Digital BW, The Print

That sounds about right Paul.

You bet the big three listen to these kind of forums now and just hate to death people like Paul and Cone, and Roy, and Walker who bother to open the hood, shine a flashlight in there and take the thing apart to see how it works then share what they find out globally. The web is their worst nightmare in probably more respects that it is a source of advertising. 

This kinds of reminds me of "what ever happened to the electric car". People say, "oh if there was a need for it we would already have it right", "its a free market, go ahead and build it". Right. There is a need, there are a million needs but to turn around an entire industrial culture isn't as simple as having a real need. It's very politically complicated.

My brother is a phd and 30 year veteran of micro biology and immunology research. It used to be that you could keep things very close to the vest and patent everything. Now the web and mandatory sharing of data has broken a lot of that wide open. Scientists can't hide anymore if they really want to progress because sharing info IS how they get ahead now. Open information is critical for survival.
It certainly isn't there in our profession yet, but it will be. 

john

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> I'm not sure this relates, but I was warned by someone who purports to be a serious observer that the net effect of my and similar comments on this forum was to cause the large companies to quickly file patents on the ideas and use those patents to stop competition.  I don't know enough about patents to know if this is true.  It seems like just the opposite of what most of us are interested in -- an open discussion of ideas.  I suspect the person making the claims to me was doing so as part of a pitch to get me to join his firm and stop publishing ideas.  No thanks.
> 
> ...
> > In regards to manufacturing, I think creating printers out 
> > of existing parts from multiple manufacturers is the way to go.
> 
> A firm tried to get me involved in such a plan, and I concluded the costs could not be held down to the point where the size of the market would support the venture.  Even with wide format printers, there are economies of scale that a small niche player will have trouble competing with.  Among other things, the costs of the parts would be much more than the internal costs to the OEM.  But, my conclusions were not based on a whole lot of research, so I would not put too much weight on them.  And, of course, if Epson succeeds in stopping us from using their printers with third party inks, such a venture might then look like a more viable option.
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com
>