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Demon-Haunted World

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Re: Demon-Haunted World

#81

Post by screature2 »

zackmorris wrote: post #52

Startup idea: Form a company that explores new markets in legal liabilities. It could bring lawsuits with little risk where the payoff could be billions of dollars. Off the top of my head: * Research whether channels were engineered into smartphones to allow water to leak in (since they have no moving parts and should self-evidently be watertight). * Find the planned-obsolescence parts in things like car doors that w…

I believe that patent trolls do this for IP.

I think there's always a danger of having this type of litigation be abused (in this case I'm also thinking of drive-by litigation around the Disabilities Act etc.)

edit aww spitfire beat me to the patent troll punch.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#82

Post by russdill »

ghostly_s wrote: post #71
kbenson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot a wiggle room in saying that your ink is almost out. The simple defense is that they don't want people to have wasted prints, which might happen if the ink for one color actually runs out, so they notify a little earlier. That "little earlier" is vague and relative, giving a lot of defensible ground for a lawyer to work with if it comes to that. Stating you are selling a certain amount of something and…

Right. Putting a different amount of ink in the package than is indicated on the label would be out-and-out fraud, and easily detected. This route operates firmly within a legal grey area. Plus, increasing the actual volume of product you sell without relying on a commensurate increase in demand is basically printing (heh) money as far as corporate returns are concerned.

If 95% of cartridges with 20ml of ink will only allow 18ml to be consumed, is the 20ml an honest figure?

Related to the above, and possibly specifically because of the above, I've noticed that HP doesn't document ink quantity in cartridges, only approximate cartridge yield in pages.

Oh, and the other thing that drives me batty. Their XL high yield cartridges are sold with "Get up to 2x the pages", but from page count it's clear that it contains 1.5x the amount of ink. So ya, you could get 2x the pages, but only if your pages use less ink. There's a disclaimer, but the link is broken.

http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-02-cyan-original-ink-cartri... http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-02xl-high-yield-cyan-origin...

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#83

Post by adrianratnapala »

nradov wrote: post #54
captaincrowbar wrote: post #14

Doctorow mentions the cases where a printer company has made their software lie about how much ink was left in a cartridge to make consumers replace them more often. I always wondered why a manufacturer would want to do that. I mean, I understand the motive of making consumers buy ink more often, but from the manufacturer's point of view, why would they want to throw perfectly good ink away? Colour ink isn't as expen…

As a consumer I don't care how much ink is left or wasted. All that matters is the price per page. You can find those prices in any good printer review. https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373165,00.asp

This will not work if the thing lies based on the age of the cartridge as it will mean the price per page is much more expensive for people use the printer less.

In fact your attitude will probably systematically get you ripped off if you are an ordinary consumer. Since the price-per-page calculation in the review probably comes from an assumption that at the cartridge gets fully used, and the test was probably under a highish workload.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#84

Post by Zanni »

russdill wrote: post #82
ghostly_s wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Putting a different amount of ink in the package than is indicated on the label would be out-and-out fraud, and easily detected. This route operates firmly within a legal grey area. Plus, increasing the actual volume of product you sell without relying on a commensurate increase in demand is basically printing (heh) money as far as corporate returns are concerned.

If 95% of cartridges with 20ml of ink will only allow 18ml to be consumed, is the 20ml an honest figure? Related to the above, and possibly specifically because of the above, I've noticed that HP doesn't document ink quantity in cartridges, only approximate cartridge yield in pages. Oh, and the other thing that drives me batty. Their XL high yield cartridges are sold with "Get up to 2x the pages", but from page count…

This is one of those ideas that seems obvious at first glance ... and then problematic with more thought. Have you ever gotten 100% of the peanut butter out of a jar? I haven't. Is that fraud? There's a distinction to be made between jars of peanut butter and ink cartridges, but it wouldn't be easy to draw that line. (For an even better example, see Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1 ...)

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#85

Post by mjevans »

brians wrote: post #74
captaincrowbar wrote: post #14

Doctorow mentions the cases where a printer company has made their software lie about how much ink was left in a cartridge to make consumers replace them more often. I always wondered why a manufacturer would want to do that. I mean, I understand the motive of making consumers buy ink more often, but from the manufacturer's point of view, why would they want to throw perfectly good ink away? Colour ink isn't as expen…

Sensors are expensive. Counters are cheap. Put in ink by weight. Assume pages at 60th percentile use of each color. Set counter. At zero, whine for more ink.

Counters are cheep; they /could/ count the actual requested ink coverage (in actual volume of ink product) across the lifetime of a cartridge.

That would at least give a better estimate and you'd only need to update the batch counter a couple min after a print job (just in case there's another one).

That would allow for a great reduction in programmable memory write cycles. Careful programming would also allow the use of a ring buffer that 'loops' with an erase the ROM page to vastly reduce the write count per cell.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#86

Post by extrapickles »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

This is what I think about at the pump. More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky. If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced. If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasol…

I think they are using the receipt prompt to hide how long credit card authentication is taking.

They can't easily cheat on prices as usually there are large signs displaying the current price. They can't easily be cheating on amount dispensed, as the pumps are regularly checked by the local Weights and Measures Department (doesn't rule out a VW like cheat though).

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#88

Post by throwawaymaroon »

The solution is to gruesomely and conspicuously 'kill' the corporations that cheat. Volkswagen should be disbanded, everyone who held shares in it should see them evaporate into nothingness, and no misbehavior of these not-people should be tolerated.

We'll get there. Or we'll be doomed to servitude. One or the other.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#89

Post by keville »

anyfoo wrote: post #59
zackmorris wrote: post #52

Startup idea: Form a company that explores new markets in legal liabilities. It could bring lawsuits with little risk where the payoff could be billions of dollars. Off the top of my head: * Research whether channels were engineered into smartphones to allow water to leak in (since they have no moving parts and should self-evidently be watertight). * Find the planned-obsolescence parts in things like car doors that w…

Minor nitpick: Speakers and microphones are moving parts. The speaker has even been used to expel water.

Not a minor nitpick at all. Physical buttons are also moving parts.
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