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Do Your $20 Bills Explode In the Microwave?
msaulters writes "After repeatedly setting off RFID scanners in a truck stop, the author discovered the culprit was a wad of $20's in his back pocket. In a paranoid attempt to keep the government from tracking him, he attempted to fry the embedded chips in his microwave, with interesting results." Alex Jones has interesting theories about a number of things, but evidently a lot of readers were interested in this one.
And GEEZ. I remember being 12 and having a twenty burn a hole in my pocket, but...
*smacks forehead* Sorry.
Mom says my
..."And he came in wielding this huge wad of 20's and a microwave transmitter!!..."
Ads? What ads?
I guess this guy just has money to burn. The article should have been from the do-do-do-do dept.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I wonder what will happen to these notes when the come into long duration contact with a mobile phone
The most cursory inspection of a $20 bill shows there's no RFID tag in Jackson's right eye.
Has anyone tried a control experiment of plain inkjet paper in the same form factor?
I always knew Andrew Jackson was giving me the evil eye.
Isn't destroying US currency against the law?
Seems pretty smart to me: 1)Committ a federal offense. 2)Post the proof on the internet.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
In Soviet Russia, money burns you.
This person isn't very smart. Why didn't he try it on one $20 bill to start with rather than all of them?
First off, having worked at a Kmart for several years, I have a pretty good idea how the antitheft systems currently in place in most stores and libraries work, and they don't yet use RFID tags; they use some sort of magnetized strip that is then demagnetized by a magnetic pulse or a powerful magnet at the counter (thus the warning not to set credit cards on or near the demagnetizers, lest they be demagnetized too). In fact, RFID tags as the retailers are thinking of using them are partially intended to replace such a system (and partially to replace bar code scanners). Given that RFID tags are barely even starting to be used by distributors, you're not going to convince me that a truck stop of all places is at the head of the technology curve using this expensive equipment that almost no manufacturers even support anyway. Thus, even if an RFID tag was embedded in the money, that shouldn't set off a magnetic antitheft system at all, because the system is looking for something entirely different altogether.
Second, these magnetic antitheft systems are capable of being set off by odd things, such as items of personal electronics or odd bits of metal. (Heck, I even remember seeing one recent news story about a kid who sets off those scanners just by walking through them without anything in his pockets at all, just because his body happens to generate the precise frequency of electromagnetic energy they're keyed to.)
Third, RFID tag or not, those new bills do happen to have a strip of metal foil running through them, right at about the point of Jefferson's left eye...to make counterfeiting harder, you see. And when you subject metallic material to microwave energy, it heats up quickly...that's just basic physics.
So I'm willing to believe that the bills set off ordinary electromagnetic anti-theft detectors just by reflecting the microwaves in some funky way. (Or heck, maybe they even are magnetized in a way that anti-theft detectors can pick up...or at least can become so magnetized, since I doubt that they're all that way...if everybody shopping with new twenties was setting off anti-theft systems, we'd be hearing about that on the news, and the anti-theft system manufacturers would be making hasty adjustments or going out of business.) I'm even willing to believe that those foil strips will cause the money to scorch in the microwave. But it's one heck of a leap to conclude that this is because of Evil RFID Tags That The Nasty Gum'mint Is Sneaking Into Our Money.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
From the article:
So we chose to 'microwave' our cash, over $1000 in twenties in a stack, not spread out on a carasoul.
Now, looking at the second picture, and knowing a bit about how microwaves heat stuff... looks to me like the approximate center of the stack charred up nicely in the microwave. Notice the bills near the top and bottom of the stack are nearly untouched. The reason the center of the bills charred in the same place in all the bill is because it was the center of the stack.
I sincerely hope this article is intended as a joke, or at the very least "we did something really dumb and we're going to at least make it funny" situation.
And for the record, I just zapped a $20 bill for 20 seconds and it's barely even warm, on Jackson's right eye or anywhere else.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Putting together Internet hoaxes! If they were using the latest versions of Photoshop they wouldn't have been able to make all that fake cash to singe.
bullshit.
Battling Beasts
I'm broke. I just burned up $1K in the microwave, now please COME SLASHDOT MY SERVER AND MAKE MY HOST COMPANY CHARGE ME EXTRA FOR THE MONTH. ;)
Boy, when it rains, it pours.
$20 bills definitely do NOT have embedded chips. Place your bill in front of a strong light, you'll see that it is just PAPER. Has Slashdot been trolled?
Explosive devices and would you be allowed to take them onto planes. 'I'm sorry Sir, we're going to have to confiscate your bank notes'...
I used to work with this old lady who never carried any cash besides coins because she swore that the government could track you with satillites, due to the embedded security thread that says "USA 20 02 ASU" etc.
Username taken, please choose another one.
He went to the bank to have the bills replaced free of charge. It's only paper.
$20 bills burn in a microwave.
Ergo, $20 bills have embedded RFID tracking chips.
More likely, the metallic anti-counterfeting strips just formed a dipole resonant near the frequency used by the truck stop's anti-theft tag scanners.
Move along, nothing to see here, just some idiot with more money than brains.
The Department of Homeland Security would like to remind you that you love Big Brother.
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
I'm skeptical. Anything could have caused those burn marks. It doesn't have to be an RFID tag.
I tried it... it didnt work.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
So THIS is why conspiracy theorists never seem to have money.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
While I can't believe this conspiracy theory made to to slashdot, I find myself wanting to experiment too.
The likelyhood of this being true is about as slim as SCO winning their "sue a Linux user tommorow case". If anybody had $20's they'd be willing to microwave until vaporized to prove there are no RFID's, we will all be grateful (and hate you for being rich enough to "burn" money").
Invasion of Privacy, Tracking purchases, cash not anonymous, blah blah blah. It's all true. But this is really cool.
I am so gonna go get a new $20 from the bank to try this out. =)
I take it if duct tape protects like aluminum foil then Duct tape wallets will come back in style?
of the better conspiracy theories i've heard in recent times.. i remember there also talk of folding a bill to get an image of the twin towers being hit by a plane
how true can this notion be? rfid embedding can have a few pros.. easy to trace actual bills and thus stolen money, easy to isolate fake bills... but then again... ransom money, thefts will all become passe..
but then again.. all this is just an extension of the conspiracy theory
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
Send all of your $20s to: PO Box 7565 Jackson, Wyoming 88096
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
...AKA karma whoring for fun and profit
Mirror w/ pictures
According to NetCraft, Alex Jones' site is hosted at EV1Servers.net... I wonder if the sum total of the ruined money is $700? I guess it would save a lot of time to just burn the money rather than give it to SCO, yet you would still have the same end result: out $700, and nothing much to show for it.
"That money will burn a hole in your pocket"
But the part that was left out is "if you stand near that microwave tower".
Does anyone know if the money is still legal tender if its been fried like that? And if blowing up the photo of presidents face like the photo illustrates could get you landed in jail for 'terrorism'. Heh.
Damn, I'm Canadian. Does that mean I'll have to wait to explode my money?
hey, I just put some eggs in the microwave and they exploded - damn chickens have started putting RFID tags in their eggs already!
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Could be the placement of the money in the microwave (microwaves are a few centimeters in length ..thats why u need that rrotating table thingy to make sure food gets cooked evenly.
Or, maybe it's a reaction with ink. Who knows?
Nothing like a Slashdot post to jump to a conclusion.
Clearly, there's something funny going on with the microwaved bills... but stores don't have RFID scanners at the exits yet. They have an acousto-magnetic sensor that gets deactivated by a pad at the cash register so that paying customers aren't supposed to set them off. Big difference here is that the tags in a store system don't yet emit an identifying signal... they all emit the same reply. The store doesn't know what a shoplifter did to trip the alarm, just that they did trip it. There's not quite proof that each bill is emitting its serial number yet.
Also, having microwaved everything in a stack makes things a bit unclear. Did every eye burn on its own, or did just one or two bills in the middle of the stack catch flame which in turn burned all of the bills above and below in varying degrees. Notice that the top and bottom bills were unharmed. Could one bill alone be microwaved safely?
And, BTW, if you so much as put slightly crumpled tin foil in your microwave, you get a similar effect. Could there just be a small metal content in the bill designed so that somebody who has $1000 worth of $20 bills (rather than simply 10 $100's) in their wallet is sure to set off an airport security alarm until they show their wallet to make sure they get an extra security questions?
It's interesting, but I think more research needs to be done. Microwave carefully, people.
Of course, as a previous poster pointed out... There are not RFID tags in money! It's just a bit of wire to help stop counterfiting.
Personally I can't think of a better way to use my 20 dollar bills, I'm going to empty my bank account tomorrow, this will be hours of fun.
So we chose to 'microwave' our cash, over $1000 in twenties in a stack, not spread out on a carasoul. Do you know what exploded on American money?? The right eye of Andrew Jackson on the new twenty, every bill was uniform in it's burning... Isnt that interesting?
So you stick them in a pile, so that the corresponding places on each bill lines up and they all burn through in the same place? No way!
intentional defacement of US currency ..it's gotta be a crime ..isn't it? With the PATRIOT act who knows??
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
Poker players. Drug dealers. Rich people.
Anti-gravity? That was *my* little secret! But I never patented it! Boy, was *that* dumb!
They may have exploded, but they're still valid currency. The treasury has an entire department which is solely for processing damaged money. I remember seeing an interview with one of the inspectors. I believe the essential part of it was that you had to have more than the majority of the bill material in OK condition to prove that you didn't just cut it up and try to claim all the pieces.
Since the bills are intact all the way around and it looks like in many cases the serials are OK, I'd say he's OK, and can get them exchanged for non-exploded ones. Of course, he better not go saying he microwaved them, as destruction of currency is a federal crime(the penny-mangling machines are 'licensed' to do it, to nip one question in the bud...)
What is interesting is that they burned so readily- US currency is supposed to be decently non-flammable(it's one of thousands of tests done on the paper and ink- that's why your bills make it through the laundry OK, for example). It's probably the toughest paper in the world, able to survive virtually anything. Except microwaving, apparently :-)
Please help metamoderate.
Just Microwaved a 20 for a couple minutes other then having a hot piece of paper nothing happened. since when is the offical /. tin foil hat coming out?
$1000 in cash? At a truck stop? Worried about government tracking?
:)
Sounds like smugglers to me.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
metallic ink. same thing will happen if you microwave checks, I expect, around the numbers, which are printed in magnetic MIRC ink.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now, you should go look at Alex Jones' apparent infiltration of Bohemian Grove, an annual meeting of powerful people -- now that's intriguing.
and the point of most of the comments, inlcluding those who actually understand the science of metallic strips in bills and/or microwaves is that the article is dumb at best.
I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that there have always been serial numbers printed on bills, for the purpose of tracking them. An RFID tag would make it easier to do so electronically, but being able to uniquely identify a particular bill is nothing new - in fact, see Where's George?
Having said that, the possibility that someone could scan the contents of my wallet while my wallet is in my pocket is rather disturbing for a number of reasons. If I were carrying $1,000 in twenties, I wouldn't want to advertise that fact to those around me.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Umm, either my twenties are borked or my microwave... or... these guys are full of shit!! I can't reproduce the effect at all here. There must be something else going on here. Like an attempt to create an urban legend...
====
Crudely Drawn Games
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Is it illegal to deface currency in the US?
Sincerely,
The Mozilla Foundation
Even if they know where the money is, is it really possible to figure out who had it, and what it was spent on? As far as I can tell, the only way RFID tags could be useful to the govt is if there are A LOT of them in a concentrated area, but wouldent the metal briefcase they always keep the money in in movies block the signal anyway? I really dont see any benefit to big brother from having RFID tags in money.
*gag*
Mom says my
1. If I ever shop lift, I'll be sure to get a roll of tinfoil while I at it.
2. If I ever decide to microwave American money, I won't microwave $1000 all at once.
Forget the tinfoil hats, now I need a new wallet.
I have no idea what game this guy is playing, but this tale is complete rubbish.
First of all, if there is an RFID tag in a $20 bill (and I doubt it, given the state of the technology), nobody has RFID tag readers in retail stores. In fact, so far as I know, nobody even has such equipment on the market. Store security systems are a completely different system.
There's no reason to even consider a second point.
This is complete, utter bullshit.
Someone jumping the gun?? April is still 1 month away...
Belvedere: Quiet, quiet, quiet, QUIET! There are ways of *telling* whether she is a witch!
Villagers: Are there? What? Tell us, then! Tell us!
Belvedere: Tell me. What do you do with witches?
Villagers: BUUUURN!!!!! BUUUUUURRRRNN!!!!! You BURN them!!!! BURN!!
Belvedere: And what do you burn apart from witches?
Villager: More Witches!
Other Villager: Wood.
Belvedere: So. Why do witches burn?
(long silence)
(shuffling of feet by the villagers)
Villager: (tentatively) Because they're made of.....wood?
Belvedere: Goooood!
Other Villagers: oh yeah... oh....
Belvedere: So. How do we tell whether she is made of wood?
One Villager: Build a bridge out of 'er!
Belvedere: Aah. But can you not also make bridges out of stone?
Villagers: oh yeah. oh. umm...
Belvedere: Does wood sink in water?
One Villager: No! No, no, it floats!
Other Villager: Throw her into the pond!
Villagers: yaaaaaa!
(when order is restored)
Belvedere: What also floats in water?
Villager: Bread!
Another Villager: Apples!
Another Villager: Uh...very small rocks!
Another Villager: Cider!
Another Villager: Uh...great gravy!
Another Villager: Cherries!
Another Villager: Mud!
Another Villager: Churches! Churches!
Another Villager: Lead! Lead!
King Arthur: A Duck!
Villagers: (in amazement) ooooooh!
Belvedere: exACTly!
Belvedere: (to a villager) So, *logically*...
Villager: (very slowly, with pauses between each word) If...she...weighs the same as a duck......she's made of wood.
Belvedere: and therefore...
(pause)
Villager: A Witch!
All Villagers: A WITCH!
(they do consequently weigh her across from a duck on Bedevere's largest scale, and she does indeed weigh the same as the duck.)
Witch: (to camera) It's a fair cop.
Looking beyond the fact that they flushed $1000.00, but they were stupid enough to publish their results on the web. So much for the listing on urbanlegends.com. Unfortunately, what they may have failed to realize is that the Federal Reserve Note is not technically theirs. Yes, the value of it is. And in the old days, they could've traded it for an equal amount of gold or silver. But all paper currency in the U.S. is technically the property of the U.S. government. This is why it is illegal to deface paper currency. And these guys were bright enough to do so *and* publish the results. One must wonder if they're going to be fined.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
Or worse, cranked-out truck driving paranoid freaks...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
...apparently has money to burn :)
[sorry, I couldn't help myself... ]
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
If I would of known that just about anything get's posted to /. I would of submitted Project CRAC. . . Hey atleast it has a catchy name!
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
(No pun intended.)
