HP Discusses Anti-Counterfeiting Measures 644
JohnA writes "While searching for drivers for an HP printer that was given to me, I noticed an article on the front page of hp.com that brags about how HP's R&D department was able to insert flaws into their products to 'deter' counterfeiting. I'm so glad we have HP looking out for us..."
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes a serious disconnect from the real world to see something threatening about this.
Can I play too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh good, facts without proof. Can I play?
Counterfeiting actually helps the typical small business in that it increases the number and amount of cash flowing through the local economy.
Surprising, and counterintuitively, studies have indicated for years that counterfeiting is mostly a concern of hollywood movies and that in a large economy such as that of the united states, counterfeiting has proven to be so difficult as to be a non-problem.
Do you see how easy it is when you can just make up facts? You make up facts, I make up facts, we all make up facts, and we still have no understanding, just the word of a *lawyer* to shed light on the truth. Please, no snickering from the back row.
Re:Can I play too? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think what HP is doing is smart! It sounds like the printers have created a way to tag money so digital devices
Re:Can I play too? (Score:4, Insightful)
There were several anti-counterfeiting measures in the last $20 bill and they got around it. How? Because the bill acceptors are not using appropriate technology.
There's a strip in that $20 bill that fluoresces under UV light. Can the printer print that strip? No. Does the bill collector check that strip? No.
Does the acceptor check the color changing ink? No.
Does the acceptor check the watermark? No.
Does the acceptor check the microprinting? No, but it is not practical to expect the bill acceptor to check that.
There are many features for which it would be too expensive to have an electronic bill acceptor check, but some things, like the strip, are fairly easy to check and extremely difficult to counterfeit.
Re:Can I play too? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are misunderstanding something crucial by applying an oversimplistic economic principle. It might be true, as you indicate, that simply increasing the amount of cash flowing in an economy does not contribute to inreased average wealth because it simply results in inflation. However, using just the average is misleading: increasing the overall flow of cash disproportionally in favor of the less wealthy elements of society results in a change in the relative wealth distribution in society. In other words, it might become slightly harder for the super-rich to buy yachts and private jets, and slightly easier for the average homeless person to buy a bottle of cheap whisky. And yes, possibly slightly easier for the average middle-class father to, say, buy a chess board for his daughter. The wealth distribution in US society is currently significantly skewed towards the extremely wealthy, who are overall probably less likely to attempt to print or use counterfeit money than the middle or lower classes, so by printing money freely, the middle and lower classes make themselves slightly richer relative to the extremely wealthy class by effectively lowering the value of the money in the rich guy's bank account. The rich guy's exact dollar value in the bank stays the same, but the value of those dollars becomes less, while the poor counterfeiter's dollar value in the bank goes up much higher than the average decrease of the dollar value.
Simple economics.
The very valid point that you also completely ignore, is that the overall effects of counterfeiting in a large economy such as the US may very well be completely negligible to the 'man on the street'. You have not even attempted to disprove that that might be the case; where are your facts to back that up? Skip the straw men bait-and-switch tactics, and argue your case.
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really get bent out of shape over this type of lawmaking (DVD/CD encryption, Macrovision, currency detection) are all. I don't care if only ONE SINGLE PERSON is out there using any technology lawfully, then it is wrong to do this. Punish the people who actually DO the wrong thing. Not everyone.
.
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:3, Insightful)
If HP wants to make a printer that prints all text in piglatin and all images inside out and upside down, they can go ahead and do so. No law says you have to buy or use it.
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:3, Funny)
Judith: Any Anti-Imperialist group like ours must *reflect* such a divergence of interests within its power-base.
Reg: Agreed. (General nodding.) Francis?
Francis: I think Judith's point of view is valid
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:5, Informative)
Why so many companies are choosing to focus on anti-counterfeiting measures anymore also confuses me. Unless things have really changed in recent years, counterfeiting isn't exactly a big problem. You might see a news story or two about it on occasion, but it's really just not that common, and there are good reasons why.
For one thing, standard printers are simply not very good at making even sub-standard counterfeit bills. The texture isn't right, the colors aren't quite right, there's no authenticity strip embedded in the paper (in $5's and above), and even the aroma of the paper and ink isn't quite right-- money has its own smell. Because of this, anybody who knows anything about money and has had their hands on cash at least a few times during their life can easily tell the difference between a real and a fake if they bother to pay the least bit of attention to these properties.
