On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 10:12:31 +0100, Brian Morrison put finger to
keyboard and typed:

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 17:38:38 on Tue, 19 Sep
2006, Brian Morrison remarked:
Ensure that the same bar code cannot be printed more than
once by doing the printing from inside a custom application in Java or
possibly something that is downloaded and installed?

And how does that work when the printer jams, runs out of ink, falls off
the network suddenly, and so on?

Accepted that this is a bit tricky Roland, but then the whole deal seems
that way to me. Whichever part of the process has to ensure single use
of a given stamp is adding complexity to what was previously a simple
arrangement.

This is a problem that has always existed for franked mail (as opposed
to stamped mail). Take a look at any commerciallly posted letter that
you've received lately, and wonder how Royal Mail manage to avoid the
franking mark being used repeatedly. But, because it's a long-standing
problem, it has a number of long-standing solutions. And all this
system is doing is allowing individuals to do their own franking,
rather than restricting franking to organisations with bigger budgets.
There isn't anything new here, from the point of view of Royal Mail,
that requires them to come up with a new process to validate the
franking mark.

The really important thing to remember is that, for all that the media
are calling them "online stamps", this system is *not* producing
stamps in the sense generally understood - it's more of a personal
franking system, which works in a completely different way to stamped
mail. It's just that most individual users of the Post Office never
get to send franked mail (although they almost certainly receive it
regularly), so they don't understand how franking works.

Mark
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