Stephen <mcavoys_at@aoldotcom> wrote:
> Longer than that, even. But sometimes snail mail is obligatory when 
> dealing with banks and governmental offices.

  I don't think any bank or governmental office would require a customer
to own a printer in order to deal with them.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 23/02/2012 4:28 PM, Warp wrote:
> Stephen<mcavoys_at@aoldotcom>  wrote:
>> Longer than that, even. But sometimes snail mail is obligatory when
>> dealing with banks and governmental offices.
>
>    I don't think any bank or governmental office would require a customer
> to own a printer in order to deal with them.
>

No, but you asked why Andrew would want to use a printer and I gave you 
a reason why I do. Also now a days printers double up as scanners and 
photo copiers. Another reason.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Am 23.02.2012 17:28, schrieb Warp:
> Stephen<mcavoys_at@aoldotcom>  wrote:
>> Longer than that, even. But sometimes snail mail is obligatory when
>> dealing with banks and governmental offices.
>
>    I don't think any bank or governmental office would require a customer
> to own a printer in order to deal with them.

No, of course they could just as well take out paper and pen, and write 
it by hand.

I personally prefer to send something legible though...


Print out forms to fill out by hand and/or sign, and then send via 
SnailMail or fax, avoiding the hassle of picking up the form somewhere 
in person?

Print out invoices for the clients of some freelancing business?

Print out stuff which freelancers are legally obliged to archive for 10 
years on paper unless they own a WORM drive for that purpose?

Print out something to read while traveling by train or lazing on the couch?

Print out character sheets, rulebook excerpts etc. for pen & paper 
roleplay gaming sessions?

Print out charts and then scribble some notes on them?


Been there, done all that with my private printer. Not that I use it 
frequently enough to keep inkjet cartridges from drying out, but that's 
why I bought a laser printer (which also happens to be a copier, scanner 
and fax machine).

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Print out invoices for the clients of some freelancing business?

> Print out stuff which freelancers are legally obliged to archive for 10 
> years on paper unless they own a WORM drive for that purpose?

  I doubt he runs a freelancing business.

> Print out something to read while traveling by train or lazing on the couch?

  That's what handheld devices are for. ;)

> Print out character sheets, rulebook excerpts etc. for pen & paper 
> roleplay gaming sessions?

  I have got the impression he doesn't play such things (at least not as
a DM).

> Print out charts and then scribble some notes on them?

  Charts of what?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Am 23.02.2012 18:38, schrieb Warp:
> clipka<ano### [at] anonymousorg>  wrote:
>> Print out invoices for the clients of some freelancing business?
>
>> Print out stuff which freelancers are legally obliged to archive for 10
>> years on paper unless they own a WORM drive for that purpose?
>
>    I doubt he runs a freelancing business.

I was listing uses that I have (or had) myself for owning a printer, 
presuming your statement to be a generic "nobody needs printers these days".

>> Print out something to read while traveling by train or lazing on the couch?
>
>    That's what handheld devices are for. ;)

I prefer printed A4 for certain texts. Not to mention that I currently 
don't have the money to buy a smartphone or the like (used to have one, 
but it got stolen quite some time ago), and actually don't need one 
anyway, because - guess what, I own a printer :-P

As long as handhelds don't allow you to just put your thumb between any 
pages you choose, and/or come at a price where you can own two or three 
of them to arrange in front of you, I guess I'm going to stick with 
paper for certain uses.

>> Print out character sheets, rulebook excerpts etc. for pen&  paper
>> roleplay gaming sessions?
>
>    I have got the impression he doesn't play such things (at least not as
> a DM).

I actually do that as a player. It helps with quickly looking up rule 
details for my character's abilities and magic items taken from some 
obscure extension rulebook, maybe with added notes about certain 
parameters as applicable to the character.

>> Print out charts and then scribble some notes on them?
>
>    Charts of what?

When I look at the left portion of my desk, I see a printout of the 
emission spectra of some typical RGB phosphors, with added hand-drawn 
lines & curves, and notes about how they might be approximated 
mathematically.

Similarly, a while ago I printed images of Penrose tilings, adding 
various colored lines to visualize how they could be defined 
recursively. Doing the same in Photoshop didn't quite cut it for some 
unknown ergonomic reasons.


As for Andy, one particular use I could think of would be to print out 
music sheets downloaded from the Internerds now and again.

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>    Your answer is like "do you have the time?" "yes".