Second of all, the time and effort required to produce anything of acceptable quality that won't be checked for authenticity (ie, less than $100) using a commercial printer far outweighs the value of money counterfitted. Yeah, you may be able to get away with faking a handful of 20's, but you'll have spent a good couple thousand dollars on a printer that's good enough, the proper equipment to cut everything, the paper, etc. Anybody willing to invest this much time and effort into counterfitting is going to expect more return from it, and so they are going to find some other method.
What it comes down to is that these companies probably invested a lot more money into creating these anti-counterfeiting technologies than will be saved from bad money. So in essence, they've crippled my photoshop software and my printer for nothing.
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's hurting businesses then maybe the US should do what every other country in the world has done and make banknotes that are hard to forge?
Trying to solve the problem at the printer level is ridiculous; it's like trying to solve the spam problem with intelligent monitors.
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regards,
Steve
P.S. And no, film is not a viable option, especially long term, considering that major companies like Kodak are going to stop selling film.
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:3, Informative)
P.S. And no, film is not a viable option, especially long term, considering that major companies like Kodak are going to stop selling film.
I must have missed the press release where Kodak announced that they were going to stop making film.
Digital might be competitive for 35 mm but plenty of photographers need more than that. Nothing on the market can compete with 6x7 or larger formats.
Kodak will be making film for quite a while.
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:3, Informative)
They're not going to sell CAMERAS anymore. And when was the last time Kodak sold a camera that was worth buying? Probably the brownie cameras from waaaaaay back.
Re:we pay for crippled printers? (Score:3, Informative)
Kids today and their new fangled color laser printers and 9600dpi scanners.
Back when I was a kid we started with two blocks of solid steel, a sharp pokey scrapey tool, and a magnifying glass. Then we painstakingly had to carve away at the steel until we had a matched set of plates, loaded up a super pressure stomper and fed it special linen based paper and uberGreen ink. Took months, maybe a year to get a good rig running.
And we were THANKFUL!
Ever want to see some good old school counterfeiting, wat
DAMN (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DAMN (Score:3, Funny)
Re:DAMN (Score:3, Funny)
pattern merging (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:pattern merging (Score:4, Interesting)
Heaven forbid that a company has a motive to do anything but market demand.
Like ethics and corporate responsiblity.
Re:pattern emerging (Score:2)
Re:pattern merging (Score:5, Insightful)
Like ethics and corporate responsiblity.
Coming from the coprporation whose CEO recently defended outsourcing jobs by stating "Workers do not have a God given right to a job", I am not sure their ethics are particularly aligned with the little guy...
I beg to disagree. (Score:3, Insightful)
2.- The standard of living in the US is artificially high and it is artificially low in India or China (the first as a consequence of colonialism and then protectionism, the second as a consequence of feudalism and then communism). There is no way in which the Western world can remain extremely rich while half the world population in these t
Re:pattern merging (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's one from actual personal experience. Many years ago, I was working for a company that produced cleaning supplies. They got sued and lost because a woman used their floor cleaner as a douche. And, no, this is not an urban legend.
Corporations are continually held responsible for after-sale use. I don't feel, however, that that is right.
Back to the main topic, I would like to take this opportunity to thank HP for making the purchase of my next printer all the more easier. We do a lot of photo reproduction work where color accuracy is critical. We also implement a number of systems that make extensive use of scanning and archiving color photographs. In addition to the whole issue of the various games that HP plays with its ink cartridges, this eliminates any compelling reason to purchase their products.
As for presuming their customers to be criminals as a blanket rule, I see no reason to support any part of their corporate operation.
Re:pattern merging (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:pattern merging (Score:3, Insightful)
However, this is very different from other frivolous product liabilit
Re:pattern merging (Score:3, Insightful)
It is illegal to exactly reproduce currency: http://www.pgca.org/pages/topics/currency.htm
Is it ethical to break the law?
Re:pattern merging (Score:4, Interesting)
No I'm not trying to make money, just did an empirical test.
nice excerpt (Score:3, Insightful)
That precluded any major changes to the currency itself, including techniques used by some other currencies. The Euro, for example, contains fluorescent fibers and foil features, which cannot easily be reproduced by conventional copiers or printers.
So, the US
Re:nice excerpt (Score:3, Interesting)
That means it is harder for professional counterfeiters, as well as amateurs.
NB, one change on UK currency in recent years is a copyright notice. That stops people claiming "I didnt know" when they get prosecuted.
