Uh-huh. That's what they're saying now. That's the consumer-friendly position at the moment. I think the other printer manufacturers are more then happy to let Lexmark pursue the lawsuit, and take any consumer flack that might come there way, especially if they lose.
But what if Lexmark wins? Probably the first thing they'll do is drop the cost of their printers. They can afford to sell them at cost, if they want to, since they're certain to make their profit back on the ink/cartridge sales. Cheaper printers means more market share, since most consumers won't consider cost per page at purchase time, or won't care if they do. So the other manufacturers see Lexmark selling more printers and making more money. How do they compete? By telling consumers "Our printers may be more expensieve up front, but you'll save money in the long run because you don't have to buy our overpriced toner cartridges!"? That seems like a pretty difficult selling job.
No, they'll compete by doing the same thing Lexmark does. Then once all the printer mfgrs are in the same competitive boat again, the prices will start creeping back up, only this time there won't be any outside toner vendors to keep them in check.
Yeah, that's the ticket... hell, cut the price enough, and you'll start selling toner cartridges to people who don't even own laser printers! Or computers!
Actually, I think the toner cartridge market is pretty fixed. People might print a little less or a little more depending on price per page, but overall cartridge sales aren't going to be affected much unless prices get really unreasonable.
That's the whole point, isn't it? You could buy a cartridge from another company that would fit in your Lexmark printer. They're going to court to try and make it so you can't do that any more.
If they win the court decision, and if it doesn't hurt their market share, other companies will do the same thing. Or maybe they will anyway. Manufacturers might figure that if they all screw the consumer simultaneously, they can all get rich together.
I think you can safely infer that Lexmark must be making a pretty good margin on the cartridges they sell to Best Buy, or they wouldn't be going to such lentgths to prevent others from manufacturing them.
Also, Lexmark sells cartridges directly, so they're protecting their retail margin as well.
I've played Diablo I and II, EOB, Daggerfall, Wizardry, LoL... damn, I've wasted a bunch of time playing computer RPG's. They were fun, but I'm not playing any of them any more. Commercial RPG's are a pretty face over a (relatively) shallow game. Once you've won, the fun is pretty much over. Replay doesn't reveal much new stuff, just more of the same stuff you saw the first time. I don't think any of those games are still on my HD.
I've played a fair amount of Nethack too. It's an ugly face on a pretty deep game. There always seems to be something new to find or do or try or see. Sure, I die a lot. Thats part of the fun, actually. I enjoy Nethack a lot more when I try to have fun playing, instead of having fun trying to win.
I'm on broadband, my PC doesn't even have a modem in it. Even if I dropped a cheap fax modem in, the spam still doesn't *arrive* by phone line, so this law doesn't apply.
Why would the court do that? It's not illegal to ask someone to sign a contract. Sleazy, maybe, but if sleazy was illegal we wouldn't have any lawyers.
Sears probably figured that since the guy wasn't a lawyer, they'd just send the contract along and hope he thought it was just part of the settlement process. Nothing lost if he doesn't sign it.
Yeah, the social engineering exploit seems pretty interesting. Blame it on poorly trained help-desk personnel, and probably some pretty lax guidelines as well. 400 calls in the queue, I'm supposed to average a call every two minutes... screw it, this is probably the right guy.
I imagine you could work the same exploit with a really thick foreign accent. Or a cell phone that kept having mysterious problems.
Since when did "purpose" or "usefulness" have anything to do with a geek project? You want a purpose? I'll give you one!
Okay... here's the scenario. You need a new computer, but your wife/girlfriend/SO says "There's only money in the budget for ONE new computer. We'll just have to share!"
So you just buy this monstrosity, keep her from seeing the price tag, and the two of you can compute away at the same time. It's kind of like a bicycle built for two, only without the doing things together part.
I think the authors problem is pretty obvious. He went from a Powermac to an Ibook. I doubt he has much experience with the Windows/x86 side of things. Look at how he complains about his systems "crashes and screen seizures"... as if that sort of problem was unique to the Mac. I bet if he spent a few months working on a Windows system, he'd have a whole new appreciation for his Mac software.
