The farriers, knife-makers, locksmiths, chain-forgers, nail-makers, helmet-makers, escutcheon-makers, stonemasons and, aforementioned harness-polishers would gather regularly at their guild halls.

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Forgers may make the most of the change-over in 2002 as well.

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After signing the screen with a finger five times, the app can reliably distinguish the speed and pattern of the user from forgers.

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But until they do, just like handling counterfeit money, all of us are going to be victimized if you will, by counterfeits and forgers.

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This is handy for deterring forgers, but it raises the price and complexity of the system well above anything that exists, or is being contemplated, elsewhere in Europe.

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They are as much to blame as the forgers themselves.

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We've seen ideas at the nano level before, but IBM thinks its latest research might be so difficult to reverse engineer, that it's impossible for forgers to reproduce.

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Advances in computer know-how -- the ability to "reverse engineer" almost any product -- mean that as soon as a luxury product develops a cachet there will be a band of forgers with the technology and resources to copy it.

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