This highlights one of the downsides of the digital revolution. Digital capture and reproduction of the physical phenomena of sounds and images always lose some data. With CDs, the sampling rate is high enough that most listeners never notice that the waveform data from points in between samples is missing, but the groove on a vinyl record is still a more complete representation of the waveform that existed at the time of recording. Same with copy machines - a machine that scans, digitizes, and then prints the image loses some data, but the resolution is usually high enough that most people don't notice a difference, while a photostatic or electrophotographic copy machine produces an image that is much more true to the original.

The conveniences of digital processes make them preferable to the analog processes of the past. The technology has advanced to the degree that digital capture and reproduction processes are adequate for any purpose except those that require the utmost fidelity to the original. Xerox's press release [/url] confirms that the problems noted in the article Phil linked are related to bugs in the software that compresses the captured images rather than any inherent limitation of digital capture and reproduction.

Somewhat OT, I'm old enough to remember using a high-speed Kodak electrophotographic copier with a fancy finishing unit attached. The whole thing was about 20 feet long, and, like all electrophotographic copiers, it had to capture the image of the original for every copy made, so it had a mechanism that ran the original over and over the platen - it worked so fast that the flash lamp seemed almost like a strobe light.