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HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#231

Post by bluescrn »

mcny wrote: post #12

The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this. No measure less than prison for the CEO and all board members is enough to curtail this because it just becomes the cost of doing business. No, you can’t say it wasn’t your decision. If you want to not be held accountable for the work your employees, contractors, and agents do on your behalf, you should have to prove they acted against your express wr…

Prison is excessive.

But how about some sort of environmental levy on any device prematurely 'bricked', or disposed of before reaching a certain lifespan.

Including those bricked by server shutdowns, or by the inevitable failure of non-replaceable batteries. Perhaps even those designed to be somewhat fragile but not economically repairable - thinking of all the phones and tablets discarded due to cracked screens.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#232

Post by scarface_74 »

einpoklum wrote: post #224
scarface74 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes that in 2023, other operating systems still need separate drivers for printers. I just look for AirPrint compatible printers and they work seamless from my Mac, iPhone and iPad. I pulled an old 2010 iPad out a couple of years ago and it could print to a brand new printer.

> I just look for AirPrint compatible printers A custom, single-vendor protocol? Hmm. Is it at least license-free and patent-free? ... I doubt it.

You mean like Postscript?

No there is no license fee.

This is just like everything else on modern operating system. Apple defines a protocol for printers and if you follow that protocol, Apple guarantees compatibility and the user doesn’t have to worry about printer drivers and the manufacturer doesn’t have to worry about creating a new printer driver when a new operating system is released.

When a Windows user updates to a new OS, they have to often go find a new driver. I connect my Mac or iOS device to my WiFI network and it automatically found all of my of my AirPrint compatible printers.

As a vendor, if I support AirPrint, my addressable market is anyone who has bought an iOS device since 2010 or a Mac since 2012.

That’s a much better system than the malware that comes with most Windows printers.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#233

Post by scarface_74 »

lazide wrote: post #221
scarface74 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to go to extraordinary and extreme measures to break out of the basic choices that you are offered for which the profits all go to the same group of people In this case we are talking about printers. There are literally dozens of printer makers.

Personally I just buy Brother now, though they are starting to do some of the tricks. Least evil option?

What is Brother doing now? I haven’t heard that with Brother printers and I had one for years.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#234

Post by kerkeslager »

crazygringo wrote: post #220
kerkeslager wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's not up to execs, execs don't control the share price, no matter how much they wish they could. The market does. The market sees the fine, it adjusts the market cap, done. Not directly, but surely I don't need to explain to you what effect cutting costs typically has on share price? > Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-stock corporations, that shareholders get the…

> surely I don't need to explain to you what effect laying off a bunch of workers might have on share price? Surely you do, because sometimes the stock goes up if the workers weren't needed in the first place, sometimes it goes down because it shows the company is flailing, and sometimes it does nothing because it's business as usual. You're operating under an illusion that execs have control over how the market will…

[flagged]

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#235

Post by wdr1 »

mcny wrote: post #12

The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this. No measure less than prison for the CEO and all board members is enough to curtail this because it just becomes the cost of doing business. No, you can’t say it wasn’t your decision. If you want to not be held accountable for the work your employees, contractors, and agents do on your behalf, you should have to prove they acted against your express wr…

> The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this.

I'm not sure if it's hyperbole or not. If it's not, what law was broken?

(Honest question. I'm not a fan of this, but I was curious if it's actually illegal.)

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#236

Post by clnq »

wdr1 wrote: post #235
mcny wrote: post #12

The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this. No measure less than prison for the CEO and all board members is enough to curtail this because it just becomes the cost of doing business. No, you can’t say it wasn’t your decision. If you want to not be held accountable for the work your employees, contractors, and agents do on your behalf, you should have to prove they acted against your express wr…

> The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this. I'm not sure if it's hyperbole or not. If it's not, what law was broken? (Honest question. I'm not a fan of this, but I was curious if it's actually illegal.)

Maybe none. Everything was done above board, capitalism (growing capital as a core value) worked as intended.

It was immoral and unethical but those are lesser concerns than maximising return on capital invested. Possibly, no law was clearly broken.

We need to outsource some of our lawmaking to ethics boards/commissions if we want to keep capitalism. Otherwise, every other company is now looking to defraud its customers and that’s the only way an endless desire for capital growth (exponential growth expectations from investors) goes.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#237

Post by htss2013 »

crazygringo wrote: post #198
kerkeslager wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No they don't, they get passed on to shareholders. The market cap of the company decreases by the amount of the fine (plus any predicted future effect of the lost money) and the stock price goes down to reflect that. Ehh, if they have to, but execs are going to do their very best not to pass on costs to shareholders. Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome? Are you arguing that we…

> but execs are going to do their very best not to pass on costs to shareholders. But it's not up to execs, execs don't control the share price, no matter how much they wish they could. The market does. The market sees the fine, it adjusts the market cap, done. > Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome? Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-sto…

Why would you assume the market efficiently adjusts for things like fines? Have you seen the stock market lately? There is at best a loose correlation between business reality and stock prices.

Why would there be a 1 to 1 relationship between the price of stocks and reality, when most investing is blind passive investing that ignores reality by design?

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#239

Post by pythonguython »

pessimizer wrote: post #170
crazygringo wrote: post #69

I just want to be clear, because this headline is borderline clickbait. HP is not bricking the printers. The printers will continue to work if you put the HP cartridges back in. I'm not condoning HP at all , not in a million years. But the verb "disable" carries connotations of permanence, so it seems like a disingenuous word choice at best, if it's not outright clickbait. Just so people aren't confused here.

> But the verb "disable" carries connotations of permanence No it doesn't. I can disable the safety catch or disable the alarm just fine without breaking them.

Before reading the article, I interpreted the headline to mean a permanent disabling. Like disabling a tank. Or a disabled person. Merriam-Webster may agree with you, but I felt the wording was misleading

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#240

Post by WalterBright »

mcny wrote: post #157
crazygringo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's not how it works, it isn't both. Yes HP is laying off employees just like pretty much every other large tech company right now. Which shows you it has nothing to do with fines, and rather everything to do with industry-wide overexpansion during COVID and high interest rates now.

> Because that's not how it works Exactly! I don’t know how to deal with people who talk about the economy in terms of a perfect competition free market where all participants have full knowledge and are all equal in terms of power. If a physicist talked in terms of zero friction or spherical cows, we would laugh them off and never listen to them again. And yet people continue to talk about the economy with these ass…

I don't know where the requirement of full knowledge became part of the definition of a free market.

Because it isn't true.

Another word for lack of knowledge is "risk".

The amount of risk is factored into the price of everything you buy and sell. For example, a name brand item sells for a higher price than a generic item because the name brand carries with it less risk for the buyer.

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