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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."
How can a formula be patented when you can't even copyright a recipe (and that's all ink is, a recipe of dyes)?
As for patents on toner cartridges, I imagine if they were specific enough to get a patent for it (I know, I know, I'm not new around here, I know stupid patents get granted all the time), chances are they wouldn't need to worry about after-market producers.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I mean really? Every printer of quality I've seen in the last 3 years (and I use the word 'quality' loosely) has been an Xerox, HP or Canon. Maybe they should spend some time building things people want to buy. Could be wrong of course. Often am.
JE
Their patents are probably nothing more than 'we patented the specifications of cartridges that work with our printers so other companies can't sell cheap 3rd party cartridges' patents.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Lexmark, HP, Canon, and Kodak all deserve the money gotten for their ink. It's only fair. I say, and I am sure most of slashdot is with me, what's GOOD FOR LEXMARK IS GOOD FOR CONSUMERS !!
I called their tech support after trying to get one of their printers to work on Linux. This was before I found out that they use a non-standard and proprietary way to communicate between computer and printer.
The tech asks me if I'm using Windows XP or Vista. I say I'm using Linux. He's says "Windows Linux?" "No, just Linux." "Oh, okay, Windows 98." From there he proceeded to give me help based off the idea that I was running Microsoft Windows 98 Linux Edition.
Its not just for inkjet printers anymore.
One more company takes the patent troll route after finding out they are incapable of manufacturing something worth owning in the first place. Unfortunately HP printers are approaching Lexmark quality levels and not the other way around. I hate both companies, but obviously avoid Lexmark like the plague. I usually don't even bother trying to troubleshoot them or buy new roller kits -- I just replace the lexmarks with HPs.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
"Bastardze?"
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I usually ignore stories about hardware patents, but this one highlights a problem that exists in software patents: interoperability is essential.
Microsoft can develop a wonky filesystem (FAT), and use their market power to force it on everyone. When they finally realise that 8-letter filenames is a broken idea, they add a fix, patent the fix, and sue people who use the fix.
That fix isn't patentable because it's valuable, it's simply valuable because it's patented. It's an arbitrary idea, not necessarily better than any other solution (of avoiding the problem in the first place!), but it becomes a must-have because it's the idea Microsoft chose to implement.
Same with Word. Microsoft patents a few features in their file format and they're essential. You develop your own file format and patent some features, and they just get avoided by Micrsoft and nobody cares about your patents. How good your patents are, or how they compare to Microsoft's patents, is of no consequence.
And so it is with Lexmark. They make cartridges in a certain way. Might be good, might be wonky. You can patent a better idea, but it's useless because you're not looking for "best", you're looking for "compatible".
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help with developing these arguments is very welcome.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Evidently you've not shopped for a laser printer recently. Toner isn't any cheaper. I think they migrated the laser printers to inkjet printer model some time ago. Cost of toner cartridge today can go over a hundred dollars easily. Some manufacturers even have built in page counters on toner cartridges that would refuse to print once certain page count is reached, irrespective of the actual amount of toner remaining in the cartridge.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
All Power to the Glorious Corporation!
Really, do you think that dropping all government regulation of industry is a good thing?
Yes, except that the toner cartridges can print 10,000 pages.
A nice advertisement for what not to buy, thanks Lexmark.
Anyway, for those looking for alternatives, Brother doesn't chip their cartridges, and the ink is not criminally expensive. Anyone know of other brands?
Another option is to buy a continuous ink system; often these include compatible chips so you can bypass the manufacturer. Though, finding good CIS and quality inks may be somewhat troublesome. Any suggestions here?
Toner may be more expensive but in the long run its cheaper. I don't do much printing and my old ink-jet seemed to eat ink cartridges irrespective of whether I actually used the damn printer. I'd try to print something and pretty much every colour would be empty even though I had only brought more ink about 10 pages ago. My new B&W laser has already printed more pages than my ink-jet ever has and shows no signs of running out of toner. It apparently has enough toner to last It 2000 pages
The Magnusson Moss Warranty Act does not let them void the Warranty so they just try this BS to lock out the 3rd party stuff.
What if a car maker pulled this on a radio interface so you are locked in to there radio and can't install your own. What about remote starters?
In car DVD and TV systems?
The cost per page for toner is less than the cost per page for ink. For example, this HP ink cartridge costs 4.4 cents per page, while this HP toner cartridge costs 1.3 cents per page.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I really hate this mindset... do you really think that people are powerless? I mean, the only reason that unionization wasn't more effective earlier on is because the corp's used the government to bully strikers. If more consumers were well informed they'd buy smarter... If a telecom pisses you off, you switch, no gov't subsidies, companies die... No bailouts? Car companies compete or die.
I'm a bit more pragmatic than most libertarian minded people, but feel that citizen activism, and civics are part og what a free market is... I do think government has its place though. I do think process and design patents (including all software) should be limited to 5 years, as a special class of patent, that copyright law should return to sanity, 20 years, and renewable once if owned solely by the original owner(s) and all original owners are living persons (not companies) and that trademarks should be used for thier original purpose, not bullying or fair use in comparisons.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
You cannot sell your 'fake' inkt with less than a 2000% profit... And even then we will lose a 1000%... Seriously printer inkt is not more expensive than gold. It just isn't no matter what they let you pay for it. For this very reason I never buy inkt. We have come in the absurd situation that is quite a lot cheaper to just buy a new printer with the 1000 pages worth of filling you get with it.
