The general availability of high-quality electronic scanners and color printers for computers has made the counterfeiting of che
cks much easier. In order to deter such counterfeiting, several banks plan to issue to their corporate customers checks that contain dots too small to be accurately duplicated by any electronic scanner currently available; when such checks are scanned and printed, the dots seem to blend together in such a way that the word "VOID" appears on the check. A questionable assumption of the plan is that(A) in the territory served by the banks the proportion of counterfeit checks that are made using electronic scanners has remained approximately constant over the past few years(B) most counterfeiters who use electronic scanners counterfeit checks only for relatively large amounts of money(C) the smallest dots on the proposed checks cannot be distinguished visually except under strong magnification(D) most corporations served by these banks will not have to pay more for the new checks than for traditional checks(E) the size of the smallest dots that generally available electronic scanners are able to reproduce accurately will not decrease significantly in the near future
The questionable assumption of the plan is (E): The size of the smallest dots that generally available electronic scanners can reproduce accurately will not decrease significantly in the near future.
Explanation:
Technological advances increase in an exponential rate, it took almost a hundred years for electricity to become part of almost every house in the world. Computers became a daily part of our lives in a few decades since its creation, and smartphones took every life aspect in less than a decade. Being so, we must assume that electronic scanners will also become more precise and available faster than expected, which will make the small dots strategy obsolete in no time.