I'm taking this article at face value, though I probably shouldn't... (ooh, another pun!)
Is defacing currency legal in the US? Here, if done on purpose it carries a fine.
And I think you'll have a very difficult time convincing someone you burned the right eye of 50 bills by accident.
Here in MI if you have that kind of cash on a state highway the state police can seize it and hold it until you prove it wasn't being used in a drug transaction.
That little strip inside of the bills appears to be aluminized mylar. We all know what happens when you put aluminum foil into a microwave oven.
I made that mistake once, about 20 years ago. My mother gave me a Wendy's Kid's Meal, I didn't eat it right away. Later, I wanted to warm it up so I put into the microwave. I didn't open the box, and I forgot that they wrapped the burgers in a foil type wrapper. It was like fireworks. Bright flashed of blue-white light were coming out of the Kid's Meal box.
I nearly soiled myself out of fear. In those days they led you to believe that if you put metal in a microwave it would be like the Ghostbusters crossing the streams of their proton packs.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Moral of the story: don't put a wad of cash into the microwave.
"Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's coming to get me!" I guess i can't blame them to much though....
Derek Greene
Looking around the website, one can find this choice quote by Alex Jones:
AJ: And that also happened- where you aware the New York Times and Chicago Tribune reported this in '93, the FBI cooked the bomb and trained the driver[s] and had an Egyptian security agent doing it for them, had two retarded Muslims, literally retarded, drive the truck and park it, let the bombing go forward. At Oklahoma City, the same company that destroyed the remnants of the World Trade Center, blew up the remnants of Oklahoma City [and] had that buried under machine gun guard at a private landfill to this day. And they hauled the rubble away from the W T C to China! They wouldn't let you take photographs. Yes, exactly.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
A twenty dollar bill so that the back side is face up long ways.
holding the bill horizontal - fold one side of the bill down with the crease towards the center line of the bill, so that it runs perpendicular to the original horizontal angle with a 45 degree crease at the edge angle, then fold the other side the same way (the bill will look like an arrow) - you will see the two towers afer being hit by the planes, before the collapse.
So why didn't they try the old twenties or other bills with metallic strips to see if they also burned? That would be the only logical thing if you were trying to prove that the new twenties have mysterious invisible RFID tags.
I can't believe this story got accepted. Since when are easily disproven kook conspiracy theories legitimate news? Or have the editors simply been had? What will the next Slashdot story be? Some Geocities page explianing how Larry Ellison, Halliburton and the Trilateral Commission are peddling global mind control masquerading as a polio vaccine?
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Worst. Story. Ever.
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
I think we're overlooking one very important question here...
Why the hell was someone carrying around $1000, mostly in 20s, in their wallet?
Maybe I'm the only one that doesn't get that part...
Actually, $1000 in cash is not all that much for a trucker to carry.
Remember most long distance truckers are on the road for a week at a time. This includes tolls, fuel, food, etc. I did a rough calculation a trip from Ontario to New York and back cost about $500 out of pocket. And lots of truckers transport fruit from California.
Really unbelievable news. 20$ bill microwave burning is passe. The really hot(no pun intended ... have to say that or no one notices the pun) news is that $ 50 , $100 and $1000 bills DO NOT burn. Can you belive it ?? Of course you wont but try it out and tell me then !! Infact I can even prove it. Send me your 100$ bills and I will microwave them and send you the photos of the unburnt bills (and even post a story on slasdot).
The only obvious explanation is that the treasury department has tied up with the big league ransom mongerers, kidnappers and SCO and has decided to protect them by not puttng radio tags in the large denomination bills( which explains why SCO does not charge $20 for Unix licenses)
PS: pls hurry up, so I can quit my boring job and spend all my useful time reading slasdot and photographing your 100$ bills (and buy a SCO license for my machine).
He's flirting with you.
2) ????
3) PROFIT!
Er, OK. It doesn't work all that well.
Information Unlimited sells Tesla coils. I can speak first hand of how effective they are at frying electronics. I built their BTC3K Tesla Coil when I was in 10th grade, it is fantastic. On days with low humidity purple sparks 10-12 inches in length are not out of the question. I figure that 250,000 volts is more than enough to fry RFID chips.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Here's something to try: .5cm... 1/4 of an inch or less.
/\_/\ Arc...Sparc...Bang.
1. Cut thin slices of AL Foil As thin as you can get it,
2. cut peices of paper up into roughly the shape of a 20-spot. Cut the paper from different sources, news paper, printer paper, fax paper, etc.
3. glue the AL foil strip to a peice of paper, then , stick another peice of paper on top, glue another strip of foil above the other location, another peice of paper, etc.
4. Stick stack of paper with embeded AL Foil into microwave.
Observe results.
It is my hypothesis that each strip of AL foil will gather a charge, and try to discharge through the paper, therby setting it on fire/scorching it.
BTW, ever cut a grape in 1/2 but leave a small peice of skin attached, and pop it in the microwave for 4 seconds?
1.3L, 3 moving parts, 280 HP, no Turbos, wanna Race? RotaryNe
My recently-wed friend is currently doing a grand tour of the states with his wife. I really hope he's willing to sacrafice any unspent benjamins when he gets back :)
Ceci n'est pas une
There are no RFID tags in US currency. There is no METAL in US currency. I just microwaved a new $20 for over two min. in a 2000 watt microwave oven to no effect (aside from being warm). And lastly, the new $20 bills do NOT set off anti-theft systems. The photos are obvious photoshops. Slashdot is slowly becoming the new Weekly World News.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
As my EM prof put it - putting tin-foil into your microwave turns it into a spark plug, and god help you if the sparks strike any explosive elements.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
sure, one can come up with a logical explination for it. That doesn't make it any less real that sensors can be set up in places (like airports) that detect when you're carrying a moderate amount of cash with you. Unlike me, you might not resent the government doing this. Might you resent street thugs doing this to help pick a ripe "vic"? Personally, I resent that it can be done with out money at all.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There's an even easier way to see the twin towers hidden in U.S. currency. Take two $20 bills. Hold one in each hand so the long sides are oriented vertically. Bring your hands together. Notice that the bills look like two identical skyscrapers right next to each other!!! Clearly this proves the US government had prior knowledge. Why, I'll bet it was actually Dick Cheney at the controls of both airplanes. He wanted Halliburton to seize the Iraqi oil fields.
What's the matter? That's a hell of a lot better than the Slashdot story that actually got accepted!
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
would anyone explain to me why conspiracy theory loonies seem hell bent on obsessing over radiowaves, microwaves, etc?
what i'm getting at is, your average pop psychology understanding of paranoid schizophrenia suggests that people are "out to get you", so, controlling your thoughts, tracking your movements, etc. through invisible waves is a wonderful example of this kind of thinking
but what about viruses? why not nanobots?
what i'm getting at is these loonies seem inordinately obsessed over invisible rf waves, but there are a million other "invisible hand" type illuminati control mechanisms they can obsess over
perhaps rf is just easier to understand, reflecting the general low intelligence of paranoid schozophrenics in general i guess
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I screwed up with a search/replace and didn't read carefully enough (the name was given as B: in the script after the first mention).
Sorry about that.
I took one of my roomate's $20s and put it up to my blacklight. I've know that the metalic strips showed up, but I was stuned to see a pinhead sized dot in the corner of Jackson's left (my right) eye. It was glowing the same neon green as the strip. His others didn't have it, but I'm convinced that the one with the dot has something in it. Its just too crazy to be a coincidence.
haud servio tui deus neque tui diabolus huad servio tui regalis neque tu
I tried it with both the old-new $20 bills and the new-new bills. Nothing happened. Besides, they had these all in a stack, so if one got a hot-spot, they'd all go up in the same place. The microwave test proves nothing, though the RFID scanner test is intriguing.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
is not a crime. Trying to PASS $ you've intentionally damaged is. Licensed penny manglers. Get real.
All bills have a serial number. Why would the government need RFID chips? They can easily scan the serial number off while dispensing a bill at an ATM, and check it again when it ends up in a bank. Sure, it may change hands a few times, but for me, the majority of my 20 dollar bills come straight from the ATM, goes straight to a retailer, who brings it straight back to the bank.
slashdot is now feeding paranoid schizophrenics
how the heck did this wind up on the front page?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Dude! You did not pull a proper 720 corkscrew! I order you to smoke a phatty!"
(I think you mean border , not boarder.)
== :
:
sorry for needed repost
This is a repost because FBI shills modded original to -1 immediately again (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=98942&thresho ld=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=843794 9)
===
TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders!
Forget the airport ati-smuggle money detector Rf angles on the maylar strip... there are worse REAL RFID tracking in place
Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.
A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFid chips embedded in the tire).
Yup. My brother works on them.
Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.
Its kind of like FBI "Taggants" in fertilizer and "Taggants" in Gasoline and Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car.
Taggant research papers
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/ ~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)
I am not making this up. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].
It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.
Photos of chips before molded into tires:
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:TAQIKjBI01g C: www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html
(slashdot ruins links, so you will have to remove the ASCII space it insertess usually into the url above to get to the shocking info and photos on the enbedded LOGI 160 chips that the us gov scans when you cross mexican and canadian borders.)
You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is very secret.
Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.
http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html
but the fact is... YOU PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE A RADIO TRANSPONDER not counting your digital cell phone which is routinely silently pulsed in CA bay area each rush hour morning unless turned off (consult Wired Magazine Expose article). Those data point pulses are used by NSA on occasions.
The us FBI with NRO/NSA blessings, has requested us gov make this tire scanning information as secret as the information regarding all us inkjet printers sold in usa in the last 3 years using "yellow" GUID barcode under dark ink regions to serialize printouts to thwart counterfeiting of 20 dollar bills. (30 to 40 percent of ALL California counterfeiting is done using cheap Epson
Seriously, why on earth did he include those shots of burned money? Why did he stick the bills in the microwave in the first place? The whole thing is just so damned silly that it hardly even matters what his main point is.
Yeah, I want to see if a $20 bill will catch fire, so I'm gonna stick $1000 into a microwave. Sheesh, what a moron.
Note the use of the words FRAUDULENTLY and REISSUED, that is to say, the treasury will not be able to replace the bill. Slightly fscking up the currency is not likely to be sufficient to land you in federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison unless by some monumental feat of idiocy you were trying to mutilate a $20 into something passing as a $100 as when people try to turn $20 into $60 by cutting off the corners and taping them to $1s. THAT is the kind of "mutilation" the law speaks of. Flattening a penny is not illegal. Melting it into something resembling a quarter, on the other hand, is quite definitely illegal.
US Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 17
Section 331
Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or
Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened -
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both
Section 333
Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
I see this happen all the time on the TV show "Cops" -- it's as if cash is illegal.
The history and composition of pennies!
Original transcript of article before it was "prettied up" for public consumption.
Me and Bubba was hanging out in this truck stop. We had just escaped a pack of UFO's on highway 66 in our Kenworth while hauling grapes from Florida to Nevada! I saw em! They had lights on them and these strange whirling blade above them!
At this point we had been on crystal-meth for about 46 hours, so obviously our minds were a-clear. So there we were in the truck stop counting all the money we done made transporting meth across state lines for this "mex" called Jose. We had a huge wad of cash! As we left, this young pencil-neck (probably an alien in disguise) started hasseling us about how we hadn't paid for some chewing gum in out pockets or something. That's when I started a wondering how they KNEW?! Must be one of dem R.I.D.E. tags I hear the guberment is using to control our minds! They know our thoughts!
So, Bubba and I bought us some shiney tin foil and wrapped it on our heads. Thank the lord Jesus for the Crystal Meth! We couldn't have come up with this idear ta stop em without it! Well, we started to leave again, and the lil alien started bugging us again about the gum. THEY STILL KNEW! I figured right about then that it must be OUR MONEY! Sure, Bill Gates controls the money, and Jose must have put tracking devices in it fer him!
So we gots real smart and put our money in the microwave! Now it's OK to spend. Sure, it's brown and burnt, but we can still spend it at the titty bar! Thank god for Crystal Meth! Next time, Bubba and I will make sure we bring extra, just in case the guberment tries to bug our coffee.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Australian money shrinks in the microwaves.
Unsure whther it's because it's different to the other money or because our microwaves are Southern Hemisphere microwaves.
Ah ok, here are the pictures
Slashdot was also spotted recently fielding an article entitled:
Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?
Does the spearmint lose its flavor
On the bedpost over night?
If you pull it out like rubber
Will it snap right back and bite?
If you paste it on the left side
Will you find it on the right?
Does the spearmint lose its flavor
On the bedpost over night?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Defacement of Currency
Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
I remember reading somewhere that a stack of paper put into a microwave will char in the middle. Heat input from all around maximising at the centre. Try it with ordinary paper (carefully) before drawing any paranoid conclusions about RFID tracking.
I hope you removed your credit cards when you deactivated you wallet, cause that would suck
OK... back to the basics of the microwave. Microwave ovens work by exciting the water (and some fats and sugars) in whatever you're heating, leaving all other compounds alone (try putting a piece of paper or a dry glass bowl in for as long as you want). The sparks that fly off metal objects like pop tart bags and CD's are caused by poor insulation in the microwave cavity. That's why we have the stigma of "Don't put metal in the microwave." Many modern microwaves don't suffer from this problem. But put enough metal in the microwave and you'll usually get a loverly light show from the high power electrical current arcing between the metal object(s) you put in and maybe even explode things. So, this dufus shoved 50 metal-laden $20 dollar bills into his microwave and expected nothing to happen? Jackass... but hey, I have a microwave that will safely disable those non-existent rfid tags for you...
Most of the bills in the pictures were older style twenties with an oval around Jackson's picture.
I too worked for Cutco once upon a time. The only thing I got out of it was a car that wore out way too quickly... never broke even... how'd you do?
Feeling with fingernails over Jackson's eyes yields no bump, either.
I get a feeling that IHBT. IWHAND.
It's probably the toughest paper in the world, able to survive virtually anything.
If anyone has seen or handled the currency from New Zealand, then they would immediately disagree with you regarding that statement. The kiwis make their cash out of recycled plastic, and the stuff cannot be torn, and believe me we tried.
I've heard of this before the new twenties. Just get a RFID chip that is still active and insert it into someones wallet and presto, every time they walk though a scanner they will set it off. Good for years of fun. Just drop the little metal strip to the bottem and they will never find it. Better yet, drop it into someone's purse, who knows whats inside those things. A small mettle strip will never be found. Looks like in this case the metal strip was between a few folds of money.
The only thing that would be against the law is defacing currency and attempting to use it in commerce.
What if I draw moustaches on the presidents and sell the doctored notes as artistic portraits of Saddam Hussein?
Microwave radiation won't affect RFID. They are too small. Try nuking some ants and see what happens.
Secondly, who is STUPID enough to ruin that much money?
