Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: August 11, 2013

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REAL LIFE NEWS: WHEN IS A COPY NOT A COPY?

by Hazed

Put a document into a photocopier and take a copy, and you expect the copy to come out the same as the original. You certainly don’t expect the machine to decide to make changes to the figures on the page. But that’s what happens with a certain model of Xerox copiers.

The Xerox WorkCentre models 7535 and 7556 are no longer sold by the company, but are still available from dealers to hire or purchase. So if you have one, pay attention!

A German computer scientist discovered that some measurements were changed on a building plan when he scanned it and then printed a copy. Follow-up tests showed that the number 54.60 was changed to 54.80 and 65.40 became 85.40. The machine was just substituting wrong numbers, such as changing a 6 to an 8.

David Kriesel explained that, “Patches of the pixel data are randomly replaced in a very subtle and dangerous way. The scanned images look correct at first glance, even though numbers may actually be incorrect.”

Experts say this could result in buildings being built to false measurements, customers being billed incorrect amounts, or prescriptions issued by hospitals or doctors’ surgeries giving the wrong dose of medicine.

Xerox are looking at the problem and advise people using the machine to use higher resolution settings to avoid the machine making these changes.

Source: http://metro.co.uk/2013/08/06/the-photocopy-thats-not-a-copy-fear-of-costly-errors-as-machines-alter-figures-3914378/

Stop press: Xerox now say they will release a patch to fix the problem: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23610405

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