My Rights Online (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My Rights Online (Score:5, Insightful)
wanna make a joke trillion dollar bill to represent the deficit with a disingenious picture of GWB as a protest?
you can't -- first amendment issue
Re:My Rights Online (Score:5, Funny)
You'd need seven of them...No, wait 8....9....
Re:My Rights Online (Score:5, Insightful)
So how is this a first amendment issue?
Re:My Rights Online (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My Rights Online (Score:4, Insightful)
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Re:My Rights Online (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My Rights Online (Score:3, Interesting)
Explain to me exactly how the Bill of Rights, which sets forth limits on the federal gov't (and sometimes the States), applies to HP, a private company?
So, out of the goodness of their hearts, with no motives other than saving humanity from the ravages of counterfeiting crime, the publically and privately held multinational companies including HP and Adobe and Xerox and Konica and Canon all decide one day to work with the US Government? Of course, implementing such technologies would cost money, and wo
Re:My Rights Online (Score:4, Insightful)
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Re:My Rights Online (Score:5, Insightful)
But your $4000 printer ruining your prints, because an algorithm thinks it's a bank note is kinda crummy, y'know..
Re:My Rights Online (Score:4, Interesting)
And if you don't, then you should.
Interfering with fair uses (Score:5, Informative)
Not all uses of banknote images [rulesforuse.org] are prohibited. For example, a one-sided illustration of a U.S. Federal Reserve Note not between 75% and 150% of actual size is a fair use. Some people have shown how some of the anti-counterfeiting technologies interfere with fair use of banknote images.
Re:My Rights Online (Score:3, Insightful)
When Microsoft's Pallidium project is put into effect, it will be mostly worthless because someone can just take a photo of their computer screen, bypassing all of the digital interference checking. But what if it a digital camera will refuse to take such a picture, and a scanner will refuse to scan
Re:My Rights Online (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL. But my best friend is. He is also a secret service agent.
According to him, scanning currency into your computer is not against the law. Nor is printing it out.
Violation of federal counterfeiting laws does not actually occur until you try to pass off the fake currency as real. In other words it is not the act of creating the bill that is against the law but the intent to defraud with it.
Re:My Rights Online (Score:3, Funny)
Funny story (but not for the guy who did it), a few years ago my brother was working as a bartender at a popular nightclub. One of his customers starts spending some big money (nothing really suspicious there, however), but mentions that he is about to go into prision for a few years. At that point, he received a some crisp new bills with a 'different' feel to them. He looked at it, and it didnt look right, so he tested it with his 'fake mon
Re:My Rights Online (Score:5, Informative)
From: http://www.pgca.org/pages/topics/currency.htm
Printed reproductions, including photographs of paper currency, checks, bonds, postage stamps, revenue stamps, and securities of the United States and foreign governments (except under the conditions previously listed) are violations of Title 18, Section 474 of the United States Code. Violations are punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to 15 years, or both.
And the conditions talk about destroying masters and size limits.
Re:My Rights Online (Score:4, Informative)
Those conditions that you neglected to mention make all the difference. From the page referenced above:
So it's entirely legal for me to print out a one-sided 11"x17" picture of a $100 bill if I destroy the scan after use. If I use an HP product, though, I'll be stopped.Re:My Rights Online (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My Rights Online (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that the currency people will go along with this, of course.
The Swedish Riksbanken, for example, offers special images to photographers, in an attempt to appease people on both sides of the issue.
When couterfeiting money is outlawed... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, wait a minute...
Ha! (Score:2, Funny)
Beautiful.
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
-Trick
My favorite quote... (Score:5, Funny)
Way to keep the confidentiallity going there HP!!!
Re:My favorite quote... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, (Score:4, Informative)
I'd think that if the government of any country is having enough of a problem with fake money they should move to digital money. They already do for bank transfers and credit cards, why not go all the way?
Re:Well, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well, (Score:3, Funny)
With money in your "pocket", your electronic account can't be emptied by scumbags. Nor do you have to worry about banks charging outragous fees for their services. Of course there are other problems related to having money in your pocket.
Screws up circuit board prototyping (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Screws up circuit board prototyping (Score:3, Insightful)
Thousandths of an inch is an extreme tolerance a probally requires a non-commerical printer.
Re:Screws up circuit board prototyping (Score:3, Informative)
Where does it stop? (Score:4, Insightful)
What you do not know (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no problem with counterfeit measures in Abobe or now in HP's product.
