Slashdot Mirror
HOWTO: The Anti-Printer
Compu486 writes "Inventgeek.com has an interesting article on modding laser printers. In this how to mod they have converted a standard Xerox laser printer into an automatic high volume paper shredder. Just what we need to take care of those pesky alien autopsy photos, TPS reports, and Apple & IBM's CPU Contracts."
A laser printer seems like a much more useful tool than a paper shredder. That is considering that they have shredders at my local office store for next to nothing.
:-)
Hacks are wonderful things... but this is like turning a 911 into a Chevette.
Ignore Alien Orders
Did everyone miss that? It's here: http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050803/index.h tml
...since a cross-cut unit isn't that much more than a strip unit. The guy says he doesn't need cross cut... well, perhaps.
But consider this; assume the shredder takes a vertically-aligned piece of A4/US-Letter paper. That's not too bad if you've printed the document in the same orientation.
On the other hand, if you've printed the document as 'landscape' (or simply fed it in that way), the text is rotated by 90 degrees, and it's quite possible to get a COMPLETE LINE OF TEXT LEFT INTACT. Sure, it might get cut in half. Or it *might not*... and this is a near-certainty if you have one of those cheap shredders that only does really wide strips (7-8mm). Not to mention that the latter, assuming the documents in the bin haven't become too mixed, will be relatively easy to reconstruct because there are so few pieces.
In addition, feeding the paper 'correctly' (as a printer mechanism would) improves the alignment and hence *increases the problem*!
I bought a cross-cut shredder which reduces to fairly small pieces (4 x 22mm). Although it might be possible to have some meaningful information remain intact (e.g. a short account number), this is far less probable. Even if this happens, as it's not part of a long run of text, the context and meaning will be separated (e.g. the account number might not be recognised as such), and unless someone *really* knows what they're looking for, they'll probably miss it.
Plus, they have *many* more pieces to search through, and they're easier to mix up if you're really paranoid.
Yeah, the FBI could still get your information if they got their hands on the shredded paper (I bet they have pretty advanced 'stitching' software and the money to pay people to scan the pieces properly), but there's little information I have that the FBI couldn't find far easier in another manner. It'll stop everyone else, and that's good enough for what I use it for.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
While this is technically feasible, along with line-printer-music, and other cool hacks, this story smells a bit.
A postscript dot matrix printer? Has there ever been such a beast?
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
For that matter, why not mod the printer to have a small incinerator inside it. Of course, you'd need ventilation and fireproofing, but you'd have a much more secure system of document disposal. :: Waits eagerly to see whether this gets modded "Insightful" or "Funny" first ::
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.