Slashdot Mirror
Mandatory Banknote Detection Code?
metamatic writes "The European Union is planning to introduce legislation to make it mandatory for software developers to add black-box banknote detection code to their graphics software.How will this apply to open source software? Is it time to get writing to your Euro-MP?"
Link here
got sig?
As far as in the USA, most scanners will print something over the scanned money. Generally its "Void" in stripes over the entire scan. Copiers are worse. There are several Xerox models that will literally lock up until a service tech fixes it if American money is inserted.
I see little in the need to copy a bill. We all have issues with forgeries and counterfitting ruining the value of the dollar/euro. Why not?
Sigs are nice guns
The term for faking currency is "forgery" with fake currency being "counterfeit". "Piracy" has nothing to do with it.
The "partern" is a series of circles with the correct proportial relationship between the distance and the diameters of the circles. Therefore, you don't have to know what the 2008 currency design will look like, instead you can presume that the 2008 series designers are going to follow the patern that the code was already designed to notice.
>
>What about on the back of the t-shirt?
Here's an image of the pattern. As you can see, it's pretty subtle. Putting the shirt directly under a scanner will probably trigger the protection, but wearing it will almost certainly mess up the pattern enough for it not to be recognised. The human body just isn't very flat anywhere.
Of course, I haven't actually tried it myself, so I could be wrong. If that's so, then such a shirt would be wicked cool.
the larger the note's value, the larger the note
Same in the UK, but I don't think it's true for the Euro. However, there isn't a great deal of difference in size, and most people would just see the 20 and think, Says 20, not regular paper, magnetic strip, it's a 20.
The braille seems like a good idea, and easy to implement - assuming politicians or whoever else makes these decisions knows about them, why not adopt it? Good for PR (counterfeiters might not like them, but the blind people would - and blind people are the one group they can't afford to annoy any more), bad for forgery. It might cost a few thousand to modify the mints, but in the long run it would save a couple of million.
The more valuable Euro banknotes are indeed physically larger than less valuable notes. Here's a link for you.
As for braille, the notes do not have any braille codes on them, but the banknotes are printed in relief, using a special printing method known as intaglio. The EUR 200 and EUR 500 banknotes have tactile marks printed in intaglio and positioned along their edges. This should help blind people to recognize the notes.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
Yes I agree, the banknote detection code is just an annoyance, it doesn't really stop the forgeries.
As for forgery rates, there were 551 286 found counterfeit Euro banknotes in 2003, most of them were 50 EUR notes. This can be seen from the annual report of the European Central Bank, see chapter 3.2.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
We don't have one dollar bills mog. ;-)
Another thing that would make it difficult is the plastic window thingy on the notes.
Each note has a transparent section on it. The transparent section is a different design and shape for different values of the note.
Even if the notes weren't difference sizes and textures, even if it were possible to bleach them some how. The transparent section would still be different for different values of notes.
I must say I like the plastic money over our old paper money, I've saved hundreds of dollars in potentially lost money from the washing machine.