Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by lifeisstillgood on Saturday October 24, 2015 @07:57PM
(#10445357)
I'm reminded of a story in the Book Of Heroic Failures which went something like "Mr Smith, who attempted to pull off the worlds largest single cheque forgery, altered his pay cheque from 14 pounds 8 shillings to 148 million pounds. The fraud was successful right up until the moment he tried to cash it."
The best security for thousands of years has been simple - be a suspicious bastard.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by ygra on Sunday October 25, 2015 @04:58AM
(#10446393)
The more formal number ideographs are the original ones, the simpler ones were simplified so numbers aren't as awkward to use.
You can also easily change a one into a ten, for example. Note also that it's not exactly a positional number system like Arabic. E.g. the number 123 would be written 1 hundred 2 ten 3. IIRC you can also easily change a ten into a hundred or thousand, so for larger values with a few zeroes in between you could shift a meaningful place into the zeroes to the left sometimes.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by 542458 on Sunday October 25, 2015 @12:28AM
(#10445977)
Well, just look at the symbols in his comment. 2 into 3, 4 or 5 is pretty easy looking, as is 1 into 10, 7 or 8. I'm sure you could probably spot more.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by semi-extrinsic on Saturday October 24, 2015 @06:01PM
(#10445025)
Interesting: "it was tested at the University of Giessen's Dept. of Physiology and Cybernetic Psychology." That's quite a name, sounds like it was lifted straight from Command & Conquer.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by nabla9 on Saturday October 24, 2015 @07:17PM
(#10445259)
Cybernetics is more common term in the continental Europe. Anglo-Saxons use "systems theory" and it's slowly replacing cybernetics. If you want to read about cybernetic psychology and related subjects, you might want to google "systems psychology", "systems neuroscience", "systems biology" instead.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by x1798DE on Saturday October 24, 2015 @05:49PM
(#10444989)
>FE-Schrift has been the only typeface used on new vehicle registration plates of Germany since November 2000, except for plates issued to military-registered vehicles, which still use the former DIN 1451 typeface.
Interesting that the the military vehicles don't get it. It makes some sense that they wouldn't need it, but I can't imagine that it would hurt to have it.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by hwh on Saturday October 24, 2015 @06:12PM
(#10445058)
I guess they still have 1 million plates in some storage facility. Nah, jokes aside: what they actually do is to not only legally, but practically issue their own plates, which would include stamping them. Also, they don't use the reflective background white. So not only they don't need it, they also have reasons to continue with the old variant. (And actually, they might indeed have a huge stock of them. Military supplies are often aquired at ridiculous numbers.)
(PS: Sorry, auto-correct inserted a typo, just fixed)
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by hwh on Saturday October 24, 2015 @06:43PM
(#10445161)
Police does use the EU variant for the plates, though. You're right, of course they could go with FE Schrift on their old (non-reflective, non-EU) plates. That would, however, be a new combination that would match neither the new civil plates nor the old ones.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by jo909 on Saturday October 24, 2015 @07:01PM
(#10445211)
I think that is just a function of military vehicles being excempt from that law in the first place. To force them to also use the standard font would mean changing a totally different law, maybe even add a whole new one if the current status is not defined in federal laws but only in some military-interal regulation. Not that that is impossible, but there is little motivation either.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by paulsutter on Saturday October 24, 2015 @08:40PM
(#10445448)
The article explains:
> The motivation for the creation of the typeface was spun in the late 1970s in the light of Red Army Faction terrorism
Given the amount of money spent on vehicle licensing, the additional work to create a font is small potatoes. It certainly doesn't cost more to produce.
It's analogous to choosing between TAI and UTC time in a system. They differ by only 36 seconds, but UTC clocks break during leap seconds. Why not just choose the right one.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by weinzierl on Sunday October 25, 2015 @05:12AM
(#10446422)
Whilst the DIN typeface was using a proportional font,
the FE-Schrift is a monospaced font (with different
spacing for letters and numbers) for improved machine
readability.
The German version of the Wikipedia article says more clearly that (despite the name: FE = hindering falsification) machine readability was the other important reason for the design and introduction of the typeface.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by mpclark on Sunday October 25, 2015 @06:49AM
(#10446580)
I believe it is a problem here in the UK, where one can expect to be ANPRed several times on any journey that takes one out of town. A little bit of black tape can turn a six into an eight and make one anonymous, or make a stolen car appear legit.
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by MichaelGG on Saturday October 24, 2015 @08:06PM
(#10445378)
Are license plates that hard to forge? How much work is it to stamp one? (Not to mention that you can get away with printing plates even on paper. A buddy was driving his car intercountry but didn't have his official plate, just the temp ones. Border agents were particular about that part. A bit of Photoshop and applying a bit of dust and no problems at all during a trip spanning 3 countries.)
Re:FE-Schrift – forgery-impeding typeface
by ianbooker on Sunday October 25, 2015 @04:34AM
(#10446357)
You can actually just buy one for 12 euros, with any combination you like. The stamp, at least in Germany, seems to be the harder thing. It is more common to steal a plate and punch them out.
When you think about it, although the stamps are not that hard to fake, stealing a number plate is a matter of a second. You just clip it out of a plastic frame.
Source: My number plate was stolen in Germany last year.
1: 一 2: 二 3: 三 4: 四 5: 五 6: 六 7: 七 8: 八 9: 九 10: 十
For financial documents, a more complicated form of symbols is used:
1: 壹 2: 貳 3: 參 4: 肆 5: 伍 6: 陸 7: 柒 8: 捌 9: 玖 10: 拾
The best security for thousands of years has been simple - be a suspicious bastard.
You can also easily change a one into a ten, for example. Note also that it's not exactly a positional number system like Arabic. E.g. the number 123 would be written 1 hundred 2 ten 3. IIRC you can also easily change a ten into a hundred or thousand, so for larger values with a few zeroes in between you could shift a meaningful place into the zeroes to the left sometimes.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_numerals#Formal_numbe...
Interesting that the the military vehicles don't get it. It makes some sense that they wouldn't need it, but I can't imagine that it would hurt to have it.
(PS: Sorry, auto-correct inserted a typo, just fixed)
The police issues their own plates as well and they manage fine.
What does this phrase mean?
Note to others: also "civilian", mostly un-marked car models, buses, trucks etc. get the old-style, non reflective plates in our military.
Then again, their layout looks vastly different from civilian plates, so someone forging a BW plate doesn't really gain anything.
> The motivation for the creation of the typeface was spun in the late 1970s in the light of Red Army Faction terrorism
Given the amount of money spent on vehicle licensing, the additional work to create a font is small potatoes. It certainly doesn't cost more to produce.
It's analogous to choosing between TAI and UTC time in a system. They differ by only 36 seconds, but UTC clocks break during leap seconds. Why not just choose the right one.
When you think about it, although the stamps are not that hard to fake, stealing a number plate is a matter of a second. You just clip it out of a plastic frame.
Source: My number plate was stolen in Germany last year.
http://www.fsd.it/usefuldesign/german_plates_font.htm