There once was a seller of toner
Who said to a purchasing moaner
"If you like it or not
This lock-in we've got
Will give all the lawyers a boner."
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
After all, that's what it boils down to.
Can't beat the competition - sue them. What this tells me is that Lexmark doesn't have a good enough value proposition on their replacement toners. If they offered even close to equal value to the knockoffs, or the knockoffs had a bad rep for damaging people's printers, there wouldn't be a problem.
Some of has to go, yes. When people are gaming the system this badly, the system needs to be changed.
While I agree that it sucks that Lexmark (and most other printer manufacturers) put chips in their printers and discourage 3rd party consumables, I will say this: there is a good reason for it. I can count on one hand the number of Branded ink/toner cartridges I've ever seen go bad. When someone buys easter egg coloring ink for $3 a gallon and puts it in their Lexmark printer, or a "remanufactured" cartridge that has 3 million pages on it and is filled with shredded tires by blind people in China, guess who gets blamed when the print quality gets messed up? Certainly not "ch3ap1nk4le$$" on ebay. No, it's Lexmark. Shitty toner cartridges have caused more problems with printers than manufacturing defects, probably by 10x or so. Lexmark (and the rest of them) have a real reason for wanting to do this. What they should do is drop the prices on the consumables and sell the Total Cost of Ownership, not the retail price. Then nobody would need to make remanufactured carts.
They should also sell the carts with a "core charge". Send back your carts, get a $50 credit.
Hint: when you buy a printer, look at the cost of consumables per page BEFORE you buy it. That $99 color laser printer probably isn't a deal when you factor in the $500 it will take to replace the toner. But the $250 printer just might be.
(Also, all printers are crap these days. Nobody competes on quality anymore, just on specs. There is a reason those old Laserjets were $2500, and that's because they were made of cast iron.)
(Although I will say the Lexmark C53x series is pretty damned good.)
Certainly not, but at this point they're apathetic and ignorant. Never mind that the GP was suggesting we basically hand the reins of power over to corporations which are way more powerful than any one individual.
Read my above statement.
Because there are so, so many to choose from.
it's certainly not for lack of trying! take the RIAA for instance: they've been on a "education" campaign in schools for years now, trying to convince kids that copyright law essentially means the RIAA wins, no ifs, ands, or buts.
or like in health insurance and big pharma, where the average citizen simply lacks the needed specialized education to understand complex medical terminology.
and history has borne out that when a corporation or similar entity has unbridled freedom, they WILL do whatever they want to establish their own economic and political dominance. let's look at Microsoft: they essentially HAD an unregulated monopoly, up until the Fed (and the EU) came and put a stop to it. the government solutions were STILL ineffectual; Microsoft simply adapted (and i'm treading dangerously close to Gates of Borg here), and there's really still no viable OS alternative save Mac OS. it took Apple and Google to knock Microsoft down a peg. and both of those companies have really problematic practices, too.
government regulation is NECESSARY. there's a fine balance, but leave corporations alone and they WILL abuse the people. stockholders don't care so long as they make profit. with government, at least we can vote abusive politicians out, no capital required.
But why is government helping corporations or anybody for that matter with 'trade secrets' and basically getting involved in fixing monopolies by killing off competition? That's the question. The answer is of-course because people with money want this and people in gov't are willing to take the bribes and the rest don't understand how they've been just had.
We should not care about trade secrets, we shouldn't be in business helping to create monopolies. We should promote any competition that's possible, we should not stand in the way of anybody taking things apart to look how they are built and then building and selling those things themselves, this is part of life, this makes things run more efficiently, every argument against it is basically an argument against competition, it's nonsense.
You can't handle the truth.
Some people want good colour prints that are not standard size. I'm curious if lasers are any better at creating good photo quality prints on high end photo paper like can be done on good ink jet printers? Or are ink jets still the way to go?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I disagree. Decent GPS units give quite good directions, if you filter them using your head. I may simply be unwilling to spend the time noting every twist-and-turn down. In the old days, people used city maps to look up an address, and presumably you wouldn't consider it insulting. I still have such an archaic map in my car and use it occasionally. It's easier to browse it than the map on the GPS.
If I prefer to use a map, or a GPS, it doesn't mean I'm sociopathic. It may simply mean that I've been around places, and don't need handholding.
Heck, many locals are of a mistaken belief that their own learned ways of getting places are the best. I checked once -- just for the heck of it: the route that I would routinely take from/to the classes at the university turned out to be a leftover from a road construction project from 7 years ago that happened to coincide with me starting to drive myself to uni. The GPS gave me a safer and faster route.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
is intimately familiar with the best way to get there
The problem is that "intimately familiar" doesn't mean the same to everyone. Have you ever tried to get directions from someone who hasn't got a clue what streets are named, only that they turn left at the corner with the green gas station, then right at the tree that looks kind of like their grandpa?
The only thing more infuriating is the person who lists every intersection you go straight through. "Next you'll come to Crystal Falls Drive." "So I turn right there?" "No, you keep going straight. After that will be Babbling Brook" ad nauseam.