Apple isn't going anywhere anytime soon. They have a solid core of intensely loyal fans... the kind of folks who would rather cut off both arms and work an abacus with their nose then run Windows. I don't pretend to understand their devotion, but you can't deny that it's there. They'll continue to buy enough systems to keep Apple in business, and create a large enough software market that *someone* will be there to fill.
...from the first three books... "% in liar". Took me and my group forever to figure out that in wasn't some indication of how often the monster told the truth.
There there was the revelation when the first supplement (Greyhawk?) came out that dice could be other then six-sided. Four! Twelve! Twenty, even!
Damn... I haven't rolled a funky-shaped die in almost 20 years. I'm getting all teary-eyed and nostalgic.
If you want to get someone in trouble, there are any number of easier ways to do it. You're gonna sneak a file onto someones hard drive, then at some later time somehow induce a hard drive failure so the drive has to be sent back for warranty service, then notify the authorities anonymously and hope they take you seriously and hope they can find the drive and hope the file is stll there.
And that scenario is enough to keep you from buying a cheap, fast, big new hard drive with a five year warranty.
I dunno, maybe your enemies are much more devious and persistant then mine.
If I read the article correctly, there will be a way for the reciever to return the ticket back to the sender, so that it can be reused. So if it's an EMail you wanted, you can return the ticket and it costs the sender nothing. If it's spam, you cancel the ticket and they wind up paying.
Mailing lists and large sites would just have to keep close tabs on their mail lists, and how is or isn't returning their EMail tickets. They'd probably automatically remove you from their mailing list of you don't return the email ticket.
That might be a problem... coming up with something that would slow down a whizzy new computer sufficiently to retard spammage, but would still not be overwhelming for someone with an old system. My Mother-in-Law is still using a P100 with 32 meg of ram... all she does is EMail and some minor web surfing. I imagine she'd be pretty pissed if it took her 45 minutes to send an EMail.
And what about PDA's and phones and all those other web-enabled devices? I don't know what kind of raw processing power they've got.
First name from one Grandfather. Middle name from the other Grandfather.
The only beef I have with my name is that my first (Jon) sounds fairly common, but is spelled strangely. Which means that every time someone asks my name to put of a form or a list or something, I have to decide whether to give them my name and then quickly spell it before they put it down wrong, or just let them put down J-O-H-N.
Or I'll just give them a different name entirely. I wait for food orders and restaurant tables under my sons name, since it's fairly uncommon.
Actually, rate of pay, education level, and experience have nothing to do with exempt/non-exempt status. All that matters is your job functions, responsibilities, and duties. A double PHD who makes $400 an hour flipping burgers (and has been doing it for 30 years) still gets overtime. A HS dropout making $20 an hour on his first day as VP of production doesn't get overtime IF his job duties are commensurate with his job title. If he's making hiring decisions, setting policies, approving budgets, etc... then no overtime. If he's just flipping burgers, then he gets OT, VP title or not.
You might want to consider a lock for aforementioned storage box. This is not the sort of thing you want the neighbors kid or babysitter poking around in.
They're talking about imbedding ID codes in electronic files being transmitted over the internet, not CD music. Presumably the paranoid can still go out and buy the CD and get a copy of the song without an ID code.
I can't say anything about audio recordings, but I can attest that at least one major computer retailer let customers return opened software at least until 1996. We even kept a shrink-wrap machine in the back so that we could repackage the stuff and put it back on the shelf.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh-huh. That's what they're saying now. That's the consumer-friendly position at the moment. I think the other printer manufacturers are more then happy to let Lexmark pursue the lawsuit, and take any consumer flack that might come there way, especially if they lose.