Third, I suspect this is FAKE and if so, someone may be guilty of counterfiting. If they printed up fake bills to make this fake "news" report, the Treasury folks may be interested.
And lastely, Alex Jones is a FLAKE that is in serious need of MEDS..
JMO..
...they're "mid-20s", the previous generation. The new 20s don't have a halo around Jackson.
if the fruit were married in california, could the truck only go to MASS and VT since their fructial union is honored there?
This chip doesn't have collision avoidance, though. So a stack of bills wouldn't be individually readable.
So the technology isn't quite here yet to do it right, but it's getting close. Currently, you can get collision avoidance or tiny size, but not both. Good collision avoidance combined with fast data transfers is hard, and it's wanted by retailers, who want to be able to read out each box in a carton individually. That could be thousands of items. That's do-able, but not with the low-cost tags yet. Retailers want to get tag costs down to around $0.02. Realistically, today RFID tags cost upwards of $0.25.
True public key challenge/response hasn't made it into the smallest tags, either. Challenge/response is available in keyring size and in credit card size, and is used for access control applications. But the low end tags can't do that yet.
Two more years, and this will really be happening. But not yet.
The big question is: Did they use Photoshop or Gimp to edit the photos?
It's most obvious when you look at the bill he is holding in his hand. For even a non-trained eye, the editing should be easy to spot.
Clearly the government secretly placed an RFID tag in your paper towel sheets in order to track your every spill!!! Placing the towel in the microwave obviously caused the tag to explode, and from now on you should wrap all of you paper towels in tinfoil to prevent the government from spying on you!!!
See subject.
- Alex Jones
I don't think they print $2 bills any more.
Yes, they do. You can even buy uncut sheets of them from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. I'm sure they're not as actively circulated nowadays, but they're definitely still printed. See the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing website for more info.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
And I guess it never occured to anyone to examine the wallet as well as the money. This story was a perfect example of the phrase "dumb as owl shit".
And by the way, while I'm here, a note to the editors at Slashdot...you're a month early...this is only March...they call it "April Fools Day" because it is the first of APRIL...not March.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Ever held $1,000 in twenty dollar bills?
I don't think so. His wallet would need a wheel to keep if from dragging off his ass if it was full of $20's..
Also, the cops pull you over with that much money in small bills, you get a free ride to go explain it. They assume you are selling dope when you have a lot of small bills.
In recent manifestation of so-called "slashdot effect" power consumption in western united states peaked 200% around 11pm today after bunch of geeks tried to fry their 20 dollars bills in microware ovens in attempt to uncover government conspiracy to track them via hidden micro chips (called RFID tags) in their bills.
on the canadian $5 bill you can turn sir wilfred laurier into spock. just draw some pointy ears and the hairdo and voila! perfect likeness ..sigh.. i guess you guys win this round...
This guy seems to be closest to the target, I think. The reason ants don't fry is that the majority of the microwaves 'miss' them. The ant is smaller than the microwave wavelength (which varies between 10^-1 and 10^-4 meters), and so can miss the crests, so to speak, and avoid frying.
I think it fried all of the bills in the same spot because all of the bills had similar orientation and position, and Jackson's eye was right over a spot of peak intensity. Microwaves don't cook evenly; that's all he's demonstrated.
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's ONLY $1000 ...
...
gez - hasn't anyone ever gone to a computer
show to buy a computer - and noticed the
extra charges for CC or check?(if the vendor
event takes checks.. )
seriously, $1k isn't that much
unless maybe you're in India..
Will photoshop allow you to scan in microwaved 20 dollar bills? Those DRM bastards will stop at nothing!
Ok so everyone points out the obvious and is quick to suggest tinfoil hats, but there might be some truth to this story (by accident). Clearly this guy nuked either the paper, moisture in the paper, or the metal strips heated up. A better experiment would have been to microwave along with a glass of water to absorb the bouncing around waves.
Those security scanners work by exciting those little metal tags (bi-metalic i think and some now out of more exotic plastic & mylar) which resonate briefly after the field is removed. Is it possible some slight engineering went into those metal strips to resonate themselves? Maybe not at the store scanner frequencies, but slightly off? Maybe the truck stop scanner was off or extra sensitive or uncalibrated.
The reason the Dept. of Treasury might do this is to be able to identify large quantities of money coming into or leaving the country. Maybe the gov't has the ability to scan for suitcases of cash.
I don't think i'll ever outgrow that "what happens when we put this in the microwave" stage of my life. Gummy bears are particularly fun by the way. Also on cold days before school, i used to pop my clothes in there quickly for that fresh out of the dryer feel in only 30 seconds.
According to CNN.com in a story dated June 12, 2003 - "Moneymakers in Washington are contemplating printing a new series of the $2 bill, which is by far the least-used small note in circulation. The last time the notes were issued was in 1996 (it bears a 1995 series stamp), when about 164 million were made."
The US Dept. of Treasury confirms that the $2 bill does indeed exist.
Funny how so many of the tech savvy alphageeks on slashdot don't have basic researching skills to find out facts on their but rather follow others like sheep and just assume what the other guy is saying is true
Did he try passing his wallet through the detector without the money?
I have a Kastanza wallet - I put everything in there, and it's waaay too big. The wallet I had was falling apart, and eventually my girlfriend pretty much forced me into buying a new one. Which I did, at the retail store she works at.
It just so happens that after this, I could no longer get through the metal detector at airport security. The wallet would set off the wand, and the TSA agent would spend a good 3-5 minutes examining the wallet, but couldn't find anything amiss and would eventually let me through.
The *FOURTH* time I went through security an agent finally managed to find the source of my problem: An anti-theft tag placed in some obscure fold of the wallet.
As it turns out, the guy at the store responsible for putting the anti-theft tags in things has a reputation for being able to hide them very well.
So I'd be willing to bet something similar is afoot here.
As for the money burning all in the same spot, it's pretty obvious why: Metal heats up in the microwave, and paper has low thermal conductivity. Put one bill in the microwave, the heat escapes from both sides of the bill fast enough that you don't get enough heat to initiate combustion. Stack 50 of them on top of each other, and now you've got a buncha metal in the middle of a buncha paper, the heat builds up in the center, and now your bills combust. The bills didn't all burn in the same spot - one bill started burning, and then the other bills - all stacked neatly on top of each other - burned in the same spot as the fire spread up and down the stack.
A conpiracy theorist needs to be smart enough to connect a bunch of unrelated facts, but not smart enough to realize that they're unrelated.
paintball
Actually, being very forgetful, I often leave my wallet in my pants when I take them off, and then end up washing it. What do I do if I'm in a hurry and have a wet wallet? I leave the wallet to dry itself, but I microwave the money so I don't pay for things with soggy bills. Am I the only one who does this? I've never had any problem with this exploding stuff, btw...
Karma: Bad (mostly due to all those "In Soviet Russia" jokes)
The problem could be that he bought the wallet and it's (non-RFID) tag was not deactivated properly by whoever sold it to him (last time that happened to me was last week with a box of wine (incidentally when I was setting the alarm off I was asked if I had any razor blades...).
Either that or he stole the wallet...
The notes will "explode" because of the foil strip in them, and if you want to see something else explode, try putting a small amount of chopped onions in the microwave, which coincidentally I discovered accidentally last week and made a short video as someone wouldn't believe me.
Just so you know, metal does the same thing to microwaves that it does to other electromagnetic radiation: in the absence of a ground, the metal (such as aluminum foil or metal strips in bills) will simply reflect the microwave radation.
The issue is when there is not a sufficient quantity of water (food, glass of water, etc) to absorb the microwaves; they will collide, cause sparks, etc. The metal will resonate and eventually heat up.
Cover your food with aluminum foil and you get sparks. Leave a spoon lying on the plate next to a helping of food and you've got no problem. You just need a sufficient quantity of water inside the chamber to absorb the radiation.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I've seen new $2 bills. Actually they have tons of them in Germany at US bases. I have no idea why.
There is one "new" $20 bill on the bottom-right of the first picture. It is not, however, burned that badly. But you're right, I too doubt 1996 series bills could have had RFID tags installed.
The Ezine Directory
US paper currency is printed with an intaglio process whereby the (slightly conductive) ink is rolled onto plates and then the paper is pressed into the plates (rather than the plates being pressed into the paper on most presses.) IE the RECESSED parts of the plates hold the ink, not the bits that stick up.
The effective result of using this printing method can be felt on the bill. On a new bill the ink will be coarse and raised off of the paper. The lines will be very crisp and solid. There will be no 'breaks' even microscopic in the ink.
Since it's slightly conductive (it has some metals in it and whatnot) and the lines (and crosshatching etc) are pretty well continuous it's going to be an excellent absorber of microwave energy. Without anything else in the microwave to absorb the energy better than the money, it's likely the ink near the portrait is going to get really hot really fast. This is pretty much what I'd expect from microwaving money.
All that being said, the RFID equipment or the security equipment that this money was falsely triggering must be some of the cheapest crap on the market!
You know what else can do it, besides Evil Gov't RFID? A magnetized, steel-toed boot. Happens all the time, strangely enough. At least it did when I worked at Home Depot--about once a day, maybe more. Every so often, a blue-collar type would set off the alarm, walk to the counter, put each foot on the counter to de-mag, and walk out. And you know they were de-magging because the counter device did its signature thump to indicate it had done its job. I'm really not kidding.
I never carry anything but quarters. This was a bit troubling when I paid the deposit on my house, but it's a small price to pay for keeping the prying eyes of The Man out of my financial transactions.
From the article:
We could have left it at that, but we have also paid attention to the European Union and the 'rfid' tracking devices placed in their money,...
Maybe in X-files country, but here in real life, euros do not have 'rfid tracking devices'. What they do have is a metal strip which makes it more difficult to counterfeit.
Of course I fully expect now to be told that my government only wants me to think that that's just a metal strip... :-)
microwaves don't cook evenly. they're *waves*. they resonate and form standing waves in the chamber of the oven. just like sound. jackson's eye happened to be at a peak of one of these standing waves. since the bills were in a stack, the peak was in the same spot on all the bills.
put any old piece of paper (or more fun, a plate of marshmallows) into a microwave that doesn't have a working turntable. you'll get a pattern of burn marks. you can even measure the distance between them to calculate the wavelength of the microwaves if you want to. basic physics.
this isn't even a *good* conspiracy theory.
If the feds tried to arrest every person who had committed some sort of crime and then posted it to the internet, I have a feeling that Slashdot would be very quiet.
The paper describes fancier options, such as only impersonating numbers in some given range so that it only blocks reading some kinds of items, like the serial numbers on 100 Euro banknotes.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Those burned dollar bills... it's just like the wooden box containing the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark! Only instead of burning away the Nazi swastika, it's burning away the former president's face! [cue somber John Williams score]
The only thing that would be against the law is defacing currency and attempting to use it in commerce. So we learned in Business Law.
Actually, what's illegal is attempting to use it in commerce after defacing it in a way that would let it be passed as currency of higher value.
You're entirely welcome to deface it in a way that doesn't promote fraud. In particular, some defacements are legitimate political speech and protected by the first amendment as interpreted by the courts.
My favorite defacement is to give the portrat of Hamilton on the (old) $10 a Hitler moustache and hair. Hamilton is the founding father who was the ideological head of the Federalists - the group that promoted the changes to the US central government that eventually led it to become the powerful and often oppressive machine it is today.
Not so much deliberately, of course. For instance, his opposition to the Bill of Rights was predicated on the idea that explicitly acklowledging certain rights would create the expectation that the government could stamp out any others. The proponents of the Bill claimed that, absent an explicit list of those that are particluarly important, the government would have no guideline and would stop 'em all. (Of course they were both right.)
But you know what they say about good intensions and paving.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And you obviously know nothing about this either.
...m
Most truckers carry their wallets in their front pockets. Sitting on a wallet all day hurts.
Volvo, Kenworth, Peterbilt, Freightliner,
Lots have have 100gal tanks each side.
http://www.truckerslink.com/fuel_prices.ht
Thats about $340+ to fill with less then 6mpg.
Nope 10 mins on High in my microwave not a darn thing anyone else?
Linux is like living in a teepee. No Windows, no Gates, Apache in house.
A metal strip would have the same effect in a microwave as tin foil or any other piece of metal.
No RFID plot here!
No. No they don't.
I count only $600 in the pictures. Either he can't count or there is $400 in bills that arn't damaged. What happened to those 20 extra bills?
Devise, Repair, Solve, Build
If I were rich, I could have my parents lawyers help me patent my many inventions and continue to sit atop my pile of cash.
B S
A 1/4 wave 2.45GHz antenna is I think still over an inch long (30mm?). How can this device operate at 2.45GHz with an antenna as short as you say?
Also, note that challenge/response is different than RFID. RFID is just serial numbers, essentially. Basically, RF barcodes.
It's bad enough RFID is as misunderstood as it is without confusing it some more.
Tell me about it. I broke my Magnatron, and totally fried Optimus Prime too. That's the last time I play Decepticon Rays From Space with my Transformers.
Damn, did I set my watch wrong? Mine says it's March 1st, not April 1st.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/faq.htm
Who owns the Federal Reserve?
The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
They burned on Mr. Jackson as he was a hell of a guy... Ok just kidding. The ink has metals in and should I would think tend to heat up faster then other parts of the bill. Hence causing Jackson to blush.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
People seem to think there are RFID tags in Euro bills. Let me clearify that they are not there (yet). They try to add them by 2005, according to the eetimes.
I am surprised the government doesn't encourage people to do more destroying of money. When you lose or destroy a dollar bill, the government can print and spend a replacement without causing inflation.
You know, all of those State Quarters that people collect with fervor are almost pure profit for the mint. I mean, it's like the mint has a license to print money!!!!
...but they are openly admitting to committing a felony. It is highly illegal to damage or destroy money intentionally.
Loading...
Oh My God!!! CUTCO!!!!
How did you escape?
Did they make you drink the kool-aid?!?!?
You are correct that our currency is not backed by precious metals, and is only worth whatever someone will give you for it. However, gold is only worth what someone will give you for it as well, but fiat currency has the advantage that the government can control the total supply of money, and thus limit inflation.
Will someone please mod the parent post back down? Maybe, "-1, Skipped Economics Class?"
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/faq.htm#frsq3
Who owns the Federal Reserve?
The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
This article at CNN's website was the closest article to the topic introduced here that I could find on CNN, Google News, or Yahoo News. Given the popularity of the RFID issue in the United States technology realm, I would expect it to be in a larger news source such as these. I don't know much about this www.prisonplanet.com place, but I don't have any reason to believe it's highly professional. I get the impressino that it's somewhat of a conspiracy theory website.
/.ers have tried the same microwave experiment, with no ill effect to their bills. Personally, I'm more inclined to believe my fellow /.ers than this story.
The most apparent points of conjecture about this story, in my mind, are:
1. Why, if these tags are in $20's all across the nation, are not people setting off alarms for "no reason" all across the nation?
