3 ms·

A maybe forgotten fact about the whole CueCat saga was that the hardware was given away for free, mainly at Radio Shack in the USA, with the expectation that th

by breput 3y ago

A maybe forgotten fact about the whole CueCat saga was that the hardware was given away for free, mainly at Radio Shack in the USA, with the expectation that the company would be able to recoup the costs by...um...I guess collecting user data and charging publishers to generate bar codes. Of course, people quickly reverse engineered the data format, as it was just a PS/2 format keyboard device, which caused the company to threaten to sue[0] anyone who distributed the software. Much fun was had for a few months skirting this until nearly everyone, other than a few people like book collectors, realized that having a UPC scanner wasn't that useful and the CueCats got stuffed into the junk drawers. Now everyone has a barcode scanner on their phone and it is no big deal, but at the time, it was a fun toy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat#Security_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat#Security_breach

GauntletWizard 3y ago
I've been writing a collection inventorying system for myself, in anticipation of the coming streampocalpyse (which could take several forms), and I've been frustrated and dismayed by the state of UPC Data sources, especially free ones. OpenLibrary is the one good source I've found. Any others?
anonymousiam 3y ago
I have a half dozen of them in a drawer somewhere. I never used the supplied software. There was a nice Linux driver here: http://linas.org/banned/cuecat/oss.lineo.com.cuecat.cuecat_driver.index.html http://linas.org/banned/cuecat/oss.lineo.com.cuecat.cuecat_d... I haven't used any of them for over 10 years. Most smartphones now have more capable barcode reader apps.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Ironically now that smartphones are a thing this kind of thing I would have thought would be more prevelant, but instead of barcodes I am imagining QR Codes
jstarks 3y ago
You could also just cut a trace on the motherboard and it would type out the UPC codes unencoded.
- ggdm 3y ago
  Correct. That would remove our DMCA lightweight encryption. Well done hacker.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Yes, but showing people which trace to cut is a federal felony under Section 1201.
buzer 3y ago
I used it for quite a while to scan physical invoices before e-invoices became more common. Finland has a standard for encoding the required fields (account number, amount, reference code & due date) as a barcode and companies almost always included it.

by breput 3y ago

GauntletWizard 3y ago

I've been writing a collection inventorying system for myself, in anticipation of the coming streampocalpyse (which could take several forms), and I've been frustrated and dismayed by the state of UPC Data sources, especially free ones. OpenLibrary is the one good source I've found. Any others?

anonymousiam 3y ago

I have a half dozen of them in a drawer somewhere. I never used the supplied software. There was a nice Linux driver here: http://linas.org/banned/cuecat/oss.lineo.com.cuecat.cuecat_driver.index.html http://linas.org/banned/cuecat/oss.lineo.com.cuecat.cuecat_d... I haven't used any of them for over 10 years. Most smartphones now have more capable barcode reader apps.

no_wizard 3y ago
Ironically now that smartphones are a thing this kind of thing I would have thought would be more prevelant, but instead of barcodes I am imagining QR Codes

jstarks 3y ago

You could also just cut a trace on the motherboard and it would type out the UPC codes unencoded.

ggdm 3y ago
Correct. That would remove our DMCA lightweight encryption. Well done hacker.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Yes, but showing people which trace to cut is a federal felony under Section 1201.

buzer 3y ago

I used it for quite a while to scan physical invoices before e-invoices became more common. Finland has a standard for encoding the required fields (account number, amount, reference code & due date) as a barcode and companies almost always included it.