5 ms·

I wish printing was harder. I have piles of slides filling my desk. Slides on paper, printed by someone else, pages that have been barely read once, their infor

I wish printing was harder. I have piles of slides filling my desk. Slides on paper, printed by someone else, pages that have been barely read once, their information is already outdated and the contents could have been collectively read from a white screen in the meetings. Using Linux since 1995 forced me into paperless thinking, because printing used to be hard. And these days, with all those smartphone, tablet, laptop, ereader etc. screen it should be virtually unnecessary in office environments. But still people just keep on printing everything. I hope there is some terrible fault in CUPS that makes people to think, that trying to print this is not worth the trouble</semisarcasm>

thejosh 12y ago
Technically you could take a photo of it, process it then chuck it into a recycling bin :).
- m_mueller 12y ago
  Doesn't solve the waste though.
nnnnni 12y ago
I know exactly what you're talking about. I have to deal with a lot of the "I have to print email to read it!" mentality at work. We started to track the printing and discovered that a building of approximately 1300 users was printing 100000 pages a month. The worst part is that every user has at least two devices (computer and phone, sometimes tablet) and access to the full Google Apps.
ClashTheBunny 12y ago
It's interesting that this is a problem. I would guess that it's mostly to do with the problem of interaction and eye strain associated with on-screen information. I can interact with most things on a monitor, but math is one of the things that I still need paper or a whiteboard for. I have friends that can't stare at a screen for 16 hours a day like I can, and I assume that's the other problem. Either way, I hate it when somebody comes by and has my email to them printed out and ready to "discuss" and the discussion is just yes or no.
sudowhodoido 12y ago
We use printer accounting to get around this. Everything is billed to the relevant departments at an extortionate rate per sheet. The department has to pay the print bill out of their budget. Printing has nearly stopped to the point that some departments have resigned their printers entirely.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Funny that I have the exactly opposite feeling. I want to print more, but I don't, because CUPS is a kludge, and I don't feel like using Windows at work for the sole purpose of somewhat sane printer handling. Now to answer why and what I would want to print more? Surprisingly, I mostly want to print code. The reason is that computers suck for reading and thinking, and in my specific case, I can't focus on thinking hard in front of a computer screen (it's too easy to turn on HN). When I'm stuck with a hard refactor to do, I like to print out all relevant files, take coloured pens and highlighters and keep drawing and annotating code until everything is clear in my hand. Paper is simply superior in annotating capabilities and high-level view (i.e. spread 20 pages in front of you to see everything). I haven't found any tool yet that would make doing this on computer even comparable. I once asked a very known HN user, who prints out all relevant code every afternoon as a method of planning work for the next day, whether he worries about the amount of paper he uses. The answer I got: "Paper is cheap. Focus is golden." As for ecology side of printing, I used to worry much more about it before. But at some point I realized that I didn't do any math, and from what I can tell, "paperless world" seems to be much more damaging to environment than cutting down trees for paper, and as long as we recycle, paper ain't that bad. But still, I didn't do the math.
- Morgawr 12y ago
  >When I'm stuck with a hard refactor to do, I like to print out all relevant files, take coloured pens and highlighters and keep drawing and annotating code until everything is clear in my hand. Paper is simply superior in annotating capabilities and high-level view (i.e. spread 20 pages in front of you to see everything). I haven't found any tool yet that would make doing this on computer even comparable. I can't agree more. I tried several ways to get a better overview of projects I work on, but ultimately it's all very klutzy and awkward. When you have 30 (or more) files with cross references and you need to get a global understanding of the whole architecture, working with code can be very hard. Even with visual tools like UML diagram or similar IDE features, even when ctrl+clicking offered by various editors to jump to definitions and jump around code, even with ctags and multiple buffers open in vim. I tried working with 4 screens but my eyes have to move all over the place to keep following, I can't easily re-organize my files next to each other to keep relevant portions of code close together (regardless of logical modularity in my implementation). Paper is really the best we have at the moment, maybe a more modern environment in the future will solve this (I recall LightTable promising something similar where you could move around small blocks of functions, during their Kickstarter, however that was never delivered unfortunately), but for the moment we are stuck with paper.
maninalift 12y ago
unmatched </semisarcasm> at (3,123)
- maninalift 12y ago
  Voted down? It's just a quick, weak joke, I don't see the harm.
  - dfc 12y ago
    "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."[1] I imagine that a lot of people also find "quick, weak jokes" to make for boring reading. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
moron4hire 12y ago
To that end, I started insisting people only print things one-sided if they are going to give me something printed. It seems counterintuitive, everybody says "print double-sided to save paper". But the way I see it, that's wasting the WHOLE page, whereas single-sided wastes only half of the page, and I can write notes on the other side. But yeah, it used to be so bad that I had to write a LOT of notes to keep up with it. Now, I just don't bother with offices at all. Nobody can print anything at me.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I agree with this sentiment. I do print code single-side (easier to work with, especially when you want to see all pages at once), and then use the other side for notes and design later. I keep the old printouts as scratch paper.

