Comments
Crotch_Rot69 t1_j8qf4pp wrote
As if I could ever make such a mistake, never. Never! I just, i just couldn't prove it. He covered his tracks, he got that idiot at the copy shop to lie for him!
Morgus_Magnificent t1_j8qgyyo wrote
You think this is something? You think this is bad? This chicanery? He's done worse!
NeuHundred t1_j8qivlu wrote
Slippin' Jimmy with a law degree is like a chimp with a machine gun! The law is sacred! If you abuse that power, people get hurt!
YdexKtesi t1_j8qqbm0 wrote
HE DEFECATED THROUGH A SUN ROOF
Asmallfly t1_j8uonom wrote
That billboard: are you telling me that a man just happens to fall like that? No, he orchestrated it. Jimmy.
CardMechanic t1_j8w2ttd wrote
And I saved him! And I shouldn't have. I took him into my own firm! What was I thinking? He'll never change.
Mordocaster t1_j8t3s6z wrote
I learned the word chicanery because of this show
oodelay t1_j8smy57 wrote
Actually that was a terrible thing that Saul did. His brother was a shitty person but he became as bad.
TheBestElement t1_j8t3dcg wrote
I don’t think Saul was ever supposed to be a “good” guy, he was always shitty just in a different way than his brother
GWI_Raviner t1_j8ra2j5 wrote
Thought this was /r/okbuddychicanery for a few seconds there
Zrgaloin t1_j8t3irm wrote
I have never heard of this sub and now I can't stop reading. It's like a Breaking Bad circle jerk sub but with extra circle jerk
COMPUTER1313 OP t1_j8qbb1f wrote
> D. Kriesel, a German Ph.D. student studying computational geometry, encountered a strange problem when scanning a blueprint on a common Xerox office scanner. The numbers denoting the square footage of rooms were totally wrong, and what's more, they changed when he scanned the blueprint again.
>Intrigued, Kriesel tried scanning a table of costs and figures. Numbers changed again—but not wildly, just by a little bit: 54.60 became 54.80, for instance.
Another article on that same news: https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_means_dodgy_numbers_and_dangerous_designs/
Yeah, that could potentially result in lawsuits or other legal mess with Xerox being caught in the crossfire. Such as a purchase contract's or construction plan's numbers being silently changed.
Totally_Not_A_Bot_55 t1_j8qc1jm wrote
Did the Challenger shuttle program use xerox machines?
Chris4477 t1_j8riftd wrote
“Mission Control, do you copy?”
ScaryBluejay87 t1_j8riwrt wrote
“The numbers Mason, what do they mean?!”
cvr24 t1_j8s5pnc wrote
Negative, the copier is inop again, over.
bake_gatari t1_j8tf0jh wrote
*do you scan?
purchankruly t1_j8rxsnf wrote
I’d bet not, only because this OCR-ish software wouldn’t have existed back in the 80s and 90s.
marmorset t1_j8ssfjv wrote
I was using a scanner with OCR software in 1991. It was a somewhat new technology, but not cutting edge. I worked for a small publishing company and while the OCR wasn't perfect, it was still much better than having to retype an entire book.
purchankruly t1_j8ssu34 wrote
My glib answer would be, it is Xerox after all.
Hattix t1_j8qkmql wrote
No it wouldn't.
The use of the aggressive JBIG2 setting was not default. You had to change it yourself on the MFD's interface, where there was a warning saying that this setting could cause character substitution errors.
ImNrNanoGiga t1_j8r57zs wrote
Shishire t1_j8raxy5 wrote
It ultimately turned out that it did it even on the highest setting, so that the only way to actually get a clean scan was to scan to TIFF.
spoke2 t1_j8qc0sk wrote
Better get some Scribners on staff.
SuperToxin t1_j8sgw3z wrote
Imagine having like your finances being skewed because you used one of these. Insane. Lmao.
brazzy42 t1_j8rfkb9 wrote
Note: the bug had existed for 8 years, and there's a good chance that there are still scanners out there being used which have the bug and were never updated.
2MegaWhats t1_j8xej6h wrote
Imagine being in prison for 3 years and the scanner the office staff use randomly decides to turn your sentence into 33 years.
Megafritz t1_j8qys61 wrote
Here is the ABSOLUTELY amazing presentation of the guy who found the bug. It is one of the best presentations I have ever seen, hugely popular among German IT people (It was a German event)
purchankruly t1_j8rxlq9 wrote
It’s in a very funny dialect of English.
wolfkeeper t1_j8sw9w4 wrote
Technically English is a Germanic language, so.. basically yes.
purchankruly t1_j8sxw58 wrote
Technically anything is anything. :D
thesonofmogh t1_j8s1u4d wrote
WHY DOESN'T HE SPEAK AMERICAN /s
norkelman t1_j8wjus5 wrote
i'm genuinely disappointed captions are disabled bc i want to watch it but i do not know german
m_Pony t1_j8tgl6v wrote
Somehow the use of ragecomic artwork makes the whole presentation come together
the-silver-tuna t1_j8qcf9v wrote
Sorry, the card says Moops
vapre t1_j8r1x6g wrote
Bubble hiss intensifies
outfoxingthefoxes t1_j8rcrwg wrote
Bubble? What, like an igloo?
matt95110 t1_j8rop8j wrote
Its really just a plastic divider.
