• (cs) in reply to pscs
    pscs:
    Noise, speed, quality, only b/w.

    I had an Epson A3 colour dot-matix printer I got from the dump shop - it worked fine! The colour was a little dodgey though.

    Dot-matrix docket printers are better than the thermal paper ones in common use these days - mostly due to using "real" paper and the print not rubbing off/fading.

  • ChiefCrazyTalk (unregistered)

    The real WTF (tm) is that I thought the Inline Eddie Bauer add was the subject of the WTF, but closely examining the advert didnt reveal anything WTFish.

  • Joe (unregistered) in reply to w00t
    w00t:
    Joe:
    Schnapple:

    Simple, it uses your color ink. Which runs out quicker and is way more expensive than the black ink. This is why you have the $50 razor (the HP printer), so you can keep buying blades (the ink). This is also why HP's ink division is the most profitable part of the company.

    Do you know that for a fact or are you just guessing based on your cynicism? I thought their server or consumer desktop PC divisions were more profitable?

    Actually, you're almost right. According to the Motley Fool, their "Personal Systems" division brought in 31.8% while "Imaging and Printing" brought in 29.1%.

    http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2006/08/18/hps-enviable-reinvention.aspx

    Reading comprehension FTW.

    1. The Personal Systems division brought in 31.8% of sales, not profits.
    2. Even if the printing division only brought in $100 in sales, but at a cost of 0.00001 cents, they'd still be the most profitable division, seeing as their profit margin is better in relative, rather than absolute numbers, and
    3. the article you quote has this to say: "HP's most profitable division, imaging and printing" (and that's not just the ink, that's including printers and scanners; the loss leaders)

    So, yeah, whatever.

    My reading comprehension while posting during a hectic workday FTL.

    Yeah, I knew it was sales. And I did agree with you, I just wanted to make sure it was based on more than just cynicism for this crap-tastic practice of theirs.

  • Tac Eht Xilef (unregistered) in reply to Greg Martin
    I'm sure that as soon as any old Clipper programmer saw the SET FILTER they knew where this WTF was going.
    Heck, as soon as I read the word 'Clipper' I knew what was going to happen!

    (Not a programmer, not in IT, but knew a few people in the 80's who's business was built around writing/selling/supporting a trio of Clipper apps running on PC/MOS.)

  • b0x0rz (unregistered)

    that was just awwwwwwwwwwww so cute awwww

  • Synonymous Awkward (unregistered) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    Curd Zechmeister:
    Going back and fixing a problem for no charge shows some really great character.

    I disagree. Going back and fixing it for no charge when he should have known better would have been good. Going back and reworking things he did when he was still learning just because now he knows more, is letting them abuse your current experience.

    They paid for a junior, they got the work of a junior; don't later give them a senior for free.

    I guess that's why he said "shows really great character" rather than "shows really great business acumen" or "shows really great cynicism".

    Cynicism is cool.

  • Brady Kelly (unregistered)

    I've just started rewriting a paid for application for free. My previous delivery was an MS Access application, as per the original request. Seeing as I have quite a bit more work to on it, and seeing as I'm really, really starting to like WPF, I'm redoing the first bit for free, as it takes a bit longer being new to WPF, but it's so much better than having to work any more than absolutely necessary in Access.

  • Nijans (unregistered)

    Call me synical or greedy but I cannot fathom why anyone would throw themselves into the legal calamity it could create just to clear ones conscious about something one should not be conscious about.

  • (cs) in reply to Shyama
    Shyama:
    Daisy wheel printers are good for multi-part paper.

    Yes, but they're not easy to find nowadays for some reason... (~12cps, REALLY noisy - I printed out my degree practical work documentation on one I borrowed from the university - I don't know how I or the people around me in the student accommodation managed to sleep for the 2 days & nights it took to print it... thud-thud-thud-thud)

    As I said - dot matrix is really your only choice nowadays.

  • Joce (unregistered)
    "I don't know why the dot matrix printer ever went away.... I don't think any printer laser or inkjet comes anywhere close to the cost per page of a dot matrix printer."

    I'm pretty sure you just answered your own question...

    Inkjet inks are one of the most profitable parts of the entire IT industry.

