3/1     Backup MX servers: should I have one (y/n, given that most isps
        spool mail for a couple of days), and if so, how should I go about
        having one (are there commercial backup MX servers, and if so,
        how much?) - linxu
        \_ Yes, you should have one.  You're right that most ISPs spool
           mail for a couple days, but the situation where I've found a
           backup MX server to be most useful is when I relocate a mail
           server.  I'd be happy to run a secondary for your domains on
           my box if you'll do the same for me, assuming, of course, we
           don't share the same upstream provider. :)  See also:
           http://www.joreybump.com/code/howto/nolisting.html
           Probably one of the best, most elegant anti-spam measures anyone
           has come up with in years. -dans

1/30    We have a lot of photos (4x6 and 5x7) that we'd like to scan and
        turn them into jpeg files.  We have misplaced the negatives for most
        of them.  What's the fastest way of doing this other than scanning
        with a flat bed scanner one photo at a time?   Are there scanners
        that you can feed a stack of 4x6s or 5x7s and it'll scan them
        automatically?  Thanks.
        \_ there are lots of good scanner/feeder systems out there, and
           the good ones are over $500. If you want to scan negatives,
           1200x1200 is barely sufficient, 2400x2400 is decent, but
           4000x4000 is much better. Check out the Nikon feeder systems,
           that's what professionals use. If $800 is too much for you
           despite the fact that you already have a milk-cow job and a
           moonlight real-estate job, you can always pay someone else
           to do it for a nominal fee.
        \_ Quit being a cheap chink and pay someone to do it.
        \_ Yes, there are feeder systems, but they tend to be a bit pricey.
           When I had a bunch to do, I just sort of set up a production line
           and put 4 on the bed at a time, then cut them up later.
           \_ My old flatbed scanner had a feeder on it. It wasn't
              particularly expensive, but I guess expense is relative.

1/4     There was a short thread about AV scanners for Windows recently-
        someone asked "Hmmm, getting my AV ware from dodgy people?" --
        No, that was not the implication--I just said that many people
        "in the know" are pretty sure that Kaspersky has good connections
        to people who write viruses, and get some inside info from them.
        This is not to imply that they in any way commission or endorse
        them.  -John
        \_ I understood.  I just don't like the idea of my AV ware coming
           from black or grey hats.
           \_ They are neither.  It's one big happy community.  Many
              good security people hang out at the same conferences. -John
        \_ Hey sodans, jameslin said among free antivirus scanners,
           avast! > AntiVir.  ClamAV does not do real-time scans.
           Anyone have an opinion where AVG fits in the ranking?
           \_ AVG used to be good when it was the only free program around.
              Most people say that Avast! and AntiVir are better, though.
              http://urlx.org/episteme.arstechnica.com/e0fc
              --jameslin
              \_ doh, one of the referenced urls says "All external studies
                 referenced...unanimously rank... 1. AntiVir 2. Avast 3. AVG"
                 http://wiki.castlecops.com/AntiVirus_Comparison
                 Also, this June 2005 test shows better numerical scores
                 and better comments for AntiVir over avast!
                 http://tinyurl.com/cqfdy (virusbtn.com)
           \_ It also appears that ClamAV can't repair files.

