"David Walters" wrote in message
...

In my case the first 4 digits are 0905 for a
disc that runs out at the end of Feb next year.
0205 would have seemed more obvious.

Perhaps they are using week numbers.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

In article , John Rowland
writes
In my case the first 4 digits are 0905 for a
disc that runs out at the end of Feb next year.
0205 would have seemed more obvious.
Perhaps they are using week numbers.

Unlikely, since they won't know the week of sale when they print the
code.

--
Clive D.W. Feather, writing for himself | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address

In article , David Walters
writes
Does anyone know what information the bar-code on the new style Tax
Discs stores and who has access to reading the code.

I got a new tax disc today and I've just scanned the bar code.

It appears to be a type 128 code and has a 14 digit number encoded.
The last 10 digits match the number across the top of the disc. In
my case the first 4 digits are 0905 for a disc that runs out at the
end of Feb next year. 0205 would have seemed more obvious.

The first digit of the disc number *is* the expiry month.

I'll look at my tax disc when I remember and see what the code says.

--
Clive D.W. Feather, writing for himself | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 22:37:54 -0000, "Dave Liney" wrote:


You have to remember that these are the idiots who wasted good money
inventing the new number plate system which pandered to the motor
industry.

In what way does it pander to the motor industry? Changing the 'year
identifier' twice a year was brought in with the old single letter
identifier scheme.

Which is exactly what happened with the yearly letter change and then the 6
monthly nonsense which resulted from the august sales glut.

It was originally meant to turnover on the 1st of Jan.


As I understand it the car industry would much rather not
have a change at set points in the year but rather have a continuous series
and so reduce the peaks and troughs in car sales after and before the
changeover time.

Pardon my french, but F*ck the car industry. Other countries manage just
fine without changing a year identifier every 6 months.

IIRC in switzerland the plate is handed out for life.

In 7-8 characters, they could have easily encoded registration information
using Base36 and not have of the 4/7ths redundancy on each and every plate.


Of course if you're not fussy about when your car was born according to the
number plate you can get a bargain.

Quite. Taking a 10-15% loss on something driven new out the showroom door
is the height of stupidity.



greg
--
You do a lot less thundering in the pulpit against the Harlot
after she marches right down the aisle and kicks you in the nuts.

"Greg Hennessy" wrote in message
...

In 7-8 characters, they could have easily encoded registration
information
using Base36 and not have of the 4/7ths redundancy on each and every
plate.

What's your problem with the redundancy? Isn't some of it needed anyway
to enable the old numbering systems to coexist with the new one?
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

In article , David Walters
writes
It appears to be a type 128 code and has a 14 digit number encoded.
The last 10 digits match the number across the top of the disc. In
my case the first 4 digits are 0905 for a disc that runs out at the
end of Feb next year. 0205 would have seemed more obvious.

Having thought further about it, 05 is probably the year of expiry
(which isn't encoded in the disc number), but 09 probably means "this is
a car tax disc" as opposed to, say, "this is a pension book".

--
Clive D.W. Feather, writing for himself | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 01:40:41 GMT, "Richard J."
wrote:


"Greg Hennessy" wrote in message
.. .

In 7-8 characters, they could have easily encoded registration
information
using Base36 and not have of the 4/7ths redundancy on each and every
plate.

What's your problem with the redundancy?

Its a horse designed by a committee.


Isn't some of it needed anyway
to enable the old numbering systems to coexist with the new one?

Taking up nearly 60% of each and every plate issued is bad design IMHO.

Some is needed if one is going to encode the year and location of
registration.

Personally I consider the issue of yearly plates to be silly.

Giving each license holder his own plate for life would have solved the
problem once and for all.



greg




--
You do a lot less thundering in the pulpit against the Harlot
after she marches right down the aisle and kicks you in the nuts.

Greg Hennessy wrote:
On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 01:40:41 GMT, "Richard J."
wrote:


"Greg Hennessy" wrote in message
...

In 7-8 characters, they could have easily encoded registration
information using Base36 and not have of the 4/7ths redundancy on
each and every plate.

What's your problem with the redundancy?

Its a horse designed by a committee.

That's not an answer to my question.

Isn't some of it needed anyway
to enable the old numbering systems to coexist with the new one?

Taking up nearly 60% of each and every plate issued is bad design
IMHO.

You're implying that it needs only 3 characters to identify the vehicle.
That's a maximum of 46,656 using all letters and digits. I think we
have rather more vehicles than that on the roads.

Some is needed if one is going to encode the year and location of
registration.

Personally I consider the issue of yearly plates to be silly.

Giving each license holder his own plate for life would have solved
the problem once and for all.

What is this "problem" that you are so concerned about?
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:42:35 GMT, "Richard J."
wrote:



What's your problem with the redundancy?

Its a horse designed by a committee.

That's not an answer to my question.


It is, I was clearly referring to ~60% redudancy in the current system.
Which I qualified in the sentence below.


Isn't some of it needed anyway
to enable the old numbering systems to coexist with the new one?

Taking up nearly 60% of each and every plate issued is bad design
IMHO.

You're implying that it needs only 3 characters to identify the vehicle.

Where did I imply that. A vehicle is *uniquely* identified from the 26^3
combination of the 3 character remainder, not the 4 characters wasted on a
static year / registration office. Thats only ~17.5k odd combinations which
one must assume a busy registration office would easily consume in a
matter of days/weeks. Especially with bulk registrations from fleet buyers.

Common sense would dictate that a combination of

2 digit Year
[A-Z0-9] registration location
4 Character Base36 unique ID,

would generate nearly 1.7 million unique registrations in comparison


Personally I consider the issue of yearly plates to be silly.

Giving each license holder his own plate for life would have solved
the problem once and for all.

What is this "problem" that you are so concerned about?

Unnecessarily wasting taxpayers money.

The number of vehicles and licensed drivers on the roads is relatively
fixed when compared to the open ended number to keep track in the current
system.



greg

--
You do a lot less thundering in the pulpit against the Harlot
after she marches right down the aisle and kicks you in the nuts.

Greg Hennessy ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying :

You're implying that it needs only 3 characters to identify the
vehicle.

Where did I imply that. A vehicle is *uniquely* identified from the
26^3 combination of the 3 character remainder, not the 4 characters
wasted on a static year / registration office. Thats only ~17.5k odd
combinations which one must assume a busy registration office would
easily consume in a matter of days/weeks. Especially with bulk
registrations from fleet buyers.

Erm, not quite.

A vehicle is *uniquely* identified by the full seven characters.

For example - AB51DEF, AB02DEF and AB53DEF might all exist.
AB51DEF, GH51DEF, KL51DEF might all exist.

While it's possible that the 17,500 AB51 registrations may well only last
a week, the office that issues AB has a number of series available to it
for the six month period dictated by 51.

The smallest allocation of codes to an office are Inverness and Truro,
with two apiece, and Bangor and Aberdeen with three apiece.

There's one code allocated to new cars registered to addresses on the
Isle of Wight.

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/regm...ent_system.htm
has a disclaimer, too - "Please Note: In the event of one office
receiving an exceptionally high demand that depletes its stock of
registration marks, marks may be transferred between DVLA local offices."

Since there's 19x23 regional identifiers, there's a total of 7.7million
unique registrations available in each six month period.

According to the SMMT, there was a "record" 2.6million new cars
registered in the whole of 2003. OK, that's cars, not
trucks/busses/bikes/whatever, but even so, it's a long way off the 15.4
million available plates....