Good directions are the ones that tell you how far you'll drive and which way you'll turn on what street, including a warning if it's some fucktarded road design like 5-way intersections where there are two different ways to turn left. Better when they happen to mention "oh by the way there's no stop sign for this intersection" Even better when they tell you "if you hit ____ you've gone too far".
I'll give you one thing though: at least even the worst people usually manage to be able to tell you what side of the road they're on.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Nope. Trade secrets, patents and copyrights are orthogonal concepts, they cover separate issues. Patents used to provide insight -- to the point where HP would publish firmware to their instruments within a patent, these days the ratio of signal to noise is so bad that you can't tell much. Patents and copyrights, in the U.S., were created to provide a time-limited monopoly to further development of useful arts and sciences. Trade secrets are there to protect know-how from being sold out by employees.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The person giving directions is a prick. A bigger prick than the one asking for the address. Why ignore everything someone is saying? That's being a prick. Answer the question. Then, if there's a known GPS issue, then add in that piece of info. But to ignore what someone is asking and just answering what you think they mean drives me crazy. I'd rather they did me the service of listening to my question and then I get lost, rather than never listening to what I say.
Learn to love Alaska
Certainly not, but at this point they're apathetic and ignorant. Never mind that the GP was suggesting we basically hand the reins of power over to corporations which are way more powerful than any one individual.
You are severely mistaken. The government is ran by banks/insurance companies/military industrial complex/big pharma/food/energy/mining/etc.
They government is completely ran by these corporations. This shouldn't have happened, but it did. So while you are saying I am for corporations taking over, I am arguing the government today consists of corporations already, and those corporations are using government power to keep themselves monopolies and to bail themselves out. What you do not see, is that the US government is bankrupt already NOW, so my proposals here even if will fall on deaf ears, are irrelevant, very soon the government will fail to pay its obligations (of-course it will print the USD into hyper-inflation, it's not actually going to admit it's bankrupt.)
But you see, the government is NOT your economy, it's sucking out the value and force from economy, but it is not your economy.
Your economy are not large monopoly powers either, they are only using your government as long as they can take the last pennies out of this piggy bank. They will take the rest of the money out very soon, the social security (aren't you glad you paid into it?) the medicare will be gone, etc. At the end an empty shell of an economy cannot be used by large corporations anymore, they will move away to the rest of the world, which is MUCH bigger than US.
US citizens will be left in actual ruins and they will have to rebuild the economy anyway, so then why not start sooner and go through the pain sooner? And all of the regulations that your gov't has out there, is basically just so that the monopolies can stay monopolies longer. So why help them?
You think I am pro-monopoly corporations and against power of the people? Quite the opposite. But your government is NOT the people, it is together with those corporations you don't like.
You can't handle the truth.
Toner is CHEAP, third party carts for my Brother are .35c/page, even the Brother carts are only .8c/page, yes that's correct they are less than a penny a page, you'll spend more on the paper than the toner =) Bigger printers are even cheaper per page, but obviously come with a bigger acquisition cost and the cost of a single consumable replacement is more than my printer with 2,500 page starter cart ($99).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
GPS are only as good as the map data and some time that data does not show
it's a non truck road.
it's been closes off.
the ramps where re routed and you can't go that way any more and you have to take a different way to get there.
They reworked a one way systems map does not show the new way.
A easier and better way is not in the map yet.
and many other things.
only that they turn left at the corner with the green gas station, then right at the tree that looks kind of like their grandpa?
That's how Lassie found Grandpa, you insensitive clod.
Yeah, but if copyright and patent law were far saner, we'd probably be far better off, if MS didn't make the concessions needed to compete with open-source it'd be far worse... Linus did far more to open up MS than the government ever did, and if it weren't for software patents, would be farther along.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
The article also notes that HP has been filing lawsuits over ink patents.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
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?
Well using a GPS saves a lot of writing down/remembering directions heck even with good directions it is still easy enough to get lost if you don't know the area you are going to GPS units are maps and directions all in one :)
I don't commonly see color Lasers with more than 4 colors: CMYK. And the degree to which they can be proportioned and mixed on the page tends to be less than ink jets too. On the other hand, I commonly see ink jets with 6 or 7 colors and since it is fluids being shot at the page can mix those to more shades than laser will manage.
That said, I still hate ink jets. You may as well just buy another one once the ink runs out and you'll basically find you can run to the drugstore and print color cheaper than what they'll do overall. Even if that isn't true for color photo printing all by itself it is true if you also use the ink jet for things like driving directions or printing out forms. I think you're better off owning a B&W laser and doing color printing at the photo processor. If you MUST print color at home, a color laser is good enough for things that need a bit of color but aren't going in a photo album like a diagram or map.
And I'm restraining myself by not getting started on the pigware drivers that come with inkjets......
Your proposed solution to our current economic problems is to become a communist nation? (not to be confused with a Communist nation)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I bought a samsung clx-3175, disobeyed the instructions on maximum weight paper stock (I bought some thick kodak glossy photo print paper, and put it in the paper tray, one sheet at a time, on top of a stack of ordinary paper), and the prints are REALLY nice. The paper makes all the difference.
Print it, frame it, nobody will be able to tell the difference.
