Epson's Built-In Cheating Mechanism

(A little righteously indignant background music, there, maestro... just a bit lower? Thank you, that's perfect.)

I turned on my printer yesterday, and it informed me that the ink was out in three of the six cartridges. Okay, these things happen. But then there are these puzzling occurrences, and a rather troubling number of them, in fact.

This is a printer series that is infamous for shutting down and not letting you print once it decides any one of the cartridges is "out" of ink. (You can guess there's more to this subject, and I'll get to it in turn.) I didn't realize when I bought this thing that Epson was withholding the right I'd enjoyed with every printer I ever owned or used to that point, to print a faded copy of something I needed right then.

First of all, even though I'm supposedly out of a color ink, it refuses to print even a purely black-and-white page. There is really no reasonable justification for this, except to hasten the hapless owner's purchase of more of "the Barbie clothes." (Would prefer to use "razors and blades," but that one is so over.)

Secondly, while "the paperless office" is an absolute that is still beyond reach, I certainly live and function in the "much-less-paper office," and as such wind up printing very little. I use this machine much more often for its scanning.

So it was obvious to me when I turned the machine on several weeks ago and it informed me that the ink was getting low on those three cartridges, that I hadn't printed anything between the last time the device was on and then. Some timer had clicked over a notch, and the ink in half the cartridges was duly reported as having evaporated below the sensor lines or escaped or something.

But Wait, There's More: yesterday I turned the machine on for the first time since the last time, still not having printed anything, and was informed that I was completely out of ink in all three of those cartridges.

It turns out that in 2005, Epson, the maker of my Stylus Photo RX620, settled a a class action suit against them for exactly this behavior. According to a PC World article when legal actions were filed in, oops, 2003,

"…chips are used to monitor the amount of ink inside the ink jet cartridge. Cartridges actually contain up to 38 percent more usable ink after the chip cuts them off, according to research cited in the suits.
"The chip does not measure the real volume; instead, it estimates the amount of ink used and predicts when the cartridge will be empty. The chip transmits estimated ink levels to the printer, which alerts the user with a screen message."

The gist of that message: "You're Gist Out Of Luck!"

In the settlement, any owner of an Epson printer manufactured and bought within some period of time, and who heard about this in time (it wasn't referenced on their home page when the settlement was in force), got a $45 dollar certificate from Epson's own online store, as I recall. Since you pay full retail there, that's not even three cartridges. And, critically, Epson was not required to change the programming in the chips or offer a download to correct the cheating calculations, and give an accurate reading of the ink levels. Bad settlement.

It's a shame, and an insult to the engineers who put this printer scanner copier together, because they did a really nice job. It prints beautiful photos, the scanner works fine and has very good, well integrated software. But somewhere between the various departments with input on this design, the dark directive came down to operate on its brain to turn it against its owner. (Hm, sounds like a great sci-fi movie concept.. .)

===

Good grief, I think I just released my first real, full-out rant. !, even. My apologies; but these skunks should be aired out appropriately. And I feel a little better now.

Epson Faces Consumer Suits - PC World (10/24/03)

Epson ink cartridge controversy - Wikipedia

"Google: Huge Idea, Simple Insight"

(Extract of a recent post written for Idea Champions' "Heart of Innovation")

"Discovery's Science Channel Has Good New Series On (the) Internet." (Search Engine Watch)

Download: The True Story of the Internet, by former editor and writer for Wired, John Heileman, "is no softball show.. . the series gives it to you 'warts and all' and does not hold back the punches on how things have developed so far. The last show I watched discussed the development of search..."

"We hear amazing stories," The Discovery Channel tells us, "of how, in ten short years, the Internet took over our lives. The style of the story-telling is up close and personal... with first-hand testimony from the people that matter."

I also was watching that episode on search, one of four. To me, the most arresting observation was that while the original, breakthrough idea at the root of Google's effectiveness and success came from a programmer, cofounder Larry Page, it was a very simple thought. Page was not crouched over a keyboard or remembering any computer code in order to come up with this construct.

