This is not difficult to do, once you know how. Of course, it’s not terribly useful, since a) most people don’t read the display on a printer unless an error occurs, or b) you’re only likely to see it once you’ve already sent something to […]
All posts filed under “Cartridges”
Dependence
Karel Donk has some intriguing thoughts on ‘maximising the upside’ of life, by reducing dependence on other people, status and possessions, so that there is less to lose: So one of the important things in life is to be as independent as possible and rely […]
Forcing functions designed to increase product consumption
A few days ago, Tim Quinn of Dangerous Curve posted an interesting observation on the Simple Control in Products page: “This may not be what you had in mind, but I immediately thought of such things as toothpaste pumps that ‘meter’ use to insure the […]
Planned addiction as a method of control: a parasitic lock-in business model
The news that tobacco companies have increased the levels of nicotine in their brands over the last few years – especially those popular with certain groups – made me think further about architectures of control: “The amount of nicotine in most cigarettes rose an average […]
Ed Felten: DRM Wars, and ‘Property Rights Management’
At Freedom to Tinker, Ed Felten has posted a summary of a talk he gave at the Usenix Security Symposium, called “DRM Wars: The Next Generation”. The two installments so far (Part 1, Part 2) trace a possible trend in the (stated) intentions of DRM’s […]
Friend or foe: Battery-authentication ICs?
Via MAKE, an article from Electrical Design News looking at lithium battery authentication chips in products such as phones and laptops, designed to prevent users fitting ‘non-genuine’ batteries. Now, the immediate response of most of us is probably “razor blade model!” or even “stifling democratic […]
Epson messes up my day
My Epson Stylus Photo R1800’s been running low on ink in a couple of cartridges for a few days now. I’ve been putting off ordering them until this weekend. Now I find that when the printer believes a cartridge has reached 0%, it won’t print […]