Actually, a GPS is like a religion. Follow me here. If you put all your faith in the voice from the sky, it will see you home safely. As soon as you start to doubt and second guess it, to ask "is this really giving me the best route?" -- it stops working and you end up going the wrong way.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Wow, I'm astonished that you even bothered to post that. The US economy isn't dying, it's been worse and while we'll have a period of stagflation thanks to the massive debt and incompetence of the Bush administration and the shrink government crowd, it will ultimately pull out of it. Probably with higher taxes and almost certainly more services. The private sector is if anything else even less efficient than the public sector is thanks to the fact that we don't get a say at all in who runs those businesses.
Why should a person have to save money first before starting a business? There's no compelling reason for that restriction, you just have to make sure that the loans are being written with due dilligence and that the individuals receiving the loan have an actual business plan with contingency plans and a way of making money.
Of course corporations won't save us, there's a simple reason for that, we've been compensating them specifically too screw us over because the wealthy and the Libertarians like that. The rest are mostly too inept or incompetent to realize what's going on. But shrinking the government isn't going to solve that problem, if anything it's going to exasperate the situation as it was a vacuum of government that caused it in the first place.
> that's not what happened. [...] People used FAT because it did what they wanted
Microsoft had a dominant position on the desktop. Being incompatible with Microsoft would have been a show-stopper. Microsoft's filesystem was FAT, so if you wanted to be compatible, with then-current Windows and will all future versions, then you use FAT.
For your disagreement, a link to a contradictory story would be very interesting. Or if you don't have a link (and I won't hold it against you, given that I've no link), could you at least say what part of this story you see a flaw with?
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
While Adam Smith agreed with you that IP shouldn't exist at all, in contemporary society the general agreement is that it's needed. The problem isn't that it exists, the problem is that it's become somewhat larger and more extreme than what is really necessary. Patents, trademarks and copyrights as they were up to the early part of the 20th century didn't cause a lot of trouble, mainly because they didn't last very long. You got it for a short period of time to make back your investment and after that it was public domain for everybody else. There's no compelling reason to completely get rid of IP, just to shrink it back to where it belongs. I'm curious what the point of my inventing something is if you can just immediately steal it and sell your own copy.
The theory on a patent is that anyone skilled in the art - an engineer for machinery, a chemist for drugs, etc. - would be able to build the object using the information in the patent. Now it's not the engineers and chemists that write them, it's the corporate lawyers. So rather than "heat @ 97deg C for 30 minutes" you get "apply heat for an extended period of time". Of course, only 97 deg C for 30 min works, but by not telling you that, they keep a trade secret reality while getting protection in case it turns out that 101 deg C for 24 minutes turns out to work too.
Most of the patents being submitted are either business patents or software. Actual engineering patents are a small segment of the pool, and a huge chunk of the chemical patents are from pharmaceutical companies either re-applying the same product for a new 'use patent' or for the same chemical compound with a slight twist that keeps the original compound covered beyond it's 17 year limit.
The other problem is that most of the people approving these patents are not skilled in the art they are approving. That means that things like 3 reference linked lists get approved because the lawyer reviewing it can't find a reference to exactly that in the references provided by the company requesting the patent. The fact that they are used in almost every class that teaches a linked list structure is irrelevant & is now a million dollar problem to anyone who uses linked lists.
I don't know about you, but unless I know an area well myself I can't keep more than two or three steps of driving directions in my head. Potentially writing it all down works, but that presumes I know which bits of the information are the important ones. "Turn left at the red maple on elm where the speed bumps end" will probably get transcribed as "Left at maple - Elm bumps Stop." Ten minutes later, looking at that in a car, I might see a big red tree sail by, wonder which elm tree becomes the maple, and why I'm stopping for every bump.
I'm sure the person who lives there's directions are better. But they're not sitting in the car as I drive. All I get are my vague recollections of the person's directions, and those are terrible. They certainly won't shout "Go back, dummy, you missed it."
The ______ Agenda
Anything built by HP pre-Carly is pretty much a tank, even the early DeskJets.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The person giving directions is a prick. A bigger prick than the one asking for the address.
I disagree. The person giving directions who isn't listening to the question is a being a prick, but in a more removed way. At least that person is trying to be helpful.
Unless the person talking about the GPS is somehow strained for time, how long does it take to listen to the directions first, even if just to disregard them? It's part of dealing with people. And it's not that bad.
Unlike the usual XKCD, it strikes me as snarky, not insightful.
No chips in cartridges!
What Lexmark is fighting about is most likely not the cartridges themselves as containers of ink, but rather the chips. Makers of third-party cartridges have to reverse-engineer Lexmark's chips which prevent users from refilling cartridges.
You can fight this nonsense by not buying Lexmark, Canon, HP, Epson, etc.
So how are those anarchy regions of the world doing?
The ______ Agenda
And the average human navigation narrative are long on detail and short on relevant constraints. e.g. "The most direct way is to cross town on the Panzerbahn, but it's a black art to merge into the exit lane, so I suggest you loop to the south and cross town on Marine Drive which is longer but avoids many ugly intersections, then after you turn north on Artic Express, you need to shoot past 49'th which has a three second advance left, and then take the next three rights, which gets you westbound on 49'th where there's a project to reline the local water main, so it's going to make a big difference if you arrive before or after the works crews" etc.
