I also wonder if they'd grossly underestimate the complexity of the whole thing, like we tended to do with ecosystems and biological organisms.
Something like "no way this one random half-row of pixels on the left and the four pixels in the bottom right have a completely different meaning than the rest of the pixels!"
Also, I figure, it would be very difficult to reconstruct the mask patterns if you don't already know the formulas in advance. Someone might be able to figure out the codes that use the simple masks, but I figure, there'd still be many "unreadable" QR codes left that use the more complex masks.
Something like "no way this one random half-row of pixels on the left and the four pixels in the bottom right have a completely different meaning than the rest of the pixels!"
Also, I figure, it would be very difficult to reconstruct the mask patterns if you don't already know the formulas in advance. Someone might be able to figure out the codes that use the simple masks, but I figure, there'd still be many "unreadable" QR codes left that use the more complex masks.