That is as long as I know that it is there. My real concern is all the gunk that is inside commercial closed source software the we do not know.
Think the CIA has not placed a few lines inside Windows? I bet you that a lot of the behind the scene actions against FOOS is driven by Government agencies and politicians Not because the like MS or Adobe etc, but because they know th
Re:Where does it stop? (Score:3, Interesting)
The simple fact is that this feature will not stop people from counterfeiting so it is a waste of time, effort, and money, and may prevent you from doing things which are expressedly permitted by law and guaranteed by the constitution.
Drivers and Flaws (Score:3, Informative)
The only flaw I've ever had with my printer is that it only prints 4 pages a minute (if you're lucky), hence why I got it for free.
Re:Drivers and Flaws (Score:3, Informative)
Re:To state the obvious... (Score:3, Informative)
Are you printing through Novell? I think on our network that's where the problem crops up.
I think I speak for everyone... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't fault them (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, HP makes some of the most reliable office printers available, and their printer support is excellent. I've worked on hundreds of HP LaserJet printers in the last couple of years, and they are uniformly fantastic to maintain and repair.
From the article... (Score:4, Funny)
No, that would infringe upon SCO's business model and IP rights....
Just how stupid are people? (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of when the Euro came out first, and there were incidents of 'forgers' [bbc.co.uk] passing Monopoly money, and pictures of the Euro that had been cut out of the newspaper.
Looks like stupidity knows no nationality.
What I don't understand is... (Score:5, Insightful)
If your store hires people dumb enough to accept 1 sided black and white bills... you have bigger problems.
Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of ways the counterfeiters get around this issue. Wash the ink off real notes ( like 1$ bills ) and print fake 20's on them. Use parchment type paper and "mess it up". Put it in the dryer for a while. Dirty it up. Fresh paper is easy to tell, but dirty is a lot harder. Most money starts lookin pretty crappy after it's been in circulation for a while.
Most cashiers don't have the time or inclination to examine every bill they're given. If you hand somebody 5 $20's at Best Buy to buy a couple of videogames, do you think the cashier is actually gonna scrutinize each bill one-by-one? When they have a line of 5 people backed up? Make the top and bottom $20s real ones, and put one or two fake ones in the middle, and 95% of the time they won't notice.
It's the stupid and/or greedy counterfeiters that get caught. If you understand how people think, you can do a lot to get away with it. Do one or two bills mixed in with real ones. Don't do a lot to the same people. Use smaller bills like 10's or 5's. Who even thinks about counterfeit versions of those? Learn what places use to detect counterfeits and tailor your bills to them. If a place uses the counterfeit detector pens, print your bills on non wood-based paper and your bills are automatically real because the counterfeit detector pens say they are. You know how easy it is to defeat them, but the average person has no idea and accepts their results on blind faith.
It's just another example of social engineering. You can get people do to or believe ridiculous things depending on how you present things.
Re:What I don't understand is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Once in a blue moon now, I'll have the cashier at a store examine my 20 dollar (or larger) bill, but it's VERY uncommon for them to do so.
HP products have enough flaws already... (Score:2, Interesting)
"Inserting flaws"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely ridiculous.
Dlugar
I hate to say it but they have a point. (Score:4, Insightful)
What if I... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What if I... (Score:3, Insightful)
As another poster mentioned, it's the intent to defraud that make it a crime.
Drivers? HP? I don't think so.. (Score:5, Funny)
HP printers are textbook-example standards compliant. They don't use drivers.
Now, seriously, what were you doing on HP.com?
why not make bills harder to counterfeit (Score:5, Interesting)
In Australia the notes are made from plastic with a transparent section [techtv.com].
It's not something you could make with a scanner and a printer
This won't affect HP's business (Score:4, Insightful)
HP, like most inkjet printer manufacturers, produces printers which have an inordinately high operating cost due to the cost of ink carts and their relatively short lifespan. But does this stop people from buying them?
Absolutely not.
HP has a reputation for producing inexpensive printers and proving good customer service for them. I have an HP Photosmart 1115, and I had a problem with it. No biggie. They fed-ex'ed me a new one with instructions as to how to package the old one and send it back. It didn't cost me a dime and it took a matter of a couple of days to handle the complete transaction.
They can afford to do this because their profit margins on the ink are so high. And since most people don't add up the cost of ink, they don't realize just how much they're spending. They only know that the printer was cheap and they can actually talk to a human if they want technical support.