Then the intrepid driver is free to ask, "what if I survive exiting the Panzerbahn, do I avoid the waterworks on 49'th?"
Probably the fastest way is to ask the address, consult the GPS and then declare "my GPS is routing me here and there, is that going to cause me any problems?" The other person will say "oh no, that's fine", and you'll run into problems anyway. When you arrive (late) the person goes "huh, that road has been closed for a year now, I never knew" and the happy consensus is achieved that local road knowledge, like poetry, rarely translates.
One case where I do take detailed notes over the phone is when entering suburbia where you need to snake along the path of the Minotaur within tract developments of Wolframesque originality.
I once bought a Lexmark inkjet as part of a package for my GF, took it home, read the heavy legal text on the outside, refused to open the box, and took it right back. I have a different grudge against HP. The build quality in Brother printers scares me, so I always start with Canon when possible (but not the Pigma photo printers.)
Even Canon earned a black mark. I once had a perfectly good Canon scanner for which they never upgraded the driver (for any OS whatsoever) after Windows 98. Took it off to recycling. It was shipped to China where a ten year old boy ingested some of the toxic metals and grew a tumour on the side of his head which he treated by using for a tourniquet a reclaimed power necktie that had outlasted its profit mojo. Good thing, he almost died.
Unfortunately, inkjet printers are one of the less excusable waste streams in the history of western civilization.
Not long ago I read about the billions of dollars HP invested in ink with a thousand miraculous qualities, so no doubt it's worth more than liquid gold. 80% of the documents printed barely last two weeks before heaving directly into the recycle bin. Somehow the profit margins at HP have convinced management that the average person wishes to print their suggestive but erroneous Google map navigation route in gold brocade, every damn time.
Where's the cheap shitty ink I would generally use 90% of the time? And why do none of the print drivers I commonly encounter ever tell you in advance the total ink consumption of the job you are about to print, including the ten full colour sheets you forgot were in the middle of chapter seven?
"This short print job will cost more than the initial purchase price of your inkjet printer. Press OK to continue, or CANCEL to terminate the print job after squirting, but prior to curing." Those little print heads consist of many hundreds of reverse-engineered penis brains swaddled in patent protection.
Why should a person have to save money first before starting a business? There's no compelling reason for that restriction, you just have to make sure that the loans are being written with due dilligence and that the individuals receiving the loan have an actual business plan with contingency plans and a way of making money.
You pretty much answered your own question there, capital is an integral part of most business and contingency plans. Someone who isn't bringing a lot of their own money to the table is not forbidden from starting a business, they merely have a higher bar to pass to demonstrate "due diligence."
Have a near-perfect credit rating and an extremely sound business plan, and it's possible to start a business without using a penny of your own money. Of course, most people with near-perfect credit and capable of making a business plan like that are also believers in saving, so they'll tend to have at least a little money regardless.
I prefer having the address first too. And if I'm given directions, I might not use them. I like finding my own way and looking at maps. I like taking scenic routes if I'm not on a tight schedule.
But if an acquaintance is giving me directions, I'm not just going to cut him off and tell him I don't care what he is saying. Unless it's a long list, at least. It strikes me as pretty rude. Interestingly, it's hard to tell, because you don't get the other side of the conversation in the comic. You only hear the impatient guy with the GPS.
"I mean, the only reason that unionization wasn't more effective earlier on is because the corp's used the government to bully strikers."
And without laws protecting workers any given company can just fire union members. Enough companies doing it and people won't join a union because they need to eat.#
"If more consumers were well informed they'd buy smarter."
And with less regulation companies would just lie more. The well informed consumer is a myth now and would be even more so in a world with less regulation.
Your IP reforms I agree with though.
others have already pwned you on how much more lasers can print, the other issue is laser printers can sit unused for a long time and be fine. leave your ink jet with new ink sitting for 9 months and you will need new carts or at least need to blow a ton of ink and paper running head clean cycles.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Well using a GPS saves a lot of writing down/remembering directions heck even with good directions it is still easy enough to get lost if you don't know the area you are going to GPS units are maps and directions all in one :)
I'm not saying GPS devices and electronic maps aren't great! I really like them.
I just think it's short-sighted to totally disregard what someone is trying to tell you. And I speak from experience, because on at least two occasions in the past I put an address in a GPS / Google Maps thinking my technology was quicker and easier than what someone had to tell me, and it cost me a lot of time and some embarrassment. On one of the occasions, it turned out Google Maps didn't know that there was a difference between First St. and First Ave. and my friends and I ended up at a trailer park instead of our destination, which was 30 minutes away. Oops. Should have read the directions.
Decent GPS units give quite good directions, if you filter them using your head. I may simply be unwilling to spend the time noting every twist-and-turn down.
I agree with you that the directions are often good (though certainly not more than 90% in my experience). But the comic wasn't about filtering the directions through your head. It was about blatantly disregarding the directions you would filter against. Rudely.
If I prefer to use a map, or a GPS, it doesn't mean I'm sociopathic. It may simply mean that I've been around places, and don't need handholding.
Again, I agree. I love maps, and I'd usually rather find my own way than using someone's directions, just for fun. Yes, that is fun for me.
But showing contempt for what someone is trying to tell you and being so sure of your own tool that you're not even willing to listen through someone's directions is arrogant. And probably not sociopathic (I was a bit strong in my initial assessment), but certainly heading down that road.
