Found the email outlining what it does, it's a barcode scanner:
If you have a CueCat Barcode Scanner (used to be free from Radio Shack, possibly still is?) I've written a little hack in Java to decode the output and print the barcode type and number in a window. If you're interested, let me know and I'll post a copy of the source.
You can also easily modify the source to print the serial number from you CueCat Scanner. (You didn't know the serial number is sent everytime you scan a code, did you?!!! Makes your activities easy to track if you're using the online service provided along with the CueCat!)
Since this is in Java, and doesn't require the creation of a device, as does the Linux decoder, you don't have to be root to use it!
Here's the java classes for the CueCat barcode reader. I've also included the source code. Note: you need to pass special options to the java compilder to get this code to run because of circular class dependencies.
I haven't figured out how to get this to compile with the command line java compiler, but it works great with Borland's JBuilder. (I highly recommend JBuilder.)
Also, I haven't taken the time to package this into a nice neat jar file.
To run this file, unzip the cuecat.zip file. This contains a directory called cuecat. DO NOT CD INTO THIS DIRECTORY. Open a command window and cd to the directory where you unziped cuecat to. When you show the directory listing (dir) you should see the cuecat directory. Now type java cuecat.CueCatReader. The program should run.