Well then maybe they should price thier cartidges reasonably and make a profit on the printer in the first place. It's not like we need our landfills filling up with these disposable printers that are only disposable because of the price.
Now I would be very curious to see if the reason that printer prices have come down so far is due to the intention of making money on the ink and paper products. If that is the case I would say they made a bad business decision and should rethink their strategy. Not sue someone else that can do business in the ink market at a lower price.
At which point I would return the damn thing. I just wish more people would do the same. At some point people have to actually stand up against this type of "licensing" if they don't like it. Rather than just ignoring the license actually stop buying the products and supporting these manufacturers.
The issue is that gas and paper are not under the controlling interests of auto manufacturers nor printer manufacturers.
For now, and not entirely true. Have you seen how much HP makes from selling paper?
The specific inkjet nossel, or toner cartrage is highly customized to fit the particular printer. Thus it's entirely possible to use the DMCA to conceal the API, or the patent the particular usage of the device.
The gas nossel, or intake system is highly customized to fit the particular car. Thus it's entirely possible to use the DMCA to conceal the API, or the patent the particular usage of the device.
Someone that makes paper can do so for any number of printers; and thus can't have an injunction.
What's to stop HP from putting RFID tags in thier paper products and ensuring that only HP paper is used in thier printers? Absolutely nothing. It also would be protectable under the DMCA.
Someone that goes out of their way to produce a cartraige that fits a particular printer has an obvious intent, and thus is at least susceptable to court harrasment.
Open to court harrassment due to bad law. However that's just my opinion. Unless it can be proven that the cartridges violate a patent this shouldn't even be wasting a courts time.
What Lexmark and friends do is put 90% of their technology into their print-head. This makes the design slightly more expensive but it garuntees that you can't take advantage of alternative vendors.
It doesn't gaurantee anything. They hope that by putting 90% of thier technology into the print head you won't be able to use alternate vendors, but it doesn't gaurantee anything. Only through legal means are they able to effectivly stomp out competition. If the vendors are violating a patent then that is the direction a lawsuit should be taken. However putting a chip on the cartidges that reports the cartidges status and using that as a copy protection mechanism is simply assinine.
As it stands today I can drive over to any auto parts store in town and have a selection of air filters for my vehicle. If Honda followed in the footsteps of Lexmark I could expect that the next revision of my car would have a special mechanism to report that the airfilter was dirty and needed replacing. Due to the special mechanism I would only be able to buy a Honda air filter. Any third party manufacturer would be sued under the DMCA if they attempted to provide an air filter for that vehicle as they would have to "circumvent" the reporting mechanism for their air filter to work.
Sounds like a great plan and a lot of fun. About two years ago a friend had an old OkiData laser printer that died a horrible smokey death one afternoon. We promptly took it outside and beat the crap out of it. Being that it had been a frustrating day to being with this was quite fun.
I think I'll stick with my $14 toner refills for my old LJ4 though. If I need to print color that badly there is a kinkos around the corner or a color laser at work;)
You are joking right? Have you looked at the prices of Epson or HP cartridges? They are horribly expensive just like the Lexmark supplies. Also, if companies like Lexmark are allowed to decide what manufacturers are allowed to sell supplies for thier printers what is to stop car manufacturers from forcing car buyers to purchase specific types of gasoline or oil? Sure it's not a perfect analogy but it's close enough. It should be the consumers right to use whatever supplies they want with thier printer. You did buy it after all. What's the next step? Only being allowed to you Lexmark approved paper in your printer? I'm sure it will only be 100-200% more than the bargain brand that you were using before.
This is exactly why I have an old HP LaserJet 4 Plus that I got off of ebay. Every once in a while the toner cartridge will need to be replaced, but for my needs I fill the cartridge once a year or so with a $14 refill kit. The last ink jet printer I had used ink like crazy, and if you didn't use all the ink up they dried out and you had to prelace them anyway. Color cartridges for the POS were $45 and the black cartridge was $35. I may as well have thrown the printer away and bought a new one every time at those prices.
