Too much time this year has been lost fixing random cups issues for people. Too much damn time!
The kids aren’t alright.
Seriously.
When I was around 8, we had a printer that never seemed to work. One day, I somehow cast a spell that allowed it to print out a couple of colouring book sheets, but I had no idea how.
I couldn’t get it to work again, but my one-time success led my mum to believe that I understood the magicks that power printers, and she became frustrated at me for this. Fun fun fun
I’ve used computers recreationally for 35 years, professionally for 30.
I’ve never owned a printer.
I refuse to support equipment I don’t use.
PC LOAD LETTER.
The paper cartridge (PC) needs to be loaded with letter sized paper.
It’s a command to get the paper cartridge and load letter sized paper in it.
C’mon people.
Richard Stallman literally started the Free Software Foundation over his frustrations with a printer
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
Xerox gave the Artificial Intelligence Lab, where I worked, a laser printer, and this was a really handsome gift, because it was the first time anybody outside Xerox had a laser printer. And, you know, copiers jam, but there’s somebody there to fix them.
Well, we had an idea for how to deal with this problem. Change it so that whenever the printer gets a jam, the machine that runs the printer can […] tell the users who are waiting for printouts go fix the printer.
But at that point, we were completely stymied, because the software that ran that printer was not free software. It had come with the printer, and it was just a binary.
And then I heard that somebody at Carnegie Mellon University had a copy of that software. So I was visiting there later, so I went to his office and I said, “Hi, I’m from MIT. Could I have a copy of the printer source code?” And he said “No, I promised not to give you a copy.” He had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Now, this was my first, direct encounter with a non-disclosure agreement, and it taught me an important lesson – […] non-disclosure agreements have victims. They’re not innocent. […]
(he goes on for a bit, but ultimately describes never accepting any software that requires signing an NDA ever, and then goes on to write his own unix)
And then I heard that somebody at Carnegie Mellon University had a copy of that software. So I was visiting there later, so I went to his office and I said, “Hi, I’m from MIT. Could I have a copy of the printer source code?” And he said “No, I promised not to give you a copy.” He had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
"this is it kids, this is the moment, right here, where all the madness starts… " time traveller viewing the birth of free & open source software
We are complaining about printers now? Outstanding! I can help! I never miss the opportunity to say double-fuck Hewlett Packard/Compaq and anything they’ve ever thought about producing with the heat of a thousand suns. Two shitty orgs that geometrically devolved into quintessential, archetypal enshittification enshrined, the unequalled horrors that are HP printers and drivers.
Are we having stereotypical talk shop about printers?
I though it was an urban legend, but I did buy a used brother and I’m def delighted. Spent less on it than a round of inkjet for my crappy Canon. Guess what, 6 months later and I’m still using the toner that came in it. I’d be in the 2nd round of dried inkjet.
Why, yes. Yes, we are.
My experience mirrors yours; 6 years later, still no issues. Moreover, old used laser Brother’s seem to love shittynonametoner.com cartridges as well.
shitty no-names - they work fine. functional, and if I’d started with them, I doubt I’d ever perecieve a diff, but… for color laser - I find the og brother toner carts are much more vibrant and colors overlay (and therefore mix better). I almost wish I had two brother printers, one with OG expensive brother toner and another for all the print jobs I might want color for but don’t care about fidelity.
We are complaining about printers now?
Sadly, no. We’re complaining about age cohorts.
In the future, kindly refrain from introducing reason to my painstakingly constructed anti-HP tirades. It throws me off stride.
To be fair I can make a 3D printer work more easily and for longer without any maintenance than a regular ass printer. I get that inkjets are actually super complex but bro there are now cases where it is literally easier to make a thing than to print out a picture of that thing.
Guess it’s time for someone to start 3D printing documents with 1 layer high text
Time to start submitting documents as 3D-printed stone slabs.
Time is a flat circle.
Literally helped my parents with this last night.
Also, fuck windows for defaulting a setting I’d never seen before: “let windows manage my default printer”
That’s why it wasn’t printing. What a fucking stupid idea.
Ah, I see mom’s PC updated and it’s trying to print with the fucking “OneNote XPS” virtual printer again.
Also I see the “OneNote XPS” printer I manually remove every month is back again.
Gearing up for this tomorrow, every time I turn off automatic updates and uninstall a bunch of bullshit…every time it’s right back there.
I manually remove every month
People don’t learn about cron and scripting anymore, smh my damn head.
Not a terrible idea if there’s one printer plugged in. The idea isn’t bad, it’s Windows that’s bad.
Before things like the XPS printer showed up, if there was only one printer anyway, it was the default. Pointless.
Blame tablet culture. Everything is now optimally desgined for user friendliness. Kids can just download an app from the appstore and point at what they want it to do. People don’t even know anymore how the filesystem on their computer works. If the dow load pup-up in chrome disappears, they think the download has dissapeared and they need to download it again.
TBF, Android and iOS do not make it clear where files are going when you save them like desktop OSes do. It’s almost as if they are intentionally trying to hide their file structure, especially Apple, which is beyond frustrating.
They are intentionally trying to hide it.
The default file browsers don’t access the entire file structure, what exists and what you can see and edit, without root.
You can, or at least could, sideload a FOSS filebrowser, much more straightforward UI, doesnt shit itself if you arent logged into it.
What they instead do is make it really, really easy to upload all your personal files to their cloud, which is either going to cost you time, money, or your privacy.
Its why Microsoft genuinely doesnt understand why everyone hates OneDrive, why they genuinely don’t see a problem with Windows becoming an AI prompt/API with ads.
Because its basically the same as the mobile UI paradigm.
Its why Microsoft genuinely doesnt
understandcareFTFY. Microsoft doesn’t deserve the Hanlon’s Razor benefit of doubt.
