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> [...] and this enabled others to OCR it, and recompile it offshore. Did it? Or did it just give them plausible deniability? I remember playing with OCR as a
by tjoff 3y ago
> [...] and this enabled others to OCR it, and recompile it offshore.
Did it? Or did it just give them plausible deniability?
I remember playing with OCR as a kid and all the software I could get my hands on gave horrendous results, even if the input was as perfect as one could hope for.
And even today I sometimes run tesseract on perfect screenshots and it still makes weird mistakes.
Would be interesting to know if the book had any extra OCR-enabling features. I'm sure the recipients would get access to proper tools and software but OCRing source-code still seems like a nightmare back then.
- consp 3y agoBanks used it on checques for ages, why would it be that difficult? You do need a compatible typesetting though.
- ryaniscool 3y agoWhere did you get your information? MICR lines, the line of numbers at the bottom of the check, use magnetic ink. The acronym stands for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. So for ages, they didn't use optics at all. In the modern day, cheque OCR is monopolized by one company, Mitek. They may use tesseract somewhere in their stack but I've never read that anywhere.
- MereInterest 3y agoNot so much plausible deniability, as a clear First Amendment argument. If you’re forbidden from exporting computer code, that was some new-fangled magic thing that nobody could possibly understand. If you’re banned from exporting a book, well that has some clear and obvious precedent as a restriction of free speech.