Thoughts -> Re: classiccmp server

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "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