2. It appears that other
Perhaps these bills were part of a scheme, or an elaborate set of counterfeits with a specific devious purpose in mind. Or perhaps they were never microwaved at all.
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
I don't think so, but it is definitely illegal in the UK. Defacing an image of the monarch. One of those daft treason laws which we still having lying around but no-one enforces anymore.
(Most banknotes have metal strips in them, so I've no idea why anyone would find it surprising that they catch fire when microwaved.)
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
You know if I kept setting off a store alarm and I knew damn well I hadn't boosted anything I'd keep right on walking. "Would you step over here, sir?" would be met with a quick "Fuck you. Call the cops if you think I stole something. Who the hell do you think you are?
Retail employees with hand-scanning wands. Give me a break. If there's a living, breathing witness that saw me steal something, that's one thing. But no machine is going to bear false witness against me. I would refuse to cooperate. A truckstop is not an airport where the guards are employees with authority and jurisdiction to prevent "dangerous" items on board aircraft. I refuse to recognize that they have any authority to search or probe my person.
Those magnetic tag detectors you see in stores have only one valid purpose as far as I can see. To act as a deterrent and scare would-be thieves away. They convey no authority to perform a body scan.
I was, to say the least, intrigued, by this story, so, I wanted to experiment. I grabbed a new $20 and stuck it in the microwave. I started with 1 second intervels and slowly increased and increased. And, in the end... nothing happened. I longest interval I tried was 4 seconds on high, but nothing happened in the end. The total amount of 'on' time for the microwave was about 30 seconds.
I don't know if my bill was defective, or if I didn't put it in long enough, but I seriously doubt this story. The bill never even got toasty, and the right eye was just as warm as all the other parts of the bill. As other people have said, there are tiny amounts of metal in bills normally, so I find it very unlikely that there is any relatively large strip of metal in as well.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
If this actually does happen within two years, then it will certainly make life easier for muggers. Carry a small silent scanner with you and you will know who has the cash.
"Hey you, Show me the money!"
No.
Next question.
Not flaming, but if that is true, America has gone to hell. It is illegal to have money? I guess I had better quit my job!
Perhaps it is more like, the police can seize, and use it to buy beer!
What happens when you stack a bunch of metal strips on top of each other with a fine gap in between? How about rolling them up? ... Congratulations, you just made a capacitor!
Now place in a magnetic field to have it possibly resonate at the frequency that it resonates at.
Or like others suggested, a leftover security strip in the wallet.
People really should learn how to troubleshoot properly. Which reminds me of a story... in short, grad student doing research on fleas, trains his flea to jump when he yells out "Hop!". After much testing and mutilation, one by one, all of the legs get pulled off the flea. He yells out "Hop!", and nothing happens. Hence he begins to write his conclusion:
"When all of the legs are pulled off the flea, the flea becomes deaf".
-- Robi
Ouch....
My...
Eye...
!!!
Australian Money is much more fun. As it is plastic, it melts in the microwave, and as a definate bonus it also releases toxic fumes!
As the US Dept. of Treasury informs us here, they no longer produce $5,000 and $10,000 bills. but they do accept them as legal currency.
Weren't you looking to hire another news editor?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Just imagine the scene at the bank when the intrepid couple goes to replace their cash:
"Umm, I want to replace my 20's because I was dumb enough to burn them in the microwave."
Actually, I'm not sure if banks will take seriously damaged cash. I know that there is a Dept of Treasury office that will replace damaged bills (as long as there is 51% of the bill left), but would a bank take a stack of them since they'd have to turn around and do the replacement? I imagine that the conspiracy couple would just love having to send their money into the government.
Well, this news may or may not be a hoax. However, I have personally had problems with a couple stores and their security devices crop up suddenly in the last few months. I tracked it as far as my wallet. Nothing had changed about my wallet's configuration. It had the same credit cards, id, etc. Suddenly I ran into a problem where I was setting off some security gates when going into or out of a couple of stores in the city where my girlfriend goes to school. So, after some trial and error, I eventually tracked it to my wallet (I tried going through each time I visited her and took one item at a time out of my pockets.. cell phone, loose change, gave her my car keys and had her walk in before me, etc. until eventually I got rid of the wallet and the problem went away--which presents a problem when you want to go to the store to buy something...).
So anyway, there might be something to this although it could be related to the partially conductive ink on newer bills. I haven't bothered to track it any farther (as to specific money arrangements) as I've grown tired of the murderous looks I get from other customers as I walk through and the alarm sounds. (Oddly, the employees never seem to care...)
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
"This versatile structure is designed to protect homeowners and their families from a broad range of security, bio-chemical, natural and industrial disasters," etc.
It's worth a peek. There's this guy sitting on the bed with his protective arms around his wife and kids as they watch a TV set that is, presumably, declaring the end of the world or another Janet Jackson tit outbreak. Nobody's spazzing. They're in their SmartRoom(tm), illin' on the floral print sofa, kind of daring evildoers to try and penetrate their secure, tastefully decorated sanctum.
Whether they've burned all their twenties in the microwave for extra-smart safety, it doesn't say.
I...I'm not sure that's a good idea. That's probably just what They want, but, but YOU know that already, don't you? I didn't fall for the "Meds" trick and you think I'm going to fall for this? Hmph
Now, who took my tin foil umbrella...? It was here just before I used Outlook, at least I know Outlook's secure.
putting aluminum or other metals in a microwave doesn't do anything. and if its a pure metal cup with water in it putting it in a microwave won't heat it up. the problem is only when metal and other materials like paper or plastic are present such as a cup with an aluminum liner or foil wrapped paper.
This stupid fuck burned 30 dollars. That's FOOD and BEER for Christ's sake!
So if I get a bill I suspect is fake, I can nuke it. If it burns, it was real. D'OH! Okay, so Treasury intended for some other testing method, but this one sounds like drowning the suspect to find out if she really was a witch.
This seems to be a feasible possibility.
SCULLY: How can they do that?
BYERS: How? I'll show you how. You got a twenty dollar bill?
SCULLY: Hmmm... I'll check.
(She digs into her back pocket, looking at Mulder, who smiles back.
She pulls out a twenty.)
SCULLY: Um-hmmm.
(She hands it to Byers and he goes over to the table.
Mulder waves his hands like "I don't know.")
LANGLY: (still on phone) Uh-huh... yeah...
(Byers holds the bill in front of him and rips off its left side.
Scully crosses over to him. Langly can still be heard unintelligibly
in the background.)
SCULLY: Hey!
(Mulder laughs. Scully looks back at him. Byers pulls out the magnetic
anti-counterfeiting strip.)
BYERS: That's just one method. They use this magnetic strip to track
you. Whenever you go through a metal detector at an airport, they know
exactly how much you're carrying.
MULDER: Hey, Byers, it is a federal crime to deface money.
(Scully crosses back to Mulder, holding the ripped bill. Langly hangs up.)
SCULLY: This strip is an anti-counterfeiting measure.
LANGLY: How come it's on the inside? Other countries put that strip on the outside.
The anonymity of pound notes [or dollar bills] is a point in their favour. Imagine if it was possible to trace the history of every note in your wallet?
Suppose some supermarket chain decided not to accept money obtained by gambling; so, say, you couldn't spend money won fairly and squarely at William Hill's in Asda. Or a brewery decided that pubs selling their beer should not accept money that had been used to purchase, shall we say, products that compete with alcohol? If traders could refuse to accept money that had been won in a lawsuit, suing people would become less attractive {maybe there is an upside to this after all}.
There would be a brand new market for "clean" notes, which would go for more than their face value. Meanwhile, some establishments -- and I suspect they would be the posher ones -- would not be so fastidious about checking where money had been.
The end result of knowing the full history of every piece of money would be a situation where money would have different nominal values in different establishments -- and the reason why money was invented in the first place was so that you had something whose nominal value was the same everywhere you went.
I guess it's already possible to do this sort of thing in theory, since every note already has a unique serial number; but the infrastructure just isn't in place to do it. However, you can bet that the infrastructure would find its way into place right as they were in the process of deploying RFID-ed currency.
And just who is going to protect you from all this? In the beginning, only criminals will be affected. That is the way all these new control-freak measures are introduced. But then, the effects will be extended to a group of law-abiding but universally disliked citizens; and then, gradually, throughout the whole of the working class. History has shown that the people will tolerate any abuse of liberties, as long as they can be persuaded that it will only affect those they consider as being somehow inferior to themselves.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This is (I believe) why UK and EURO bills get smaller with smaller denominations. So you could wash a 20 note and make a 5 note but the treasury is less concerned about this (its still ilegal though).
Ian
That's amazing! paper burns when you put it in the microwave? quick, call nasa! this could revolutionize the space race! oh wait...
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
Ah, but these quotes do not contradict the parent, since they do not outright say that the Federal Reserve is in any way owned by the US Government... which indeed it isn't!
However words "within the government" quoted from the Fed's site are very misleading, since few people suspect that this alludes to the Fed's status as a privately held corporation which is able to wield governmental authority.
Yes the Federal Reserve corporation does derive its authority from the US Congress, which is precisely the illegal part. Congress is not constitutionally permitted to delegate this function.
Why do you think states like Nevada are rebelling against the Federal Reserve, introducing bills to legalize their own state currency?
Check here for a list of serious grievances knowledgeable folks have with the Federal Reserve system.
Actually the "Fed" is indeed a private corporation. Its shareholders are known to be major banks, such as Chase Manhattan, Citicorp, etc.
(And the "federalreserve.gov" should not enjoy a ".gov" top level domain either!)
For more information, see Test Your FED I.Q.
The parent post stating the Fed is a private corporation is 100% factual, and its former +5 mod was indeed appropriate, so mods... please restore the post to visibility.
Lastly, I've taken enough Economics to know that the politically incorrect facts tend not to get any coverage in such classes.
I just put all of the change from my pocket into my microwave and...wait a minute...oh.... :(
Take a grape, cut it almost in half, place it on an old plate with the cut faces flat, and microwave.
A counterindication for having a MRI scan done is having a tattoo. Obviously, people with tattoos are more likely to be of a subversive persuasion so it makes good sense for the government to infiltrate tattoo parlors... ...or could it just be that magnetic dye particles are conductive and therefore heat in a rapidly varying magnetic field?
Saying nobody owns the Fed is exactly like saying nobody owns the Internic!
Be careful how you read the Fed's own PR site. It tends to mince its words a bit, without spelling out the whole story.
Note that elsewhere in that same text, it does disclose, almost in passing:
"...the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks."
So, who owns the Fed? Its shareholders do. Who are these shareholders? The shareholders are the member banks. Who are the member banks? They are private corporations. Does this mean the Federal Reserve is privately owned? Yes.
From the article: ... We then walked across the street to a store and purchased aluminum foil. .
"It's a conspiracy! They bugged my money! Quick - get some TINFOIL!" I wouldn't be surpriced if he used the rest of that roll to make a tinfoil hat and put in on his head.
Underholdning.info
And lots of truckers transport fruit from California.
er... OK.
Would try just one before doing a $1000 stack of twenties.
Since microwaving one would reveal the location of the RFID chip, wouldn't something low tech like a pin or punch do the job on the remainder?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I know this is a lighthearted thread about idiots burning their money, but surely you can't be serious in the above statement? If you are that is the most profoundly sad thing I have heard about america yet. Forget who blew up the WTC on 911, the fact that you can comfortably say your police will just take your money until you can prove a legitimate use is obscene. That's what you expect in some bannana bongo republic not America, or is that what your once proud country has become?
uhmmmm, was everyone else carrying 5s in the places these people were going? it doesn't mention anyone else having these problems.
Is a fucking nutjob. Anyone in the Austin Area who has TWC and watches his access program for more than 5 minutes can tell you the same.
Maybe its the tracking device the CIA implanted in his skull, or maybe its bad genetics, I don't know. Either way, its sad (yet humorous) to watch the fucker rant.
I've never actually seen him foam at the mouth, but he's gotten close.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
(sorry, don't have a chance to see if anyone came up with that already, I'm late as it is...)
--<Mike>--
You have to know that most of the thing he says, can be proven. Look up "nortwood.pdf" with Google, and realize that your "real world" is very spooky.
"The Federal Reserve is not a private corporation."
He he. Do you really believe that?
i work at a convenience store/gas station. this provides many opportunities for microwave experimentation. when it rains outside, people tend to pay with soaking wet bills. i regularly dry them by microwaving them for about 10-20 seconds. (we have a higher-wattage industrial microwave.) i have never witnessed any burning like this before, but i usually just microwave smaller bills like 1s and 5s (which, of course, have the older design).
i have, however, seen paper napkins burn and look like this when left in the microwave for a rather long time---say, several minutes. usually this happens when drunk people heat something and forget to turn off the microwave (when not using the timer). since wood pulp napkins would mostly be cellulose, and U.S. paper currency is made from a special blend of cotton (about 90% cellulose) and linen (about 70% cellulose, i think), then i would expect any bill to burn similarly if microwaved long enough.
oh---another fun thing to microwave is halogen bulbs. just about one second and they glow brighter than when they're plugged in.
I am not text.
Go here to create your own Slashdot dis
go look at the picture... some were new, some were older...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Did he remove the tin foil before he nuked the money? This is what happens when bubbas read too much.
What about the serial numbers on each bill? Wouldn't they end up with each bill having different numbers?
Also, in the US, its not the banks that redeem destroyed money, its a division of the bureau of engraving and printing. It's interesting stuff. I'd find it hard to beleive you could pull some kind of scheme with them.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
This is way OT, but still hilarious enough to read again:
& ci d=4731395
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=45779
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
You'd be better off to leave the foil at home and deal with some temporary embarrassment. Wrapping articles in aluminum foil in an attempt to defeat EAS surveillance is using a tool to help you disable an anti-theft device, and is a felony (Burglary).
"All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell
I don't make enough money to just have a $20 laying around at my disposal (no I don't work for slashdot) but I remember a PBS program about these new bills. They were grinding up metal flakes into the green ink. This would produce the "holographic" type shifting colors in the printed ink when the bill is tilted. Perhaps these dudes were nuking the metal shavings out of their $20s? It would make sense that each bill would burn in the same place if they are all printed the same.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I don't know about the security where you are, but where I work those damned alarms never work. There are several other stores in the same complex, and everyone's tags set off the alarms in all the other stores, even if they've been deactivated for the original seller. We don't trust them at all. We watch actual people (you know, with cameras) to see if they're stealing things. And we catch professionals all the time... which could support your argument, I suppose, if they expect our store to act like others do.
"All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell
This is going to be a problem for anyone trying to by a large amount of illegal drugs or weapons with a few thousand of these $20 dollar bills.
Guess they will just have to use $10's.
Zoot!
Well, the law for one thing.
All the schemes you have outlined would be unlawful if applied to statutory legal tender.
Oh well, maybe things a different in the US...