I was thinking of the type of inkjets that photographers use to do portraits or other artwork. I had one that died a year ago, but I don't shoot as much serious stuff anymore and mostly just take happy snaps on vacation now, so I haven't bought a new one. I did look them up and a comparable one now-a-days runs around $2100.00 to 2900.00 US. Considering I don't do enough serious colour work, I'll stick with your suggestion of the drug store if I really want a print... but looking at them on computer is good enough for now. Any serious stuff I do shoot now is usually BW and BW film still has better latitude and tonality than BW digital (but printing I'd say is WAY more expensive than a laser :-). Give it a few years and digital will be there. Interesting to hear what others have to say on the colour printing side though. Thanks.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Colour laser printers are under $200, and the toner cartridges last a hell of a long time. Why is anyone buying ink-based printers?
First, please give an example of one market that has ever been free of taxes, laws and regulations. Now that we have the reality that free markets never have and never will exist we can get real.
Although I am no fan of American car companies I am aware that these companies tend to be part of our national defense supply chain. Without them we would not be able to defend ourselves. Then there is the issue of economic ruin for everyone if huge companies collapse. And finally we would have serious tax payer issues if all of these auto workers, many who have their entire working life with one company, lost their pensions and their medical care in retirement.
Even with some safety net programs in our society we still are seeing people taking to crime simply because they can not get work or the jobs don't pay survival wages. This could get really ugly if it gets worse. It is easier to give welfare checks than pay for prison cells for car jackers and home invaders. The right wing has zero reality on this.
At least that person is trying to be helpful.
I guess you've never called tech support. http://www.ethanwiner.com/Dilbert2.gif That's my life when I call tech support. People who refuse to listen to anyone else. They either think they really know what you meant when you said something, or they simply don't listen. I'm much much more pissed off by people who deliberately choose to ignore me than someone who refuses my help. "Would you like directions?" "No." "Your loss." Done. Rather than the hour long conversation being given directions you didn't want.
Unless the person talking about the GPS is somehow strained for time, how long does it take to listen to the directions first, even if just to disregard them? It's part of dealing with people. And it's not that bad.
Ah, I get it. Deliberately ignoring people and wasting their time is perfectly ok with you, but expecting to be listened to is a sin.
Unlike the usual XKCD, it strikes me as snarky, not insightful.
And I find it well in line with the usual. I think that, for whatever reason, you just have an issue with this issue. I really don't know that many people who think waiting through directions with the intention of discarding them is more polite than stating that you don't need them. Sure, he would have been more polite to have asked only once, but to be completely ignored, which you think is ok, then to say he should have ignored the person giving the directions indicated that you don't mind everyone ignoring everyone else, if the other option is actually communicating effectively with them. And that's where I think you are having the issue. I don't think most people think it polite to deliberately ignore people on a regular basis.
Learn to love Alaska
Along with Kodak with no Linux drivers don't support Lexmark products.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Rated for over 50K pages/month. So far I've only gone through one toner cartridge, the replacement is good for 6000 pages.
Your line of thinking is at odds with limitations of our cognition. Listening for directions works if they are relatively short -- perhaps as short as 2-3 steps. Otherwise you have to note them down, and verify them -- else they are useless. This is an all or nothing proposition: if you depend on someone else's directions, without a backup, one mistake means that you are lost. If you have a backup (map/gps), you may as well forgo directions: any work spent on verifying directions with a map/gps is obviates the need for them, pretty much. Never mind that taking down directions in general cannot be done in real time unless you're a stenographer or possess similar skills.
I think I made the point that full-blown directions are a waste of time, and that's what XKCD depicted. Now a helpful hint, like "avoid route X between Y and Z due to construction" is entirely appreciated, but route-planning-via-telephone is ridiculous.
Babbling directions like in the referenced XKCD strip is thus at best inconsiderate, and an indication that the babbler is temporarily regressing to a preschooler who can't quite imagine what goes on in the listener's mind. If me asking for the address would be at this point rude, then it's something that the babbler on the other end of the line is well deserving.
I have run a few times into direction babblers, so I know what I'm talking about. They are universally useless without realizing so. I give them 15 seconds, and if by then they haven't run out of steam (sometimes they get self-confused and pause), in a no-nonense fashion I inquire about the address. If the babbler doesn't provide it and resumes babbling, I consider whether the trip is really worth making. If it is, and I know the person's name/phone, I do a quick online lookup, if it's successful I do whatever it takes to end the call ASAP. If the trip is low on my priority list, I make up an emergency and decline to come, it's not worth the trouble.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Well, now I know not to buy Lexmark printers :)
I haven't heard of page counters in toner. I recently researched and bought a laser printer (went with Brother 2170W in the end if anyone cares) and I noticed many of them use a sensor to tell whether the toner is out. When the sensor says it's out it won't print any more. Put some tape over the sensor port and it just keeps going. I admit I was mostly interested in Brother and Samsung though just from word of mouth. Samsung reviews mentioned wireless problems which is why I went with Brother. The page counters may exist in brands I didn't look at.
Interest rates - that's the answer to your question.
The interest rates will go through the room when USD collapses. My comment was moded 'flamebait' simply by misunderstanding, most people simply don't see what is happening, even though they are staring right into its face.
