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So would I be required to have a high-quality expensive-ink printer attached to my computer to use software which otherwise has no need for a printer? Maybe I'll just plug in my old 9-pin dot matrix which I've had since I bought a commodore64 back in '89. (OK this is sad. It's still plugged in, right under my HP colorjet (4 years old, but still suits my needs.) and gets plenty of use (more than the color printer) printing out blocks of code (on form-feed paper no less, which, sadly, is getting harder to find) while I'm debugging.) I've gone through several color printers which have for one reason or another stopped functioning, but the old dot matrix just keeps chugging along. A few drops of stamp pad ink in the ribbon cartridge every few days and she's good to go. |
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Not likely to work on me since I keep the printer turned off unless I plan to print. If I observed an app printing without my request I'd be careful to delete the queued documents before they waste my money. |
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Some persons working for a business may not care how much it costs their employer in print cartridges. |
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Finally, I don't understand punishing the user and profiting the print cartridge manufacturer. The software developer gets no direct benefit and their reputation suffers in the process. More annoying than pop-up ads (if that's possible). |
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it's a hamfisted way of enforcing shareware registration periods, like Winzip's "you are on day 796 of your 30 day trial" window. better to just refuse to open after trial period. negating this is possible, but harder than stopping a print job. - |
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ExtortionWare sounds like something Microsoft would invent. |
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Someone would soon after write a "fake expensive color printer" hack that added the AstaLaVista.box.PRINTER to your list of available printers and set it as default. The ExtortionWare would "Print" to the nothing driver as a result, and continue to work. |
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