Digital Watermark: Bar Code Celebrates Birthday, Is It Evil?
evil barcode
LOOKING FOR MR. GOOD BAR CODE
ARE BAR CODES EVIL?
We missed an event in Weird History yesterday: October 7 marked the 57th birthday of the bar code. The code is created by printing the pattern with magnetic ink read by a scanner.
The little icon, which appears on all sorts of food, fashion and magazine packaging was created by Norman Woodland, Bernard Silver and Jordin Johanson after a supermarket executive asked the dean of the Drexel Institute of Technology if it were possible to create a system that could automatically read information about products.
–MORE GOOD BAR CODE: For 6 weird ways the bar code has been used, check out The Barcode celebrates its 57th anniversary and we look at weird uses for this litte logo.
[ABOVE: Some consider the bar code a possible mark of Satan.]
Are Bar Codes Evil?
At least some in Russia think so:
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A hundred residents of a Russian village have refused to switch to new passports because they believe the documents’ bar codes contain satanic symbols, state television reported Wednesday. “We believe these new passports are sinful,” Valentina Yepifanova, an elderly resident of the village Bogolyubovo, told Rossiya television as she clutched an old, tattered passport she said she wanted to keep.
–Bar-codes ARE Evil
Russians are not alone. Within years of the bar code coming into popular usage, the symbol was despised by more than supermarket checkout clerks who were afraid it would cut their numbers.
Bar codes are very easy to decode if you understand binary – just take the black bars as ones and the white bars as zeroes, and you can see what the number should be. Not that the number isn’t already printed below the bar code, but bear with me here.
Now, if you’ll notice, there are three sections on the bar code that are unnumbered. The part at the beginning of the main code, the part at the end, and the part in the middle. Decode it, see what numbers you come up with.
Did you see it? Not all bar codes are like this, but some are… if you’ll notice, most bar codes have a double bar in those spaces. That is a 6. And most UPCs have three of those double bars, unmarked, in all three spots…
That’s right, kiddies, most bar codes have 6 for the front number, 6 for the middle number, and 6 for the ending number! Folks, this is no coincidence! It’s 666! The UPC is the Mark of the Beast.
–The hidden evil in UPC bar codes
Of course, one guy said the 666 in bar codes is an example of Playing 666 Jokes on Christians.
Which is somehow, not very comforting.
For today, we’ll wish the bar code a 57th birthday. The rest of the discussion can take place on another day.
by Mondo Frazier
images:
* http://xachandler.blogspot.com/2007/03/bar-codes-are-evil.html
* http://www.zedge.net/wallpapers/888025/evil-barcode-wallpaper/
