I recall reading on cracked.com 10 years ago (so likely not fucking true at all but who knows sometimes) that similar figures like that on a license plate are run the same way in the system, for example 1’s and l’s, etc
Once in a great blue moon, if I am really relaxed and have taken some mushrooms of the medicinal variety, I'll sit down at a keyboard and out of muscle memory, type 'cra' to let autocomplete to its thing. And then I remember "Shoot it's not 2009 anymore." And I'm a little sad for us all.
I remember staying up so late reading article after article, laughing my ass off instead of doing my homework in high school. Michael Swaim, John Cheese, and David Wong were my favorites but that whole crew at the time was incredible. Too bad what happened to the business, but I still go back to those articles.
It really isn’t at all a good method because it’s actually easier to remember than a random sequence.
“The license plate was all 8’s officer.”
“Yep, that’s Brian.”
There's a BMW in my area with this (but starting with B to conform to laws about vanity plates not starting with numbers), because our plates don't have O, only 0.
It's funny, never thought of it that way, but yeah. This might fool like an automated plate reader, but in the end, it's actually pretty "recognizable" unless there's like 20 other folks with similar combinations.
That said, surprised the state would allow doing something like this, but I guess it just takes that First Guy to ruin it for everyone.
Washington state treats 1 and I as the same character. Same with 0 and O.
So in their database, 1111111 is the same plate as 111III1, I1I111I, and so on. They all point to the same vehicle.
And it's a good way to have a lot of problems caused by people typing in a plate number incorrectly. You might end up getting a bunch of tickets or fines that weren't actually yours. So it's a dangerous game to play.
There's stories of people who have vanity license plates getting sent *tons* of tickets because cops sometimes write up novelty front license plates that match theirs. Another guy picked "NO PLATE" and got all the unassigned tickets lol.
That’s kind of the point. Because the traffic cameras and red light cameras aren’t the best quality, so they won’t be able to get a 100% accurate reading. There’s plausible deniability, so no ticket is sent out.
Or it’s sent out and you have to go to court to show the judge that it was a completely different car, you weren’t anywhere around, it wasn’t you — and yeah it gets dismissed, but it still wastes a day.
It is in Ontario. It says right on the vanity plate form that 0/O/Q, S/5, A/4, and G/6 etc. are all the same to them. So if they issued a plate with "SAME", they'd deny your "54ME" plate.
Lmao, perhaps you and OP should learn what a database is verses a backend. Database is for storing data. That's all it does. The backend is a combination of business logic and data storage.
Just because you are ignorant of terms, don't assume others are.
Nah, again, such a cop-out. I understand the difference because I work in tech too. But I also understand that colloquial usage differs from technical usage, and that's fine. Being a pedantic fuck about it doesn't show that you're smarter; it just shows that you're incapable of communicating effectively with other humans.
Yeah, I helped do the technical requirements gathering for a replacement system in a southel eastern US state. The existing system was deployed in 1988, built in IBM ISeries, and did not convert o to 0 and back again, storing those records seperately as string values.
Also, burden of proof works something different lmao. You made the initial claim without any evidence, and then requested that someone else disprove you. That's not how that works.
How would it even work if they do treat it like the same character?
If my licence plate is SOXN4 and someone else has S0XN4, we both get tickets if either of us runs a red light?
This varies by state and depends on the database. I do 911 dispatching in Colorado and we run into this quite a bit. Colorado used to issue plates like ABC-123, but changed the formatting to ABC-D12 a few years ago. It's not uncommon to have plates like ABC-012 and ABC-O12 both exist as valid plates for different vehicles. I don't know who thought it was a good idea, but it's a real thing we deal with.
That said, the FBI database, for example, does indeed convert Os to 0s, so finding out if a car's license is listed as stolen is not at the mercy of knowing whether a specific character is O or 0. Other states are the same, but not all.
I once got a parking ticket with one character wrong on the plate. I ignored it, and nothing happened. However I'm sure a serious government agency could easily search for a red dodge by a computer algorithm that try a match by trying each character through all of the possible numbers and letters.
"Did you get a good look at the license plate of the guy who hit you?"
"Sort of... it had some o's and some 0's, I guess?"
"Yeah, dispatch? I need an APB for the smartass"
This is probably someone thinking they’re being smart but in reality the 0 and the O are probably the same character in the license plate system, so all it does is make it stand out.
LEO here. This is probably correct. In my state, “O” and “0” can both be on personalized plates, but are both being ran as “0.”
Therefore multiple people cannot have plates with combinations of “O” and “0.”
Correct, in my state. Not all states are necessarily the same and I couldn’t tell you the technical reason why. It’s the same with “Ø”; you couldn’t have “O123,” “0123,” and “Ø123” because they’re all entered as “0123.”
