OCR

[Charles Steinkuehler]

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Jon Pruente wrote:
| Anyone ever wonder why banks still use magnetic ink to print the
| characters on your checks?  Because they print in a very specific font
| and don't rely on a computer analyzing the picture of a character to
| figure out what it is - magnetic ink is proven and reliable.

Er...without naming names, I know a company that used the (very
expensive) magnetic toner cartridges to laser-print checks.  This same
laser printer was also used for normal printing, requiring swapping out
of the magnetic toner with regular toner.

Needless to say, this didn't always work perfectly (typical PEBKAC :),
and the bean-counting accountants stopped buying the expensive magnetic
toner when they noticed none of their errantly printed checks were ever
returned.

Then again, the MICR font they use for check numbers is pretty
sub-optimal for human reading, but highly optimized for machine/OCR
interpretation.  Just like the FedEx/UPS scanners have no issues reading
the 1 and 2 dimensional bar-codes printed on just about everything these
days.

The real solution will come when you change the problem...instead of
trying to get computers to deal with the messy, noisy, analog world of
human communication, just augment the humans to be able to easily
interface to the pristine, mathematical world of the machine.  Hearing
aids can begin to do this already.  Wired directly into the brain, they
allow people who have *NEVER* heard anything and have defective audio
'hardware' in their ears (due to genetics or whatever) to hear normally.

Similar feats for visual information are likely not far behind (at least
in a long-term view of human history).  I personally look forward to the
day when I no longer have to lug around my limited resolution iPod,
remembering to plug it in to charge, etc.  It will be so much easier to
just have it jacked straight into my brain...

- --
Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net
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