A portable indicium scanner that includes circuitry for enabling an aiming pattern through an activation device. The cellulosic polymers having grafts andor co-blocks are prepared using living-type free radical polymerization techniques, which provides control over the degree of substitution and graftco-block composition and structure. A cover member has a front wall having a peripheral edge. Fault information may be passed between the individual memory controllers and the hostdata controller to facilitate expedient fault isolation. The watermark is read by decoding the executable code and assigning the decoded bit values, determined by the presence or absence of optimized code, to bit positions in a signature.