Thoughts -> Re: classiccmp server

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Tue Oct 5 13:16:25 2004

>>>>> "Vintage" == Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com> writes:

 Vintage> On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Fred N. van Kempen wrote:
>> On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Ron Hudson wrote:
>>
>> > I once was wondering if a backup software could be written that
>> writes > to laser printer.
>> >
>> > Backups would be read in with a scanner..
>> >
>> > Hmm limit usable area to 8"x10" = 80 sq in. 600 dpi = 48mb per
>> page. > One way to strike a blow against the paperless office.
>>
>> I actually have a customer who does something like that!!!
>>
>> They do a "paper dump" of some critical (to them) inventory stats
>> each evening, and those printouts (which are standard A4 forms)
>> contain only machine-readable info consisting of barcodes and
>> something that looks like, indeed, papertape "strings"
>>
>> They have a scanner thing that can read those forms. I believe
>> every day, the forms from the previous day get sent to HQ, by
>> regular mail ;)

Something related: the EFF and PGP teams used paper to export software
that was otherwise (possibly) subject to export restrictions. There's
a nicely crafted standard way to bootstrap the OCR process, and ways
to capture spaces accurately, handle checksums, etc. There's a good
description in the book "Cracking DES" (which is very much worth
reading for other reasons).

        paul
Received on Tue Oct 05 2004 - 13:16:25 BST