this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Technology
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This sounds accurate based on the user reports. They're not bricking anything, they just make you do manual registration if you use third party toner.
Man, if only we had a word for disabling critical features in this way.
If there is one, it's not "bricking", because it still functions as a printer.
Upvoted for understanding the concept of words having already established definitions
Standardized word meanings being recognized and adhered to really brings me joy.
I don't like that meanings change over time.
"my account got hacked"
No, you gave someone your information they used to log in.
Oh man, I have bad news for you about living languages...
But no, I know what you mean, I don't like it either.
Is it "the good ones, like French, gate-keep changes to prevent capricious drift by vapid Instagram whores, and the others are 'literally'[sic] English"?
Haha, yeah the French totally do that.
I remember when I was a kid and my dad worked in the computer industry. He went to France for work somewhere around 1990. I remember he said that France likes to keep their language pure, not adopt English words, and in technology, where there were a lot of new words, they didn't always have one for things. So for example, their word for "hard disk" translated literally to "spinning magnetic binary drive". Whereas, the Japanese would say something along the lines of "harta disku", which was at least more succinct.
Ohhhhhhh, standardized word meanings are TIGHT!
Bricking it was super easy, barely an inconvenience!
Where were you when I was being called a pedant? 😅
It's a very mutable word due to it's metaphorical nature. It's certainly not set in stone.
So on one hand, yes. On the other hand, there are tasks that are onerous to non technicians.
If you asked me to do it manually, sure. I've interacted with a bunch of software, understand measurement systems, done some programming etc.
My wife on the other hand... There's no overlap between ecology or life sciences in this task. Outside her ability.
Yeah some folks in here are clearly out of touch with the capabilities of the average consumer.
Do we really need to define things in terms of what the average person is capable of? Especially when the biggest barrier seems to be "willingness to put a small amount of effort into learning a simple process"?
Yes. It’s called the Network Effect. People use discord because people use discord.
There's no equipment calibration in ecology or life science?
Her degrees are ECE and conservation so no.
Which is weird because one of Rossman's sources claimed that they were on the phone with Brother, asked how to do manual registration, and were told it couldn't be done unless a genuine Brother toner cartridge was installed.
That person was just plain wrong. The same source showed the manual registration sheets under their reddit post.
Maybe support agent was being lazy, or ignorant.
The portal the agents use should be able to bring up internal info via keywords like "colour registration"
Customer service reps have almost the same information that a customer would have. The only difference is they have a few more tools available to them.
Asking policy questions or anything at this level would likely get no useful info.
Only if the customer service is unempowered garbage.
Welcome to the real world.
Rossman's "source" was a 3 year old unconfirmed Reddit post.
I have a black and white brother laser printer that had 3rd party toner that worked fine for years, it was even a two pack of toner. Then I installed a firmware update and immediately it threw an error stating trouble with the toner and refused to print. Tried the unopened 2nd toner, same error. Looked and searched all over online and could not find the previous firmware to try a roll back.
I then purchased a new two pack of 3rd party toner from a different brand and it worked just fine. My guess is with each new firmware they also have a set of chips to block (each toner has a chip on it) that they bundle into to update.
I'll never install another firmware update for that printer now.
I would consider what they did as bricking my toner.
Link? Where does it say that and how does one do that?
The links are in the article.
I don't know the specific process, but usually it's printing a registration page and then entering the offsets on the printer's control panel.