    (Which is why I just bought a cheap color laser - and boy an I happy with it)

  • rawr (unregistered) in reply to pscs
    pscs:
    Shyama:
    Daisy wheel printers are good for multi-part paper.

    Yes, but they're not easy to find nowadays for some reason... (~12cps, REALLY noisy - I printed out my degree practical work documentation on one I borrowed from the university - I don't know how I or the people around me in the student accommodation managed to sleep for the 2 days & nights it took to print it... thud-thud-thud-thud)

    As I said - dot matrix is really your only choice nowadays.

    "a high speed daisy wheel printer sounded like intermittent machine gun fire."... Wow. I want one! Them techno kids that live next door... Muaha!

  • Da' Man (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    I respect anyone who a) owns up to a prior mistake, and b) offers to fix it - for free.
    Absolutely. And if I ever meet that guy, I will sure think if I have a job to give to him.

    Captcha: alarm - now, what's that trying to tell me?

  • Synonymous Awkward (unregistered) in reply to Nijans
    Nijans:
    Call me synical or greedy but I cannot fathom why anyone would throw themselves into the legal calamity it could create just to clear ones conscious about something one should not be conscious about.
    Can't do "synical". I can call you "cynical", though, if you like?

    You're cynical.

  • NeoMojo (unregistered) in reply to bwood
    bwood:
    Jim Bob:
    did he give the operations manager a bj after that?

    Spoken like a true code monkey.

    Also in glorious Technicolor

  • (cs) in reply to AbbydonKrafts

    I can never understand why that thing wants to use the color ink for black text when I have a black cartridge in there, too! It only uses the black ink when I explicitly tell it to do Black & White Only through the properties (which has to be done every time I print something).

    HP is in the business of selling ink, not printers...

  • Crusoe (unregistered)

    Nah, Line Printers rule you all. Nothing like printing a full line of text all at once!

    chunka-chunk-chunk-chunka-chunk-chunka

    Those things were fast! And the lab used wide format paper. They were perfect for printing out code for reviewing!

  • (cs) in reply to SmartDude
    SmartDude:
    The real WTF is that this was done using Windoze.

    Ummm... No, it wasn't. Clipper was a DOS compiler.

    So I guess the real WTF here is your choice of posting names, isn't it?

  • whicker (unregistered) in reply to SheRa

    I am not one for defending HP's ink ripoff, but ever hear of anti-aliasing? You can get more grays out of mixing the color inks at the edges of the black portions. It does this because when printing color, it figures you're... big surprise...? Printing graphics and photos?

    Also, I assume you're using Windows. If you go to Control Panel -> "Printers and Faxes" and set your Printing Preferences THERE, the settings will stick. Gee, you can even set your default printer here too, so that you don't keep printing your emails to the UPS label printer...

    Now, this is in before the possible cause of broken drivers.

  • Worf (unregistered)

    Actually, it turns out that you can make a "blacker black" (so called Rich Black) if you overprint the colored ink black (composite black) with black ink.

    Of course, the primary reason is to sell more ink, the secondary reason is that it makes better blacks. (Printing presses often use this technique)...

  • Ross Presser (unregistered)

    Successware released a free RDD (replaceable database driver) for Clipper called HiperSIX in 1996, I believe, which allowed you to specify the subset at index creation time. I don't think it really did query optimization though. For that you needed Mach SIX, an add-on.

  • (cs) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    I disagree. Going back and fixing it for no charge when he should have known better would have been good. Going back and reworking things he did when he was still learning just because now he knows more, is letting them abuse your current experience.

    They paid for a junior, they got the work of a junior; don't later give them a senior for free.

    I sort of agree. I don't think he would have been in the wrong to leave it alone, or ask for payment. That said, I suspect that he was more rewriting it for himself than for the company. And that shows character, and that you care about the quality of the work you produce.

    Now, there are still issues (the "last person to touch it" thing) which may not make it a good idea, but his heart is in the right place anyway.

  • Synonymous Awkward (unregistered) in reply to KenW
    KenW:
    SmartDude:
    The real WTF is that this was done using Windoze.