If wrapping the money in tin foil helped, you think carrying it in a duct tape wallet would too? :)
Whenever I get money from an ATM and the bank is still open, I just change it for fives and singles. I do this for two reasons: I patronize a lot of small stores, and giving them smaller denominations makes it easier to make change. The other reason is a corollary of the first: I can leave a store faster if the clerk counts out slowly, or if breaking a twenty results in having to ask a manager or another clerk for change.
I'm not terrorably concerned with the goverment tracking the movement of money
You are not TERRORably concerned with the government? Hm...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
... even the photograph of the president has to wear a tin-foil hat.
Those detectors at Walmart are not anti-theft gates, they're warnings that a customer is leaving the store with money still in his pocket!
... even photographs of the president have to wear tin-foil hats.
This statement is false.
Never had money seized, but one time I got pulled over (in MI also, btw) on the highway to pick up some computer equipment/parts from a shop in a nearby town. I had about $900 USD, and the trooper saw the wad in my wallet when I hauled it out for the mandatory DL check. He started really checking me and the car out, but, luckily I had the invoice for the order with me, and he quickly apoligised, saying it wasn't so much trying to roust people just for having money, but just a matter of their own safety. A lot of cops have been shot in MI, a lot of them State Troopers, on traffic stops in recent years, and anything out of the ordinary gets their attention, as it could mean them going home tonight..or not.
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
All it takes is for some big enough and nasty enough event to happen which -- it can be claimed -- would have been able to have been prevented if the law were different, and popular opinion can be manipulated. Alternatively, a sudden discovery of something that has been going wrong for a long time, with no way of measuring the damage, can have the same effect {such as, if you bypass your electric meter, nobody will ever know just how much juice you have got away without paying for}.
Is this likely? Well, given the USA's popularity on the international scene, there probably would not even be any need to set up an international incident -- US foreign policy is motivation enough for someone, somewhere, sooner or later, to want to Have a Go. And despite the USA not having especially high taxes {things such as healthcare, education, pensions &c. being considered luxuries and therefore not simply stopped out of wages at source} there are still people who begrudge paying any taxes at all.
It's likely that RFID-ed cash {or even a transaction history database using the existing serial numbers on banknotes -- whose very existence is the sugar that will help the public swallow this particular pill} would be proposed initially as a tool to fight terrorism or tax evasion; but eventually would be used for surveillance and manipulation of ordinary citizens.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I particularly like the emphasis through bolding. It's a subtle and yet clear way of saying, "This is what I mean" in a way that also says, "I speak Swedish and you don't".
It's truly an inspired effort to be very clear and yet say nothing at all to your largely English speaking audience. Kudos.
Never confuse volume with power.
Gee, I think the first one or two would have made you stop, but no, you had to do all 50 at once. Idiot.
Did anyone think that perhaps they burnt because they may have put the bills into the microwave dry? I mean, if you put any paper into the microwave, it will burn unless you soak it with water first.
The fact that they burn in the centre could be because they STACKED the bills together and put it most likely in the centre of the microwave. As such, the microwave concentration is highest at the centre and so they burnt first in the centre. I don't know, but this is just a guess. Perhaps you should try spreading the bills out in a radial pattern?
Since at least in the 1970's US bills have used magnetic particles suspended in the black ink to help automate the detection of real bills from phony bills.
This helps vending machines detect the bill as well.
Your comment about aluminum foil in the microwave is exactly right.
The magnetic particles in the bills are going to do the same thing. Especially in a stack of bills. The ink in the eye probably lines up in the stack, and is more concentrated than in other parts of the picture.
The electromagnetic field generated by the microwave will induce a current in the magnetic particles suspended in the ink.
Twinkle twinkle little star, power equals I-squared * R.
The resistance will result in heat, and the bills will burn.
So take off your tin foil hats folks, or at least don't stick your head in the microwave while wearing it!
foil covered wallet.
"The Federal Reserve is funded by interest collected on U.S. Govt. securities..."
That's exactly what your parent post was saying. But you disagreed with it?? Read more carefully next time. That is precisely the form of the interest we pay on the money which is in circulation. It is bond interest.
New money enters into circulation when the Fed buys interest-bearing Government bonds.
Try going to the Fed sometime.
I went to the Fed bank in New York City. Before taking us down to see all the gold, the tour guide pretty much spelled it out, the Federal Reserve is a private corporation -- a business. It's no secret... just one of those things people choose to ignore, or deny.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
The real danger of RFID tags is twofold: First, if any and all articles and goods, including money, is provided with such a tag, the possibility of privacy-abuse is staggering; the amount of details that could be gathered about a person, without him even knowing, is unheard of. Second, the ease at which this intrusion is possible. While some claim it's only for short-distance detection, and therfor rather limited, this argumentation seems rather foolish. As the history in technology has shown us, it's rather trivial to come up with much more powerfull and sensitive products, even only after a copple of years (or even months) after the original product. It is, therefor, not farfetched to imagine that before long, we will have devices capable of RFID-tagt detection on a distance of, let's say, 20 metres, to be consevative. Can you imagine what power that would give to any government or agency, who happens to be interested in you? And even to common burglars? Someone walking behind you; one push on a button and he knows exactly how much money you have; if you are an interesting prey or not, etc. Or just driving by your house and detecting all things that are of value in your house. It's even possible, using two devices on a known distance of eachother, to exactly pinpoint where you have hidden your stack of cash in the house. The prospects are really frightening. Yet, one must also akcnowledge RFID has potential. The 'cure' is rather simple: allow RFID tags for bulk-transports, but not for money. Als for individual 'consumer' items: if you (a shop) use them, then just make sure you always remove the tag the moment the customer buys it (just as current anti-theft tags are being handled today). With these simp^le rules (who should be put into law), you still have the benefits of RFID-tags, but without the frightening possibility of abuse.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
My brother did that for a summer. Demostrated the power of the shears by cutting a nickel in two. What a stupid name. Who would by knives from 'CutCo'.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I doubt it would take 5 min on high just to cook some tags, furthmore i doubt 3 sec on high gets anything hot enough to catch on fire..
Silence Bossy Meat Creatures!
canadians have more coins than americans.
Well, you may be right about the circumstances in this particular case. Although, what if these RFID tags are serial #ed. Lets say we have a detector in the doorway of some kind... this detector could quantify the amount of cash you were carrying on you. If it was large enough, maybe they'd pull you aside and search you, just in case you were smuggling something.
It is well known that wallets themselves set these things off. I was once a victim of this. I don't keep cash in my wallet (dad told me keep it in front pocket), and I began setting off a store alarm. The wallet set it off, once removed, it did not set it off.
Umm, yeah, stuff burns when you put it in the microwave. I always use the microwave to dry my money after going in the ocean, when left on too long it catches fire. Gee wiz, really?
EMP.
Pay some kind of ransom for hostages, then blow EMP charge destroying the ransom?
Or terrorist attack - launch EMP by a bank, not only their electronics get fried, but there's a large fire in the valut?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
...with money to burn.
Ha, ha.
Steve Wozniak has an interesting story about how he uses sheets of $2 bills on his site. I got a kick out of reading this a few weeks ago:
He ended up raising the suspicions of a casion manager in Las Vegas, who called in the Secret Service because he thought the bills were counterfeit...
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
There are no 2000 watt microwaves. The most powerful microwaves in consumer use right now top out at 1400 watts. So sorry to see you blatantly misrepresent in a post.
...is the way these people, wallet fat with cash, snidely refer to the minimum wage worker as though it were amazing that he had the grey matter to sort out the cause.
Perhaps they'd have been even more amazed had he lifted up their tinfoil hats and whispered in their ears "The theft alarm works on magnetism... new US currency has a magnetic strip in each bill. You have a stack of magnets in your wallet."
Now, if you'll all excuse me, I have a grassy knoll to prowl.
- I am made of meat.
If you look at the list of banks that make up the Federal Reserve, you will discover that they are *all* corporations... it's disingenuous at best to state that the Federal Reserve is *not* private. Rather, it is the best example of corporate control of the Federal government, as it comes from controlling the money that Congress has to spend.
It's a wonderful scam for the banks, though: Create fiat money from nothing by printing it, loan it to the US Federal Government... and then collect interest on it, making even more money from nothing.
And then there's the trickle-down effect at the commercial bank level: Fractional reserve laws permit banks to lend more money than they have in reserve, up to 9 times more, IIRC... so for every dollar taken in, they can loan 9, charging interest and again making money from nothing.
Nice work if you can get it! If a citizen tried it they'd be arrested for counterfeiting.
The rest of us poor schmucks have to work for our money, and then pay income taxes (and other taxes)on it.
Other notes about the Federal Reserve: Any audits of it would be conducted by the General Accounting Office. Check the GAO website, you'll not find the results of any Federal Reserve audits because none have ever been conducted.
The oversight by Congress which you cite is non-existent, any activities that Congress performs with regards to the Federal Reserve are rubber stamps at best - after all, all of Congress knows from where their budget money derives, and it isn't from income taxes, which serve merely to pay down the interest on the debt (and remove money from circulation, thereby helping limit inflation).
Maybe your post should be moderated "-5, Views World Through Rose-colored Lenses"?
But there is an easier way of knowing there are no rfid tags in 20 dollar bills. Basically it is that if there *were* rfid tags in $20 bills, then we would already know about it. I'm sure $20.00 bills have been completely disected with a microscope/metal-detector/mass-spectrometer-to-det ermine-ink-composition/whathaveyou by entrepreneurial money hackers ( aka counterfeiters ), and if they found anything this nasty, we'd know.
Eat at Joe's.
Could there just be a small metal content in the bill designed so that somebody who has $1000 worth of $20 bills (rather than simply 10 $100's) in their wallet is sure to set off an airport security alarm until they show their wallet to make sure they get an extra security questions?
:(
I used to never have credit cards, so I paid for everything in cash. I have paid for electric guitars in cash ($600), amps (~$550), and once a used car ($3300). Am I suspicious? By this guy's token, yes. But if you read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I'm pretty smart because I used to never "borrow from the future to pay for the present." Now of course I'm stupid and use credit cards.
In Soviet Russia, the Federal Reserve Bank owns YOU!
Eat at Joe's.
This person isn't very smart. Why didn't he try it on one $20 bill to start with rather than all of them?
:-)
Well, I guess he wanted to try out a Beowulf cluster of them. . .
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
I wasn't counterfeiting, I was protecting my funds from loss or damage.
Particularly Panduit Level 7 patch cables. These have a tendency to set off the anti-theft devices at several locations I've been too.
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"
Good thing they have that intent to defraud clause in there! I wouldn't want to go to jail for passing $7.00 bills ( a five glued to a one glued to another one ) or my $3.00 bill ( a $2.00 bill glued to a $1.00 bill or a $2.00 bill glued to 4 quarters )
Eat at Joe's.
strange that you think cash is "anonymous".
take a look at a dollar bill - or any piece of US paper currency. notice a big fat number (surrounded by letters) anywhere on it? serial number. each note is unique. anti-counterfeiting applications, as well as tracking stolen cash, spring to mind, but then, so does something a little more sinister.
i had a chat with some friends not long ago about how the lunatic ravings of people like alex jones could possibly be true, based on simple OCR of bank notes' serial numbers. it sounds paranoid, but don't you think someone else may have thought of it?
any ATM or money changer that doles out money, or any vending machine that accepts paper money could very easily apply OCR to any bill that passes through it. each note already undergoes a battery of tests to be sure it's legal tender - and those tests are updated every time a new note goes out. how difficult would it be to sneak a software OCR into that mix, and some means of recording the serial numbers (correlated with the items purchased with that bill)
so, here's a $20 that came from this bank at this time, drawn from this person's account. it gets changed to fives, ones and subway tokens at this machine in this subway station. one of the ones is used at this station two stops down to purchase a Cola Beverage...
so, in the end, the banks will all know what your beverage of choice is. or, slightly more useful, where you spend all your yuppie green stamps (consider that the stores you shop in have to take their money to the bank, too. and it goes through money-counting machines there)
we all decided it was time to start using sacagawea dollars. but none of the vending machines around here take them...
paranoid yet?
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
If anyone would like to help me recreate this experiment, just send me your $20 bills, and I will report back here with the results.... Really, I will.....
I'm not a human, but I play one on T.V.
A new breed of muggers has started hitting the
city. They carry rfid scanning wands and casually
scan your wallet without ever touching you. If
you have more than $50 cash, you're the next target!
A mugger can get an RFID scanner, hide in a alley and only step up for business when he gets a strong signal. This eliminates the possibility of mugging people with only petty cash!
Bet you didn't even think of this !
Ummm, I have a twenty dollar bill in my hand right now and the metalic strip is nowhere near the eye Jackson's (not Jefferson's) eye. You might want to look at the bill before you let everyone know you are pulling stuff out of your rear end.
actually, had you set it for a second or two less, and opened the door- it would have gone off in your face.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I can't wait to read the real explantion on Snopes
He could've friend any RFID and kept his money if he did the bills one at a time...
I wonder if it has dawned on him that he just destroyed $600 of perfectly good money.
//m
Agreed whole-heartedly. That was one of the first things that popped out at me about the article.
I also pulled a couple twenties out of my wallet. Two of the 1996 series (haloed, off-center Jackson) and one of the new multi-color series.
Also, regarding the "metal strip" many explain this as:
None of these bills has a solid object anywhere near Jackson's face. They all have an embedded strip, but the strip is less than 1 inch from the left side of the bill. (it passes through the '0' in the upper left corner of the bill, not Jackson's eye)
RFID tags, when removed from their packaging, are a small square silicon chip. This chip will NOT transmit light and would be easily visible in the bill if held to light.
Let's face it, "Dave and Denise" are crackpots. The pattern of burning is typical of what would happen if someone "accidentally" set a stack of bills in front of a propane torch. Note that some bills are burned through and some are barely browned? Looks like heat applied from the bottom to me.
They also appear to have started off with the heat off to the wrong side and moved it to center it on Jackson's face. Note the double-spot pattern? I suspect they moved it after they realized that when you look at the back of the bill Jackson's face will be offset to the right instead of the left. Brilliant. The crackpots can't even figure out how to measure correctly.
-Matt
RFIDs did not cause his money to burn. Microwaving the money caused the cloth to burn. I'm guessing that the microwave didn't have a carousel in it by the way the microwaves burned through one spot... What a jackass. The author never even mentions if he tried to take the money out of the wallet and walk through the scanner with just the money or just the wallet... There is probably an RFID embedded in the WALLET. I see these things all the time and sometimes they are well hidden, like under a flap. I hope the bank refuses to take back his burned money and then calls the FBI on him for destroying currency.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
And how to I obtain one?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Put anything in one of my microwaves without changing it's position and you'll burn a hole through it. So I can reproduce the same results with $1's, cookies, bread, a shoe, anything that does not have a lot of moisture!