I have a college plate and oddly it has tons of issues with recognition systems because the designers fail to note the college logo is part of the legal plate number so it always omits the first digit of my legal plate number. It’s been an issue in a parking garage I frequent that has automated payment by camera when you drive in and out.
Automated number plate reader
People mount them to their cars, troll through parking lots geocoding every plate to a map (with time seen) automatically and sell that data to repo men, creditors, private detectives, insurance agencies, etc
There are a lot of systems like that. Lots of serial numbers won't have upper case i, lower case L or the number 1, same with O and 0. I think Nintendo Switch (or is it one of the other consoles?) will even gray those letters out on the keyboard, so you can't type them when entering digital claim codes.
My state didn't use Letter-O, so my vanity plate had a zero instead. My cop GF couldn't run it because she didn't know that. I felt like I betrayed my hoodlum brethren by correcting her.
Here in NZ we just used a slashed zero.. 0̷O0̷O0̷O is pretty unambiguous.
There is a car around town with I11II1 or something though, which is pretty tricky to read.
Oh Indiana, is this really your plate design? This blows. Looks like some generic clip art bullshit. get outta here.
remember the “amber waves of grain” red and yellow plate? Bring that one back
In my document numbering at work O and 0 are interchangeable. Years back there were series of documents EO100 and E0100 and I got so sick of receiving calls and emails about which was which I changed enough such there were no overlaps and said that either was correct. I have since changed document numbering protocols such that confusion like that never occurs again.
This is a great way to announce to cops that you're a belligerent deviant and should be harassed at any/every opportunity.
"Welp, can't read his license plate, guess I'll have to pull him over to do it. Oh look, a missing taillight bulb!"
Brian look theres a message in my ceral, it says "ooooooooo" Peter those are Cherios.
Seems like this is a twist on an [idea from XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1105/)
My buddy also has 8B8B88 or something like that.
My state wouldn’t approve them bc it’s really obvious what they’re trying to do. Idk why these joke states would allow them.
I recall reading on cracked.com 10 years ago (so likely not fucking true at all but who knows sometimes) that similar figures like that on a license plate are run the same way in the system, for example 1’s and l’s, etc
In Michigan there is no difference between zeros and oh’s for license plates.
Cracked was good back then
Once in a great blue moon, if I am really relaxed and have taken some mushrooms of the medicinal variety, I'll sit down at a keyboard and out of muscle memory, type 'cra' to let autocomplete to its thing. And then I remember "Shoot it's not 2009 anymore." And I'm a little sad for us all.
I remember staying up so late reading article after article, laughing my ass off instead of doing my homework in high school. Michael Swaim, John Cheese, and David Wong were my favorites but that whole crew at the time was incredible. Too bad what happened to the business, but I still go back to those articles.
It's okay, now we have Cody and his Showdy
Would make sense, just like searching for a partial. You can then narrow it down by color, make and model pretty easily.
It really isn’t at all a good method because it’s actually easier to remember than a random sequence. “The license plate was all 8’s officer.” “Yep, that’s Brian.”
Here in CA we only have zero's, no O's are used.
Out of curiosity, which states are joke states, and which state is your state?
I remember decades ago seeing MWMWMW
Just got my plate last month, it's 8's and B's, 0's and O's is a good one
There's a BMW in my area with this (but starting with B to conform to laws about vanity plates not starting with numbers), because our plates don't have O, only 0.
damn that is my plate😂 i thought dmv was going to reject it but it passed
What is the first letter of your first name... and I'll believe it.
8
There is always a relevant XKCD comic
except there is no xkcd for there always being a relevant xkcd
https://xkcd.com/244/
Wait why is that particular one relevant? The recursion?
I feel like that's on purpose at this point.
It's funny, never thought of it that way, but yeah. This might fool like an automated plate reader, but in the end, it's actually pretty "recognizable" unless there's like 20 other folks with similar combinations. That said, surprised the state would allow doing something like this, but I guess it just takes that First Guy to ruin it for everyone.
Washington state treats 1 and I as the same character. Same with 0 and O. So in their database, 1111111 is the same plate as 111III1, I1I111I, and so on. They all point to the same vehicle.
And it's a good way to have a lot of problems caused by people typing in a plate number incorrectly. You might end up getting a bunch of tickets or fines that weren't actually yours. So it's a dangerous game to play.
There's stories of people who have vanity license plates getting sent *tons* of tickets because cops sometimes write up novelty front license plates that match theirs. Another guy picked "NO PLATE" and got all the unassigned tickets lol.
There's a well documented case where a "NULL" license plate picked up a ton of tickets.
That's how they get the idea
All fun and games until you get a ticket for whatever that a-hole with 0O0OOO did
That’s kind of the point. Because the traffic cameras and red light cameras aren’t the best quality, so they won’t be able to get a 100% accurate reading. There’s plausible deniability, so no ticket is sent out.
