Bar Coding The World Away

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."

saw this coming

[frovingslosh]

I for one welcome the New World Order and our European Article Numbering Code Overlords.

let me hit you with some knowledge

[spoonyfork]

In June of 1974, the first U.P.C. scanner was installed at a Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's Gum [about.com].

Re:Mobile Phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, except that in the US you get a *choice* of which type of carrier you want. You can get a GSM phone if you'd like, but I think that everyone (including the Europeans, who are basing their next system on it) realizes that CDMA is superior to GSM.

Besides, cross-Europe standards make sense: European countries are small, and border crossings are common. The same is not true of North America, where the countries are large (2 of them being the number 2 and 3 largest countries in terms of size), and the phone systems between Mexico, the US, and Canada are fairly compatible.

Re:Mobile Phones

[strictnein]

Sorry, the US isn't the only one using TDMA/CDMA [cdg.org]. In fact, over 202 million people use it worldwide, with over 120 million outside the US.

GSM has about 1 billion subscribers.

Re:Inevitable

[KD5YPT]

Not sure what 1 is and why its important... 3, I could live without, but yeah, better standardize that... 4 would be nice... but 2 is a must have!!! The US system is FAR TOO CONFUSING to use in the scientific world.

I have a professor who actually think the base-unit in US for mass AND weight is the pound (he coined the word, pound-mass and pound-weight).
Just for those who don't know. The base-unit for mass in US-unit is a slug, the weight is a pound. And 32 slug = a pound because the acceleration due to gravity in US unit is 32 feet/second squared.

Re:Why not be smarter?

[MarkedMan]

Arbitrary length barcode standards do exist (EAN-128 for example), but they are complex beasts and great care must be taken to ensure both the creater and reader get everything exactly right. The UPC or EAN-13 have the advantage of being simple. There may be multiple barcodes on a box, but only one of them would be in the UPC/EAN-13 symbology. I suppose you could create a new symbology just for that, but every reader in existence would be obsolete.

In the end, that's what it boils down too: anything that would allow varying length would make way too much software and hardware obsolete. The cost/benefit would be astronimically bad.

Re:How long?

[TopShelf]

Maybe in your experience that's the case, but by and large, the middle 10 digits contain the main information that a retailer would use. Digits 2-6 denote the manufacturer of the item, and 7-11 are the item's ID. Throughout the supply chain on the way to a retail store, unique logic can often be applied based on the manufacturer ID. They might read digits 2-6, for example, and that would determine a specific label that needs to be generated, which would use digits 7-11 to pull the item info. Now they'd need to adjust that logic to account for the extra digit.

Like someone else mentioned, it's not a difficult problem to solve, but the testing will just take a good deal of effort.

Re:Metric?

[Sexy Bern]

I am in the UK.

First, we tend to call them "Imperial" measurements, after the guy that invented them, Bob Imperial*.

Everybody under the age of about 40 has always been taught metric units from birth, so many of us have no real life experience using purely imperial units. However, we have plenty of infrastructures that will probably never swap over to metric, even in 30/40 years' time when there will be very few imperial-only peeps left.

All "long"-distance road signs in Britain are in miles. A sign saying "Birmingham 17" would indicate that Birmingham is 17 miles away.

HOWEVER, "short"-distance road signs tend to use metric units. "Humps for 200m" is a innuendo-laden example.

Speed limit signs are always in mph. Mechanical car speedos are marked in mph, with kph usually on there in significantly smaller digits. Mechanical car odometers are always in miles, but the newer digital combo displays can show all information in any combination.

Babies are weighed at birth, and everybody knows that a five-pounder is light, 7's about right and 10's a Christmas turkey.

And yes, before you ask, cocks are usually measured in inches here too.

There are some Canute-style Imperial zealots [bwmaonline.com] in the UK however.

* This is not true.

Re:What happens to old bar codes?

[johnlcallaway]

As I recall, products are not assigned UPC codes, companies are. The first half of a UPC code is the company. They can use the last half in whatever manner they deem fit.

But I haven't worked with bar codes for about 10 years, I could have remembered that wrong.

Re:Mobile Phones

[gbjbaanb]

in case anyone else thought strictnein got his billions and millions mixed up..

This [umtsworld.com] page shows you that latest numbers are 70% of subscribers use GSM, 12% CDMA.

Incidentally, the US are the heaviest users of mobile tech - 458 minutes per month on average!

Re:Get me a rewrite...

[letxa2000]

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.

Re:OSR...

