Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

5 comments

  1. Anonymous

    starts hitherto unused barcode reader application on mobile phone…

    hey what do you know, it actually works.

    Reply
    • neilh

      Re: starts hitherto unused barcode reader application on mobile phone…

      Mine has a little trouble focussing and seems sensitive to alignment, but I haven’t experimented much.

      Reply
    • neilh

      The closest I can find to an explanation is here.

      A widdy is derived from Ann Widdecombe, who put up a web page into which it was possible to write your own words as if they were said by her. Web 1.0 was full of web programmers who didn’t learn the lesson from her, to the point where NTK ran a widdy-of-the-week column in their (now sadly defunct) newsletter.

      The URL for this barcode suffers from the same vulnerability as the original Widdecombe web page, meaning that you could take the URL for it and rewrite it to say anything you wanted.

      However reading of the injected message is non-trivial, even with a phone that supports QR codes.

      For those without such technologies immediately to hand (or still with low-persistence phosphor, which plays hell with CCD AGCs) it is a link to my other blog (violence:minimal; sex:none; language:mild; tech:frequent,graphic).

      You’re going to tell me the explanation didn’t make sense either, aren’t you?

      Reply
  3. neilh

    Sadly this is a little small for my phone to read, and making it larger without anti-aliasing would likely help….so, thats me failed my geek test.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.