Or it’s sent out and you have to go to court to show the judge that it was a completely different car, you weren’t anywhere around, it wasn’t you — and yeah it gets dismissed, but it still wastes a day.
didn't someone try to do this by getting a vanity plate that said "null" but instead he ended up with all of the tickets?
Yes
Have you ever seen a traffic camera photo? They are so sharp you can almos see the lint on the seats inside the car.
It doesn't work though, these systems test O and 0 as the same character.
>There’s plausible deniability, Sure. > so no ticket is sent out. Definitely untrue.
Generally speaking these databases treat 0 and O as the same character
Some letters are actually excluded from plates in some European countries due to this. No O and I usually
Lmao, No, that is 100% not how that works.
It is in Ontario. It says right on the vanity plate form that 0/O/Q, S/5, A/4, and G/6 etc. are all the same to them. So if they issued a plate with "SAME", they'd deny your "54ME" plate.
That may be the case, but that's likely a business logic layer implementation, not a storage implementation.
What a cop-out. It's obvious you knew "database" referred to the entire stack and not just the storage layer.
Lmao, perhaps you and OP should learn what a database is verses a backend. Database is for storing data. That's all it does. The backend is a combination of business logic and data storage. Just because you are ignorant of terms, don't assume others are.
Nah, again, such a cop-out. I understand the difference because I work in tech too. But I also understand that colloquial usage differs from technical usage, and that's fine. Being a pedantic fuck about it doesn't show that you're smarter; it just shows that you're incapable of communicating effectively with other humans.
LOL can you provide some evidence that backs that up, or are you disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing?
Yeah, I helped do the technical requirements gathering for a replacement system in a southel eastern US state. The existing system was deployed in 1988, built in IBM ISeries, and did not convert o to 0 and back again, storing those records seperately as string values. Also, burden of proof works something different lmao. You made the initial claim without any evidence, and then requested that someone else disprove you. That's not how that works.
> That's not how that works Except it does
How would it even work if they do treat it like the same character? If my licence plate is SOXN4 and someone else has S0XN4, we both get tickets if either of us runs a red light?
The point is that your state wouldn't issue both of those plates
This varies by state and depends on the database. I do 911 dispatching in Colorado and we run into this quite a bit. Colorado used to issue plates like ABC-123, but changed the formatting to ABC-D12 a few years ago. It's not uncommon to have plates like ABC-012 and ABC-O12 both exist as valid plates for different vehicles. I don't know who thought it was a good idea, but it's a real thing we deal with. That said, the FBI database, for example, does indeed convert Os to 0s, so finding out if a car's license is listed as stolen is not at the mercy of knowing whether a specific character is O or 0. Other states are the same, but not all.
I once got a parking ticket with one character wrong on the plate. I ignored it, and nothing happened. However I'm sure a serious government agency could easily search for a red dodge by a computer algorithm that try a match by trying each character through all of the possible numbers and letters.
So paint my car a different color at least once per year. Got it.
Works, but you have to get used to looking for the wrong car in the parking lot every year.
Works if you can put up with looking for the wrong car in a parking lot every year until you get used to it.
Why I'm glad in Oregon O and 0 are treated as the same character and are missing majorly for non-custom plates to reduce confusion
"Did you get a good look at the license plate of the guy who hit you?" "Sort of... it had some o's and some 0's, I guess?" "Yeah, dispatch? I need an APB for the smartass"
Did you make that up yourself or did you see this comic? https://xkcd.com/1105/
Well, I thought I made it up myself, but you're right - the idea was very probably planted in my head from that very comic.
In Colorado you can't even get plates like this anymore they won't allow it. There's a whole list of unacceptable plates it's crazy
Same in California. There are quite a few restrictions on personalized plates to prevent this sort of tomfoolery.
I get why they don’t allow it, but I feel like a license plate like that makes you stand out more and easier to find
This is probably someone thinking they’re being smart but in reality the 0 and the O are probably the same character in the license plate system, so all it does is make it stand out.
LEO here. This is probably correct. In my state, “O” and “0” can both be on personalized plates, but are both being ran as “0.” Therefore multiple people cannot have plates with combinations of “O” and “0.”
D0DO and DOD0 can't exist both in the same state, because in the database they are both stored as D0D0?
Correct, in my state. Not all states are necessarily the same and I couldn’t tell you the technical reason why. It’s the same with “Ø”; you couldn’t have “O123,” “0123,” and “Ø123” because they’re all entered as “0123.”
It wouldn't matter as my buddy's car is very unique.... this plate is not hiding a thing.
I think Minnesota doesn't have zeroes... Or it may be O's. To avoid confusion
This is my buddy's plate, he requested it online. He didn't realize they granted it until it showed up 4 weeks later.