[deleted] t1_j8ten07 wrote
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SketchyApothecary t1_j8qjemm wrote
This isn't limited to Xerox. Lots of scanning recognition devices/programs have trouble differentiating 6s and 8s in some fonts when trying to convert images to text fields, and occasionally other numbers get mixed up as well.
n1gr3d0 t1_j8qt5x3 wrote
The fun part is that was not about recognition. Scanning shouldn't do any OCR, so in that context any meaningful character manipulation (like replacing one character with another one) look shady as hell. Thankfully it turned out to be just an overly zealous compression algorithm.
surelythisisfree t1_j8rdhnl wrote
Most copier manufacturers have their own pdf compression that generally puts a scanned page between 50 and 150kB, down from about a Meg if they don’t do anything fancy. I only realised after years of working with them how that isolated out things that looked like letters and basically averaged each letter representation on the page to slow better compression. The only reason I realised was due to a big in a released firmware that only affected compact pdf (that was quickly pulled within 24 hours). The big basically made all the letters not line up in a row on each page so they’d move up and down the line a bit.
Gathorall t1_j8r7dsg wrote
That tracks, magnitudes easier "though shouldn't matter nowadays" to tell the head to put "8 in black" in a certain spot rather than tell the precise location and color of every constituting dot.
purchankruly t1_j8rxyk1 wrote
Why oh why did we switch from Roman numerals?!
girhen t1_j8soe26 wrote
MCCXXXIVDLXVII - >!1,234,567!<
MMMCDLVMDCCLXXXIX - >!3,456,789!<
I know you're joking, but it's always nice to add perspective.
Also, some of my coworkers frequently have to read legal documents in paragraphs, sections, etc and convert lines to outlines. Nothing like deciphering section i from section i in an outline - meaning a section after h and before j at one level vs the first Roman numeral at another. It's a PITA.
purchankruly t1_j8sqgiu wrote
Roman numerals in binary is simpler.
h0nkee t1_j8sw9e2 wrote
More of a Hexadecimal man, myself.
noeljb t1_j8tfdl3 wrote
No Zero
purchankruly t1_j8tffad wrote
Oh.
PMzyox t1_j8qnivz wrote
Yeah I saw that episode of Better Call Saul, so
GeneralNathanJessup t1_j8qqw9l wrote
This article looks like it was xeroxed.
purchankruly t1_j8ry2wo wrote
And enlarged.
PC-hris t1_j8sxql1 wrote
How does that even happen? Doesn’t a photo copier just directly copy what it sees? I wouldn’t think such an old one would be content aware enough to make changes like that
planchetflaw t1_j8w5bc7 wrote
I believe it was digitizing the scans as a file. If you selected the Normal quality mode, it would use a lookup table to save file size by compressing in the stated standard. At least that was my understanding.
paulsteinway t1_j8t1znj wrote
The actual text in the article is clipped on the right side so a lot of sentences make no sense. I had to highlight the text and paste it into a text editor to make it readable.
sadi89 t1_j8unvhi wrote
Damn, who knew scanners could also have dyslexia.
[deleted] t1_j8ri6ll wrote
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[deleted] t1_j8sz0lq wrote
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syncboy t1_j8t4xto wrote
OCR technology wasn’t very good until very recently. It also used to change text, letters, capitalization, etc.
bothunter t1_j8t952g wrote
This had nothing to do with OCR -- it was due to compression artifacts. Specifically it looked for common patterns and created a lookup table to save space. It's just that some numbers and letters look similar enough to that algorithm that it didn't notice that a 6 and 8 were different "patterns"
And that was the issue -- nobody was using the Xerox to scan the text -- they just wanted it to make identical copies like all other Xerox machines did in the past.
syncboy t1_j8tdqx3 wrote
Oh, yikes.
badassbridge t1_j8un5i3 wrote
This happened at a small, ethical company most people haven’t heard of. It was called Enron!
disneyvacafacts t1_j8wrjnb wrote
As an embedded engineer, I'm proud that I guessed the problem after only reading the first paragraph, having never done this exact type of engineering.
All I did was think of how I would have personally handled these scans and how I could have screwed it up.
avipars t1_j8qyr6t wrote
Does this effect scantrons for tests ?
bothunter t1_j8t9e4y wrote
It could affect the test books, but not the Scantron sheets.
EmperorJake t1_j8qc7qw wrote
I know it was 1216! One after Magna Carta!