3 ms·

How is this not something akin to an anti-trust issue? Fun story. I had a printer for a while, and then I just didn't after university. I don't print anything

How is this not something akin to an anti-trust issue? Fun story. I had a printer for a while, and then I just didn't after university. I don't print anything anymore. To no loss at all. It's either on my phone or I write things with a pen.

netflixandkill 6y ago
I'm sure some clever executive figured out they'd increase revenue enough before they were hit by a regulator or lawsuit to more than cover the subsequent apologies and announcement of their new firmware that loves free markets and customers SO MUCH that it accepts other cartridges again (but HP can't guarantee quality! So sad!). I generally print things on the order of single digit pages per year, but some people do things like print PDFs to read them or still live in fax land, etc. E-ink is making some inroads, but a fair portion of the population does like text on something physical and highlightable and pen-markable.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  > I'm sure some clever executive figured out they'd increase revenue enough before they were hit by a regulator or lawsuit It's a pretty easy calculation, because they're not going to be forced to change anything. The race is against publicity and a loss of customer goodwill, not regulation. Who regulates businesses anymore for anything other than being owned by a Chinese person?
k_ 6y ago
> I don't print anything anymore. I wish =/ Most of the documents I have to print are documents to be printed, signed, and scanned again (or sent by mail - not email). Some (including my employer) still don't accept anything else than signature on real paper somehow.. Luckily I have a "re-purpose device" at home (a young child with a huge appetite for drawings), but I'd still like to avoid this waste.
- arusahni 6y ago
  Some PDF viewers (e.g., Preview, Okular) let you place images of your signature on a document and then export the "signed" version. I haven't had issues with getting these documents accepted.
  - remus 6y ago
    I've got a tablet so can actually sign PDFs with a proper signature. None the less, a company the other day insisted that I print out a form, sign it, take a picture of the signed form and send them that. It was almost enough to bin them off, but unfortunately I was deep enough in the bureaucracy by that point that sucking it up was less hassle.
    - ProZsolt 6y ago
      I just use this oneliner to "scan" it: convert -density 130 input.pdf -rotate 0.33 -attenuate 0.15 +noise Multiplicative -colorspace Gray output.pdf
- himinlomax 6y ago
  Last time I was asked to do this, I imported the PDF in Gimp, rotated the picture slightly, pasted my signature and converted to 1 bit. Looked enough like a scan.
- LeonM 6y ago
  Fun fact: on the receiving end they usually have complex systems in place to scan and process those documents back into digital format. And the people working with it pay good money to OCR those scanned documents to make the whole system usable. This is sometimes referred to as the 'five monkeys with a ladder' paradigm [0] (not to be confused with the '5 monkey experiment'). It basically comes down to: we must use paper format, because we have always done it that way, though nobody knows why we still do it. Having worked on a paperless accounting startup, I though that paper was still used for legal reasons. It turns out that (for most countries) this is mostly a misunderstanding. Digital documents are just as valid (if not higher level of assurance) as its paper counterparts. Many businesses still insist on the 'signature with a blue ink pen' thing, but again that is due to the 5 monkeys with a ladder problem. [0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-ex...