    Ummm... No, it wasn't. Clipper was a DOS compiler.

    So I guess the real WTF here is your choice of posting names, isn't it?

    In a sense, not really. It's almost always the ones with names like "SmartDude", "CertifiableGenius", "Intelligant"(sic), etc who get stuff wrong more than anyone else. I suppose that's what a lack of awareness of your own limitations does for you.

  • MadHacker (unregistered) in reply to happy tappy

    Actually, this sounds exactly like a dot-matrix printing a row of vertical bars or text in columns. It goes tap, tap, tap as it whacks the paper at each column.

  • Ch0 (unregistered)

    To silence [sic] all the arguments about dot matrix printer noise:

    http://www.theuser.org/dotmatrix/en/intro.html

    Captcha: Surprisingly it's vaguely relevant to this story and my post, but I won't be telling you what it is.

  • raveman (unregistered)

    lol, that is a funny story, but boss was too good for him, i bet he could get some money for letting him play.

  • Stan (unregistered)

    Ahh, Clipper. My fondest memory is a thousand line source file that caused the compiler to just fall over. No messages, no clue about where it ran into trouble, just C:> Turned out to be a missing comma. What a robust parser! I had to go back to a prior version of the code and reapply changes in ever smaller chunks until I found it.

  • Quote (unregistered) in reply to CastrTroy

    I get free black ink for my printer (A phaser 860).

    Of course, it is a wax printer.

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered) in reply to Nutmeg Programmer
    Nutmeg Programmer:
    Let's not go knocking Clipper. It kept food on my table for a decade.

    Amen, brother!

    To this day I miss the elegance of Clipper's code blocks :-)

  • Kuba (unregistered) in reply to Matthew
    Matthew:
    AbbydonKrafts:
    A dot matrix beats others any day when it comes to a quick, cheap printout. The ribbons are still cheap compared to ink or toner.

    There's nothing quick about a dot-matix printer. You want quick? Pick up a used HP laser (not the personal ones like the 5L, but an office printer). A toner cartridge for one of those will last forever under most personal/home use. And the quality is great... even on an old one.

    I second that. In the US, just look on eBay for a while, you'll surely find something like a LJ8000 or 8100 that's available close enough to drive and pick up. Expect to pay $300-$400. With a new cartridge, it'll last you forever in home use.

    Cheers!

  • Not A Robot (unregistered) in reply to GrandmasterB

    Yes indeed, Clipper was way ahead of its time in simplicity and usability - even as a relative novice I was able to write an entire windowing (not GUI) database application in Clipper on my own - and it worked! Never had the same level of satisfaction with dBase III and IV...

  • FIA (unregistered) in reply to AbbydonKrafts
    AbbydonKrafts:
    BlueEagle:
    The real wtf is that you haven't read the manual. If you co to the control panel and choose printers and faxes (win XP) and right-click the printer and choose properties you'll find a nice button on the "Advanced" tab called "Printing Defaults" where you can set the defaults for printing amongst other things b/w or color.

    Actually, for some reason or another, that doesn't stick. I wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise.

    Try looking at the 'printing preferences' in the 'General' tab too, getting these settings to stick can be a pain. :(

  • Ydrol (unregistered) in reply to Joe

    Those are Sales figures not Profit. FWIW

  • (cs) in reply to Not A Robot

    Ah the joys of Clipper! I learnt so much working with Clipper Make - some DOS version (dMake?) memory management with Blinker OOPs with Class(y) how to RYO cascading updates and deletes...

    There was a Clipper add-on called Provision(?) that let you create a GUI (DOS graphics mode rather than windoze).

    Oh how we waited and waited for VO while VB/Access headed towards world domination. Thank goodness for Anders Hejlsberg and Borland Delphi.

  • Doakes (unregistered)

    I'm a mainframe programmer, but got roped somehow into working on a Clipper application about 12 years ago. I'm still maintaining it =(

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to rawr
    rawr:
    "a high speed daisy wheel printer sounded like intermittent machine gun fire."...

    Funny you should use that analogy, the first time I heard a Smith-Corona TP1 in action the effect was like sitting in a sandbagged emplacement with a Ma Deuce firing a short distance away.

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