But what if Lexmark wins? Probably the first thing they'll do is drop the cost of their printers. They can afford to sell them at cost, if they want to, since they're certain to make their profit back on the ink/cartridge sales. Cheaper printers means more market share, since most consumers won't consider cost per page at purchase time, or won't care if they do. So the other manufacturers see Lexmark selling more printers and making more money. How do they compete? By telling consumers "Our printers may be more expensieve up front, but you'll save money in the long run because you don't have to buy our overpriced toner cartridges!"? That seems like a pretty difficult selling job.
No, they'll compete by doing the same thing Lexmark does. Then once all the printer mfgrs are in the same competitive boat again, the prices will start creeping back up, only this time there won't be any outside toner vendors to keep them in check.
Yeah, that's the ticket... hell, cut the price enough, and you'll start selling toner cartridges to people who don't even own laser printers! Or computers!
Actually, I think the toner cartridge market is pretty fixed. People might print a little less or a little more depending on price per page, but overall cartridge sales aren't going to be affected much unless prices get really unreasonable.
That's the whole point, isn't it? You could buy a cartridge from another company that would fit in your Lexmark printer. They're going to court to try and make it so you can't do that any more.
If they win the court decision, and if it doesn't hurt their market share, other companies will do the same thing. Or maybe they will anyway. Manufacturers might figure that if they all screw the consumer simultaneously, they can all get rich together.
I think you can safely infer that Lexmark must be making a pretty good margin on the cartridges they sell to Best Buy, or they wouldn't be going to such lentgths to prevent others from manufacturing them.
Also, Lexmark sells cartridges directly, so they're protecting their retail margin as well.
I've played Diablo I and II, EOB, Daggerfall, Wizardry, LoL... damn, I've wasted a bunch of time playing computer RPG's. They were fun, but I'm not playing any of them any more. Commercial RPG's are a pretty face over a (relatively) shallow game. Once you've won, the fun is pretty much over. Replay doesn't reveal much new stuff, just more of the same stuff you saw the first time. I don't think any of those games are still on my HD.
I've played a fair amount of Nethack too. It's an ugly face on a pretty deep game. There always seems to be something new to find or do or try or see. Sure, I die a lot. Thats part of the fun, actually. I enjoy Nethack a lot more when I try to have fun playing, instead of having fun trying to win.
'bout freaking time. Have you tried playing nethack with a framerate below 900? Sux0rs. I kept getting killed over and over.
Those are in order of increasing importance, I'm presuming.
Or temporal order. Baby in 9 months, house in 42 days, job in 5 days.. but nethack is NOW!
He also says he doesn't have a website... that's not on his website, though.
Actually, I think the Mark who brought the case to court and the Mark Welch whose website has the broadcase fax law info are two different people.
I'm on broadband, my PC doesn't even have a modem in it. Even if I dropped a cheap fax modem in, the spam still doesn't *arrive* by phone line, so this law doesn't apply.
Why would the court do that? It's not illegal to ask someone to sign a contract. Sleazy, maybe, but if sleazy was illegal we wouldn't have any lawyers.
Sears probably figured that since the guy wasn't a lawyer, they'd just send the contract along and hope he thought it was just part of the settlement process. Nothing lost if he doesn't sign it.
Yeah, the social engineering exploit seems pretty interesting. Blame it on poorly trained help-desk personnel, and probably some pretty lax guidelines as well. 400 calls in the queue, I'm supposed to average a call every two minutes... screw it, this is probably the right guy.
I imagine you could work the same exploit with a really thick foreign accent. Or a cell phone that kept having mysterious problems.
Since when did "purpose" or "usefulness" have anything to do with a geek project? You want a purpose? I'll give you one!
Okay... here's the scenario. You need a new computer, but your wife/girlfriend/SO says "There's only money in the budget for ONE new computer. We'll just have to share!"
So you just buy this monstrosity, keep her from seeing the price tag, and the two of you can compute away at the same time. It's kind of like a bicycle built for two, only without the doing things together part.
