4 ms·

In the 1990s HP was a great brand. Nowadays it's a nightmare. My neighbor asked me to troubleshoot one. Obviously the whole printer cannot be used without WiFi

In the 1990s HP was a great brand. Nowadays it's a nightmare. My neighbor asked me to troubleshoot one. Obviously the whole printer cannot be used without WiFi and a connection to HP cloud nonsense. Only that the cloud and Windows driver could not agree whether the printer had been set up or not. And the neighbor could not remember their HP account. It took me 2 hours to figure out how to do a factory reset. 1990 a printer was a peripheral and if you had a driver it worked. Today it's a spyware, ink-selling nonsense.

davisr 3y ago
This underscores why libre software is so important: if you don't control the software running on your devices, then somebody else does. One day, that somebody /will/ work against your interests. Don't let that happen. Apply the (A)GPL and put an end to the bullshit.
- jamiek88 3y ago
  Didn’t the whole GNU think come about because RMS was pissed off at the locked down printer? Or is that urban legend?
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    It’s real. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
wolverine876 3y ago
Buy their corporate line of printers, which work as you expect (at least the ones I've seen).
cyberax 3y ago
> 1990 a printer was a peripheral and if you had a driver it worked. LOL no. Printing and scanning have ALWAYS been terrible. A fortune cookie somewhere: "GNU is a printer driver gone horribly wrong". I have a theory that printer drivers are somehow produced by aliens, who are hellbent on destroying the Earth's infrastructure.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  There was a brief golden age where it wasn't so bad, banded on both sides by dark ages. Some time in the 90s. Trying to remember the last time you could get away with just printing in blue if the black ran out.
  - ben_bai 3y ago
    Or printers that would accept refilled cartridges, good times.
- ddingus 3y ago
  My favorite machines were the Tektronix / Xerox printers. Solid ink, amazing prints. No driver needed. If a person wanted to, they could ftp a postscript file to the printer. The machines took an anon connection. From there, simply using the put command resulted in pages coming out of the printer. How a postscript, or encapsulated postscript file was up to the user. Handwritten files to print fractals were fun too. "Why is the printer taking so long?", lol
orangepurple 3y ago
Proprietary printer drivers directly contributed to the open source revolution. Richard Stallman started his journey of free and open source software development because he got triggered by proprietary drivers used by his laser printer https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  Not just his, it was shared between people on the time-sharing system in the MIT AI lab. The change he wanted to make, that he'd made to the prior printer, was to shoot off a message to anyone with jobs in the print queue when the printer jammed because that was the quickest way to get it fixed. I'm amazed xerox didn't think of this usecase themselves, unless they expected the printer to be attended all the time. In hindsight, it's good that they didn't.
freetanga 3y ago
I still remember moving from raw printing over LPT to USB+drivers, and feeling it was a step back. How naive I was...

davisr 3y ago

This underscores why libre software is so important: if you don't control the software running on your devices, then somebody else does. One day, that somebody /will/ work against your interests. Don't let that happen. Apply the (A)GPL and put an end to the bullshit.

jamiek88 3y ago
Didn’t the whole GNU think come about because RMS was pissed off at the locked down printer? Or is that urban legend?
- kstrauser 3y ago
  It’s real. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt

wolverine876 3y ago

Buy their corporate line of printers, which work as you expect (at least the ones I've seen).

cyberax 3y ago

> 1990 a printer was a peripheral and if you had a driver it worked. LOL no. Printing and scanning have ALWAYS been terrible. A fortune cookie somewhere: "GNU is a printer driver gone horribly wrong". I have a theory that printer drivers are somehow produced by aliens, who are hellbent on destroying the Earth's infrastructure.

Tao3300 3y ago
There was a brief golden age where it wasn't so bad, banded on both sides by dark ages. Some time in the 90s. Trying to remember the last time you could get away with just printing in blue if the black ran out.
- ben_bai 3y ago
  Or printers that would accept refilled cartridges, good times.
ddingus 3y ago
My favorite machines were the Tektronix / Xerox printers. Solid ink, amazing prints. No driver needed. If a person wanted to, they could ftp a postscript file to the printer. The machines took an anon connection. From there, simply using the put command resulted in pages coming out of the printer. How a postscript, or encapsulated postscript file was up to the user. Handwritten files to print fractals were fun too. "Why is the printer taking so long?", lol

orangepurple 3y ago

Proprietary printer drivers directly contributed to the open source revolution. Richard Stallman started his journey of free and open source software development because he got triggered by proprietary drivers used by his laser printer https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt

extraduder_ire 3y ago
Not just his, it was shared between people on the time-sharing system in the MIT AI lab. The change he wanted to make, that he'd made to the prior printer, was to shoot off a message to anyone with jobs in the print queue when the printer jammed because that was the quickest way to get it fixed. I'm amazed xerox didn't think of this usecase themselves, unless they expected the printer to be attended all the time. In hindsight, it's good that they didn't.

freetanga 3y ago

I still remember moving from raw printing over LPT to USB+drivers, and feeling it was a step back. How naive I was...