What some people report as news! If I'd known this would make Slashdot I would have built a site for my defective microwave a long time ago, and blamed it all on RFID.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
is how many people (after reading all the threads) were willing to burn up and destroy perfectly good money in their microwaves.
If you've got money to "burn", how about donating it???
EFF.org is a good place to start.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
Hah! I'm not going to fall for that! Soupy Sales got in trouble during the 50s for asking kids on his TV show to get their mom's purses and dad's wallets and send him all of the pictures of the presidents they can find. He got them, a lot of them! Then he got fired.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
You are correct. However, it doesn't matter. Quit thinking in terms of governments and corporations. All that matters is that there are a small number of really powerful people that control the money, and they will continue to control it regardless of how it is organized.
Screwing with these people is the kind of stuff that causes sudden heart attacks and broken kneecaps.
Plus, I'm not convinced it needs screwing with. It is in the best interest of the people in charge to make the money supply work well at the same time that it keeps them powerful. One of those Nash equilibrium-like things.
I tried it.. It's not true. The bill wasn't even warm.
This must've been sent in by the college nerds from the Simpsons.
Actually, isn't a Simpsons reference also nerdy?
If I remember right, US bills have a mylar/foil strip running thru them. You can see it when you hold them up to the light. It also contains a blacklight sensitive dye. If this guy is afraid that strip is being used to track him, he can just throw the gummint off by sending his money to me.
Take it from someone who's learned it the hard way; DO NOT microwave your Visa card!
Open source is the art of letting other people write your bad code.
The store theft detectors are not RFID scanners - they are highly "tuned" metal detectors. If it was the 20's setting it off, then it was probably the "USA $20" strip which has minute traces of metal.
Though I would add that this is a good one for Mythbusters!!!
We don't need no water let the Andrew Jackson burn
burn Andrew Jackson, burn.
FLR
The idiot that wrote the article can't spell "its".
the authors need to put down the crackpipe and the copy of 1984 and get real.
an RFID tag would require a conductor. go see for yourself, scrape layer by layer through the whole area by those eyes and you'll find nothing but paper.
this is NOT to say that there is not an RFID in the new 20-dollar bill, but I certainly assert that there is nothing near the location described by the author.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
What we resent is the fact that the government or a corporation can track our 'cash'. Credit purchases and check purchases have been tracked for years, but cash was not traceble until now. Cash has always beed traceable they have these unique identifying numbers printed directly on the bills.
Also, those anti-shoplift scanners are (except for some very new and expensive trials) NOT RFID scanners. There's no "ID". Either it finds a security tag or it doesn't--it can't ID the exact tag it found.
Crazy people (i.e., the "UN Black Helicopter" folks and the "9/11 never happened" people) like to think that there are RFID tags in our new money. Nonsense. The government doesn't give a crap about the cash in Joe sixpack's wallet.
Best Buy can have you arrested
I think that I heard this on the Daily Show (which actually does report real facts, it just makes fun of them) that it costs less than the face value of (at least certain units of) currency to make the currency. When they introduce new coins, they have to introduce more than they want in circulation because people like to collect new coins (especially tourists). So this actually counts as a slight profit.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I just microwaved my new 20s...nothing unusual to report. I was hoping for a pop or a fizzle or something but nothing...
Oh well
I forgot the right spelling, I didn't learn Physics in English, but there's a thearem of Stocks. So, if you put you RFID inside metal box, it won't emit anything.
about 10 years ago. I don't know what I had in my wallet, but there was a bookstore in which I always triggered the alarm and it was my wallet. I never suspected about tags in bills. Maybe I had US bills in my wallet? I doubt venezuelan government put tags on bills, especially 10 years ago.
My heart is pure, but make no mistake, it's pure evil
Investment prospectus available on request. Any investment carries risk.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
There was a scene where the conspiracy theorist guys pulled the strip out of a 20 dollar bill and revealed a transmitter in it.
Why would they bother with paper money that they can't tie to any specific person? That would be pointless to say the least.. It would make much more sense (and is MUCH easier) to use cell phones and credit cards to track people. Try sticking your credit card in the microwave you clod.
Mod +5 Drunk
Uh, dude, we have been off the "gold standard" since 1913
That's exactly what he said, moron.
1) Like you said, the magnetic anti-theft systems aren't even the SAME as an RFID system.
2) RFID chips aren't so thin that you can't feel them on a US bill.
3) RFID chips require a decent sized antenna to work so they can re-radiate RF. It'd be visible if you shine light through the paper either as a consistent pattern in the ink or as fine wires.
It's BS, pure and simple.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
For a week or so, I set off every sensor I went through. Turns out there was an active tag in one of the credit card pockets of the wallet I'd just bought.
Try getting cross country with big deseal trucks hauling who knows what. The gas and lodging alone could be over $1000. BTW, It is illegal to carry more than $10,000 in to airports without written permission from the government. I guess that rule applies to other places of public transport and other check stations. I think there is even a law against just driving that much money across state lines. I know everyone is going to just assume there is something just terribly wrong with someone like that, but many folks just do it without thinking. For example, why won't you just take enough cash to spend two weeks vacationing in another country? Other countries much prefer large American bills -- you often get a better exchange rate (speaking from experience). Besides, the FBI profiling needs to be updated. Carrying $10K today vs $10K 30 years ago are VERY different.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
Oh, you are so trusting. Ask the Federal Reserve's site itself if there if there is anything corrupt and unconstitutional going on here. "Of course not, sir, where did you get that idea?"
... the banks and corporations ... will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson
It's like asking the cat what happened to the canary.
The AC's have already pointed the way to the truth. Somebody mod them up.
All right, I will give you one more reference, and a good one:
Federal Reserve Act of 1913 Unconstitutional
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money,
F.Y.I. The worst you could do to a microwave by putting metal inside is break the magnatron, and when it breaks, it will just die, not explode or any cool shit like that
Well, it kinda depends what else is in the microwave too. Years ago I had a girlfriend who put a box of chinese food in her parents brand new microwave - this was around 1983, when they were still relatively expensive - the little metal handle sparked and set the cardboard on fire, and the flame proceeded to melt the top of the inside of the microwave into a black gooey gaping hole! Needless to say, that was the last anyone used it.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Our first microwave came with a recipe book for the microwave, one recipe was for bownies that included the tip, put a bit of foil in the corners to keep the brownies from drying out. It was the first time we had ever used a microwave, and you can imagine the shock when lighting began flying around the microwave.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I zapped a new $20 bill for 40 seconds. No discernible heat. Oh, wait. This is incredible! I've just replicated Patterson's cold fusion results. Nobel Prize, here I come!
Homer: There's a 10,000$ bill in it for you
Barney: Oh yeah? Which president is on it?
Homer: Uhh..all of them. They're having a party.
Barney: Wow!
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
She had no manager, she could call to deal with it?
This is nothing new. That thin strip in each bill actually has a few atoms of an Iridium isotope in it. Not enough to hurt you, barely enough to detect. But, put a bunch of bills in a duffel bag for instance, and the NSA can track you from space. This conspiracy theory is as old as those little strips in the bills. I don't know if it's true, but I never have had a duffel bag of currency either!
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
"What we resent is the fact that the government or a corporation can track our 'cash'. Credit purchases and check purchases have been tracked for years, but cash was not traceble until now..."
Even if it were true, so what? No one knows what $20 bill came from what individual. This so call "story" is just as bad as the one from last week about bud doing inventory tracking on its beer. More proof that a lot of slashdot people are so paranoid that they have exceeded idiot status.
This feature would be useful for high-tech criminals who could conjure up their own scanners, then would like to target victims carrying the most money. I can imagine a well organized mafia using it in casinos, race tracks and other events where people carry lots of money.
The group that would find it useful would be customs agents who want to make sure you declare curreny over $10,000 in and out of the country.
Get a stack of small sheets of paper (helps if they're slightly absorbant, blotting paper is ideal) and place a small drop of water on one, ensure that is it soaked up by the paper. Put the piece witht he wet spot somewhere near the middle of the stack and leave for a while (let the water soak into the adjacent sheets). With the paper still in the stack put it in a microwave oven and heat on full power for 30 seconds. Depending on the amount of water you put on the initial sheet you might see the paper catch fire in the oven and explode or when you get the stack out you might see a scorch mark on the sheet you put the water on and the sheets either side of it. Very much like the photographs of the $20 bills in the article.
Metal reflects microwaves, water is heated by microwaves. Seeing a burned spot demonstrates the presence of water, not an RFID chip. Microwaves destroy RFID chips much like static electricity destroys CMOS chips, the electric field generated (several thousand volts but tiny amounts of current over very short amouints of time) destroys the P-N junctions. The heating effect is negligable.
I've seen similar effects wiping magnetic tapes in a domestic microwave.
I can only assume that the affected spot on the writer's $20 bills had gotten damp (maybe there's something about the way the bills are made that makes that spot more absorbant).
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
I had the same problem, I walked into a store once alarms went off. It turned out my new wallet had a security tag tucked under the lining that was never deactivated.
Thanks to the miracle of modern internet translation we have this perfectily readable text....
Riksbanken able vagra that losa in currency ors coin as intentionally second ors damaged. Dar stout : " have a bank note ors one coin intentionally second said that its size ors look aberration stamp whatever tillkannagivits cowboyenielors able inlosen darav vagras. " That vagran that losa in tillampar Riksbanken as a rule ago infargade and inplastade currency , ago intentionally sonderklippta currency , ago currency dar sakerhetstraden rivit from and such.
So who carries $1000 in twenties in their wallet? What a fat wad that would be! 50 bills.
t ru cker_wallets.html
Oh Wait! Maybe it was one of those "biker" / "trucker" wallets?
http://www.leathercheckbooks.com/large_leather_
I like getting all my information from folks who are up all night driving and listening to late night AM radio talkshows. And stopping at truck stops.
Be sure to buy a carton of Camels, a copy of Hustler, and handful of beef jerky and "Slim Jim's" before you microwave your money.
Actually, I meant control inflation. By expanding the money supply, the Fed can cause inflation. By constricting it, they can curb inflation. Sometimes either policy is necessary. The point is that with gold-backed currency, the total money supply depends on how much gold there is. If someone finds a huge new load of gold, we get instant inflation. For example, Spain had a gold-based currency during the colonial days, and the huge influx of gold from the colonies completely destabilized its economy, causing extreme inflation. With modern economic tools like fiat money, we can limit these problems.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
Here in CT there's a famous grocery store whose founder was charged with skimming $17M from the corporate accounts in order to avoid $6M in taxes. He decided one way to get out with some of the money would be to head for the Carribbean with $80,000 in lots of pads of $20s hidden under baggy clothes. What he failed to take into acount were the metallic printed threads on the newer 20s - the aggregate of which managed to set off the metal detector. What they really got him for was not telling anyone he was leaving the country with more than $10,000. Then it got really bad.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
That a stack of $20 bills burns in a microwave is not proof of an RFID conspiracy. If you take a stack of ordinary paper and put it in the microwave long enough, it burns from the middle. This is an old hacker prank. Back in the days of punch cards, if you put a stack of punch cards in a microwave, they burned from the middle. The top and bottom cards were fine, but the middle ones were charred. (It was a mean prank to play on the card feeder.) Notice the photograph of the bills. Some are charred a little, some are charred a lot. I would lay freshly baked $20 on the fact that the amound of charring is dependant on the depth in the stack.
I have one follow-up question for Dave and Denise: do the charred bills set off the scanner? This would not be proof, but it may provide contrary evidence to their claim.
I carry my money and credit cards inside an Altoids tin, minus the Altoids. Now I have a good reason. Thanks!
This message has been scanned for memes and dangerous content by MindScanner, and is believed to be unclean.
Photoshop doesn't work with the new $20 bills. :)
Economics classes are good, but you have to go beyond economics 101 to see the whole picture. The officially accepted economic theory by the US government advisors is Keynesian-Monetarist, but these theories have already proven that they don't work. Keynes believed that during depressions the government could fix the economy by spending on useless projects, monetarists (Milton Friedman et al) believe that by controlling the supply of money with a fiat currency you can steer the economy out of inflation. The practical implementation of these incorrect theories has created a new phenomenon, stagflation, which is stagnation and inflation together. Other equally important theories that are not usually taught in the classroom are the Austrian School(Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek) and the Supply Side School(Arthur Laffer). Several proponents for these theories have received Nobel prizes as well as the monetarists and the keynesians, so they are not exactly fringe wacko theories. They are just unpopular among government regulators, the economists they employ, and the academic programs they give funds to, because their conclusion is usually that the government should leave the economy alone. Both of these theories hold that the government should peg the currency to gold, or to some relatively fixed in supply and hard to manufacture comodity, so that economic agents can make long range plans using an objective measure of value instead of the subjective whims of whoever happens to be dictating economic policy at the time. In my opinion the Austrian school is the most correct of all, but the supply siders also have some interesting to say. You can read Ludwig Von Mises magnus opus, Human Action, online for free at the site dedicated to his memory: http://www.mises.org/humanaction.asp
This is too funny. The funny thing is that it gets \.ed. I mean, the guy is a kook. He's right about a lot of anti-goobermint stuff, but he's still a kook.
Oh, yeah. There are no RFID tags in money.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
True, it is a powerful tool which could potentially be used to regulate inflation.
However since it can also serve as an inexhaustible spigot of imaginary funding for federal budgets, guess how it inevitably gets used?
Hint: The national debt has now surpassed 7 trillion.
"Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth," Greenspan stated in The Objectivist some 30 years ago, noting: "Gold stands in the way of this insidious process."
When the Clemson Tigers football team is invited to bowl games, Clemson fans obtain large quantities of $2 bills. Many will stamp the requisite orange tiger paw on them all too. Then they pay for everything at the bowl with the $2 bills: hotels, meals, bar tabs, everything.
At the end of the day, merchants understand very plainly the economic impact of having 50,000 Tiger Fans visiting for a few days.
This gives rise for future generations to have this little poem:
Poor Andrew Jackson
Had but one eye
The other was RFID
And poked out by and by
Poor Andrew Jackson
If only he knew
He'd turn in his grave
To see the "Land of the Brave"
Wait a minute. This guy is trying to determine whether cash has RADIO FREQUENCY ID's embedded in it... by exposing them to MICROWAVE FREQUENCY radiation?
Something tells me he slept through his Physics for Crackpots lectures.
I burned my Popcorn!
RFID tags must have been genetically engineered into the kernels!!!
There are RFID chips that can fit into paper. Digital Watermarking is a perfect solution for fighting counterfeiting. See here and here for random crap discussing it. The only question is: If they haven't released RFID chips in paper money yet, when will they? This would also make processing large amounts paper money much easier for banks. Anyhow, the Slashdot community is not ready for Alex Jones. He's like some wild eyed sooth sayer reading the tea leaves. You have to decipher what he's saying by ignoring his editorializing. You can't just process everything literally.
p
An interesting thought occurred to me- what if the bills don't just *contain* a tag, but *are* the tag. The engraving was redesigned- how difficult would it be to arrange it so that the printing on the bill becomes a viable circuit (antenna, capacitors, whatever else is needed)?
