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Sunday, February 1, 2004

Random thought:

Set your scanner on "stunning"

A long time ago in a far-away land (a land before Windows 2000) I owned an Epson scanner, a 1200C. When Windows 2000 arrived, I could no longer use the scanner because the existing drivers didn't work and Epson decided not to make drivers for Windows 2000. I ended up selling the scanner (cheap) to somebody who planned to continue using Windows 98 for a while and then I bought a scanner from HP.

I didn't much care for that scanner from day one. No matter what I did, the scans were crooked. And the bottom side of the glass was dirty. Hazy. Foggy. The "experts" said that wouldn't be a problem, but I know enough about optics to understand that when light passes through fog, it disperses. I wanted to take the scanner apart and clean the glass. As I recall, it took several tries to convince HP to tell me how to get to all the screws that held the case together. Once I cleaned the glass, the scans were a little better. But they were still crooked.

When Epson offered to let me take a look at their Perfection 3200 Pro scanner, I jumped at the chance. Despite the name, the Perfection 3200 isn't a particularly expensive scanner. The "pro" version comes with some additional software that's helpful for -- ahh -- professionals and sells for about $600. The standard version omits the software, but otherwise everything is the same and this one goes for $400.

That's more than the $130 you'll pay for an Epson Perfection 1670 or the $80 you'll pay for a Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 3670. But you get what you pay for. I haven't seen an HP 3670 and I'm sure it's more than adequate if you don't set your standards too high. It's interesting that Epson doesn't have anything in the Sam's Club price range. Epson's lowest priced scanner is more than 50% more expensive than HP's low-end scanner.

Low-end scanners probably won't last as long as their higher-priced counterparts and the resulting scans won't be as good, but it's amazing that anybody can make a functioning scanner for around $100. At the lower end of the spectrum, I'd probably pick the $130 Epson over the $80 HP for no reason other than my experience with a $500 HP scanner that's far inferior to Epson's $400 scanner.

Lies, damn lies, and dpi

Scanner manufacturers (and they all seem to be equally culpable here) spend a lot of time talking about dots per inch (dpi) when they describe their scanners. First, it really should be "samples" instead of "dots" per inch (spi instead of dpi). Second, spi numbers are essentially useless. If you're scanning a photograph for a website, 100spi is more than enough. If you're scanning a photograph that you plan to print, 200spi is more than enough. Why should I care that a scanner is capable of 1600spi? (Or 3200spi? Or 6400spi?)

These numbers are easy to talk about. The American psyche says that "more is better" so a 3200spi scanner must be bette than an 800spi printer.

And sometimes the scanner manufacturers play with even those numbers. They talk about "interpolated" resolution. Interpolation is a lie, plain and simple. The marketing guys like interpolation because they can talk about bigger numbers than the other guy. But interpolation does nothing but make the resulting file size larger. It doesn't make the scan better, just larger.

If I give you $100, I can give you 1 $100 bill. (The federal government still allows $100 bills to circulate, doesn't it?) Or I could give you 100 $1 bills. You might look richer with that stack of 100 greenbacks, but you won't be any better off. It's the same with "interpolated" resolution. The only number that counts (at least for resolution) when you're looking at scanners is the optical resolution. Ignore "interpolated"; pay attention to "optical".

Look at the Dmax

The real key to what kind of image a scanner will produce is not the "dpi" number, but the Dmax number. Scanner manufacturers (except when they're selling to professionals) don't talk much about Dmax for a couple of reasons: First, Dmax is calculated on a logarithmic scale and most American's don't understand that tiny differences are significant on a log scale. Second, it's not something the sales guy at WalMart will be able to understand and explain.

Except for a couple of things. It's really not that complicated and Americans seem to be able to comprehend that there's a pretty significant difference between a 5.0 earthquake (on the Richter scale, which is logarythmic) and a 6.0 earthquake.

Simply put, Dmax is the difference in luminosity between the darkest part of an image and the lightest part. When it comes to scanners, the "best" possible Dmax is 4.0. A scanner with a 4.0 Dmax might sell for $3000 and a scanner with a 2.8 Dmax might sell for $80. How can the marketing department convince somebody that the difference (1.2) is worth $2920? Oy!

