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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

#241

Post by javajosh »

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.)

Worth noting that we make things illegal when we feel they should be illegal, and for no other reason. In a democracy the feeling turns to a vote which turns to legislation. In this case, we would pass a law making executives personally criminally liable for anti-competative, anti-consumer behavior like this. I do not think it would run afoul of the Constitution, either.

I think we should pass the law and try it out, see how it feels.

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

#242

Post by PopePompus »

scarface74 wrote: post #199
PopePompus wrote: post #133

Has there ever been another company that declined as much from its glory days as HP? During the second half of the 20th century HP was a fabled brand. They made beautiful equipment for which there was often no comparable quality alternative in the world. The pocket calculators they built in the 1980s are still sought-after, not just as collectables but also as daily drivers. They built computers during that era, but…

> They built computers during that era, but they we never a "player" in that industry. HP was definitely a player in the PC industry and has been the number one manufacturer at different times.. https://statisticsanddata.org/data/best-selling-computer-bra...

Yes, but I would claim that was when they started going to pot. LONG before the PC era, HP made its own line of computers, which were seldom seen outside of labs, and even labs were much more apt to have a PDP-8 or PDP-11. Their move into commodity computers and peripherals moved them from a situation where they were building the highest quality products available, into one where they had no "moat". After all, who would buy a spectacularly well built PC early in the PC era? After two years you would have wanted to throw it out regardless of how solidly it was built, because back then PCs doubled in performance nearly every year.

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

#243

Post by rocqua »

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.)

The argument isn't. "This is illegal so the CEO should be jailed". Instead the argument is "This should be made illegal so the threat of jail ensures CEOs keep this from happening."

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

#244

Post by WalterBright »

jorvi wrote: post #146
crazygringo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporate fines just end up being passed on to workers 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. If the company could get away with paying workers less or decreasing its workforce in order to boost profitability, it already would have. It's no…

Pretty much. Yesterday I wanted to grab some Fanta for in the park. A 0.33L can would’ve been too little, but a 1L bottle too much, and a 1.5L bottle far too much. 0.50L was the perfect size. The pricing? 0.33L - €0.66 (€2.00 per L) 0.50L - €1.48 (€2.96 per L) 1.00L - €1.93 (€1.93 per L) 1.50L - €2.09 (€1.39 per L) Initially this made me angry, as it is very clear they figured out that the 0.5L bottle is the most con…

> modern companies will always try to give you the least amount of value for the highest price the market will bear

Modern consumers will always try to pay as little as possible for the highest amount of value they can.

The proper term for this is The Law of Supply and Demand. It's how markets work.

BTW, your anecdote illustrates why making the effort to learn some math while in grade school is worthwhile.

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

#245

Post by lazide »

scarface_74 wrote: post #233
lazide wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some of their software started to get pushy, and their toner cartridges started to ‘be empty’ too early - with some new printers also having ‘trial’ toners with almost no toner in them.

Mellow compared to the alternatives.

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

#246

Post by makeitdouble »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #35

Did you know Brother makes really good printers that are inexpensive and live a long, happy, life? And their drivers aren't user hostile? This is one of those really good "vote with your wallets" situations.

> This is one of those really good "vote with your wallets" situations.

This is a really good situation for actual voting, like actual political action to have regulation, instead of pretend voting.

HP probably doesn't give a damn about the HN crowd, it won't affect their business line in the little, so there's no signaling here.

And assuming Brother gets enough of a loyal following, they can now (probably already are) jack the prices and push the envelope of what's acceptable as business practices, until you'll have to start looking around again at who's left to let you escape predatory practices.

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

#248

Post by codedokode »

Xeoncross wrote: post #187
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…

Punishment should fit the crime. We don't over-punish people to force them to think differently, that has always led to dark periods in history. There are plenty of low-friction ways consumers could be reimbursed plus the cost of lost time or energy spent on a now 'broken' printer if we wanted to solve this in a fair way.

But in America people are overpunished. I often read titles like "he faces up to 100 years in a prison" when in reality it is just a poor Russian guy who didn't murder or hurt anyone, just collected credit card numbers and sold it to other guys. 100 years just for stealing a bit of money? That's draconian laws.

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

#250

Post by frankfrankfrank »

kerkeslager wrote: post #234
crazygringo wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]

I had to double check and you were not responding to me, but yes, it was in fact you who was passive aggressive rude and underhanded with your snide “surely I don’t have to”, conceited, pretentious, snarky response. If you’re going to accuse others of being rude, you should start. This is not reddit. Are you lost? Pretentious pomp should best be left at the door anywhere outside of the reddit quarantine of awful humans.
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