This doesn't mean I intend to buy more HP inkjet printers. Since I bought the photosmart, I have learned a lot about inkjets, laser printers, and operating costs. I know there are better alternatives.
But we slashdotters are somewhat unusual among humans in that we tend to research what we buy rather than judging products based on plastic color and price tag at BestBuy. We are, unfortunately, a tiny minority. Those who are not like us will continue to buy more and more HP printers and ink carts.
Detecting currency (Score:4, Interesting)
The professional Photographers' Dilemma (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, what they describe may indeed work great for the intended purpose of reducing the accuracy of their printers under certain circumstances, but the fact of reducing their output quality will sometimes cause user problems which are totally unrelated to counterfeiting. Their software simply cannot be smart enough to avoid the false positives which will most certainly occur.
Re:The professional Photographers' Dilemma (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, imagine a world where professional photographers print on $200 inkjet printers... go ahead... and now shoot yourself because everyone in this world is abysmally stupid.
Please. Professional photographers don't print crap on these cheapo printers. They use much, much higher end stuff that's completely
Re:The professional Photographers' Dilemma (Score:3, Insightful)
"These proofs were done on an HP printer that adds artifacts - see here and here? - when it tries to print something that it thinks is counterfit money. Those gowns were just the right color. Now, I did this proof on photographic paper to show you how the prints will really look."
For what wedding photographers are known to charge, as a customer of theirs I'd be appalled to get proofs done on a cheap HP printer.
If HP's doing their job right - as they described in the article - Money Gr
The US should try what Canada does (Score:5, Informative)
What Canada has done is to use a UV ink design that will readily show up under even the simplest UV light source. If cashier desks are set up with a small UV lamp facing down towards the cash desk, the money simply has to be passed under this lamp and forgeries spotted in a fraction of a second as the UV ink design flouresces quite brightly.
I have yet to see any home printer that can take UV inks, so I'd be willing to bet that the reasources required to obtain one would mostly defeat the purpose of counterfeitting anyways.
Btw, for people who think just throwing money at the cashier and walking away might offer a counterfeitter a way past this, my experience is that for movies, they won't even let you into the seating area at all without your receipt from the cash desk (which means you have to hang onto the receipt for the duration of the film, since you will need it to get back in if you momentarily leave to get popcorn, for example).
My Rights! (Score:4, Funny)
This sets on down a very slippery slope!! (Score:3, Insightful)
When companies introduce flaws into their product as a means to prevent theft, we are the ones paying the price.
This is not the first such "flaw" that has been introduced, remember those audio CD's that were given "flawed" audio so as to make them unreproduceable?
The problem with this flaw is that it is the actual mechanics of the merchandise we are buying. They will be selling a printer that is made to not print as well as it could.
Any one want to challenge this in court?
It's fully in HP's favor and could set precident for many other manufacturers. Down the road this could have serious implications as to the quallity of the technology the public recieves. In effect, rolling back decades of progress and empowerment of the common man. Multi-media and desktop publishing were still very expensive in the early 90's... look at the cost to get into that now, magnitudes of order less. What this threatens is to lock us out of the high-end, and put the power back into the hands of the businesses. This effect will not be felt this year or the next, but in 5 or 6 years.
What I find rather ugly about this is that currency is something that enjoys uncontested proprietaryship in it's manufacture. A few years back they did a massive overhaul, adding special strips woven into the paper fibers, special inks that would last through wear/tear and show up under UV light, a special paper fabrication, and now the color process and microdetialing that has been added to this years 20's.
Why is it that the consumer must pay when our goverment has the ability to alter the currency at will? The only argument I could see that would make sense is the old "greenback" that can still be found in circulation.
And if that's the case, do like the euro and put out a public moratorium worlwide, "Redeem you greenbacks for up to date currency by so and so date" and those who miss that date, tough.
But to stifle the consumer and intentionally flaw the product? There may be a day not too far from now where noothing really works as well as it should.
Anit-Counterfitting technology (Score:5, Insightful)
My concern isn't that they are doing this but that the methods and perhaps the very technology that they use may (and in some cases will) interfere with legit uses. Crooks are smart, inventive, and resourceful. This means that the "lock" that HP and other manufacturers use has to be tough and almost necessarily will interfere with some legal uses.
