Please add (2913) to the title: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Xerox%20scanners%20randomly%20... Edit: oops, 2013 - typed on my smartphone without reading back :)
Or was it 2018?
Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
41–50 of 63 posts
Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
#42One of the more amusing parts of this blog is that it contains at least two typos: "arrors" and "ancoding" and I can't tell if they were on purpose.
Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a scene in the Cryptonomicon, where Goto Dengo's (a lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army in WWII) convoy is sunk by a US air attack. This involves a new weapon, which also requires a crucial change in tactics – and he knows that the Imperial Army has lost the war: this is not how the Americans are supposed to attack, how could this happen? Notably, this requires that several high ranking figures observe,…
Given that science progresses one funeral at a time, the practice of seppuku would seem to allow the Imperial Japanese officer corps to evolve their tactics more rapidly than most.
The problem being that many of our big corporations and institutions are much like an Imperial Army, but without the culture of seppuku. They have overrun considerable territory and established the Greater Welfare Zone, including its glacis and satellites, by adhering to concise, even gruel tactics. This works. This is how it works. If we just stick to the tactics and principles, this will continue to work. This is how we do things… Admitting fault and accepting shame, just to veer off proven and established procedures, isn't only a serious danger to your career, it also endangers the greater good, we've all committed to… There's too much at stake. (Compare how we are all just forced to throw out even the basics of AI safety out of the window. There's no alternative. Let's suppose that Banzai attacks do work…)
Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess part of the problem with boycotts is that it's very hard to know who will not buy your product because of e.g DRM, and who won't buy it because they're not interested in it. I haven't bought a single Sony product since the rootkit fiasco, but I've never been able to tell them this directly. I don't buy products with DRM in them. I just don't. I'm not going to be appearing in the balance sheet, however, and wo…
Oh they have an entire department dedicated to understand what people think about each product, so they would know.
Market research departments notwithstanding, companies can be quite oblivious about why their products are bought and, especially, not bought.
Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
#45This is basically the same thing Samsung and friends doing to their camera app. Expect, in Samsung's case, some user love this.
The issue was, that a small font sizes and default print quality settings, the caching mechanism would consider some digits like 0 and 8 to be similar enough, to use the cache - which would end up switching numbers around. This finding did completely invalidate the financial book keeping and backup of tax records of many companies. I sure hope nobody uses the Samsung camera app to file their taxes and keep their book…
> I sure hope nobody uses the Samsung camera app to file their taxes and keep their books...
A lot of people take a photo of receipts for their records.
Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
PRISM didn't kill companies, Apple home button scandal didn't touch it, sony infecting its users with a rootkit didn't make it sell less playstations, HP lying cartridges had no impact on its long term business... Fines and green washing are budgeted and only a small fractions of the profit they make by misbehaving. On this very site you can read regularly people telling you we should forget about the MS of the past…
I can see the other things but "Apple home button scandal" either does not belong in the same league or there might be something I do not know about. Can you expand a little bit on your thinking?
When Apple introduced a fingerprint unlock in the home button, it wanted to keep the fingerprint scans secure. The security chip that stores the fingerprint scans needs to verify that the home button's fingerprint scanner is trustworthy, to prevent man in the middle attacks.
However, when an unauthorized or unofficial button is used as a replacement for repair, the phone will permanently brick itself. No warning is given that the fingerprint scanner's trustworthiness can not be verified, no ability to just use the phone with the fingerprint scanner disabled. Just straight to a permanent bricking.
Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see the other things but "Apple home button scandal" either does not belong in the same league or there might be something I do not know about. Can you expand a little bit on your thinking?
When Apple introduced a fingerprint unlock in the home button, it wanted to keep the fingerprint scans secure. The security chip that stores the fingerprint scans needs to verify that the home button's fingerprint scanner is trustworthy, to prevent man in the middle attacks. However, when an unauthorized or unofficial button is used as a replacement for repair, the phone will permanently brick itself. No warning is g…
IMO it wasn’t nearly as egregious as the other examples. I only defend them because they didn’t do this when you replaced the screen etc.
You don’t want phones to work if someone swaps out that specific piece of hardware without your knowledge. Bricking the phone forever makes it harder for people to find back doors around that security feature as they would risk large numbers of expensive phones. Presumably people developing replacement fingerprint readers would notice the issue before most customers where harmed. Further, anyone actually harmed would have gotten hardware from an very untrustworthy source.
They reversed course after a backlash, but I can see an argument for them standing their ground on this one.
Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
#48Is this a Xerox specific issue or industry wide problem? The author suspected that this is not an OCR issue What about out scanners? HP, Epson, Cannon, Ricoh, etc?
Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
#49Even though this happened a long time ago, whenever I hear or think about it, I am a mazed that it didn't put Xerox out of business, or at least hurt a little more. After all, some big players were already doing digital archiving at the time. :-/ BTW, the CCC had a pretty neat presentation at that time as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O6UXrOZJo
PRISM didn't kill companies, Apple home button scandal didn't touch it, sony infecting its users with a rootkit didn't make it sell less playstations, HP lying cartridges had no impact on its long term business... Fines and green washing are budgeted and only a small fractions of the profit they make by misbehaving. On this very site you can read regularly people telling you we should forget about the MS of the past…
ony infecting its users with a rootkit didn't make it sell less playstations
They sold atleast one less PS3. I caved and let my kid get a 4 and 5 when they came out. But he's gotta keep them at his mother's house.
Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see the other things but "Apple home button scandal" either does not belong in the same league or there might be something I do not know about. Can you expand a little bit on your thinking?
When Apple introduced a fingerprint unlock in the home button, it wanted to keep the fingerprint scans secure. The security chip that stores the fingerprint scans needs to verify that the home button's fingerprint scanner is trustworthy, to prevent man in the middle attacks. However, when an unauthorized or unofficial button is used as a replacement for repair, the phone will permanently brick itself. No warning is g…
As a user, that’s what I’d want it to do. If someone is trying to bypass the fingerprint sensor by replacing it because they know that’s where the authorization is stored, that’s exactly what I’d want the phone to do.