I think the authors problem is pretty obvious. He went from a Powermac to an Ibook. I doubt he has much experience with the Windows/x86 side of things. Look at how he complains about his systems "crashes and screen seizures"... as if that sort of problem was unique to the Mac. I bet if he spent a few months working on a Windows system, he'd have a whole new appreciation for his Mac software.
Apple isn't going anywhere anytime soon. They have a solid core of intensely loyal fans... the kind of folks who would rather cut off both arms and work an abacus with their nose then run Windows. I don't pretend to understand their devotion, but you can't deny that it's there. They'll continue to buy enough systems to keep Apple in business, and create a large enough software market that *someone* will be there to fill.
...from the first three books... "% in liar". Took me and my group forever to figure out that in wasn't some indication of how often the monster told the truth.
There there was the revelation when the first supplement (Greyhawk?) came out that dice could be other then six-sided. Four! Twelve! Twenty, even!
Damn... I haven't rolled a funky-shaped die in almost 20 years. I'm getting all teary-eyed and nostalgic.
-
Okay, you're paranoid. Very, very paranoid.
If you want to get someone in trouble, there are any number of easier ways to do it. You're gonna sneak a file onto someones hard drive, then at some later time somehow induce a hard drive failure so the drive has to be sent back for warranty service, then notify the authorities anonymously and hope they take you seriously and hope they can find the drive and hope the file is stll there.
And that scenario is enough to keep you from buying a cheap, fast, big new hard drive with a five year warranty.
I dunno, maybe your enemies are much more devious and persistant then mine.
Duke Nukem 4ever?
No, wait....
I've got it figured out.. the stories are from different departments. I never realizes Slashdot was such a huge outfit.
If I read the article correctly, there will be a way for the reciever to return the ticket back to the sender, so that it can be reused. So if it's an EMail you wanted, you can return the ticket and it costs the sender nothing. If it's spam, you cancel the ticket and they wind up paying.
Mailing lists and large sites would just have to keep close tabs on their mail lists, and how is or isn't returning their EMail tickets. They'd probably automatically remove you from their mailing list of you don't return the email ticket.
That might be a problem... coming up with something that would slow down a whizzy new computer sufficiently to retard spammage, but would still not be overwhelming for someone with an old system. My Mother-in-Law is still using a P100 with 32 meg of ram... all she does is EMail and some minor web surfing. I imagine she'd be pretty pissed if it took her 45 minutes to send an EMail.
And what about PDA's and phones and all those other web-enabled devices? I don't know what kind of raw processing power they've got.
First name from one Grandfather. Middle name from the other Grandfather.
The only beef I have with my name is that my first (Jon) sounds fairly common, but is spelled strangely. Which means that every time someone asks my name to put of a form or a list or something, I have to decide whether to give them my name and then quickly spell it before they put it down wrong, or just let them put down J-O-H-N.
Or I'll just give them a different name entirely. I wait for food orders and restaurant tables under my sons name, since it's fairly uncommon.
I don't actually know of any positions like that. It was an example, and I was exaggerating things to make my point.
Actually, rate of pay, education level, and experience have nothing to do with exempt/non-exempt status. All that matters is your job functions, responsibilities, and duties. A double PHD who makes $400 an hour flipping burgers (and has been doing it for 30 years) still gets overtime. A HS dropout making $20 an hour on his first day as VP of production doesn't get overtime IF his job duties are commensurate with his job title. If he's making hiring decisions, setting policies, approving budgets, etc... then no overtime. If he's just flipping burgers, then he gets OT, VP title or not.
You might want to consider a lock for aforementioned storage box. This is not the sort of thing you want the neighbors kid or babysitter poking around in.
They're talking about imbedding ID codes in electronic files being transmitted over the internet, not CD music. Presumably the paranoid can still go out and buy the CD and get a copy of the song without an ID code.
I can't say anything about audio recordings, but I can attest that at least one major computer retailer let customers return opened software at least until 1996. We even kept a shrink-wrap machine in the back so that we could repackage the stuff and put it back on the shelf.