Printing my own money

Haha. Or not. But: I got myself a new scanner yesterday. I went totally lowcost (a CanoScan LiDE 25) as I only need to scan stuff (mainly for the web) now and again. Besides, my last Mustek scanner (parallel port! ECP/EPP anyone?) was a gift from a friend back in … uhm … 1998 or 1999 or so … and it served me well till a few month ago.

Anyway, so I got this scanner yesterday, threw the CD away instantly, downloaded the tiny WIA driver and everything worked out of the box. (!!)

Today I figured I’d do a little “resolution test” and scan something really hi-res. Like … a banknote. I wasn’t completely naive about it and something about “scanning money” rang a bell — I vaguely remembered having read about countermeasures in consumer products but I had yet to see it. So I put a 20-Euro bill onto the glass, weighed it down with a book. Found the sticker on the box is lying: 600 dpi is not 2.400×1.200 dpi. So far — not surprising. Waited for the ~14MB to be squeezed over USB 1.1 (I said “lowcost”, did I not?). Fired up the graphics software and there it was:

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