The US economy IS terminal, there is absolutely nothing that government or anybody can do about it, the reason is in the loss of production capacity, which resulted in a gigantic trade deficit. The US Government is bankrupt, no question about it. There is 13trillion of the visible and near 70 trillion of the t-bill/bond debt, none of this will be paid out.
The US is refinancing all of that debt every 3 months in short term debt, which is only at very low interest rate because US is not trying to refinance the debt in anything longer than that. Should US try to refinance the debt in 30 year bonds, the rates would go through some invisible roof, nobody in their sane mind wants to give US government that kind of a debt, because they understand it will not be repaid in anything but funny-money.
So when the USD crashes, the interest rates that are 0% now, will go into high double digits, and THAT is why people will have to save first and only then start businesses. Nobody will be able to pay interest that is in high double digits.
You can't handle the truth.
I don't know, you'll tell me all about that when USD crashes due to government printing after the lending stops.
Switzerland is doing fine, and it has no federal income tax and most regulations/rules are on canton (state) level.
You can't handle the truth.
Well, contemporary society got quite a few things wrong. Keynesian 'economics', criminalization of drugs/prostitution, governments meddling in economics on any level, wars for profit, religions, all of those things are accepted in contemporary society (it varies from place to place) but it doesn't make those things right, it only makes them a fact.
Any amount of attempted regulation of economy by government (or any other strong-force that does this not by production, but by artificial means) is detrimental to the economy, it destabilizes the process. The economic collapse of now is the result of this meddling and destruction of competition. By not letting the economic cycle work (boom/bust cycle) that normally happens in economy every 10-20 years, the gov't created a gigantic boom/bust cycle that has been busting now since about 2003 and it will be a long and painful bust indeed, entire nations' economies will be wiped out.
You can't handle the truth.
With Ink however you will generally get much less use than what you calculate because apart from office-environments most people will go many weeks without running out, which means that some of the ink will dry up. Some people will only print a handfull of pages before they find out their ink is ruined.
Unused toner will keep for many months or years and are much more reliable.
For Bulk printing I would guess that a nice continuous ink system would be most effective, but then again inkjet printer wear out much quicker.
there is no sane copyright and patent law, especially if your country's economy is going down the drain and another one is becoming a powerhouse and it does NOT care about your copyrights and patents.
It is especially really really really stupid to have copyrights and patents in that situation.
You can't handle the truth.
Your comment is correct for normal economic times. For what is coming, your very sane comment will fail, nobody will be able to get any loans for opening businesses because the entire country won't be able to get any loans, because people who used to loan will be especially ticked off by them losing a few trillion dollars in reserves due to the liars in your government.
The interest rates on any loans will be in high double digits, it will not matter how sound your business plan is, nobody will give you money because you won't have the kind of collateral needed to cover that risk.
Savings will become the only way to start a business.
You can't handle the truth.
Do you people really fucking believe this shit?
Industry has proven time and time again they'd use newborn babies as a fuel source, bottle toxic crap and sell it as elixir, and generally fuck over everybody and everything all in the name of making a fucking profit.
You idiots walking around spouting this libertarian/laissez-faire crap really make me want to repeatedly kick you in the nuts -- all in the name of the free market mind you, think of it as the invisible hand finding an optimal solution.
If we didn't have government, rules, and all of these things you want repealed, we wouldn't have civilization. You want to know what it's like without any of this stuff? Go for a Stroll in Mogadishu or some place where there is no real functioning government -- see how long before some guy has a gun to your head or a knife to your throat.
Lawlessness and chaos are the results of having no government, not some fucking libertarian utopia where we all peacefully coexist and respect each others property rights. Fuck, you guys live in a fantasy world full of drivel which has no actual bearing on reality.
The solution:
print at work.
I haven't printed _anything_ since I got a smart phone 3 years ago lol.
You can save a lot of money by getting a smart phone and ditching the printer. Just sayin...
People bring me printed crap all the time at work. I just don't understand it. You can take a screen shot and email the crap. You can even email the document or a link to it.
I used to work with lawyers that would take an electronic document (which THEY wrote in the first place), print it, mark it up with red pen, then interoffice me the printed corrected copy, so I could correct the electronic original. I'm a developer, not a paralegal, so I told them to fuck off, but what kind of idiot wouldn't just edit the fucking electronic document and send it back. Why print it? You can't tell me "Oh I work on stuff on the train" This was a doc that got sent to them, and inter-officed back to me the same fucking day. Aren't lawyers supposed to be smart? Why would they do something so fucking stupid? It boggles the mind, especially with electronic signing and revision history.
People need to learn to lay off the fucking print button. It generates and unbelievable amount of waste. My desk is filled with paper that other people printed and brought to me. All of it is 100% unnecessary. What a fucking crime.
Bitching about lousy printers and cartridges is pointless. You don't need them. Stop fucking buying them.
Crap like this is why my family doesn't even -have- a working printer. Instead we print the natural way; bring the file to work and print it there. Plus it's free!
Seriously though, once tablets are more or less ubiquitous in a professional office it will trickle down to the point where they're giving the ink away for free just to sell a printer again.
bend like the reed
Brother is making some great printers these days, and have Linux support for almost all of them. Linux Support = support for CUPS, LPD and SANE. Many of the drivers are GPL, so you can get code from Brother's website. Many of the drivers are in Ubuntu's repos, so most of the time you can just apt-get.