Maybe they could show people the difference. Or would that be too easy?

The $600 Epson Perfection 3200 lists a Dmax (3.4) but HP lists no Dmax for its $80 scanner. You might reasonably assume that it is not going to be 3.4. Or 3.2. But it might be 3.0 or 2.8. How can Epson explain that a difference of 0.4 or 0.6 is significant? Important? That's the trouble.

If you're buying a scanner, forget about the spi (dpi) numbers. Any scanner that costs more than $23 will have all the resolution you need. Instead, take a look at the other specs -- specifically Dmax. And look at the additional features the scanner has that you might want -- a document feeder, for example, or color management software.

And look at color depth. Your screen and your printer will be limited to 24 bits per pixel, but a scanner that can operate at a higher color depth (32 bpp or 36 bpp or 48 bpp) will produce better color images than a scanner that operates at 24 bpp.

And now ...

The only thing I don't like about the Epson 3200 is this: It's so much superior to the scanner I've been using that I'm not going to be able to send it back. That means Epson will send me a bill and that I'll have to pay it. But it also means that I won't have to deal with off-color, crooked, fuzzy scans any more.

The difference between the standard version and the professional version is, as I mentioned, software. The pro version comes with Silverfast, scanner control software from Germany and Monaco EZColor 2, an application designed to help professionals match colors on scanners, monitors, and presses. Scanners and monitors use the RGB colorspace while 4-color printing uses a CMYK colorspace. The RGB color model can reproduce more colors than the CMYK model and it is therefore difficult to preview the results of CMYK printing on the screen.

		Here are two scans of test pages. Click either of the images to see a larger version of the scan (full size, converted to PNG). The Silverfast software has many more controls than the software Epson includes. A professional graphic artist might understand how to tweak all of the controls to create a better scan with the the "professional" software, but I generally get better scans with the Epson software. But regardless of what software you use, the software can't make a bad scanner better. That's not a concern with the Epson Perfection 3200. You won't find a better scanner for the money.
Epson software	Silverfast software

Technology corner rating for EPSON PERFECTION 3200 SCANNER
	TEN CATS: This is simply the best "consumer" grade scanner on the market. It's good enough that even professionals are using it to create images for commercial publications. The ability to scan film negatives and transparencies is a plus, and is more than adequate for the occasional film scan. (If you're a professional photographer or someone who needs to scan a lot of film, this would not be a viable choice.)
How the Technology Corner rating system works.

Here's an interesting spam ...

I've been critical of Congressional anti-spam legislation. I received the following spam on Thursday of this week and I think that it illustrates what anti-spam legislation is up against and why it won't work. All of the addresses listed in the spam, both e-mail and website, are in Russia.

I've eliminated the links and disguised their destination, because the site is probably one that's designed to steal the visitor's information and make that person a victim instead of allowing the visitor to victimize others. In other words, anyone who would follow a link to a site such as the one described above in the e-mail I received on Thursday would probably deserve anything that happened.

Would Microsoft do something this dumb?

Apple's Ipod music devices used to be just for Mac owners, but now they're for Windows users, too. The Ipod (which Apple would like me to style as "iPod") is an outstanding piece of hardware. It's possible to carry around tens of thousands of popular tunes in your shirt pocket. Battery life isn't so great (my MiniDisc player can go all week or one or two AA batteries while the Ipod runs out of steam in less than half a day). But the ability to carry that huge stash of music along is appealing. And Apple's Itunes (aPple wAnts mE tO mAke iT iTunes, bUt i dOn't eNjoy wRiting tHis wAy) software works well to organize the music on a PC. There's just one problem.

Can you read this serial number?
I've highlighted it for you with yellow.
Dumb, dumb, dumb!

Would it really be so hard for Apple to provide a package insert that would include the serial number?

Oh -- and when you want to register the device, Apple asks for the model number. Is that on the back of the case? No. The front? Nope. Any of the other 4 sides? No, no, no, and no. It's on the box that the Ipod is shipped in. Clever, eh?

Or maybe not.

Update

I've been advised that I could have gone to the "about" screen on the Ipod to see the serial number and the model number. That's much better than trying to read the number from the back of the case.