They probably aren't the same costs. When you start evaluating the variances between the number of available Unix admins vs. Windows admins you will find that the more numerous of the two will typically come at a cheaper price. These are basic economic principles at work. Evaluating the other details is a lot harder, but there probably are some significant differances in costs in other places as well. Add it all together and there may or may not be a "significant" differance between the two, but there will be differances. Of course the differances may or may not be significant based on your interpretation of what a significant differance is as well. A small company may consider a differance in TCO of $2-10k significant where a large company may not.
Actually most of the tuition hikes at the University right now are due to poor budgeting decisions over the last five years or so. We can also thank this poor planning for the reduction in classes we are seeing.
They'll just raise tuition again to cover the costs. That's what they do around here. Tuition goes up damn near EVERY semester for some reason or another. The quality of the education sure isn't improving so it must be going to something important such as a program for reducing file sharing on the university network.
Hopefully never. They spray that crap all over the office at work. Not only does it smell horrible, but all it does is mingle with the other scents in the office. Instant headache when that crap is sprayed.
Yeah, that's a given. I was just trying to point out that the Crusoe is already a 128 bit processor. So you won't be seeing a 64 bit Crusoe any time soon. Maybe a Crusoe executing instructions intended for an X86-64, but that's just an extension of the code morphing software. Even then I think the new astro chip would be more likely for that application since it looks to be meant for high density low cost blade servers with more punch than the Crusoe.
Your absolutly correct. Paul focuses on nerds and thier superior intelligence. This isn't necessarily true. Intelligence is a mysterious thing really. My wife is an elementary education major and is currently trying to get a paper published on Multiple Intelligence Theory. What most people don't take into account is that the intelligence exhibited by nerds is what most people stereotype as "smart" when there are equally as intelligent people that simply learn, or express thier knowledge differantly. Some of the best students in school, and the most intelligent people I knew were athletes or popular. Intelligence doesn't play nearly as much of a part in popularity as many people claim. Social awareness and desire are more important to popularity.
Yes, his work was coached, by more than one person. The final result was created by more than one person. However, comparing it to simply voice acting is inaccurate.
He did not do it by himself. The question at hand is this. Does this type of work qualify as acting? At some point will we be handing out awards to digital actors?
I don't really care, I just wanted to point out he did a hell of a lot more than just voice act.
He did more than just voice act. He also made all the necessary movments etc and then the special effects were placed on top of him. More like digital makeup on an actor than a fully digital creation ala Jar Jar.
We get plenty of connections from hotmail.com smtp servers and it turns out to be nothing but junk mail. The majority of email with from: soandso@hotmail.com is of course forged, but that doesn't discount connections from hotmail.com that are junk mail. It just increases our dislike for anything that says hotmail.
I'm not saying that the Black Penny project is bad at all. I'm personally all for research projects that have a goal of limiting or eliminating unsolicited emails. I think that when the monetary aspect is explored that will be the only avenue followed with any diligence. That's unfortunate.
Your examples are valid. I don't doubt that the possiblity of those things happening are possible, but in my case I've done the best I can to eliminate them from happening. The majority of my friends are either extremly technically savvy or not at all. This means that I'll probably be getting email from personal domains, or thier ISP domains. Most of these people don't use the big name ISPs simply because they don't like the inflexibility that goes with them. My non savvy friends just pick up the phone. In fact I recently got in touch with a friend that had left to join the military and was just now back home. We hadn't spoken but once in almost 4 years. He got ahold of me by getting my phone number from my sister in law who he happened to run into in one of his classes. When I talked to him he said he had planned on stopping by my parents house to get my info that way. With email it is highly unlikely that anyone I haven't talked to in a long time would email me simply because they probably don't know how or have that information. It's much easier to get a phone number.