Not that I mean to fan the flames (puns not intended) of conspiracy theory...it is my opinion that "The Government" already has too much information flowing in and not enough ability for analysis. As mentioned elsewhere, every bill has had a unique identifier (serial number) for quite some time. The printed versions can't be read remotely, but could be tracked whenever the bills changed hands. Whether this data could be rationalized into information is another question.
A friend of mine had a similar run-in with an airport metal detector and his stack of traveler's checks- each had a foil seal on the face, and collectively these created enough of a signal to set it off. Maybe a simple precaution would be to ensure the bills are oriented randomly (i.e. some with A.J. facing right, others turned 180 degrees and facing left, still others face down in the stack...)
All true paranoids and patriots unite- pay for everything using old quarters...or better yet- pennies!
Will the microwave oven work on the chips in my head too?
Hey, can I borrow $20?
There should be a law requiring/prohibiting that (Please circle one)
Rfid in money is pretty pointless, and I'd be supprised to see it implimented in the next fifty years, I'd be less suprised to see the end of cash all together.
Erm, you do know the E.U. has a proposal on the table to add RFID to the Euro, right...?
1. Cut a grape in half and put the two halfs next to each other on a paper plate.
2. Set microwave to 30.
3. Profit!!!!!
Grapes have embedded chips!
I believe that, due to the "War" on Drugs.. your cash can be seized if it is above a certain amount. Unfortunately, this is, at best, something I've heard. You have to convince them not to take it. My pop was taking out a lot of cash for a vacation, and the bank teller asked him what it was for. Being a fairly hard core Libertarian, he said, "I'm going to buy a bunch of drugs. What does it matter to you?"
Either way, I guess one could just ask their local Law Enforcement Agent.
p
Highly confused and inaccurate. I'll let others explain why the Fed is not a "private" institution, and I'l concentrate on money.
First - money was never "backed" by gold, anyway - that's what people thought, but it was always based an a misconception of the nature of money. Under the gold standard, the government set at price for gold above it's market value and pledged to pay it to anyone who showed up at the mint with gold bricks, thus accumulating large stocks of a very useful metal and locking them away uselessly in vaults. In 1971, the market price of gold (due to inflationary forces in the larger economy) crept up so that it's price was now greater than the mandated price of $35 an once. Thus the stocks of of gold started to disappear. In response, Nixon announced that the treasury was out of the gold business, and let the price "float". If you examine it closely, you'll see that gold never gave "value" to the currency - it was the currency that gave value to gold. (Think about it - imagine what would happen if the US mint came out with, say, a $10 coin made of 1 once of gold. It would never circulate because people would melt it down for the gold! Money only circulates if its face value is greater than its intrinsic value...)
I don't really have time to go into a complete monetary theory here, but here's the short version: "money" is credit. Period. All money is, and all it has ever been, is a generally recognized IOU that people use because they have reason to beleive it will be redeemed. Banks issue money by making loans, which other people accept because the bank accepts the money as payment of loans. Governements issue money that is accepted because governments accept it in payment of taxes. You could issue money by granting someone an IOU, that would circulate if if enough other people owed you and thus had need of something to pay you back. The "dollar" or "pound" or "euro" is merely a commonly agreed-on unit - it has no more physical "reality" than a meter or a yard.
Money is exactly equivilant to tokens for a subway. They have no intrinsic value - they only have value because the subway demands them for you to ride. Money has value if and only if someone, somewhere, will accept it as payment.
Here's a good overview: http://mosler.org/docs/docs/innes_final.htm
The ones without the metal strips.
...and the blatant bragging of Walmart and many corporations of using 'rfid' electronics on every marketable item by the year 2005.
I thought Walmart was pushing for all of their distributers to use RFID tags on each pallet or case of products, not every individual product...yet.
Just trying to point out this guy's exaggerated conspiracy theories and inaccurate information.
Typically at the Canadian border and at any currency exchange you have to fill out a fair amount of paperwork if you are carrying more than $10K USD of cash - they want to know where you got it from. I beleive it stems from an international treaty on money laundering.
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
A Popular Science writer decided it would be fun to smelt metal in the microwave. He even made tin fish!
There should be a law requiring/prohibiting that (Please circle one)
The $10K rule for airports was enacted primarily to prevent drug smuggling, because drugs are bought with cash (to reduce tracability).
:)
One of my old roommates from college, who, btw, was a bit paranoid (he was a recovered heroin/dope addict) believed the metal strips in $20s were put there specifically to set off metal detectors if too many of them were on a person... Sounds like he's driving trucks these days
The Fed is a bastard institution, it's true, but it does serve a necessary regulatory role, so I'd keep it - I'd get it out opf the buisness of setting interest rates, though - there's no real evidence that it gyrating short term rates do anything to avoid recessions, and it tends to drive up long term rates. I'd have them set rates at a low rate - or even at 0% - and let the market determine long term rates based on that.
BTW, the fed (despite its self-serving propaganda to the contrary) does not "control" the money supply in any real sense. It sets overnight rates, but in order to maintain those rates it must provide whatever reserves the banking system needs to maintain liquidity. It has no discretion in this.
And that story about Nevada is pretty funny. As one wag put it, anybody can issue money - the problem is getting people to accept it. Sure, Nevada can issue a $20 coin, and if it accepts it in payment of taxes, maybe people will use it. But since the niether the feds nor any other state government will accept it, most private institutions won't either, and it will probably trade at a discount everywhere outside of Nevada, and even within Nevada. Once again, monetary cranks misunderstand the basic reality of money - not surprising, since mainstream economists do, too...
Apparently, a number of slashdotters have tried putting $20 bills in the microwave. Well, I thought I'd try the same with other currency and the results are nothing short of a fullblown implication of our government! (Yes, you can even try this at home to verify that everything I'm doing is real.) I placed $10 in quarters into the microwave and it lit up like the 4th of July. Clearly, the government is tracking even currency down to the coin level!
this is just great. Now teerorists can run around with a vircator or other EMP thingy and make our pants explode. Imagine the damage a terrorist could do in a las vegas strip club! Everyone knows that's where all the new twenties go.
This is total BS...
I have an RFID reader and there is no tag in the $20 bill... I get no reads from the 5 new bills I have.
Just another parinoid wack-o-
...nothing happened even after one minute - save me wasting $0.02 worth of electricity.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Those of you who are fans or friends of fans of KISS and/or 70's kitsch will recognize the reference to Phantom of the Paradise, in which Paul Stanley shot some sort of laser beam from his eye. I'm a friend of a fan, so I can't guarantee it was his right eye, but...
and a more obvious but less appropriate reference for those not so unfortunate as to have suffered through Phantom of the Paradise.
But it's an unsustainable illusion of equilibrium since the debt continues to grow. What, then, will happen in a few decades when the payment on this debt can no longer be borne, and the growing financial crisis can no longer be ignored?
Do we then privatise the nation's water supply and other natural resources? The bankers will be calling all the shots at that point.
Already, the Fed Chairman is specifying radical changes to Social Security. We will certainly obey him, because:
"When a government is dependent for money upon bankers, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes....Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain." - Napoleon
We can foresee the ultimate playout of America's predicament as demonstrated many times thoughout history, and already in smaller economies of today. Look at Venezuela, or Brazil... or anyone else on the long list of countries which have leveraged themselves to the point of bankruptcy with the assistance of international finance and central banking. When a foreigner says, "where I come from, the central bank owns you," they are not overstating by much.
The way I see it, a major battle between central bankers and first-world taxpayers is inevitable. The sooner this confrontation takes place, the less traumatic or (God forbid) militarized it will have to be.
You're right, that messing with these power-brokers is can be hazardous to one's health. (Just ask Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy about their splitting headaches.) Also notice that you don't see me signing my posts.
But even in America, this confrontation has happened before. The Federal Reserve corporation is actually the third central bank of the United States.
For a history lesson, see:
WHY OUR FOREFATHERS FOUGHT THE FED
In most jurisidictions, store security DOES have the right to detain customers it suspects of shoplifting. Now, if they don't have proof of it, or were acting unreasonably (I don't remember the standard) then you have a claim for false arrest and imprisonment.
"Negative, I am a meat popsicle"
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
There are plenty of gas stations in the middle of nowhere that only accept cash. I'm talking places where there are no telephones and plumbing.
Wierd huh?
Nope, you're one of them.
you are wrong.
There is nothing mandating that money be credit. That is in fact the most popoular money now, but their is nothing inherent in the definition of money which requires it be credit. In prison, cigarretes are money.
Its interesting you bring up 'yards' and 'meters'. Where do you think the word "pound" came from (to describe a currency)? Examining how much a pound of silver is worth now (or gold, I'm not sure which metal it used to refer to), will give you a good idea of how much the banker/governemnt cartel his skimmed off the top over the course of history. Hell even 'ounces' of gold are 'troy' ounces, as a relic of some time in the past when the government decided to 'redefine' an ounce, so they could more easily pay back a debt. At least people used to know when they were getting screwed. Its pure and simple fraud. Instead of working to eliminate the fraud, governments ususally recognize how good of a stealth tax inflation is.
Money (the most popular form of it) used to be gold and/or silver.
Then it became a claim on gold. If you are saying that at no point in time was money redeemable, on demand, in gold, then you are just factually incorrect. If you are saying the this does not constitute 'money backed by gold', then you are just playing empty word games.
Then it became a claim on gold that the bank didn't actually have.
Then a cartel was formed to prevent runs on banks (the Federal Reserve).
Then they decided they didn't need to honour their claims to redeem in gold anymore.
Then muddle-headed apoligist like you started spouting nonsense about how money has always been credit.
But it hurt too much when I close the microwave door, and never could get to see the results.
To do list for Windows
Here's a conspiracy theory for you: All "money" is backed by nothing more than faith. Luckily, that's a resource this country has in abundance.
That is good example on non-cartel, non-fractional-reserve caused inflation.
So over say the last thousand yaers, how much inflation has been caused this way, and how much has been caused by cranking up the printing pressed? Its not even freakin close.
I believe there is an issue with certain types of wallets. Eelskin wallets can erase your credit cards. Perhaps this has something to do with it? Don't the RFID scanners scan for magnetism? Wait, this debunks that theory.
Lousy facepalm.
Just like a used deck of cards in Vegas...
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A stack of 50 $20 bills is thin enough that they are headted essentially uniformly by microwaves. It may be that there's differential absorption in the inks, but the important thing is that a stack
of paper is a damn good insulator.
So apply heat uniformly to a block, but only let it escape (slowly) from the sides. The middle of the block is going to get really hot.
Do you notice how his disassembled bills have some less-injured ones on top? They had better cooling.
There's no magic RFID receiver with explosive anti-tampering protection; it's just that if you pump 1000 watts of power into a small space and don't let it escape, you're going to get some really dramatic heating! Lots of energy in a small space is basically the definition of an explosion.
The guy left the bills in the microwave too long. You put less than an ounce of anything in the microwave for a minute at full power and see if it doesn't get awfully damn hot...
I have to tell you my dumbest/funniest stupid microwave trick.
When I was a kid, I discovered that the Encyclopedia Brittanica had the recipe for gunpowder, and that the drugstore had all the ingredients. I quickly dove into home made rockets.
After some research and experimentation, I settled on paper mache as a good rocket casing material, with modelling clay for cap and nozzle.
One day, I was in the process of building my biggest rocket yet, about 4" long and 1" in diameter. After I got the case assembled and dried and packed with powder, I began to doubt whether I had made it thick enough. So I wrapped more paper mache around it and left it to dry.
Next day, it was still damp, and I was getting impatient. My parents weren't home, so I decided it to dry it in the microwave!
To keep a long story from getting longer, I saved the microwave, at the expense of a second degree burn on my hand, and several hours scrubbing every inch of the kitchen to remove all the ash and sulfer smell.
Moral: Don't microwave explosives.
all right, how many retards borrowed $20 and tried this at home?
;(
(it didn't work for me... umm, maybe the old $20 bills don't work)
I mean, geez....he could have at least gotten the new bills that don't have the border around 'ol Andrew.....this guy needs to change his meds.
... I like to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out. - Judge Harry Stone, Night Court
...and this example is a part of the reason why.
The longest period of sustained inflation in world economic history took place over 200 years (from approximately 1500 to 1700). It was almost solely caused by the opening of silver mines in South America and by the influx of Spanish gold.
Fiat money inflation has probably caused as much inflation, but it has been limited to specific times and places where governments let it get out of hand (countries which achieved hyperinflation by this method include post-embargo Iraq).
Most people who argue in favor of a gold-backed currency do so in the honest belief that gold is a less arbitrary standard of value. They fail to notice, however that few things are as arbitrary as the value of gold (most of which is an historical accident). Personally, I would rather use a currency that is backed by the productive capacity of a strong nation rather than by a wildly fluctuating specie. But go ahead. If you believe gold is better, buy gold. You have that option.
Just don't complain to me the next time the bottom falls out of the gold market. I once lived in a gold-mining town. I've probably seen more suffering as a result of those fluctuations than you will be able inflict on yourself by unwise investing decisions.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I'm not the original poster, but he's dead serious about police stopping people and simply taking their money.
For example, police seized $57,000 from three men on the assumption it was drug money. The men claimed it was to buy a shrimp boat, and the police chief was later charged with planting drugs in their car, and convicted of malfeasance - article (Note how in this story police are quoted as refusing to identify the laws that were broken, claiming that to do so would stop people from breaking the laws and limit police's ability to pull people over.)
Based on examples, it seems like police in the US can seize whatever they feel like, even if they recognize the owner is completely innocent. If someone borrows your car and the police find a joint on him at a traffic stop, they can take your car on the spot, and simply never give it back to you.
I generally like the police - my favourite uncle is a detective-sergeant - but not all policemen can be trusted to be judicious with power. The law exists to protect the individual, and the law is failing.
I remember that in some places such as Alcatraz, they (who are 'they'?) provide a machine that turns pennies into souvenier. Basically, you feed a penny into it and it just rolls it into a thin piece of metal and stamps it with an image of Alcatraz. Alcatraz belongs to the govenment so, this kind of souvenirs are sanctioned. How can that be illegal then? If that is illegal, I could be convicted for destroying a penny. Damn! where is my tin hat.
a stack of $20 bills to burn, you insensitive clod.
...the Federal Reserve's control of the money supply is a different thing from the government's ability to borrow money.
For the past 25 years the Fed has regulated the money supply almost exclusively for the purpose of controlling inflation. And they have proved remarkably successful at precisely that. During that time, we have seen periods where the deficit was astronomical and we have seen periods where the U.S. Government was running a sizable surplus -- none of which had the slightest effect on the ability of the Federal Reserve to regulate inflation. The monetarists have won that argument: The rate of inflation is governed by the ratio of money in circulation to the available goods. Period. It may be a tricky ratio to maintain, but Greenspan has proven it can be done.
