Jeff Atwood's recommendations: multitool, flashlight, thumb drive

CH's Jeff Atwood spends a LOT of time thinking about his keychain.

Lazy people like me prefer to read Jeff, and just buy whatever he suggests

Coding Horror: What's On Your Keychain, 2008 Edition

Leatherman Squirt S4 multitool

Corsair 8 GB Flash Voyager thumb drive

Fenix L0D-CE AAA LED flashlight

Curious results of various image formats: OS X Preview and PDF

Image compression is a tricky thing. For example, few people know that PNG is by far the best format to use for screen shots; vastly better than JPEG, GIF or (shudder) BMP. (Ok, so Word's mysterious internal format is pretty darned good -- but it's a mystery.)

Storing black and white scanned document images is even odder, however. Consider these results from PDFs generated by my Brother MFC-7820N document scanner (1 page, 300 dpi, b&w). In each case I saved from OS X preview:

• Original PDF: 132kb
• PNG: 155kb
• JPEG 2000 lossless: 296kb
• JPEG 2000 good quality: 380kb
• JPEG: 328 kb (artifact can be seen)
• TIFF zip compression: 220kb
• TIFF alternative compression: 216kb

A PDF of a scan is simply a wrapper, like TIFF, around some other format. PDF uses different compression depending on the image. A B&W image does very well with ancient run-length compression, so I suspect that's what's being used. I was surprised by how large the TIFFs were -- I think OS X Preview isn't providing the optimal compression for a b&w image.

Interesting that JPEG 2000 lossy is almost 40% larger than lossless for a b&w image. I thought I'd get better results there.

PNG, as always, does very well for lossless compression. A shame they never put any $!#$% metadata into the file specification!

Note that iPhoto will handle all of those image formats except PDF.

DRM, the new iPods and the unanticipated

Apple's movie rentals won't work with older iPods, including the 5G model I own.

The NYT mentions one reason for this:

Where Is Apple’s Rental Service for Music? - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog:

...The technology behind this is that iPods need to have a tamper-proof clock in them so that content can be vaporized after its expiration date. The first models didn’t have this feature; the new ones do...

Another "feature" of the new iPods is that they won't allow video out except through Apple's connectors. This is known as "plugging the analog hole", without this "feature" it would be relatively easy to create high quality copies of any video stored on an iPod.

As the NYT suggests these technologies could be used to control music distribution as well.

These stories illuminate an interesting aspect of the copyright wars. They drive hardware sales. Each new front obsoletes a generation of hardware. Rather good news for Apple.

On a similar front, malware wars have been good for Microsoft. Malware mandates continuous software patches, and eventually malware driven product updates - like Vista.

Unanticipated emergent consequences, as always.

Speaking of unanticipated consequences, if I were the music industry, I'd be buying up used CDs and destroying them, while distributing new music by wire -- with full DRM support. Is anyone visiting used CD store looking for suspicious batch buyers?

What about the strategy of selling non-DRMd music on Amazon? Sure, it's good for beating up Apple, but I think it's really about destroying the CD. Buy up used CDs and destroy them, migrate consumers off CDs and onto the wire, then introduce robust watermarked identifiers so music can always be traced to the purchaser.

Not a bad strategy really, but it's sure to have unanticipated consequences. What will it mean when all thinks identify us? What will happen to the use and value of these identifiers? Will kidnappers force people to turn over their music collection? Will owners be able to "repudiate" their data, so it becomes unplayable? How will all this data be mined?

Lots of fun.

Salvaging the MacBook Air: Bluetooth tethering to the iPhone

The aggravating dockless MacBook Air, a bleedin' $2,000 peripheral that's basically an inferior reincarnation of the PowerBook Duo, is probably going to sell like mad. At first.

Then, one prays, reality will set in.

So what would make the Air less foul?

Daring Fireball suggests an out ...

Daring Fireball

...Totally agree re: ubiquitous wireless networking, but so far, judging from email from DF readers who’ve pre-ordered Airs, it all boils down to weight...

If Apple enables bluetooth tethering of the MacBook Air to an iPhone then it's possible to imagine tolerating that immense waste of design talent.

Grrr.

(Note that the current iPhone doesn't support tethering with anything, if it were enabled expect an additional monthly charge. If it happens it will likely require the 3G iPhone, thereby driving a surge of iPhone updates. Double grr.)

Bose QuietComfort 2 Mobile Communications kit connects to an iPhone

Sadly, Apple has not released an iPhone with a standard headphone mini-jack (the current recessed receptacle won't fit most mini-jacks). I'm getting the feeling they never will.

Sigh. Faust would understand.

I figured I'd have to buy a stupid dongle or whittle down my Bose QuiteComfort 2* headphones. Turns out there might be an alternative -- the $40 Bose QuietComfort 2 Mobile Communications Kit. Sure, it's much more expensive than whittling, but it includes a microphone so you can handle incoming calls. On the other hand it only works with post-2005 QC2s. (I might get away though, my original QC2 was replaced for free about a year ago.)

So if you have an older set you probably want to call Bose with your serial number before you buy.

* My one extravagance. There are now good alternatives for about half the price.

Broken iPod? Get 10% off a new one

iPods are rarely discounted, so this is worth remembering if you have a broken old iPod:

Reminder, 10% off new iPods with trade-in - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... Daniel Jalkut at Red Sweater reminded us that you can get a 10% discount on a new iPod any day at your local Apple Store if you do one simple thing: bring in an old iPod to trade in. The program's been around since 2005, but it's always worth another mention...

My old iPods become household music servers, but if it doesn't work this is better than nothing.

Multiuser machines and devices: the next most messed up part of OS X

I think Permissions are the most messed up part of OS X, but device management on a multi-user machine is a close second.

Specifically, management of owned devices.

So a drive that's shared between all users seems to work. CDs can get stuck though. They become invisible except by using Disk Utility to force an eject (sometimes the hardware eject button will work).

The real problem shows up with iPods however, and presumably with an iPhone as well.

Each user account tries to seize control of the iPod. So if I sync on my account, then switch to my wife's account, the iPod can go into a limbo state. It thinks it's attached, but the OS says it isn't.

Reset time.

It's almost as if Apple doesn't really support use of an iPod on a multi-user machine.

No, that couldn't be ...