>> I typed the code number into Google. It instantly gave me the entire 
>> track listing for the CD. (!) Just from the 200-digit code printed on 
>> the CD's surface.
> 
> Well yeh, I think that's more like a barcode, you know the one that most 
> shops have a database for to convert bar codes to prices at the 
> checkout.  I imagine at least some websites have CDs listed with their 
> corresponding serial numbers.

I always assumed that was how CDDB works, and why if you burn an 
identical copy of the original CD it totally fails to identify it.

> Yeh it's always cool when you're thinking "I bet nobody in the entire 
> world could possibly have ever even played this CD, let alone typed in 
> all the track names", and then wham you get the results back!

Somewhere I found a website full of barcodes. Just about anything, type 
in a barcode and it knows what it is! (Well, almost... If you read into 
this area, you quickly discover that actually there are several 
different barcode systems, most of them incompatible.)

Tangentally: One of the example projects in Real World Haskell is a 
barcode recognition system. As in, you give it a blurry picture of a 
barcode taken with your mobile phone, and it tells you the digits. Just 
by looking at the vertical bars. It even uses the check digit to make 
sure it's read it correctly.

Post a reply to this message