Nerdly News

Another @#%! (insert nasty words of your choice) worm

How many millions of computers have been infected by MyDoom? Why is it that people just don't seem to "get it" about attachments? There is one extremely simple and easy rule that, if followed, would stop worms before they could creep off the developer's computer.

This is that rule:

Rule #1: If you receive a message with an attachment, do not open the attachment unless it is from someone you know ***AND*** you are EXPECTING that person to send you an attachment.

For those who must have something more complex:

Rule #1a: If you receive an attachment from someone you know and you're not expecting it, check with the apparent sender before opening it.

Rule #1b: Assume any attachment is deadly until proven otherwise.

Rule #1c: Scan every attachment with an up-to-date antivirus program, but do not assume that the file is safe if the AV program doesn't find anything.

Rule #1d: Make sure that Windows shows you the extensions of all file types and assume that ANY file with a double extension (such as "badfile.txt.scr") is harmful.

What about "MyDoom"?

• No matter who the message says it's from, it's lying. I received infected messages from "me". I received messages "from" a couple of central Ohio mayors. I received messages "from" all sorts of people. Those weren't the people with the infected machines. When you receive a worm these days, it's probably hiding behind somebody else's identity.
• The subject and the body of the message vary.
• The attachment may have various names and sometimes arrives looking like a Zip file.
• When the person who paid no attention to "rule 1" clicks the attachment and runs it, the process copies itself to the Windows system directory and names itself to look like an innocent system file. Then it creates a Registry entry to hook Windows startup and copies itself to a KaZaa "shared" directory if one exists.
• Next it starts having fun with your computer. It opens a connection on TCP port 3127 (and, if it can't do that, it tries every other port all the way up to 3198.) The listens for special TCP transmissions that can contain an embedded binary file, which will be written to disk, run, and then deleted.
• Of course the worm will be sending itself to every address it can find on your computer.
• Then, from February 1 through February 12, your infected machine will attempt to take part in a distributed denial of service attack against the sco.com domain.
• Starting on February 13, the DDoS attack will stop and the worm will simply begin listening again.

These things aren't fun any more and they never were as far as I'm concerned

They are a real and serious threat to your computer, your data, and your finances. Worms are designed to do one or more of the following:

• Harvest email addresses or locate and send "home" copies of financial information.
• Add, modify, or delete files.
• Affect system stability -- slow the computer or make the system unusable.
• Install a backdoor and report success to a remote attacker who is then given complete control of your computer.
• Attack other systems on your home or office network, or across the Internet.
• Turn your computer into a zombie to be used to send spam or to act as a file server for stolen software or pornography.

It doesn't have to be that way. Just follow rule #1.

Copyright solutions, Canadian style

Canada's government says downloading copyrighted music from peer-to-peer networks is legal. Uploading, however, is not. You can't do one without the other, of course. But that's not the big part of this week's announcement from the Copyright Board of Canada.

The board says that manufacturers must take responsibility for collecting fees for artists and imposed a government fee of up to $25 MP3 players such as Apple Ipod. Canadians already pay a little extra for every audio tape or blank CD. The money is channeled to musicians and songwriters -- no doubt with certain government "handling fees" extracted along the way -- for revenue lost to copying. CD and tape manufacturers are responsible for paying the fees, but the costs are passed on to consumers.

Coming soon: fewer cables, less clutter

Your TV may be surrounded by a tape player or two, a DVD player, a game box, a cable television or satellite box, and possibly some other devices. Each playback device has a video cable and two audio cables attached. If the device can also record, the number of cables is doubled. And you may have some sort of switching device. That adds up to a lot of clutter.

The good news is that when you replace the current gear, you may find a new connector on the back. At first glance, you might think it's a USB plug such as you'd find on a computer. It's a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) that's the result of an agreement involving Hitachi, Panasonic, Philips, Sony, Thomson (RCA), and Toshiba. The companies hired Silicon Image to develop a replacement cable that can carry an uncompressed digital stream of both audio and video.

Some TVs in stores now have the connectors built in. Starting later this year, you'll begin to see them on other devices.

Let us know what you think about this program! Write to:
Bill Blinn --
(wtvn@blinn.com still works)
Joe Bradley --

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