11/28   Does anyone here have any experience with reading bar codes from
        cell phone displays?  Can be any encoding mechanism (semacode, etc.)
        I'm mainly interested in whether most cell phones allow reading with
        conventional laser scanners or require some sort of weird optical
        contrast <DEAD>scanner--mticket.net<DEAD> is an example of how this is done, but
        I haven't been able to figure out the actual scanning tech.  -John
        \_ I've been curious about this myself.  Could you try it using
           a CueCat and various cell phones?
           \_ I got some info back from mticket--apparently an "optical
              scanner" like what http://www.trinitymobile.co.uk have will work well,
              he said that "laser scanners have difficulty reading from 100%
              of mobile phones", which makes sense.  -John
        \_ you are trying to read a barcode off a cell phone display?  most
           barcode has specified size.  And I am not sure a "laser scanner" is
           necessary to read a barcode.  Cell phone in Japan and Korea can
           read 2D barcode using built-in cameras.  No laser there.
           \_ That wasn't the question--I know there are apps that can read
              barcode contents (including 2D bar codes) via cellphone
              cameras.  2D codes allow more condensed encoding of info than
              1D--that's most of what you use for e-tickets.  I've found some
              infos and apparently cell phone displays have problems with
              red light in barcode light scanners--if you only use green
              light, it seems to work fine.  Also, there are optical pattern
              contrast scanners which do this--if anyone is curious about
              it, I'll gladly share.  -John
              \_ You are talking about two things here.  Optical recognization
                 off the cell phone display being one, barcode being another.
                 Due to rigid specification of barcode, I am not sure
                 reading barcode off a cell phone display can be done or not.
                 Optical recognization off the cell phone display seems to be
                 a completely different subject, eventhough my instinct
                 wasn't able to find an application for it yet.   Exactly
                 what are you trying to achieve?    kngharv
                 \_ I know they're 2 different things.  I am trying to read
                    a 1D or 2D barcode off a cell phone display.  My conclusion
                    is that there are two ways of doing it--"optical" scanners
                    and laser scanners.  The point being that the laser
                    scanners do not work well with red light.  You _can_
                    read a bar code via optical recognition.  This is used
                    for a lot of purposes, including concert and train tickets
                    (just introduced for trains here).  I'm trying to do it
                    for user authentication at non-networked PCs.  -John

5/6     I have a 45-page typed manuscript that needs to be turned into
        a digital text document. Any recommendations for an OCR service
        that would do that with high reliability and low cost?
        \_ If you have a scanner, photoshop and acrobat (full version)
           you can do it yourself. Just scan each page in at 300dpi or
           higher and then use acrobat to OCR it into a pdf. I did this
           for lots of old papers that I lost the soft copies of and
           it worked great.
           \_ How many errors per page did acrobat OCR make?
              \_ My originals weren't particularly good, but acrobat
                 didn't make many mistakes on main text, maybe 2 or
                 3 per page not counting missing spaces. It had a
                 harder time w/ figures, but overall it wasn't too
                 bad.

4/5     I have a 4x6 photograph (print not slide) that I want to have scanned
        and printed at 11x17.  Can I expect that it will look grainy, or will
        it be hard to tell without close inspection?  Also any recommendations
        for a place to have it digitized? --jwm
        \_ better to do it from the negative at super high resolution.
           \_ Yes, but I'm pretty sure I don't have them.
              \_ expect some blurring.  If you have access to a decent scanner,
                 try it and see.  If you scan as high resolution as you can,
                 then drop it down to somewhere between 300-600 dpi when you
                 enlarge it, you may minimize the blurring. -pp
        \_ If you don't have the negative, use a regular decent scanner and
           scan at a good resolution. Then upsize it in photoshop. Should be
           reasonable. Or, you can just hand over the prints to a shop and
           they will do the printing for you. It'll cost more. In either case
           don't have high expectations.

8/21    Has anyone worked with data archival software? Our microfilm scanner
        still works but the printer has died (it's 30 years old). We're looking
        at replacing microfilm with a digital system. I'm a luddite, so this
        seems like a pretty bad idea to me, but I'm told to see what's out
        there. So I guess I need a decent scanner and document feeder and
        maybe some non-consumer software to create PDFs of what is scanned in.
        Any pointers would be appreciated. On a side note, Google is not great
        when you want to actually buy a new product because you're getting
        targeted ads vs. information.

7/25    I want to run AV filtering on my mail server. Has anyone used ClamAV?
        Also, I am not sure if my server has enough juice to run ClamAV, so I've
        been looking at Procmail Sanitizer. Anyone have success with this? It
        looks hairy.
        http://www.impsec.org/email-tools/procmail-security.html
        \_ yes, clamav generally works pretty well, and doesn't require that
           much cpu.
        \_ Adult Video filter?

7/11    How well do business card scanners work?
        Will they actually take the info and put it in a nice CSV file for me?