Most print features are implemented. Also, Brother's ink is not chipped, and you can buy genuine Brother ink for about $9/cartridge or get third party ink for about $3 per cartridge (you can probably refill, too, but for $3 per, why mess with it). The cleaning cycles don't tap the ink on Brother printers the way they do on Lexmark either. I had a Lexmark years ago that would get about 40 pages out over one month and need $60 worth of ink.
The only thing with Brother is that their printers are $10-$20 more than the comparable Lexmark or Brother, but you'll get you $20 back on the first round of ink.
-- $G
> First, please give an example of one market that has ever been free of taxes, laws and regulations. Now that we have the reality that free markets never have and never will exist we can get real.
Cocaine.
Obviously, true "free markets" don't actually work that well... a larger percentage of profit is gained by leaving someone else "holding the bag", and the retirement plans tend to suck.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Cocaine.
Err... No. If you think about it "Columbian drug cartels', and a cartel is the farthest thing from free market.
*Whoosh* - right over your head.
It began as a free market. Such cartels are but one natural progression OF a free market. It's almost as if the "cartel" aspect of this example was planned, or something.
The fact that a free market is unstable? Small caveat... but also the point :)
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Nope, your analogy is still flawed. The illegality of drug trafficking means high upfront costs and high penalties for everyone doing business, but for the free market you need equal access for all participants, and in this case you got all the conditions for oligopolies to form. Thus cartels. This isn't an example of a natural progression of a free market.
Those laws only exist because of unions. When the unions got going in the first place, there were no such protective laws. The union's sole remedy other than lodging a complaint and hoping the employer would see reason was to strike and picket (shutting the employer down in the process).
I dunno if the rest of the printer industry is getting the same way lately, but some Lexmark printers I recently bought have far greater disparity between claimed toner capacities and actual toner capacities than I'm used to seeing. (No, I'm not confused about the starter cartridge that comes with new printers, and yes, this is based on real-world data, and no the page coverage on the print jobs were not particularly heavy.)
I tend to agree, for the most part... I do think that there are valid reasons for copyright and patent protections. However, I do feel that for the most part they are far over-reaching from where they should be, and are more of a hinderance to legitimate competition and advancement of society. I don't think it should really matter too much if another country doesn't respect our laws, it isn't our place or theirs to really judge, and should really not try to interfer (ie: ACTA, and several other trade agreements with other countries that include patent/copyright aknowledgement provisions as they are)
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Photographers use dye sub printers, not inkjet. They are continuous colour so measure in ppi, 300ppi printers beat most inkjets.
I don't think it should really matter too much if another country doesn't respect our laws
- are you for serious? The country who doesn't respect your copyright/patents, is the country you are getting all your goods from, there is a reason why they are cheaper.
Even if everybody respected the copyrights and patents, the only thing that would do is stifle innovation and production capacity, it only worsens the economy, it doesn't improve it, but when you get all your stuff from a country that doesn't give 2 shits about those pathetic ideas, they you're screwed.
You can't handle the truth.
Because in return you can steal anyone else's invention and sell your own copy.
The person continuing to give step by step directions when asked for the street address is a self centered idiot who thinks what's going through his head is more important than the other person actually arriving.
The person asking for the address is trying to save them BOTH wasted time.
In a professional setting the directions giver is also a jerk treating the other person like they don't know their job and self centered assuming the other person has no other customers to serve or even think about other than them.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
I just serviced a user's B/W Laser LexMark Printer (network config issue) While looking at it i noticed the Toner Low/Out lamp illuminated. So i printer the Printer's internal test page and stated 90% Toner / 80% Conductor (WTF?!)
I asked the user how long the lamp had been active, just started since August they said.
I fired out another printer page and checked again (90% Toner), Removed/Re-inserted light went off then came back on. (???)
I then noticed something on the test print... The cartridge Mfg. Date was 08/??/2009 (Ah Ha.) I remember reading somewhere recently about printer vendors like HP, Lexmark, Epson, etc... were using time-bomb code in the cartridge to disable them and say they are low when they are not (ever notice how toner cartridges that are empty still have plenty of powder left?)
So these Fuckers have decided (that since cartridges have 1 year War.) that they will lie about the low/out lamp just because the month rolled over from July to Aug. and the cartridge was purchased 1 year ago.
These people have NO honesty left so fuck'em! (besides Lexmark print quality sucks compared to an HP especially color)
Google Maps (with maps for all turns) is my weapon of choice. My first experience with a GPS began when it told me to drive to the starting red arrow that wasn't on the screen and because I was "driving" it wouldn't allow me to use the touch screen to look for it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
File anti trsut, require RAND licesning.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
I have a Lexmark business printer. Used once in the last two years, been a paper weight ever since. Their driver for this model is from the pits of hell. Bought a HP business printer. It has been a dream to use. I hope Lexmark looses their lawsuits!
EASY .... Just don't buy their products.
l
I don't care about other companies respecting out copyrights or patents... we managed to make it through into the industrial and computer age without other countries respecting out copyrights or patents. I believe I said as much above.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
s/companies/countries/
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info