Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Bar Coding The World Away

Posted by Hemos on from the it's-the-mark-of-the-beast dept.

778790 writes "The Bar Code, long used for inventory classification and sometimes feared as a tool of social engineering, has been regulated in the name of globalization, and the globe has defeated the United States. Bar Codes in America will now have more digits, to match the global bar code standard: the European Article Numbering Code."

6 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. More digits... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...to include the "evil bit"?

  2. Damn by The-Bus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now I have to go update the tattoo on the back of my neck...

    --

    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

  3. Woah... by perly-king-69 · · Score: 5, Funny
    For a minute there I thought it said that Americans were going to fall in line with a European designed system.

    Is this an April fool dupe or something? ;-)

    --

    --
    This sig is inoffensive.

  4. It's about time by 1u3hr · · Score: 5, Interesting
    You may notice that most books sold in the USA have two barcodes, an EAN-13 one (for the rest of the world) and a UPC one. It's a drag having to support those troglodyte US companies that insist on having their UPC. Books published overseas often have to pay to have a UPC code stickered to them.

    Next up, metres and kilogrammes (you can spell them American if you really want).

  5. Inevitable by metamatic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Other inevitable and overdue US switchovers:

    1. GSM mobile phones.
    2. Metric. (*)
    3. Standard international dialing. (00 + country)

    And one I won't be holding my breath for:

    4. A universal healthcare system.

    (*) Laugh all you like, global corporations are gonna use metric for everything, not stupid US-only units. Eventually this will trickle down to everyday life. It may take decades, but...

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  6. Re:Get me a rewrite... by letxa2000 · · Score: 5, Informative
    12-digit UPC-A codes are automatically EAN-13 codes. When EAN-13 was deployed, they essentially pulled a Microsoft... they "embraced and extended" UPC-A. All UPC-A codes can be scanned by EAN-13 scanners because the EAN-13 is an extension of UPC-A. However, not all UPC-A scanners can automatically understand the extended EAN-13 barcodes.

    This has meant that UPC-A barcodes can be scanned worldwide but EAN-13 barcodes produced in other countries could not be scanned in the U.S. because U.S. POS systems didn't understand the "extended" version (EAN-13). This meant that manufacturers outside the U.S. had to have an EAN-13 barcode for the "rest of the world" and a UPC-A barcode for the U.S.--U.S. manufacturers only needed a UPC-A barcode because it works worldwide.

    The only thing that is changing here is a requirement that U.S. retailers use POS systems that are able to read an EAN-13 barcode and that their database support it (i.e. the code field must support 13 digits rather than just 12). This is so that a barcode produced in other parts of the world can be scanned in the U.S.

    Thus it's not that UPC-A is being "retired"--it's just that U.S. retailers will be expected to be able to handle foreign barcodes.