Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Offers $50 Download
chill writes "CNN is reporting that the U.S. Government is offering low-quality images of its new $50 bill for artists, students and others who discover that their computers, scanners or printers won't allow them to view or copy pictures of the new currency, due to mostly-secret anti-counterfeiting measures built-in. This anti-copying technology has been discussed on Slashdot before. Now to go and test my new Epson scanner and printer to see if they're affected!"
Poor Grant, even after death, has become quiet the specimen. Poor guy. Can't we let him RIP?
:-)
Although I think it's great that we are creating bills that we believe will curb counterfeiting shouldn't we also be working to make them look good? The new colors and everything are nice but definitely overused. It makes the bills look crowded and tacky. Reminds me of a hairdresser with too much makeup. The little yellow 20s and what appear to be 50s on the back of the new color bills are horrid. I looks like I dropped the bills in honey and couldn't clean it all off.
If I'm gonna pay $50 for a piece of paper it should at least be clean
Precisely how the technology works is a mystery.
The Article really makes me want find a way around this technology. I don't want to produce fake money, but more to the point of computer road-blocks are just not cool.
Some ideas that don't leave me with a less-usable computer:
Why not have a bar-code on every dollar bill that can validate each bill. If a serial comes up in the same place more than once, then it is fake and disabled. This would be a global database, but not unrealistic.
Why not continue the push for less paper money. Paper is nice, but it is expensive due to the short length of usage. Usually, the coined money is easily worth its value so producing a fake penny/quarter is not very worth while.
Stop using money altogether. Credit cards!
It just bothers me that the government is solving problems by disabling technology instead of leveraging it.
There are countless graphics packages out there, that can be used instead of the major players.
There are indefinate supplies of older scanners that are not protected, not to mention digital cameras.
I am pretty sure that the major players who counterfit, will just get cracked versions of software or use alternatives, meaning all this is doing is bloating legitimate users software for no real reason.
The software is provided free, which means it would be relatively easy for a skilled but crooked developer to disable the checks, specially as you would know what you are looking for!
Is it also pushing the price of hardware up, if they have to include extra memory to hold this software, or is it in the scanner software - computer side?
I really dont see this stopping anyone other than a total amatuer from scanning banknotes (and may even cause more problems, as if an amateur cant do a bad copy themselves they may look into more professional means of forging. I would rather they did a bad home copy, tried to use it and got caught - meaning one less idiot on the streets forging money).
Perhaps they would have been better off keeping the whole thing secret, so no one knows about it, and then have the software log all scans of banknotes into a central database, so the police could keep an eye on who is scanning notes. If forgeries appear in the area, they would know who was to blame......
ken
http://www.lsblogs.com/ Submit your blog for free, find blogs and blog resources at ls blogs
Free Blog submission, find blogs, tools and more at LS Blogs
When the current equipment doesn't work: dust off the old equipment.
The big problem not directly addressed however...
No matter how often they change the appearance of the currency: if an older (and easier to copy) version is still being accepted, then why bother counterfeiting the new ones? I mean, everyone still accepts the pre-1996 $20 bills worldwide.
This is not my sig.
This isn't going to make that much difference as long as vendors keep accepting the old bills that can be copied. Sure, the banks will be instructed to turn in the old ones to be shredded and replaced with the new ones, so in the long term any old bills may be treated with suspicion, but how long will that take?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The difference is that the "Eurion" pattern, as it's called, is done TASTEFULLY on other country's notes.
On the US notes it looks like an afterthought, stamped-on in a rush.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Not really. The bills were put into a microwave oven in a stack, meaning that when one bill in the center of the stack ignites, they all ignite in exactly the same spot. If you look at the picture of all the bills, you'll notice that the burning is hardly uniform, and that it's pretty obvious which bills were in the middle and which on the top or bottom of the stack, based on the amount of burning.
What this really shows is that putting a large wad of cloth (which is what paper money is really made of) in the microwave is a great way to start a fire.
The problem with most counterfeiters is that they get greedy. If they just counterfeited small denomination bills (1's) and used them when they were out of town and to pay for meaningless purchases at places it would be hard to catch (strip clubs, vending machines, etc.). It might not seem like a lot of money but if you think about all the time you use 1 Dollar bills it'd add up. Chances are you'd never get caught too.
will SANE stop you scanning these notes?
will GIMP block based on this "secret" pattern?
clearly not, as this shows. (GIMPed with SPECIMEN removed, but intentionally low res)
The protection is pretty weak if a user can get around it simply by downloading a different graphics program or a patch. Certainly a skilled counterfieter will be able to work around this.
Now, if this were hardware based, then it would be pretty formidible. You could still get around it though if you really wanted to - and don't the sort of people who are going to do this on a big scale really want to?
Joseph Farthing
http://josephfarthing.com
Money is money because people believe it is money.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Would you perfer that nobody be able to view/print your webpage?
If you've got something you don't want to have others print, don't put it on your website.
Not cool. Not cool at all. Book makers could do that to prevent photocopying in libraries. Artists could now protect images they put online so users can't print them out. Hell, the images might not even be viewable in photoshop. Ugh.