Then we have family. I set my parents up with cable because they like having both of thier computers hooked up to the Internet and were tired of the slow speeds they got with dialup. Then they got tired of the spam that went along with thier @home email address (now charter). So I set them up thier own domain. They don't give thier email addresses out to anyone but family and friends. So, I have little to no chance of getting any mail from any of the above mentioned sources. I may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater when and if I get a legitimate message from those sources, but frankly, the chances of that are so slim at this point that I don't mind.
This probably doesn't work for most people for the reasons you stated. For me it is an acceptable solution with extremly low potential for error.
I filter enough spam into my junkmail folder as it is. I don't need some federal email address to go along with it that spammers will know is real and that I feel obligated to check because that is the address the government will send mail messages to. I also don't feel like paying additional taxes to have a government supported email system that will be solely used for spam.
I didn't imply that everyone should do as I do, but based on my mail statistics I feel completly happy disregarding all mail from msn, aol, yahoo, hotmail, and a few other free mailers. I have gotten zero valid mail from any of those sources in at least that last 18 months (that's how long it's been since I completly archived my mail messages).
I wouldn't accept a job from an employer that used hotmail for email, and I would never apply for a job using hotmail. Hence those arguments don't apply to me. At my office there have been no valid emails from hotmail and we have considered blocking all smtp requests from thier servers due to the amount of spam originating there. You certainly don't have to agree with me, but unless you have a better argument I would still not mind completly ignoring all mail from those domains.
A great many people are already leaving thier local carriers and thier bloated fees. More and more people are using only a cell phone to communicate with other people. I would do the same thing, but I had to have a telephone line installed before I could have my SDSL line installed.
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Well then maybe they should price thier cartidges reasonably and make a profit on the printer in the first place. It's not like we need our landfills filling up with these disposable printers that are only disposable because of the price.
Now I would be very curious to see if the reason that printer prices have come down so far is due to the intention of making money on the ink and paper products. If that is the case I would say they made a bad business decision and should rethink their strategy. Not sue someone else that can do business in the ink market at a lower price.
I have to agree, the mental picture of laced ink cartidges made my morning ;) I never would have even given it a second thought without your post.
How about RFID tags I'm sure they could be embeded in the paper quite easily.
Air Lexmarks of course.
That was pretty funny though. I suppose I should have proof-read that better.
At which point I would return the damn thing. I just wish more people would do the same. At some point people have to actually stand up against this type of "licensing" if they don't like it. Rather than just ignoring the license actually stop buying the products and supporting these manufacturers.
You have to get your inspiration from somewhere ;)
The issue is that gas and paper are not under the controlling interests of auto manufacturers nor printer manufacturers.
For now, and not entirely true. Have you seen how much HP makes from selling paper?
The specific inkjet nossel, or toner cartrage is highly customized to fit the particular printer. Thus it's entirely possible to use the DMCA to conceal the API, or the patent the particular usage of the device.
The gas nossel, or intake system is highly customized to fit the particular car. Thus it's entirely possible to use the DMCA to conceal the API, or the patent the particular usage of the device.
Someone that makes paper can do so for any number of printers; and thus can't have an injunction.
What's to stop HP from putting RFID tags in thier paper products and ensuring that only HP paper is used in thier printers? Absolutely nothing. It also would be protectable under the DMCA.
Someone that goes out of their way to produce a cartraige that fits a particular printer has an obvious intent, and thus is at least susceptable to court harrasment.
Open to court harrassment due to bad law. However that's just my opinion. Unless it can be proven that the cartridges violate a patent this shouldn't even be wasting a courts time.
What Lexmark and friends do is put 90% of their technology into their print-head. This makes the design slightly more expensive but it garuntees that you can't take advantage of alternative vendors.
It doesn't gaurantee anything. They hope that by putting 90% of thier technology into the print head you won't be able to use alternate vendors, but it doesn't gaurantee anything. Only through legal means are they able to effectivly stomp out competition. If the vendors are violating a patent then that is the direction a lawsuit should be taken. However putting a chip on the cartidges that reports the cartidges status and using that as a copy protection mechanism is simply assinine.