thejosh 12y ago

Technically you could take a photo of it, process it then chuck it into a recycling bin :).

m_mueller 12y ago
Doesn't solve the waste though.

nnnnni 12y ago

I know exactly what you're talking about. I have to deal with a lot of the "I have to print email to read it!" mentality at work. We started to track the printing and discovered that a building of approximately 1300 users was printing 100000 pages a month. The worst part is that every user has at least two devices (computer and phone, sometimes tablet) and access to the full Google Apps.

ClashTheBunny 12y ago

It's interesting that this is a problem. I would guess that it's mostly to do with the problem of interaction and eye strain associated with on-screen information. I can interact with most things on a monitor, but math is one of the things that I still need paper or a whiteboard for. I have friends that can't stare at a screen for 16 hours a day like I can, and I assume that's the other problem. Either way, I hate it when somebody comes by and has my email to them printed out and ready to "discuss" and the discussion is just yes or no.

sudowhodoido 12y ago

We use printer accounting to get around this. Everything is billed to the relevant departments at an extortionate rate per sheet. The department has to pay the print bill out of their budget. Printing has nearly stopped to the point that some departments have resigned their printers entirely.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Funny that I have the exactly opposite feeling. I want to print more, but I don't, because CUPS is a kludge, and I don't feel like using Windows at work for the sole purpose of somewhat sane printer handling. Now to answer why and what I would want to print more? Surprisingly, I mostly want to print code. The reason is that computers suck for reading and thinking, and in my specific case, I can't focus on thinking hard in front of a computer screen (it's too easy to turn on HN). When I'm stuck with a hard refactor to do, I like to print out all relevant files, take coloured pens and highlighters and keep drawing and annotating code until everything is clear in my hand. Paper is simply superior in annotating capabilities and high-level view (i.e. spread 20 pages in front of you to see everything). I haven't found any tool yet that would make doing this on computer even comparable. I once asked a very known HN user, who prints out all relevant code every afternoon as a method of planning work for the next day, whether he worries about the amount of paper he uses. The answer I got: "Paper is cheap. Focus is golden." As for ecology side of printing, I used to worry much more about it before. But at some point I realized that I didn't do any math, and from what I can tell, "paperless world" seems to be much more damaging to environment than cutting down trees for paper, and as long as we recycle, paper ain't that bad. But still, I didn't do the math.

Morgawr 12y ago
>When I'm stuck with a hard refactor to do, I like to print out all relevant files, take coloured pens and highlighters and keep drawing and annotating code until everything is clear in my hand. Paper is simply superior in annotating capabilities and high-level view (i.e. spread 20 pages in front of you to see everything). I haven't found any tool yet that would make doing this on computer even comparable. I can't agree more. I tried several ways to get a better overview of projects I work on, but ultimately it's all very klutzy and awkward. When you have 30 (or more) files with cross references and you need to get a global understanding of the whole architecture, working with code can be very hard. Even with visual tools like UML diagram or similar IDE features, even when ctrl+clicking offered by various editors to jump to definitions and jump around code, even with ctags and multiple buffers open in vim. I tried working with 4 screens but my eyes have to move all over the place to keep following, I can't easily re-organize my files next to each other to keep relevant portions of code close together (regardless of logical modularity in my implementation). Paper is really the best we have at the moment, maybe a more modern environment in the future will solve this (I recall LightTable promising something similar where you could move around small blocks of functions, during their Kickstarter, however that was never delivered unfortunately), but for the moment we are stuck with paper.

maninalift 12y ago

unmatched </semisarcasm> at (3,123)

maninalift 12y ago
Voted down? It's just a quick, weak joke, I don't see the harm.
- dfc 12y ago
  "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."[1] I imagine that a lot of people also find "quick, weak jokes" to make for boring reading. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

moron4hire 12y ago

To that end, I started insisting people only print things one-sided if they are going to give me something printed. It seems counterintuitive, everybody says "print double-sided to save paper". But the way I see it, that's wasting the WHOLE page, whereas single-sided wastes only half of the page, and I can write notes on the other side. But yeah, it used to be so bad that I had to write a LOT of notes to keep up with it. Now, I just don't bother with offices at all. Nobody can print anything at me.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
I agree with this sentiment. I do print code single-side (easier to work with, especially when you want to see all pages at once), and then use the other side for notes and design later. I keep the old printouts as scratch paper.