10/7    Anybody have a USB device that draws power from the USB cable itself?
        I'm looking into buying a canon flatbed scanner that has such a design.
        I'm wondering if this is generally a bad design or good design.  Any
        one have problems with such devices?  Thanks.
        \_ you should build a trebuchet instead.
        \_ I have the kensington usb light. It works great.
        \_ for mice and joysticks, power from the USB bus is fine.  for
           flatbed scanners, I dunno...
        \_ I have the canon n650u scanner. works fine but it's *very* slow.
           I only use it about once a month so i don't really care.
        \_ I have a usb-palmV device that charges via usb cable.  It's
           aftermarket, but works fine.  The main difference that worries
           me is that the palm-distributed cradle has a cut-off point for
           the power, and the usb-cable doesn't, so just keeps pumping
           energy into the palmV batt.  I've seen it get up to 4.15 V,
           which is kinda scary.  It charges really fast, though.  Anyone
           have any thoughts as to whether overcharging the palmV batt is
           a bad/good thing?  -nivra

7/20    Is there such a thing as a document only scanner?  I have a lot of
        documents (8.5 x 11) that I need scanned in.  Flat bed scanners won't
        work for me because I have to put in the pages one by one.  Big waste
        of time.  Is there such a product on the market?
        \_ If you didn't care about quality, you could fax them to a computer.
        \_ there are many scanners with page feeders
                \_what a brilliant idea..  good thing i didn't throw away
                  my fax modem..
            \_ such as???  Every scanner I've seen is a standard flat bed
               scanner.  I've never seen one with a page feeder.
               \_ UMAX 2400S is one. There are many. --dim
            \_ Moron.  Get out of Kansas.

4/4     Does anyone have recommendations or experiences to share on
        document conversion from hard copy to pdf?  Specifically, any
        recommended company?
        \_ You mean Word document to pdf?
           \_ Paper to pdf.
              \_ Why don't you just create the document from scratch
                 and generate the PDF from there.  It'll be much easier
                 than trying to scan it and get it to PDF (I don't even
                 know if that exists).  Or you can always do what that
                 dude who scanned tjb's resume and converted to PDF did
                 but then you get a giant bitmap stored in PDF format
                 which is a pretty stupid idea if you ask me.
                 \_ Would do that, except that it is high volume.
                    It would take a long time to do all of them.
         \_ Good scanner, good OCR program, good word processor,
            import into Acrobat.  -John
        \_ http://www.cardiff.com - haven't used them, but they have a lot of
           cool (expensive) shit.

7/23    http://www.dailycal.org/archive/07.23.98/news/death.html
        http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~jwang/ishida.jpg
        \_ this is so sad, I knew the guy too
                \_ how did you meet him, jwang?
                        \_ i don't know Ishida, nor did i post any of
                           the preceding note in the motd.  i merely
                           scanned in a picture from the Chronicle when
                           people asked for it on wall. -jwang

5/1     Anyone know of good scanners for < $500?  I'd like it to get decent
        resolution and be able to do OCR.  (OCR might be software?)  --PeterM
        \_ Omnipage Pro 8 does an excellent job of OCRing. PC ver $90,
           Mac version $500 at Fry's -- or you can pay $99 at the Caere web
           site. Go figure!
        \_ I got the UMAX Astra 1200S SCSI for $250 @ Microcenter (near
           Great America)... it's $500 @ Fry's cuz they bundle Photoshop.
           I'm very happy with this scanner... I settled on this after trying
           various scanners from HP and other UMAX scanners.
              model that replaces it; the line was being revamped.
           \_ UMAX scanners seem to be pretty good, though they've had
              scsi compatibility problems.  I think I've seen the 1200S
              \_ I haven't had any problems using Adaptec 2940W.
              in the $225 range (w/o Photoshop).  They may have a new
              model that replaces it now--they were revamping the line
              a month or so ago.  --phr
           \_ I have the umax vista 1200, which many preferred over Astra.
              Look at http://www.jor.com for image quality.  Some were scanned by
              an hp4c and I think it shows, but that's a very expensive
              choice.  -jor

5/6     Are there publically available scanners with OCR software?  I have
        heard that the one on the 5th floor of Soda is no longer public.
        -dpetrou
        \_ The scanner in the Wheeler lab *might* have OCR..  -dbushong
        \_ Both the Wheeler and Life Sciences MFs have scanners and OCR
           software.

2/1     I hear Foothill computer center just got a new color scanner for
        student use.  Does anyone know what the max resolution it will support
        is?  I have an 800 dpi scanner at home, but need at least 2400 dpi
        for some precise work I'm doing.  Thanks.
         \_First, it's only for the use of residents of Foothill,
           Stern, Bowles, or Slavic House.  Second, I believe the
           maximum true (i.e. non-interpolated) resolution is 600x600
           dpi.  (Tho I'm not sure about that--you can ask
           rescomp@uclink for more info)  -icrew