Re: [81attendees] What is it at the bottom of restaurant receipts?

Ok guys, let's shed some light on this:
Found this out when I was in Quebec. It's to prevent tax evasion.
See info here: http://ladditionsvp.com/
and here in English:
http://www.revenuquebec.ca/en/centre-information/actualite/2011/2011-06-23.aspx

Kind regards and all the best, Tobias

On 09/08/11 18:58, Paul Coverdale wrote:
> Just to add a bit more to the mystery, I had exactly the same lunch on 3
> days. On each of the 3 receipts the row of 12 dingbats is completely
> different, not even a repeat of any character.
>
> Google doesn't help much. I did a search for "Quebec City" and "dingbats",
> but it just came back with a listing of all the members of the National
> Assembly... (that's a Canadian joke, by the way).
>
> ...Paul
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: 81attendees-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:81attendees-bounces@ietf.org]
>> On Behalf Of Worley, Dale R (Dale)
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 1:20 PM
>> To: 81attendees@ietf.org
>> Subject: Re: [81attendees] What is it at the bottom of restaurant
>> receipts?
>>
>> Comparing a few receipts, I've so far discovered:
>>
>> There are always 12 dingbats in the row.
>>
>> There are never duplicates on a single receipt.  This suggests that the
>> dingbats are not a direct transcription of information, but rather
>> statistically random.
>>
>> One can easily stack 5 receipts (60 dingbats) and see no duplicates.
>> This suggests (via the birthday paradox) that there are more than 60^2 =
>> 3600 dingbats that are commonly used.
>>
>> My current guess is that there are 4096 dingbats representing 12 bits
>> each, and the line represents 12 * 12 = 144 bits that are either a hash
>> or a digital signature of the data in the hash.  The dingbats are
>> probably to be visually compared by a human with a similar display that
>> is computed by a government device from the data on the receipt.
>>
>> Curiously, on one receipt I have, the dingbat row consists of a sequence
>> of 6 dingbats repeated twice, which seems to me to be very unlikely.
>>
>> Dale
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