elmo2you 6y ago
> How is this not something akin to an anti-trust issue? It probably (if not certainly) is .. but with authorities systematically failing their duties on that subject, and for a long time too, don't expect much (if anything) to come from that. The sad (and in my personal opinion: criminal) reality is that the (official) meaning/interpretation of anti-trust has been systemically eroded over the years. No doubt as a consequence of relentless lobbying (corruption?), to the point it has become pretty much a total farce. One does not have to look far to find more examples of companies getting away with what should be punished as anti-trust behavior. HP is hardly an exception and don't expect anything to change. If anything, it might just get worse. By now, pretty much the whole system is designed to resist any change that isn't in favor of those who "invest" (lobby) into it. Pragmatically speaking, the only mitigation here is to avoid printing as much as possible. It won't do much, and certainly won't change a thing .. but at least this criminal enterprise will not get a penny of mine.
- koolba 6y ago
  > It probably (if not certainly) is .. but with authorities systematically failing their duties on that subject, and for a long time too, don't expect much (if anything) to come from that. It's likely not an anti-trust issue. No single manufacturer has anything close to a monopoly and there's no legal duty to make it the printers compatible with third party modules. At best, some consumer might argue a case that there was an expectation of third party compatibility when they purchased their printers. Even that would be difficult to prove though. Vote with your wallet and buy something that will work with third party ink. Go a step further and avoid all HP products. That's the only way this will be solved.
  - elmo2you 6y ago
    > It's likely not an anti-trust issue. No single manufacturer has anything close to a monopoly .. Funny .. It's exactly this kind of response that illustrates what I meant with the erosion of the meaning of anti-trust. You appear to hold a rather narrow definition of what anti-trust means. One that is not surprisingly rather convenient for a lot of companies these days, and as mentioned a result of systemic lobbying efforts (for decades). Feel free to know little about history, and go make those same mistakes all over again. Just don't even dare complain, when you end up regretting it. > ... and there's no legal duty to make it the printers compatible with third party modules. I never argued there is such a thing. There is a legal duty to prosecute anti-trust violations though. > Vote with your wallet and buy something that will work with third party ink. Go a step further and avoid all HP products. That's the only way this will be solved. Sadly, that won't solve it either (history has a way of proving that point). But it is indeed the only thing you can really do. Still, as an argument it is about as valid as saying: "don't go out on the street after dark, if you do not want to get killed". Might be equally true, pragmatically speaking. But totally side-steps that your country has a legal duty to at least try keep you from being murdered for no reason. You know .. because it signed and ratified that pesky little document called the Universal Declaration of Human Right ;-)
nelaboras 6y ago
Try distance learning with your kids... Thanks to corona my printing has gone from 5pages/month to >30/day ;)
anonunivgrad 6y ago
Since this is not an agreement in restraint of trade, just a unilateral action, then antitrust law would only have something to say if HP had a monopoly on printers, which no one can seriously argue.