I actually give people that answer from time to time. ;-)

>    I don't see what someone would use a printer for. It just sounds so
> obsolete nowadays, in the same way as floppy disks or RS-232 ports.

I am astounded that you would think that paper is obsolete.

I mean, sure, people have been /talking/ about going paperless for 
decades. And yet... we're still surrounded by paper. Heck, it's been 
possible to read documents on a computer since before I was even born, 
and yet book shops still sell thousands of paper books per day. Hell, 
today we even have specialised e-readers, devices which exist solely for 
the purpose of reading stuff. And yet, paper books are still vastly more 
popular. Because, you know what? Paper is more convenient than any 
computer screen.

As a side note, RS-232 /is/ obsolete. But do you have /any idea/ how 
much equipment literally isn't usable without RS-232? You might be 
surprised.

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OK, this is even stranger... Now that all my stuff is plugged in, the PC 
won't boot unless I cycle the power from the PSU. Then the machine boots 
and works perfectly. But next time I try to use it, it freezes at the 
BIOS screen, and I can't get it to do anything until I flip the switch 
on the PSU. I've never seen this before... what the heck?

To be clear, when it works normally, you get a BIOS screen, then some 
mumbo-jumbo about the RAID system that I'm not using, and then a second 
BIOS screen, and then it tries to load the OS. But now, it freezes on 
the first BIOS screen. No reason, it just does. Won't respond to any key 
presses. Won't respond to the power button. Won't respond to anything 
except turning the PSU off...

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On 22-2-2012 17:25, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> Trying to set up my printer was necessarily difficult.
>
>    What do you need a printer for?
>
We have been forced to think about that too in our hospital.
Today someone came and collected most of the printers in the staffrooms 
and half the printers used by the entire department. Collected as in 
taking without permission. He did it on orders of our board of 
directors. They have made a deal with a copier manufacturer to supply 
the hospital with multifunctional copier/printer/scanners*. Part of the 
deal is apparently to remove all competing printers from the entire 
hospital. Unless we can prove that we really really need them.

The reasoning why this 'theft' is allowed is that all (actually most) 
equipment is bought via the 'buying department' (if that is the english 
term) hence they are hospital property.

Note that the multifunctionals can only be reached via windows XP and 
you need IE to install it, FF does not work. We have a fair amount of 
Macs, Win7 and Linux machines**. I guess that is why they let us keep 
the big department printer for now.

Question: what 3 letter acronym is applicable here?

*) Scanning to USB stick is supported, but does in most cases not work. 
The copiers are slow as hell.

**) not many IPads or other tablets as the IT department does not think 
it is useful to have wireless in a research department.

-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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On 23/02/2012 21:36, andrel wrote:

> They have made a deal with a copier manufacturer to supply
> the hospital with multifunctional copier/printer/scanners*. Part of the
> deal is apparently to remove all competing printers from the entire
> hospital. Unless we can prove that we really really need them.

> Note that the multifunctionals can only be reached via windows XP and
> you need IE to install it, FF does not work. We have a fair amount of
> Macs, Win7 and Linux machines**. I guess that is why they let us keep
> the big department printer for now.

I guess that is why all competing products have to be removed first. :-P

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On 2/23/2012 2:10 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 22/02/2012 11:17 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Snort. Got a similar problem. The "scanner" software for something Win7
>> detected shows two versions. One doesn't work, and the other crashes,
>> but *only* when using the companies own on-scanner button configuration
>> thing, which Windows couldn't auto-install. Using someone else's
>> application, and picking the correctly installed "version" of the device
>> lets me copy direct to printer, but only at low resolutions. I haven't
>> bothered to even try to fix the problem... Bloody stupid OS.
>
> If a 3rd party driver won't install, I'm not so sure that's a problem
> with the OS.
Well, in this case, it sort of is the OS. Its "installing" a driver, but 
not the software, and doing it wrong, when "automatically" doing so. 
Now, I agree, to a point, in that "most" drivers, like for video, for 
example, you install over the prior one, and since its not a new device, 
it simply replaces the old one, and fixes what ever is wrong. And, that 
*is* a problem with 3rd party, when it doesn't work.

In this case, its sort of a combination of problems. The "default" 
driver may/may not have been replaced, the system might have 
"redetected" it as new, when the correct one was added, or, who the hell 
knows. But, the original cause was Windows installing something that 
didn't work, and the update failing to fix the problem.

You get that *way* too often in Windows imho. lol

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