The only argument I could see that would make sense is the old "greenback" that can still be found in circulation.
And if that's the case, do like the euro and put out a public moratorium worlwide, "Redeem you greenbacks for up to date currency by so and so date" and those who miss that date, tough.
But to stifle the consumer and intentionally flaw the product? There may be a day not too far from now where noothing really works as well as it should.
I know I am in the minority of slashdoters here but I think that HP is being ethical and responsible in their efforts to protect currency from unauthorized duplication.
My concern isn't that they are doing this but that the methods and perhaps the very technology that they use may (and in some cases will) interfere with legit uses. Crooks are smart, inventive, and resourceful. This means that the "lock" that HP and other manufacturers use has to be tough and almost necessarily will interfere with some legal uses.
The part that I keyed on was the front to back registration. If it is so small that humans won't notice it, how will that prevent counterfiting? Yet, in some applications, where you are printing on transparent Mylar, I can see this being a significant drawback! I know that this kind of stuff isn't done by everyone every day but it can be done for artistic purposes now. Laying a background layer on the backside of a transparency adds richness and depth to the foreground. I am not an engineer but I suspect that this same kind of trick is often used when designing limited run double sided circuit board masks.
Crooks can walk into any computer store and buy a box of blank checks and print out whatever they want on the checks including whatever routing number and account number they want. These checks can then be easily passed wherever a check can be cashed using a fake ID purchased over the internet or from someone who specializes in such forgeries. Why hasn't there been a hue and cry over this? Because it isn't currency, banks and people eat the cost of these crimes.
HP has the right idea but needs a better implimentation. People (especially clerks) need to be better at spotting counterfit bills, and even high schoolers with scanners and printers have to be afraid of getting busted. Counterfitting is a crime that is being done more frequently by juveniles who get their hands slapped only if they get caught. The "system" needs to fix this.
But people who handle a lot of money every day *DO* know what to look for.
More specifically, they handle so much real money all the time, that if or when a fake does happen to come along, it sticks out like a sore thumb, while the person who doesn't really handle money that often (keeping it out of sight in his wallet most of the time) might not be able to discern the difference.
I've seen it happen... sometimes they even spot a counterfeit even before they know exactly what's wrong with it (with a second slightly longer look being all that's usually required to confirm what the problem is).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you read the SEC filing you would see that about 90% of their profits comes from INK! No wonder they want to do R&D into ways of controlling us further from printing.
I have a Canon for the record, but their INK! is just as expensive. but i prefer to use a company that does innovate instead of stagnate.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Just like in the Adobe case people seem to be igoring the "why" of the whole situation.
Does HP want to include these technologies? Hell no. Just like Adobe [and every other company that makes imaging software, printers, scanners and copiers] they're under tremendous pressure from the government to include this stuff. I don't know exactly what legal precedent the feds have over including this stuff but everyone in the industry is complying.
There's several more techniques that aren't mentioned in that article as well including ways for counterfeits to be traced to specific [as in serial number] devices on higher-end equipment.
Good: HP likes Linux and open source
Bad: HP supports DRM and "trusted computing"
Somebody please...tell me. Am I sopposed to like HP or hate HP?
What?
And another thought I've had recently, take a dollar and if you could follow it around for ten years or so. Count how many times that dollar was taxed. I think it would create a monetary wormhole and collapse back on itself. The collective COST of using that said dollar would far suprass the face value.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Vote Quimby.
Sorry, but I think you missed the press release.
They're not going to sell CAMERAS anymore. And when was the last time Kodak sold a camera that was worth buying? Probably the brownie cameras from waaaaaay back.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I'm disappointed that everyone is focusing on the FUD related to the money factor and ignoring the other items in the article, such as the "FAX back" and barcoding schemes. Do you think they may be valuable?
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
I'm quite curious just exactly what they mean by flaws to deter counterfeiting. If I send an image to the printer that I want printed, I don't want my printer altering that image in any way-- regardless of what the image may be. If the printer doesn't do its job, then it's going in the trash. Period.