As it stands today I can drive over to any auto parts store in town and have a selection of air filters for my vehicle. If Honda followed in the footsteps of Lexmark I could expect that the next revision of my car would have a special mechanism to report that the airfilter was dirty and needed replacing. Due to the special mechanism I would only be able to buy a Honda air filter. Any third party manufacturer would be sued under the DMCA if they attempted to provide an air filter for that vehicle as they would have to "circumvent" the reporting mechanism for their air filter to work.
Is that a better analogy for you?
Sounds like a great plan and a lot of fun. About two years ago a friend had an old OkiData laser printer that died a horrible smokey death one afternoon. We promptly took it outside and beat the crap out of it. Being that it had been a frustrating day to being with this was quite fun.
;)
I think I'll stick with my $14 toner refills for my old LJ4 though. If I need to print color that badly there is a kinkos around the corner or a color laser at work
I thought Dell was getting thier printers manufactured by Lexmark?
Regardless, Dell over prices EVERYTHING, I don't see how ink would be any differant.
You are joking right? Have you looked at the prices of Epson or HP cartridges? They are horribly expensive just like the Lexmark supplies. Also, if companies like Lexmark are allowed to decide what manufacturers are allowed to sell supplies for thier printers what is to stop car manufacturers from forcing car buyers to purchase specific types of gasoline or oil? Sure it's not a perfect analogy but it's close enough. It should be the consumers right to use whatever supplies they want with thier printer. You did buy it after all. What's the next step? Only being allowed to you Lexmark approved paper in your printer? I'm sure it will only be 100-200% more than the bargain brand that you were using before.
This is exactly why I have an old HP LaserJet 4 Plus that I got off of ebay. Every once in a while the toner cartridge will need to be replaced, but for my needs I fill the cartridge once a year or so with a $14 refill kit. The last ink jet printer I had used ink like crazy, and if you didn't use all the ink up they dried out and you had to prelace them anyway. Color cartridges for the POS were $45 and the black cartridge was $35. I may as well have thrown the printer away and bought a new one every time at those prices.
They probably aren't the same costs. When you start evaluating the variances between the number of available Unix admins vs. Windows admins you will find that the more numerous of the two will typically come at a cheaper price. These are basic economic principles at work. Evaluating the other details is a lot harder, but there probably are some significant differances in costs in other places as well. Add it all together and there may or may not be a "significant" differance between the two, but there will be differances. Of course the differances may or may not be significant based on your interpretation of what a significant differance is as well. A small company may consider a differance in TCO of $2-10k significant where a large company may not.
Actually most of the tuition hikes at the University right now are due to poor budgeting decisions over the last five years or so. We can also thank this poor planning for the reduction in classes we are seeing.
Grants? Ha ha. That's rich.
They'll just raise tuition again to cover the costs. That's what they do around here. Tuition goes up damn near EVERY semester for some reason or another. The quality of the education sure isn't improving so it must be going to something important such as a program for reducing file sharing on the university network.
You have to pay someone to count and then spend all that money.
Hopefully never. They spray that crap all over the office at work. Not only does it smell horrible, but all it does is mingle with the other scents in the office. Instant headache when that crap is sprayed.
Yeah, that's a given. I was just trying to point out that the Crusoe is already a 128 bit processor. So you won't be seeing a 64 bit Crusoe any time soon. Maybe a Crusoe executing instructions intended for an X86-64, but that's just an extension of the code morphing software. Even then I think the new astro chip would be more likely for that application since it looks to be meant for high density low cost blade servers with more punch than the Crusoe.