[Anonymous Coward]

I finally worked this out.
1 rod = 16.5 feet = 5.029 m
1 hogshead = 63 gallons = 238.48 l

so...

40 rods/hogshead
= .002 miles/gallon
= 10.4762 feet/gallon
= 504 gal/mile
= 0.8435 m/l
= 1185.524 l/km

Grandpa Simpson gets lousy mileage.

Re:How long?

[hamsterboy]

Expense. Privacy concerns. Entrenched systems. Training. Lack of standards. I can think of lots of reasons.

Re:let me hit you with some knowledge

[hamsterboy]

Perhaps. But the scanner that read that first pack of Juicy Fruit was a Spectraphysics Model A [psc.com]. The company (the one I work for, incidentally), after many mergers and acquisitions, is now known as PSC.

Hamster

Re:When a domain runs out of numbers...

[vlm]

PSTN is not having a problem due to lack of numbers. npa-nxx-xxxx after all provides 10 billion numbers and there are only about a thirtieth of that here.

The problem is the little "competitive" dot-bombs that recently formed and want number space for sparsely populated LATAs

Example... Ma Bell wastefully allocated (123)-45x-xxxx to the city of Bozo. Now Bozo only has 100 residents so thats quite wasteful but tolerable, as Ma Bell planned for such wast 50 years ago. However, what happens when 5 new dot-bomb companies move in and want to sell local telephone service? That's right they all get x-xxxx sized number blocks. So now 50000 phone numbers are tied up by the metropolis of Bozo which only has 100 residents anyway.

That is why there were a zillion NPA splits in the late ninties and why the rate of growth has slowed:
1) The dot bombs are going away
2) The software is improving so instead of assigning 10000 number blocks you can assign perhaps 100 number blocks.

Re:Get me a rewrite...

[delphi125]

You do understand what the check digit is for? It is to (tada!) CHECK that the correct code has been entered. So why on earth would it be a 'common mistake' for an operator to enter the entire code?

Now, I realize that the parent DOES realize these problems, but he makes it clear that the equipment manufacturers themselves DONT.

The digit isn't there just to protect against machine error (or smudging of the bar codes), it is there to protect against human error too - mis-typed or transposed digits. So use it.

Not always entering the check digit is equivalent to having a RAID 1 disk with a single disk.

Re:Why not be smarter?

[pla]

Why not take the time to implement a flexible sytem which may allow to encore an arbitrary number of characters?

Actually, EAN does include exactly such a capability... You can basically tack on additional groups of digits to form a longer, still-valid EAN barcode.

Most commonly used, you'll find EAN+5 on many books. Of readers I've worked with, though, every single one (that could handle +5) would read out as wide as they could physically scan.

Just because you have a hammer, though, don't make the mistake of seeing everything as a nail - If you want a lot more information, you really want a 2d symbology such as PDF417 or code 128. EAN (and the similar but weaker UPC) only exists for the specific purpose of encoding a few digits for the purpose of product ID. It has a bit of expansion capability built in, but they never meant it as a barcode to do everything.

Re:What happens to old bar codes?

[wizardhat]

You need to be a member of the Uniform Code Council to get your own manufacturer ID:

http://www.uc-council.org/ean_ucc_system/members hi p/need_upc.htm

No link to the non-registeration page?

[stry_cat]

I'm shocked no one has posted a link to the article that doesn't require registration.

Here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/business/12barco de.html?ex=1090296000&en=0ba01a954e952cf8&ei=5006& partner=ALTAVISTA1

Now give me Karma! ;-)

Re:More digits...

[Shakrai]

It cannot be counted on to be unique....the numbers are recycled

Are you trolling or just tin-foiled? According to the source [ssa.gov] SS numbers are not reused. To quote: "No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder's death."

Not that I don't agree with you on refusing to give it out -- I don't see why my power company needs to know what it is. But they don't recycle the numbers.

Re:More digits...

[cayenne8]

Very interesting...I stand corrected. My original source must have been in error.

I was apparently mis-informed about this when I worked for Acxiom.....and they move so much 'people' data around, I'd taken this as truth there...they ran into lots of problems of SS#'s being dupes for different peoples' records...

I was told that there used to be a real problem with the 'fake' SS card they used to put in new wallets...people were thinking that was the way they were assigned a SS number...and were using it as such. That one sounded so goofy, that it actually sounded plausible, but, thanks for the link above...I'll have to look into this some more..

Re:More digits...

[Anonymous Coward]

The policy is not to re-use but the SSA screws up sometimes and has indeed reassigned numbers in use.