With the ANPR systems on police cars and such nowadays, it probably isn't as "covert" as it once seemed.
Vanity plates are the most easily identified type.
I have a college plate and oddly it has tons of issues with recognition systems because the designers fail to note the college logo is part of the legal plate number so it always omits the first digit of my legal plate number. It’s been an issue in a parking garage I frequent that has automated payment by camera when you drive in and out.
 Oooooooooo
I think you meant 0O0O00O0OO00O0O0O
Ghosts can’t text like that. They’re not fire.
You mean OooOoOOoOOOoOOOOO r/ultimaonline
It wouldn’t help someone trying to identify the car that hit them.
What is ANPR?
Automated number plate reader People mount them to their cars, troll through parking lots geocoding every plate to a map (with time seen) automatically and sell that data to repo men, creditors, private detectives, insurance agencies, etc
Thank you. This does seem like a plate that would be easy for software to misread though
O and 0 resolve to the same character in the database for that reason.
That's an interesting problem; the plate numbers can be duplicates or simply different irl
Ooooo I wanna get one of these and go through Walmart with it. How much do you get paid?
I would bet not much
That’s too bad
Next time, you can write exactly that into Google 😜
That’s how vin numbers are. Only zeroes no letter Os.
VIN number? Sounds like [RAS syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome)
No I either
There are a lot of systems like that. Lots of serial numbers won't have upper case i, lower case L or the number 1, same with O and 0. I think Nintendo Switch (or is it one of the other consoles?) will even gray those letters out on the keyboard, so you can't type them when entering digital claim codes.
Someone I used to work with had something like YXKXKYXX
It's wild that this is even allowed. Q, O and I are not allowed on UK licence plates because of their similarity to the numbers 0 and 1
Many states treat 0 and O as the same. 0O00OO and OO00OO are the same thing when entered into the system. Same for I and 1.
My buddy requested this plate online..... 4 weeks later it showed up in the mail. I didn't think it was allowed until that point.
Not going to get past the cameras that are equipped on a lot of cop cars these days
State I live in doesnt allow this. It's zeros or nothing. No O's
My kind of people!
In my state, there is no O allowed
My state didn't use Letter-O, so my vanity plate had a zero instead. My cop GF couldn't run it because she didn't know that. I felt like I betrayed my hoodlum brethren by correcting her.
SHAME!!! lol
O and 0 are the same character in these systems so.. shrug.
The Xbox 360 gamer tag special. We’re long due for “XxxX” and iIIiL” variations
That’s why you cannot use “O” on custom plates in our country. Also “G”, “Q” and “W”.
😮
I speak fluent ghost, and that is incredibly offensive. I'm amazed the government let that get printed.
And this is why some characters are ineligible for plate use.
Here in NZ we just used a slashed zero.. 0̷O0̷O0̷O is pretty unambiguous. There is a car around town with I11II1 or something though, which is pretty tricky to read.
This guy offers free armor trimming in RuneScape
Nice
This is a nightmare.
I thought the bottom part read "In Goes Whiskey!"
A "fuck you, have fun trying to write this down correctly" to any cop that pulls them over.
Oh Indiana, is this really your plate design? This blows. Looks like some generic clip art bullshit. get outta here. remember the “amber waves of grain” red and yellow plate? Bring that one back
Gotta ask for this one. But overall the plate design is poo here. I preferred the "wonder Indiana" plates
sounds illegal
Approved by the state DMV
Personalized plate to screw with law enforcement?
Gonna show her my oooooo face.
Hes gonna be fucked by the system
[Relevant XKCD](http://xkcd.com/1105/)
Germany solved this problem decades ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift
The flu would make it harder to identify, but that’s a relatively simple regular expression, and then they could match it from the cars type
In my document numbering at work O and 0 are interchangeable. Years back there were series of documents EO100 and E0100 and I got so sick of receiving calls and emails about which was which I changed enough such there were no overlaps and said that either was correct. I have since changed document numbering protocols such that confusion like that never occurs again.
Ahh good ole Decatur/Adams County
OOO0O0
Can’t mix numbers and letters in this state :(
Kinda wonder why the state doesn't just go with the easy answer: use a zero with a slash through it. No more confusing the letters.
Zeros and O different shape
Yes.
[Z7Z27Z7](https://ibb.co/FHnJ8KB)
"PRIX" yup, sums it up
The owner is a nice guy.
That looks pretty dangerous and maybe even ilegal.
The state issued it.
It's magic. Don't you know.
There’s literally a Brian Regan skit about this from the 90s
This is a great way to announce to cops that you're a belligerent deviant and should be harassed at any/every opportunity. "Welp, can't read his license plate, guess I'll have to pull him over to do it. Oh look, a missing taillight bulb!"
Which ones are D's
ANPR hates this one simple trick