Someone sent me this link today:
Look at the photos. Is this for real?
Yes, it’s for real, according to NPR. They interviewed a Kodak scientist and he explained that it was a technique to foil counterfeiters, though there were concerns that it could be used to inhibit free speech (don’t use your printer to make signs saying, “The Boss Is A Fink” and paste them all over your workplace).
As I understand it, not all printers do this. But most of the high-end ones preferred by counterfeiters do.
Yes, this is for real, and <GD?> somewhat disturbing, IMO. In particular, I agree with this:
The EFF is a respected organization, certainly not some whackjob conspiracy-theory site.
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I have tried it on my printer, and it works as advertised. The EFF website has an application that will allow you to see what your printer has to say about you, but you’ll probably need a magnifying glass and a blue LED flashlight (I found a keychain one at Radio Shack) to be able to see the dots.
Link to the EFF’s main page on this, which explains it a little more.
You can also send them a test page to help them with the decoding of other companies’ formats if you own a color laser printer/copier.
Old news actually.
Xerox developed the technology about 20 years ago. It’s just taken until now for color lasers to become popular mass-market items, and for someone to reverse-engineer the coding.
url=http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118664,00.asp]Cite
fixed link…
I got caught up in replying to another post and gotpasswords beat me to it, but yeah - this is incredibly old news in the IT world.
However, I believe that EFF’s efforts are the first time anyone has come up with actual proof of it, and they are certainly the first group to figure out what the encoding actually means.