It’s been known since probably the seventies that normies have trouble with hierarchical file systems. UI researchers kept testing the assumptions about file systems, and the results in the majority of populace have always been abysmal. Which is why people have the desktop piled with every file they ever created or downloaded, and why UI designers are trying to move away from shoving file systems into users’ faces.
I know where mine usually go, but sometimes they go somewhere else. Why did it do that? Where did it go? Sometimes I run a search and still can’t find it. Wtf? So, I have re-downloaded when I was in a pinch.
People never knew how filesystems work. It’s been tested time and again, people aside from nerds have trouble with hierarchical filesystems. They had trouble in the eighties, they had trouble in the nineties, had trouble in the two-thousandths and obviously still have trouble today. Saving every single file on the desktop didn’t start with tablets.
Nerds just have no idea how the majority of the population fare with computers, and don’t know that UI designers in fact test their UIs and continually check their assumptions. But nerds are cocksure in blaming UI designers and ‘tablet culture’, which culture made computing accessible to everyone from toddlers to decrepit geriatrics.
I thought the younger folk would be faster on computers than me but I had to show a junior new hire IT tech what a zip file was and how to open it. Something that I assumed would be second nature to them, they hadn’t seen. Growing up with analog and moving to digital as society progressed, I assumed the next generation would smoke me in tech but it’s been surprising that because tech has “Just worked” for many of them they haven’t had to learn how it works. A blessing and a curse I suppose.
Honestly sometimes having learned the analog counterpart is really useful. It’s a different field but the first time I mixed live audio was on an old analog mixer. It wasn’t really all that difficult to use once explained. Shortly after we replaced it with a digital mixer (behringer x32), and I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to use the old analog one because so many concepts would appear, at least to me, difficult to grasp if you’re starting out on the digital one.
Everything is now optimally desgined for user friendliness.
Feels like the opposite to me. Modern mobile style interfaces feel extremely hostile, designed to minimise the amount of information the user can extract from the application (and maximise the amount that can be extracted from the user and sold to the highest bidder) and our control over it.
Classic desktop interfaces (and no, the stupid office ribbons are not included in that), even when poorly designed, are many orders of magnitude easier to use and navigate, and provide a lot more tools and information.
I agree, but we have two have different meanings of user friendly here.
You: The thing makes it easy to do what I want, to understand what it can do.
Them: The thing makes it easy to do what the designer wants, makes it easy to understand what the designer wants me to do with it.
Also I’ve noticed a total lack of curiosity or willingness to learn how to use these products. It takes a little brain power sometimes.
And a lot of Lemmy could be accused of having the same attitude towards sports, fashion or pop culture. People aren’t obligated to be interested in tech, for most people it’s a tool, not a hobby.
The things you’ve mentioned are hobbies, not tools you need to use
Honestly I don’t blame them, I fall into the not giving a shit about sports or fashion camp too. My inner boomer comes out when I’m forced to use microsoft products so I’m definitely a hypocrite but at least I’ll put a little effort into trying to get a surface level of understanding.
Literacy and numeracy scores in the US in general peaked in 2012.
If you graduated high school / college around then, statistically, everyone +/-5 of greater your age is generally less literate, less mathematically literate, less knowledgeable than you, ceteris paribus.
Back in my day we had to walk up hill both ways.
You really don’t have to if you just make your kids use the computer instead of the phone
Here’s my obligatory Fuck You to ink jet printers and cartridges.
A few months ago I finally got a Brother b/w multi function laser printer and not having to refill Magenta or Black regularly is no longer, and my mind is at peace.
Mine just had a cartridge explode all over it and my counter. I took the hint and threw it out with no replacement.
My mom hates it since she can’t just drop by and have me print something, I’ve never felt more free.
I realized a while back that I print so rarely that I’m better off just using a print shop for the rare occasions when I do need to print something. They are priced for massive orders, so printing a few pages can cost under a dollar (though tbf, I haven’t needed to print anything since inflation got crazy, so not sure if that still applies). Then they can deal with DRM ink and all that BS.
We’ll see how things go when my daughter gets to essay age, though.
Hopefully all digital!
Yeah, fingers crossed. Though schools can be incredibly inconsistent with how they move forward with tech.
Won’t regret it, had one for 10 years changed the black twice. Also the powder doesn’t have a shelf life like liquid ink, so I bought the two drums when I first got it.
Oh, a Boomer needs tech support, of any kind, family, friend, otherwise?
$100/h.
Stop subsidizing their utter incompetence, time for ‘tough love’.
A kid?
Like an actual kid?
Free.
How would they know any better?
But, let em know the first fix is free, on the house, next one will be $5, then $10… or, they can spend no money if they want to spend an hour getting tutored on the basics maybe once a week.
Generate fishermen, not fish.
Show them that they are capable, can learn, can solve problems… if they’re patient and humble enough to try and learn.
Tbf printers are the most unnecessarily complicated pieces of shit ever
I’m lucky that the people in my life do try some basics before asking me and tell me what they tried. Sometimes things just seem to start working when I arrive, so I just play along with it and say the printer was intimidated into working by my mere presence.
Oh, you have that aura too? I like it in that it helps me avoid spending time on fixes, but it’s annoying too because deep in my mind I wonder what really went wrong.
Same. What do you mean your device was suddenly incapable of performing one of its most basic functions for an hour and it magically got better just before you handed it to me? I don’t have panacea NFC tags embedded in my skin.
I don’t have panacea NFC tags embedded in my skin.
Right. 😉
I don’t have panacea NFC tags embedded in my skin.
you’re sure about that?
The printers are playing the long game.
The panic my coworkers get in their eyes when they pull me from a task just to show me something that suddenly works for them is always funny.
“This was totally not working for 10 minutes straight.”