The part that I keyed on was the front to back registration. If it is so small that humans won't notice it, how will that prevent counterfiting? Yet, in some applications, where you are printing on transparent Mylar, I can see this being a significant drawback! I know that this kind of stuff isn't done by everyone every day but it can be done for artistic purposes now. Laying a background layer on the backside of a transparency adds richness and depth to the foreground. I am not an engineer but I suspect that this same kind of trick is often used when designing limited run double sided circuit board masks.
Crooks can walk into any computer store and buy a box of blank checks and print out whatever they want on the checks including whatever routing number and account number they want. These checks can then be easily passed wherever a check can be cashed using a fake ID purchased over the internet or from someone who specializes in such forgeries. Why hasn't there been a hue and cry over this? Because it isn't currency, banks and people eat the cost of these crimes.
HP has the right idea but needs a better implimentation. People (especially clerks) need to be better at spotting counterfit bills, and even high schoolers with scanners and printers have to be afraid of getting busted. Counterfitting is a crime that is being done more frequently by juveniles who get their hands slapped only if they get caught. The "system" needs to fix this.
INK! (Score:3, Informative)
I have a Canon for the record, but their INK! is just as expensive. but i prefer to use a company that does innovate instead of stagnate.
Ummmm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does HP want to include these technologies? Hell no. Just like Adobe [and every other company that makes imaging software, printers, scanners and copiers] they're under tremendous pressure from the government to include this stuff. I don't know exactly what legal precedent the feds have over including this stuff but everyone in the industry is complying.
There's several more techniques that aren't mentioned in that article as well including ways for counterfeits to be traced to specific [as in serial number] devices on higher-end equipment.
But...but...but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad: HP supports DRM and "trusted computing"
Somebody please...tell me. Am I sopposed to like HP or hate HP?
confidential names? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dammit, you're all missing the real problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
"HP and Adobe both broadly support the implementation of the Protect Our Economy act, which requires manufacturers and software developers to implement Anti Counterfeiting measures."
Bye bye free software to compete with Adobe and people who don't want to pay for HP patents.
Grow up... both of you! (Score:3, Interesting)
2. The US Government: Adding a bit of Peach to the new $20, eh? How about this... a thin VISIBLE foil strip... or some silver or other metallic print? Lets see anyone try print THAT with a CMYK printer. Every non-US currency note I've seen has that.
Fluoroscent markings, watermarks, chemically sensitive paper and security threads and all are fine... except that most of us don't carry around UV lights or hold every bill we receive to the light.
Counterfeiters aren't going to take a wad of freshly printed bills and go deposit them in the bank! They're going to go to your local McDonalds, supermarket or whatever. All you need to do is go buy a few dollars worth of stuff, hand over a $20 and pocket the nice legit currency you get in return.
In Capitalist America, Your Property Owns You (Score:3, Insightful)
No, these aren't free speech issues in general. (This particular situation might be; despite HP's warm and fuzzy claims I suspect that the government strongly encouraged them.) There is no law against this behavior. But it's unethical (not that that bothers most large businesses). As citizens we should stand up and demand that companies actually try to serve their customers first.
Re:Stupid. Really stupid. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Gov't is putting measures in the money. It takes time. Before teh new muti-colored 20's came out, there were identifier strips inside. One day when I got some cash from teh bank, I got some 50's. I noticed one of the fifties was odd and sure enough, the strip was for a 20 dollar bill.
One of the easiest forms of counterfeiting is to just bleach ink out of hte money and reprint it for a higher denomination. HP color lasers make this easy.
Gotta go...no time to spellcheck.
Re:Stupid. Really stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
My favourite part of the article: "Until the 1990s... U.S. banknotes had changed little for decades. Federal officials told the HP team they wanted to keep it that way." (my italics)
And they wonder why they're seeing more and more counterfeit bills...
Re:Like This Makes Sense (Score:3, Insightful)
But people who handle a lot of money every day *DO* know what to look for.
More specifically, they handle so much real money all the time, that if or when a fake does happen to come along, it sticks out like a sore thumb, while the person who doesn't really handle money that often (keeping it out of sight in his wallet most of the time) might not be able to discern the difference.
I've seen it happen... sometimes they even spot a counterfeit even before they know exactly what's wrong w
Re:You know what's a bit funny ....about TAXES (Score:3, Interesting)
And another thought I've had recently, take a dollar and if you could follow it around for ten years or so. Count how many times that dollar was taxed. I think it would create a monetary wormhole and collapse back on itself. The collective COST of using that said dollar would far suprass the face value.