General > RANT
Product designers should be dragged out and whipped in public!
Testlund:
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---If you're looking for a reliable printer, a laser one is the way to go. You don't get color unless you're willing to spend A LOT, but for document printing it's the way to go. I ended up getting a replacement laserjet on ebay for like $50.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, laser printers are pretty good printers. I haven't looked at it for some times, thinking they have been so expensive and you only get to print in black. For home use you need color printing every once in awhile. $50 seems like a bargain though.
I think the only way to affect the bad trend with lesser quality is to not buy a product from the same manufacturer. If this printer breaks within 5 years I won't buy any single thing from 'Brothersoft' again!
Numsgil:
HP make good printers (and crappy computers) in my experience. I haven't ever had problems with a HP printer.
Peter:
--- Quote from: Testlund ---The assumption about the resorces being gone in 50 years is from the documentary ''The planet', where scientists have calculated that we need 5 planets to sustain the population. Simple math, probably. Just think about it. It's not like you can cover the planet with crops and cows. You need different kind of environments to keep some balance in nature, or you'll end up with a desert if there are too little trees for instance. I think only a great plague or something can stop the problems we're facing.
--- End quote ---
Well, sorry but this sounds like a buch of crap. With simple calculations of me, it seems that the population like it is now exists and therefore is able to sustain.(simple calculation: it exists=it is possible)
You need different things, come on be serious.
No trees ----> Desert ??????? When I look at the petato-field I don't see any desert, and there aren't any trees.
I can imagine this in tropical enviroments, there are places where as a farmer you have to use some more complicated technologies. There are places where there have to be plants to stop the desert from spreiding. There are nomads with goats that eat the complete plants together with the wortel. And that way spreiding out the sahara. (Stupid nomads)
My point simply you can cover the planet with plants and cows, what else will you cover over it(speaking as the sun of a farmer). And if there isn't enough land you just polder some extra land. We have done it in the Netherlands.
Maybe I am going to look at the documentary, it seems to be on belgium television next week, I googled.
Edit : oh, not relly is was last month.
Testlund:
It's not like the relationship between people and the planet is a stable one. The exploitation is faster than the planet can recover and I was talking about 50 years from now. You should really get a hold of that documentary. I got it on a DVD attached to a newspaper so maybe it's not hard to get it. It may come back on TV too.
EricL:
I'll call attention to the distiction between stand alone products where reliability/reputation/service/relationship is a larger part of the business model (cars for example) and products where the business model is based primarily on selling accompanying consumables. Printers for a long time have used the razor/ razor blade business model which is why printers are sold so cheaply (at a loss in many cases actually) when they are sold at all (many come for free with a new PC) and why ink cartridges are so expensive and of course, different for every printer and manufacturor. Printers, like razors, are mearly sockets into which the high-margin consumables are sold. You'd be surprised at how many products follow this model. Dell sells low end PCs below cost for example. The kick backs from all that included junk software are where their margins are (the kickback is like >$50 per PC on average). The Xbox is the same way. Last I checked, it took an attach rate of over 9 games per console before Microsoft breaks even.
In general, products are mearly a reflection of what the consumer wants. Capitalism is another term for darwinism really - what people buy survives. It doesn;t matter why they buy, only that they do. Companies make cheap, wasteful, disposable junk because that is what people want as evidenced by their buying habits.
People, like all organisms and evolution in general, will always make locally optimal decisions over globally optimal decisions. Selection and/or capitalism tends to illiminate those who don't. If you think about it, this very bad news for most other species in the short run and our species in the long run. There's actually a therory that bascially says the reason SETI hasn't found anything is because inteligent species tend to destroy themselves soon after they evolve primarily because the locally optimal decision making which led to their evolution, which was necessary for their emergence in the first place, necessarily leads to global catastrophy at scale.
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