The billion-dollar insight was just this: that a link to a site from another is like a vote for that destination. The more sites link to yours (and the more linked-to their sites are), the better yours must be... (one of) the ones which the most visitors have "voted for with their feet," or in this case, their eyeballs.

[ more ] on The Heart of Innovation

That's most of the Google logo as of the Spring equinox,
which is coming up within the hour.

Gehry, Bricklin, Prototyping; & "Repurposing Content"

The idea of recycling material, if you think about it, is as old as the human habit of telling stories. So I'm hoping that's a good enough explanation for why I'm basically republishing this post I wrote recently for the Heart of Innovation. : - )

That's the new blog I've been managing and writing in for Idea Champions, and frankly my attention has been primarily there lately, which is how it should be. So I'll be cross-posting bits that seem appropriate here, after giving them a week or some decent interlude from their original publication.

Frank Gehry's Designing By Prototype

Columnist Dale Dauten wrote recently about some of the insights on creative thinking gained from observing the revolutionary architect in "The Sketches of Frank Gehry," Director Sydney Pollack's first documentary, new on DVD. "We get to learn how a genius works," he writes.

"Frank Gehry is the architect who did the curving, soaring metal walls of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, as well as Disney Hall in Los Angeles. He is the one who lets us walk into 'out of the box.'

"During his early Gehry spent his time hanging out with artists rather than fellow architects.

"He works by taking sheets of heavy paper and making models out of them. Not blocks, not wood or Styrofoam, but paper. When one of the models becomes an idea worth pursuing, it goes through an evolution, a series of models of increasing sophistication."

Dauten, taking the dare, as it were, starts creatively cross-referencing:

"If we wanted to apply his style to, say, working on a new sales presentation, we wouldn't use other sales presentations for ideas, we'd use novels or plays, movies, paintings . . . maybe even, I don't know, zoos, or airports. And not just one, but dozens. Some would become rough models, several going at once."

"Inside the brain of a genius lies lessons on generating & implementing ideas" by Dale Dauten, 5/6/07. (Gehry's "Dancing Building" in Prague. Uploaded on Flickr by astilly.)

Rapid Prototyping, Dan Bricklin, & "Serious Play"

This reminded me of another recent read on the power of creating with the method of "rapid prototyping," from Dan Bricklin's blog. Bricklin is of course the co-inventor of the electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc (the original Excel, and the first "killer app" on what were then "personal computers"), among other programming breakthroughs in simplification.

(Continued...)

Engineers Rule -- Again?

I could not resist a quick comment on a 1/16 article in Wired on "How Yahoo Blew It" (via the Boston Globe's Business Filter).

The article concludes, "At Yahoo, the marketers rule, and at Google the engineers rule. And for that, Yahoo is finally paying the price."

As a former Digital employee, I found this highly ironic: being an engineering-driven company was exactly what was usually blamed for DEC going down, down, and finally out.

"And the seasons, they go round and round...", in Joni's words.

Is quoting a lyricist too cheesy? Okay, then, how about Sir Isaac Newton, the inventor of gravity? As Newton's Second Law of Psychics states, "What goes around, comes around."
(...Excuse me, I'm getting a call from the Editor; just continue reading, and I'll get back to you with whatever little copy edits he might have. "What is it now? Can't you see I'm busy!?")

(Back to the serious part --)
Last summer, I went to a groundbreaking at Gordon College where Ken Olsen was being honored by naming their new science building after him. I got close enough to watch as a steady stream of his former employees came up to express their heartfelt appreciations to him, and got to see the flash in his eyes. So only then, since he was gone from Digital by the time I worked there, I felt like I got to see who Ken Olsen really was.

But I sure got to hear a lot about him from the old DEC people who were still there, and the story was told that when he came into the company cafeteria, he'd pass by all the execs and go have lunch with... the engineers.

That stuff about Google people getting a day a week to work on their own projects? That's exactly what was going on at Digital in its heyday, and it all came from Ken.


Ken Olsen, in 1972
(from DECedOut.org, a site by and for loyalists)