Coyote Blog

15 Comments

1. Jaedo Drax:

   oddly, we had a set up like that, where the fax machine would print out stuff, and it would get scanned by a computer, and then into a shredder...

   we also have a device that allows you to make fireplace logs out of shredded paper.

   October 20, 2017, 6:59 pm

2. Ward Chartier:

   Just the thing for main stream media.

   October 21, 2017, 5:05 am

3. gr8econ:

   Krugman would love it.

   October 21, 2017, 5:39 am

4. SamWah:

   Works for me!

   October 21, 2017, 9:13 am

5. Zachriel:

   Actually, that is not strictly Keynesian, as it represents an increase in overall efficiency.

   October 22, 2017, 9:07 am

6. Aunty Fah-Fah:

   Keynes Paper Co., Inc.

   October 22, 2017, 9:25 am

7. Matt Harris:

   That is one neat gif - I am thinking it must have taken a lot of work to set that up. Probably a lot of takes, too.

   October 22, 2017, 12:17 pm

8. Zach:

   Go go gadget multiplier effect!

   October 23, 2017, 7:43 am

9. Dan Wendlick:

   Hey, I regularly joke that that is my million dollar idea. Doing large accounting, inventory and shop floor execution systems, I regularly come across people who insist that they need to have reports that are printed and immediately filed, only to be shredded and disposed of six months to seven years later as document retention policies dictate. My justification for the extra cost of the shredder option on the printer is that the savings in filing cabinets is worth it.

   I also propose my compression routine that compresses reports down to a single bit. Sure they're not recoverable, but the savings in disk space makes up for the cost of rerunning them from the data that is still maintained on the servers.

   October 23, 2017, 8:54 am

10. J.l. Melcher:

    " fax machine would print out stuff, and it would get scanned by a computer ..."

    That --- actually makes some sense. In an age or that limited moment where not everybody had a PC or if a PC no internet connection or even if PC and internet connection no ability to create an image file for email attachment -- but in that same moment where EVERYBODY had a fax machine. Print the fax, scan the page, file on tape or disc or CD-ROM, and claim green virtue by shredding and composting the fax paper.

    So, that moment was sometime between 1990 and 1995, I suppose.

    October 23, 2017, 2:04 pm

11. Sam P:

    But this isn't (much) white collar stimulation. Possibly some white collar employees have to ensure the paper tray is kept stocked, some involved in the paper sales and purchasing chains. Emptying the basket, transporting the waste, manufacturing and transporting the paper, those are all blue collar jobs.

    October 24, 2017, 2:42 pm

12. The_Big_W:

    Regarding that single bit compression. Something tells me that a company looking to do that could spend many hours of meetings determining whether the bit should be 0 or 1. ;-)

    October 25, 2017, 12:40 pm

13. The_Big_W:

    Yeah, if only we could get the New York Times or Washington Post to do this with all the newspapers they print!!

    October 25, 2017, 12:41 pm

14. ecsmith2:

    While working for the bureaucracy at the top of a large state university system, I was responsible for getting out a report of all the building on all of the campuses. It took about 50 pages with the normal font used when I got responsibility for it. In working with some experiments on the printer codes to do some different things, the smallest font the printer could produce allowed me to get the report down to 3 pages. I showed my boss about the extreme paper savings we could achieve, but he said that no one would be able to read the report. I then reminded him that when I got responsibility for the report, I was told nobody actually read the report in the first place. I should have gotten an award from the state.

    October 30, 2017, 1:09 pm

15. Kit:

    you need 6 bits, the compression result is always hex 2A, or binary 101010

    November 1, 2017, 5:33 pm