netflixandkill 6y ago

I'm sure some clever executive figured out they'd increase revenue enough before they were hit by a regulator or lawsuit to more than cover the subsequent apologies and announcement of their new firmware that loves free markets and customers SO MUCH that it accepts other cartridges again (but HP can't guarantee quality! So sad!). I generally print things on the order of single digit pages per year, but some people do things like print PDFs to read them or still live in fax land, etc. E-ink is making some inroads, but a fair portion of the population does like text on something physical and highlightable and pen-markable.

pessimizer 6y ago
> I'm sure some clever executive figured out they'd increase revenue enough before they were hit by a regulator or lawsuit It's a pretty easy calculation, because they're not going to be forced to change anything. The race is against publicity and a loss of customer goodwill, not regulation. Who regulates businesses anymore for anything other than being owned by a Chinese person?

k_ 6y ago

> I don't print anything anymore. I wish =/ Most of the documents I have to print are documents to be printed, signed, and scanned again (or sent by mail - not email). Some (including my employer) still don't accept anything else than signature on real paper somehow.. Luckily I have a "re-purpose device" at home (a young child with a huge appetite for drawings), but I'd still like to avoid this waste.

arusahni 6y ago
Some PDF viewers (e.g., Preview, Okular) let you place images of your signature on a document and then export the "signed" version. I haven't had issues with getting these documents accepted.
- remus 6y ago
  I've got a tablet so can actually sign PDFs with a proper signature. None the less, a company the other day insisted that I print out a form, sign it, take a picture of the signed form and send them that. It was almost enough to bin them off, but unfortunately I was deep enough in the bureaucracy by that point that sucking it up was less hassle.
  - ProZsolt 6y ago
    I just use this oneliner to "scan" it: convert -density 130 input.pdf -rotate 0.33 -attenuate 0.15 +noise Multiplicative -colorspace Gray output.pdf
himinlomax 6y ago
Last time I was asked to do this, I imported the PDF in Gimp, rotated the picture slightly, pasted my signature and converted to 1 bit. Looked enough like a scan.
LeonM 6y ago
Fun fact: on the receiving end they usually have complex systems in place to scan and process those documents back into digital format. And the people working with it pay good money to OCR those scanned documents to make the whole system usable. This is sometimes referred to as the 'five monkeys with a ladder' paradigm [0] (not to be confused with the '5 monkey experiment'). It basically comes down to: we must use paper format, because we have always done it that way, though nobody knows why we still do it. Having worked on a paperless accounting startup, I though that paper was still used for legal reasons. It turns out that (for most countries) this is mostly a misunderstanding. Digital documents are just as valid (if not higher level of assurance) as its paper counterparts. Many businesses still insist on the 'signature with a blue ink pen' thing, but again that is due to the 5 monkeys with a ladder problem. [0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-ex...

elmo2you 6y ago

> How is this not something akin to an anti-trust issue? It probably (if not certainly) is .. but with authorities systematically failing their duties on that subject, and for a long time too, don't expect much (if anything) to come from that. The sad (and in my personal opinion: criminal) reality is that the (official) meaning/interpretation of anti-trust has been systemically eroded over the years. No doubt as a consequence of relentless lobbying (corruption?), to the point it has become pretty much a total farce. One does not have to look far to find more examples of companies getting away with what should be punished as anti-trust behavior. HP is hardly an exception and don't expect anything to change. If anything, it might just get worse. By now, pretty much the whole system is designed to resist any change that isn't in favor of those who "invest" (lobby) into it. Pragmatically speaking, the only mitigation here is to avoid printing as much as possible. It won't do much, and certainly won't change a thing .. but at least this criminal enterprise will not get a penny of mine.

koolba 6y ago
> It probably (if not certainly) is .. but with authorities systematically failing their duties on that subject, and for a long time too, don't expect much (if anything) to come from that. It's likely not an anti-trust issue. No single manufacturer has anything close to a monopoly and there's no legal duty to make it the printers compatible with third party modules. At best, some consumer might argue a case that there was an expectation of third party compatibility when they purchased their printers. Even that would be difficult to prove though. Vote with your wallet and buy something that will work with third party ink. Go a step further and avoid all HP products. That's the only way this will be solved.
- elmo2you 6y ago
  > It's likely not an anti-trust issue. No single manufacturer has anything close to a monopoly .. Funny .. It's exactly this kind of response that illustrates what I meant with the erosion of the meaning of anti-trust. You appear to hold a rather narrow definition of what anti-trust means. One that is not surprisingly rather convenient for a lot of companies these days, and as mentioned a result of systemic lobbying efforts (for decades). Feel free to know little about history, and go make those same mistakes all over again. Just don't even dare complain, when you end up regretting it. > ... and there's no legal duty to make it the printers compatible with third party modules. I never argued there is such a thing. There is a legal duty to prosecute anti-trust violations though. > Vote with your wallet and buy something that will work with third party ink. Go a step further and avoid all HP products. That's the only way this will be solved. Sadly, that won't solve it either (history has a way of proving that point). But it is indeed the only thing you can really do. Still, as an argument it is about as valid as saying: "don't go out on the street after dark, if you do not want to get killed". Might be equally true, pragmatically speaking. But totally side-steps that your country has a legal duty to at least try keep you from being murdered for no reason. You know .. because it signed and ratified that pesky little document called the Universal Declaration of Human Right ;-)

nelaboras 6y ago

Try distance learning with your kids... Thanks to corona my printing has gone from 5pages/month to >30/day ;)

anonunivgrad 6y ago

Since this is not an agreement in restraint of trade, just a unilateral action, then antitrust law would only have something to say if HP had a monopoly on printers, which no one can seriously argue.