Why so many companies are choosing to focus on anti-counterfeiting measures anymore also confuses me. Unless things have really changed in recent years, counterfeiting isn't exactly a big problem. You might see a news story or two about it on occasion, but it's really just not that common, and there are good reasons why.
For one thing, standard printers are simply not very good at making even sub-standard counterfeit bills. The texture isn't right, the colors aren't quite right, there's no authenticity strip embedded in the paper (in $5's and above), and even the aroma of the paper and ink isn't quite right-- money has its own smell. Because of this, anybody who knows anything about money and has had their hands on cash at least a few times during their life can easily tell the difference between a real and a fake if they bother to pay the least bit of attention to these properties.
Second of all, the time and effort required to produce anything of acceptable quality that won't be checked for authenticity (ie, less than $100) using a commercial printer far outweighs the value of money counterfitted. Yeah, you may be able to get away with faking a handful of 20's, but you'll have spent a good couple thousand dollars on a printer that's good enough, the proper equipment to cut everything, the paper, etc. Anybody willing to invest this much time and effort into counterfitting is going to expect more return from it, and so they are going to find some other method.
What it comes down to is that these companies probably invested a lot more money into creating these anti-counterfeiting technologies than will be saved from bad money. So in essence, they've crippled my photoshop software and my printer for nothing.
KappaStone
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Reminds me about back when some students in my high school printed out phony $20 bills in the computer lab and then spent them downstairs in the cafeteria. The bills were printed in black and white on regular printer paper, which is good enough when you're dealing with lunchladies.
In that scenario, the problems would be common knowledge from all the returns of the printer. It's nothing like this ninja technology that watches unsuspecting printouts until it thinks it needs to act.
Should we quit being concerned with spyware, too, since no law says you have to install it? What if there's nothing but spyware, because Palladium has effectively destroyed anti-spyware companies because Microsoft refuses to sign their products? Just because there's no law granting some company or technology a monopoly does not mean it won't happen.
Something that always bothers me about these articles is that they never seem to specify whether the anti-counterfeiting measures pay attention to the final size of the bill. I imagine Photoshop doesn't, though, because until its printed, it does not know what the final size will be.
__CmdrTHAC0__
In Soviet Russia, Spanish Inquisition doesn't expect YOU!!
"Multi-level detection and deterrence - a detection scheme that uses an algorithm to separate suspicious documents from those free of suspicion." Ummm.... isn't that kind of stating the obvious? Kind of like saying the solution to the homeland security issue is to come up with a way to separate suspicious people from non-suspicious people..
If it's hurting businesses then maybe the US should do what every other country in the world has done and make banknotes that are hard to forge?
Trying to solve the problem at the printer level is ridiculous; it's like trying to solve the spam problem with intelligent monitors.
The European Central Bank is proposing European legislation which would ban the distribution of software and devices not including such anti-counterfeiting technology: this has possible serious implications for open source software.
See: this document
If you think lexmark isn't far behind you're fooling yourself. This is the way it's going to be. Don't go around thinking "hey lexmark is going to be the defender of our right to make funny money" because they most certainly aren't. This whole thing reminds me of a scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian:
...
Judith: Any Anti-Imperialist group like ours must *reflect* such a divergence of interests within its power-base.
Reg: Agreed. (General nodding.) Francis?
Francis: I think Judith's point of view is valid here, Reg, provided the Movement never forgets that it is the inalienable right of every man--
Stan: Or woman.
Francis: Or woman...to rid himself--
Stan: Or herself.
Reg: Or herself. Agreed. Thank you, brother.
Stan: Or sister.
Francis: Thank you, brother. Or sister. Where was I?
Reg: I thought you'd finished.
Francis: Oh, did I? Right.
Reg: Furthermore, it is the birthright of every man
Stan: Or woman.
Reg: Why don't you shut up about women, Stan, you're putting us off.