If I recall correctly the Crusoe processor is 128bit . It is simply executing 32bit code through "code morphing"
Your absolutly correct. Paul focuses on nerds and thier superior intelligence. This isn't necessarily true. Intelligence is a mysterious thing really. My wife is an elementary education major and is currently trying to get a paper published on Multiple Intelligence Theory. What most people don't take into account is that the intelligence exhibited by nerds is what most people stereotype as "smart" when there are equally as intelligent people that simply learn, or express thier knowledge differantly. Some of the best students in school, and the most intelligent people I knew were athletes or popular. Intelligence doesn't play nearly as much of a part in popularity as many people claim. Social awareness and desire are more important to popularity.
Yes, his work was coached, by more than one person. The final result was created by more than one person. However, comparing it to simply voice acting is inaccurate.
He did not do it by himself. The question at hand is this. Does this type of work qualify as acting? At some point will we be handing out awards to digital actors?
I don't really care, I just wanted to point out he did a hell of a lot more than just voice act.
He did more than just voice act. He also made all the necessary movments etc and then the special effects were placed on top of him. More like digital makeup on an actor than a fully digital creation ala Jar Jar.
We get plenty of connections from hotmail.com smtp servers and it turns out to be nothing but junk mail. The majority of email with from: soandso@hotmail.com is of course forged, but that doesn't discount connections from hotmail.com that are junk mail. It just increases our dislike for anything that says hotmail.
I'm not saying that the Black Penny project is bad at all. I'm personally all for research projects that have a goal of limiting or eliminating unsolicited emails. I think that when the monetary aspect is explored that will be the only avenue followed with any diligence. That's unfortunate.
Your examples are valid. I don't doubt that the possiblity of those things happening are possible, but in my case I've done the best I can to eliminate them from happening. The majority of my friends are either extremly technically savvy or not at all. This means that I'll probably be getting email from personal domains, or thier ISP domains. Most of these people don't use the big name ISPs simply because they don't like the inflexibility that goes with them. My non savvy friends just pick up the phone. In fact I recently got in touch with a friend that had left to join the military and was just now back home. We hadn't spoken but once in almost 4 years. He got ahold of me by getting my phone number from my sister in law who he happened to run into in one of his classes. When I talked to him he said he had planned on stopping by my parents house to get my info that way. With email it is highly unlikely that anyone I haven't talked to in a long time would email me simply because they probably don't know how or have that information. It's much easier to get a phone number.
Then we have family. I set my parents up with cable because they like having both of thier computers hooked up to the Internet and were tired of the slow speeds they got with dialup. Then they got tired of the spam that went along with thier @home email address (now charter). So I set them up thier own domain. They don't give thier email addresses out to anyone but family and friends. So, I have little to no chance of getting any mail from any of the above mentioned sources. I may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater when and if I get a legitimate message from those sources, but frankly, the chances of that are so slim at this point that I don't mind.
This probably doesn't work for most people for the reasons you stated. For me it is an acceptable solution with extremly low potential for error.
I filter enough spam into my junkmail folder as it is. I don't need some federal email address to go along with it that spammers will know is real and that I feel obligated to check because that is the address the government will send mail messages to. I also don't feel like paying additional taxes to have a government supported email system that will be solely used for spam.
I didn't imply that everyone should do as I do, but based on my mail statistics I feel completly happy disregarding all mail from msn, aol, yahoo, hotmail, and a few other free mailers. I have gotten zero valid mail from any of those sources in at least that last 18 months (that's how long it's been since I completly archived my mail messages).
I wouldn't accept a job from an employer that used hotmail for email, and I would never apply for a job using hotmail. Hence those arguments don't apply to me. At my office there have been no valid emails from hotmail and we have considered blocking all smtp requests from thier servers due to the amount of spam originating there. You certainly don't have to agree with me, but unless you have a better argument I would still not mind completly ignoring all mail from those domains.
A great many people are already leaving thier local carriers and thier bloated fees. More and more people are using only a cell phone to communicate with other people. I would do the same thing, but I had to have a telephone line installed before I could have my SDSL line installed.