The currency issued by the Fed is not pure fiat money. The government does not simply print money to pay its debts. The Fed prints money with which it buys securities. Those securities then back the currency, just as gold once did. They choose the most secure of securities, which today means Treasury notes. But, if the deficit was erased, they could still buy notes which could back the currency. Even if surpluses were run long enough to wipe out the entire debt (considered a real possibility just four short years ago), they could still buy Class A rated corporate debt.
This does not mean that government borrowing and the Fed's issuing of money are not related. But they are tangentially or fractionally related by a fairly complicated set of interactions (note that I am not using the term in the same sense as the morons who call the Fed "the Fractional Reserve Board"). Greenspan was absolutely correct in suggesting in "The Subjectivist" that deficit spending is a subtle form of wealth confiscation. And he was corrrect in saying gold stands in the way of that process. But notice that he said it "stands in the way" not that "prevents" the process.
The federal government is perfectly capable of engaging in deficit spending (or not engaging in deficit spending) completely independently of the Fed using monetary policy to regulate inflation.
Neither fiat money nor borrowing money are inexhaustible spigots, as governments which have tried them to extreme have inevitably discovered. If such things are inevitable, how can you explain the surpluses of 1999 and 2000?
I once believed that misusing the power of the Fed was inevitable. Greenspan proved me wrong. I also once believed that misuse of the power to borrow was inevitable. Clinton, Gore and a GOP Congress proved that less than inevitable. But the misuse of that power has made a spectacular resurgence. I hope you will stop spreading obvious untruths and join the people who are really fighting to bring down that debt.
I would dearly love to be proven wrong again.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
"...with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued..."
But first you have to prove "intent".
I don't believe the microwave-ing was "intended" to render the notes unfit...
So he didn't even test just one $20 bill in the microwave before throwing the whole $1000 in. What a stupid idiot. So who cares if they know you have a $20 bill in your pocket. Get real!
FYI, It is possible to have chips that are transparent. It depends on the material you make them with. They are not yet common, but likely to be considered for newer display technology. Granted it is unlikely to use something inside a bill to escape detection.
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
Mightn't the fact that we judge him to sound crazy have quite a bit to do with the total lack of evidence and fact?
You can certainly believe a person to have unreliable thinking patterns based on a broad range of unreliable claims. Unfortunately, you can't assume that all claims are falacious because most claims are falacious.
It is a classic falacy to attack the person giving the information, regardless of their reputation. You should always attack the information itself, otherwise you will eventually get stuck in a flame war (or mudslinging if you happen to be in politics).
This is especially true in this case, when there are plenty of ways to disprove what he has to say. It'd be costly to repeat his experiments with $1000 and a microwave, but a simple investigation with an exacto knife and a magnifying glass can be done to determine if there's an rfid behind Jackson's eye. They're tiny, but they're not invisible.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I just gotta say this:
It's kinda scary when the slashdot community is the voice of reason, especially when talking about government monitoring programs.
This could really give new 20s a black eye... =)
Money typically starts as thrift, then gets abused into becoming credit.
The first bankers were trusted vaultkeepers who issued deposit receipts for unwieldy metal coinage of the day. When these receipts became tender, the paper money was a system of thrift. But it didn't take long for the slicker vaultkeepers to figure out they could profit at others' expense by handing out more "receipts" than there ever were deposits on hand, and then all the problems that accompany credit began.
Certainly there are plenty of individuals who can handle large amounts of credit in a responsible manner. There are people who can use heroin without becoming addicted. But we cannot extrapolate this and assume that any large government or population will be collectively able to do the same. Especially in a democracy, whenever possible, people will use their votes to draw more out of the public coffers than they will ever vote to put back in.
Unlimited public credit may have uses, but like heroin, it is also a highly addictive drug whose risks vastly outweigh its few benefits. It is an unnecesary and recurrent nightmare which has never been improved by repetition.
But it doesn't have to be that way, nor has it always been that way. Such financial narcotics can be banned. After the first two central banking failures in the United States, central banking was in fact, illegalized for a time; until inevitably memories faded and the powerful banking cartel once again got its way. We don't have to back up our currency with public debt notes to a private corporation, as is literally done today under the Federal Reserve system.
A buddy of mine, who I can't disclose unfortunately -- happens to work on RF type secret government contracts through a well known military contract type company (also can't name them).
:-)
As he works on typically the space type RF projects I'll refer to him as "Major Tom". Here's what Tom has to say:
Interesting. Knowing a little something about this
The RF tag is frequency related. A larger tag can be read with a lower frequency signal - has to do with wavelength. I cannot find any metal in the right eye of Jackson on a twenty. If there was, in order to be read, it would have to be read with a much higher frequency ie, microwave. As lower frequencies travel farther with less power, this higher microwave frequency would have to be rather high in power to "read" it on someone through a body, clothing, and wallet. You would be on the level on a microwave oven, which means all our money would suddenly "burn up" not to mention the sudden outbreak of cancer, pacemaker malfunctions, unexplained feeling of heat, etc.
Finally, I have walked into many a store with these twenties (so have about 5 billion 999 million 999 thousand, 999 people) and not had the alarms go off.
(Actually, this is extracted from "Os Lusiadas", a masterpiece written by the Portuguese writer Luis de Camoes in the 1600's. But, who can really tell it what is, unless one is familiar to any romance language? I could have written a cake recipe and nobody would notice!)
I think we've found Mike Judge's inspiration for Dale Gribble!
I believe this is a quick & easy way to almost completely destroy the contents of a CD. IANADRS (I am not a data recovery specialist), but I think it would be nearly impossible to recover any data from a CD destroyed in such a manner.
I call bullshit on this story. I nuked a new $20 for several min and nothing happened.
actually a troy oz might be more than one ounce. I just went with the assumption of fraud, because its right more often than not. my bad, if I'm wrong.
I don't have 20 bucks you insensitive clod!
rant from unemployed slashdot dweller.
I think I can RFID get free up-mods RFID just by RFID saying the word RFID often enough.
RFIDNORD!!!
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Thank you gentlemen. I haven't seen a flurry of useful responses in YEARS.
What remains is... destroying money as a currency and basing our economy on bandwidth and then suing the Fed for wasting bandwidth explaining how they're not what they are. I would call that a bandwidth audit.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Yes there are. Commerical ovens usually run about 2.5kw. Obviously, this guy works at 7-11.
In the interest of stopping the proliferation of RFID tagged currency, I am starting a campaign drive called RID (RFID Investigation and Destruction).
:-)
Just send your ($100+ denominations only please) bills to the address provided below. We will 'scan' your currency for RFID tags and if found, destroy said bills immediately. Of course, if no tags are found, your bills will be returned to you immediately along with a nifty certificate that designates your bills as 'RFID tag free'.
Please send your bills to the following:
RID
P.O. Box 123
Easy Street
Anytown, USA
Act now, before it's too late!
indeed anal bastard
i'm sorry for my disdain poisoning my humor
while we should always have compassion for the mentally ill, i just don't see how or why their mental illness should be on the front page of slashdot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If this is true, I'm sure a mugger would love to have an RFID tracking device, imagine being able to single out potential muggables ranked by cash on hand! Wow.
nuff said
INCORRECT -- heating is far from the worst.
/ 2/449, or google "microwave coagulation")
Microwaves are used medically for simultaneous cautery and coagulation during surgery.
(See http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/content/abstract/171
Medical microwave scalpels have 50-100W of output power, and are directed at specific tissues. Your 1200W GE Profile version is a bit "hotter" and a lot more random.
And random coagulation is bad (google thrombosis).
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
assuming they were all twenties, that's 50 bills.. probably there were a few more than that. Maybe it's not a 'wallet', but more of a 'purse' or 'money-bag'?
Read; Write; Execute
is not punctuation, but More Cowbell!
I took a tour of the FDIC in San Francisco a while back. The tour guide did mention that damaged money can be returned if they can identify unique bills. One guy apparently had his wallet eaten by a cow. He killed the cow and returned the mostly digested paper to the bank. They were able to refund him about $50 out of his $100. (It's been a while, so I wouldn't trust the details, but it is what she said.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Just take a lightbulb, crack the glass up a bit and set it in the microwave. Fill your microwave full of gasoline/explosives and set a tripwire. Everything I know about explosives I learned on TV! This trick brought to you by Steven Segal in 'Under Siege'!
why dont they microwave one dollar bills to see if its the ink that burn cause the face has the most ink doesnt it? so maybe it would burn in othe bills as well and if not mayebe there is somehting weird going on
I know I heard that the Government had kinda acted like they owned certain money a couple times in the past, but searching for it in a cursory way didn't get me authoritative information.
It seems that twice in US history some money was indeed confiscated by the Federal Government.
As to your 1900 Silver Dollar, I really wasn't able to find the real data from the Federal government on this either, Apparently the IRS tried to define anything worth at least %15 over its intrinsic (metal) value as "numismatic" so not eligible for confiscation in 1984... http://www.authenticmoney.com/part3.htm. But it was apparently never implemented, so if there were another confiscation, your 1900 Dollar is not safe (doom doom doom...whatever).
--- I got news, you never gotta go. - Ted Nugent
The real danger is not from a faceless government agencies, it comes from people who are unwilling to stand up for what they believe in and other people who will stop at nothing to get what they want. I am sure the government is doing some secret surveilance. But I doubt they are doing it en masse. Go back and read the declassified Venona files if you are interested on how the government deals with spying. They had Soviet agents within their grasp, but weren't able to convict some of them without violating their rights, so they went free. This was at the height of the McCarthy era.
There will always be abuses, but as long as people follow the rule of law and honest people are ready and willing to do whatever it takes to keep our government honest, we have nothing to fear. Don't be paranoid. Get involved and make a difference istead of complaining aobut the government.
Perhaps the metal strip contained in all twenties is the reason the money blew up?
Holding the twenty up to a light with Jackson facing me, I can clearly see the strip just to the left of the zero on the left side. I checked an older "new" twenty and it's there and a new, new twenty and it's also there.
I'm not quite sure why this would cause Jackson's right eye to blow up, but it makes more sense than the RFID transmittor in every twenty.
I tried microwaving my 20's and nothing happened. My guess is that there was something in the middle of the pack which induced enough heat from the microwave to ignite the papers.
His attribution of this to RFID tracking makes it a tin-foil hat theory. An interesting one, but false.
Take a breath, man! Do you realize how insane you sound when say "FBI shills kept marking my message to -1 to silence this post"? If the men in black are really out to get you, why haven't they just deleted your posts, and buried you in a drum next to Jimmy Hoffa?
Your citations are interesting but you come off as a complete and utter loon.
fnord
Of course they're in his eyes. The government is using them to track or 'watch' us! ;)
US Currency is printed with magnetic ink. if you look at the picture, the left eye is one of the highest concentrations of ink on the note. you stack a grand of 20's together and put them in the nuker, i can see a spark arcing across the ink. A stack of bills that big could also duplicate the reaction of those mag tags that they use for the security systems.
*** I suffer from a colorful array of psychological problems
Please tell me where the professional association of counterfeiters publish their research findings! Thanks in advance!!!
Oh, and the other AC was right; the linked-to post wasn't really very funny.
I'm thinking "degauss my microwave?" before I realize the lack of relationship.
I do not argue that it's relatively easy to understand an argument that is otherwise good, but has poor spelling and grammar. However, such bodies of text ARE hard to read, making it easy to 'brush it aside' and concentrate on something else.
In addition, poor spelling and grammar is a sign of disrespect: "I don't care about you enough to spend time ensuring my text is proofed." Again, it's easy to mentally respond with "Well, if you don't care enough to proof your text, I don't care enough to read it."
And, that 'I don't care' attitude WILL be picked up by everyone, even if they don't realise it.
Moral: Spell and grammar check your documents. The more you do this, the easier it is to write good documentation without needing to do the checks.
It's a camera device!
There you are, staring at me again.
Anyone else take this seriously. I thought maybe it was really possible, so I did some quick googling. According to the folks at RFID journal and Wired magazine, this (RFID tags in money) is on the table for discussion but not in production yet. Anyone else have a different opinion? www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/523/1/2/ http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59565,00. html
And they don't use credit cards or ATMs because....? I stay on the road 5 days every week and I hardly ever have more than $200 cash on me. Why anyone would ever carry $1000 cash is beyond me.
How do you know you're actually catching the professionals and not the amateurs? How can you prove that the professionals are getting by undetected? Huh? Huh? Oh, inventory? Fuck that!
I have ruined many an AOL CD carelessly left in the lunch room by my fellow employees. It is very simple and safe. Put AOL CD in microwave oven, set timer for three seconds, label side down for the most impressive arcing. Return the AOL CD to the lunch room/owner.
No more than five seconds or you are going to be breathing burnt plastic fumes!
Have fun, I sure know I have.
I'd love to know how taking my money would ever be "for my own protection".
I wonder if pickpockets would use a similar excuse?
Guess they didn't believe you about "not flaming" :)
But yeah, it varies from state to state, but its absolutely true. Money is hard to trace, so anyone using cash for a large transaction is generally assumed to be doing so because they want to hide it from the government.
Of course stuff like taking your money without any evidence of a crime seems like a pretty good reason to try to keep ones transactions a secret.
I am stunned. I guess no one has ever challenged that in the courts. I would like to believe that if you were to challenge that you would win else it is no longer a matter of innocent until proven guilty. It has come to the point where everyone is guilty. Where the police have the power to say you are guilty and disrupt your life for nothing more than carrying cash.
That is not the function of the police. That is the function of the courts after a case has been built against a person, and sufficient evdence of a crime has been shown. The police exist to keep the peace, not to disrupt it because they have become paranoid. Certainly crimes exist, but to say, "You have a lot of cash and therefore are a suspect of committing a crime. Prove to us you weren't and we will give you your money back." is, to me, absolute insanity.
The government is supposed to exist to serve the people. Any government that has set itself and its laws up in such a way that there are so many criminals that they have to assume everyone is guilty has done themselves and their citizens a huge disservice in my opinion.
ack! better put in my tinfoil hat now :) Don't want the government spying on the rfid tag in my head. This article proves that they actually work...can you believe it??? :D
My Gawd WTF...
Right. I learned that the hard way. ATMs are not open on weekends either. If they're such a cash-intensive society, then why don't they freaking make it easier to get cash? Computers can't keep up my ass. Buy more computers.
By your logic the Treasury can reclaim any rare coins by buying it back at face value.
Or they can just declare possession of them to be illegal, and confiscate them - just like FDR did with gold coins.
Fortunately, a lot of people ignored this larcenous decree, or we would not have $20 St. Gaudens coins around!
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.