Stan: Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Reg.
Francis: Why are you always on about women, Stan?
Stan: (pause) I want to be one.
(pregnant pause)
Reg: What?
Stan: I want to be a woman. From now on I want you all to call me Loretta.
Reg: What!?
Stan: It's my right as a man.
Judith: Why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
Stan: I want to have babies.
Reg: You want to have babies?!?!?!
Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But you can't have babies.
Stan: Don't you oppress me.
Reg: I'm not oppressing you, Stan -- you haven't got a womb. Where's the fetus going to gestate? You going to keep it in a box?
(Stan starts crying.)
Judith: Here! I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the *right* to have babies.
Francis: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister, sorry.
Reg: (pissed) What's the *point*?
Francis: What?
Reg: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can't have babies?
Francis: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
Reg: It's symbolic of his struggle against reality.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
1.- The CEO's becoming rich will pay more taxes, and so will do the shareholders that obtain higer dividends or whose shares climb as a consequence of the savings made.
2.- The standard of living in the US is artificially high and it is artificially low in India or China (the first as a consequence of colonialism and then protectionism, the second as a consequence of feudalism and then communism). There is no way in which the Western world can remain extremely rich while half the world population in these two countries remains too poor. We have two options: we either help India and China have a soft landing in capitalism by means of allowing competition (no matter how one sided is on their favour) or we live to regret the consequences. The standard of living in the US *has* to decrease, that means all those wasteful SUVs, money wasted in trash entertainment, excesive consumerism, will be curbed. People in rich nations will have to curb their appetite for superflous goods, refocus and become more responisble with credit, and that way will be able to accept lower salaries (that by no means will make them serfs as you ridicuosly claim) in order to become competitive again. When people in the US are earning 7 or 8 times more for the same work there is no way to stop the evening out once some of the constraints that allow economic pressures to work are lessened by technology (communications mainly).
Something that normaly escapes protectionist people is how by protecting "national jobs", they punish the consumer in their own country. When companies save money by outsourcing, the savings are passed to the consumer. The steel controversy stirred by Mr Populist Bush showed that nicely.
3.-Although there is a widening between the very rich and the rest of us, in average people live better everywhere where stable goverments commited to free markets are in power, it is ironic that the same people that cry for local jobs being shipped abroad very often also refuse to allow to tax the rich to allow for some basic redistribution of income by means of social projects.
In rich countries particularly, the major causes of decease and mortality are related to excess, consumerism , overconsumption and hedonism (traffic accidents, obesity related problems, smoking, AIDS) from the point of view of poorer countries one just can't see how it is that the level of life is worsening on rich countries.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
3 years later:
"HP and Adobe both broadly support the implementation of the Protect Our Economy act, which requires manufacturers and software developers to implement Anti Counterfeiting measures."
Bye bye free software to compete with Adobe and people who don't want to pay for HP patents.
1. All the Slashdotters complaining about "crippled printers" or "having their images reduced to crap"... not one of you noticed this before. I challenge you to find one non-currency image that is printed out broken...
2. The US Government: Adding a bit of Peach to the new $20, eh? How about this... a thin VISIBLE foil strip... or some silver or other metallic print? Lets see anyone try print THAT with a CMYK printer. Every non-US currency note I've seen has that.
Fluoroscent markings, watermarks, chemically sensitive paper and security threads and all are fine... except that most of us don't carry around UV lights or hold every bill we receive to the light.
Counterfeiters aren't going to take a wad of freshly printed bills and go deposit them in the bank! They're going to go to your local McDonalds, supermarket or whatever. All you need to do is go buy a few dollars worth of stuff, hand over a $20 and pocket the nice legit currency you get in return.
No, these aren't free speech issues in general. (This particular situation might be; despite HP's warm and fuzzy claims I suspect that the government strongly encouraged them.) There is no law against this behavior. But it's unethical (not that that bothers most large businesses). As citizens we should stand up and demand that companies actually try to serve their customers first.
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