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Lexmark Sues 24 Companies Over Toner-Cartridge Patents
eldavojohn writes "Remember back in 2003, when Lexmark tried to use the DMCA to stop aftermarket toner cartridges from being produced? Well, they're now suing 24 companies for infringing on 15 patents they have on toner cartridges. The article also notes that Lexmark has been filing lawsuits over patent infringement on formulas for their inks."
Wow, I don't normally think this after looking at an XKCD comic, but that one is so arrogant and off the mark, in one of the worst ways possible!
Blindly trusting a GPS device's directions, and insultingly disregarding the likely better directions of someone who lives there and is intimately familiar with the best way to get there, shows a total distrust in the intelligence of the person you're visiting. Sure, it's good to have the address and look up the directions yourself, but immediately preferring the automated directions, which often, at least in my experience, have problems, is almost sociopathic in the trust it shows in technology over personal wisdom.
To bring this back to the support desk issue, I think it actually supports the current, often frustrating, script-based approach. What is the ratio of knowledgeable users to arrogant idiots who thinks they're knowledgeable users? You know, the users who don't want to listen to the easy solution that fixes the problem 80% of the time, which would fix it for them, because they're experts and have a tool that often works that they trust in totally, even though they haven't the faintest clue on what they're doing?
unfortunately I would have to concur. If opensource projects don't patent (and than grant a non-exclusive, royalty free license to everyone), we're doomed.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)