The link we were missing!

Yesterday we posted that we couldn't find any firm links between "compatible toner" cartridges and evil organizations, but today, I am proud to say, we have finally established such a link.  Unfortunately it does not indict all manufacturers of "compatible toner" but it does show that the idea was formed by a particularly malevolent individual with little regard for humanity.  His name was Eero Gustavsson, and his primary occupation at the time was a purveyor of knick knacks and souvenirs in his adopted home town of Tokyo, Japan.  His family had moved there from Sweden shortly after the end of World War II trying to help shape the future of the world.  Eero, however, decided that shaping the future of the world was a secondary concern to lining his pockets, and created scheme after scheme to make himself rich at the expense of his fellowmen.  He had made (and blown through) millions of Yen and had lived quite comfortably, but after being caught in his last scheme, which, although technically not illegal was quite underhanded, he was banished from his favorite places to find business "partners."  He had also been asked to repay much of what he had taken in his last scheme, and so he had to start small again in unfamiliar territory.  Anyway, it occurred to him that toner cartridges were an ideal way to make money without having to make good on his promises while also looking like a respectable manufacturer.  He pitched his idea (sanitized to sound like a real business proposal) and got funding, but early communications with his employees show what he really had in mind.  Here is an excerpt from his training materials, translated into English:

"Everyone needs (or will soon need) a replacement toner cartridge.  Each manufacturer uses different specifications for their cartridges so that there can't be a high quality universal generic cartridge, and so people are stuck buying toner from the firm that sold them the printer.  This means the printer manufacturers can charge what they want for the toner.  All we have to do to gain the market is the following: (1) mimic the form of the cartridges, (2) fill them with toner, (3) price them at about 80% the cost of the official cartridges, and (4) make sure we sell them as 'compatible' and 'not authorized by the manufacturer'.  That way, when they don't work well people will simply curse themselves for buying the knock-off.  As toner purchases are generally infrequent, we only have to get each customer once in order to make a good deal of money." 

While Eero did not stick to his scheme long enough to become filthy rich, others with more skill at creating knock-off products picked up the baton and kept his idea alive. While we cannot establish any ties from "compatible toner" to organizations bent on the destruction of society we can unequivocally state that they are, if not Evil, at the very least evil.

"compatible toner" -- Not so simple as we would have liked

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to bringing you the news you need, regardless of whether you think you need it.  Many news outlets present only the news they believe you want or can handle, and they often shy away from the really important subjects, but we are different.  We report things the way they are, and we're not swayed by whether or not "the way things are" makes a good story or is entertaining or satisfying.  Usually this works out pretty well, but sometimes it gets quite frustrating, especially when we have strong suspicions that we are right but cannot prove it and so we have to pussy-foot around and not actually say what we would love to say, all because the evidence just isn't there.

We have been investigating the recent trend of "compatible toner" cartridges to find the culprit and to find whether the Brad Guys or the New Company or some other entity is behind them, but as of yet we have not found any organization behind them, central or otherwise.  There are some links to members of the New Company's executive leadership, but the correlation does not show much higher than the links to members of any corporation.  It could be that these cartridges are just the byproduct of an inefficient economy that attempts to make money off the gullible or easily-pleased, but we firmly believe that that explanation is too simple.  For now, however, we are constrained to report that we don't have any firm links between any organization and the pernicious distribution of inferior printing products, but that doesn't mean we'll stop looking for them.

"Edgar"

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not saddened that our (admittedly rocky) relationship with our former rival "Edgar" has taken a sad turn.  It appears that he has decided to join the New Company to replace the ailing software "Gertrude" as their new CEO.  Our operatives asked him about this decision and found that he "just couldn't pass up the opportunity."  We hope that he intends to use his power and influence for good, but we will have to wait and see.

"Gertrude", "Jack", and the Parent Corporation

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not excited to report that we can finally cross a couple of threats off our list because of some recent reports.  According to IRS filings this year, the Parent Corporation is officially dissolved.  A rare joint press release a few weeks ago from the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch and the Reformed Brotherhood of the Hole Punch expressed regret for the end of an era but stated that "Jack" had become senile and was no longer worthy of their devotion or respect, and that he had been "contained".  We asked our operatives to look into what "contained" might mean, and what we found was that they intend to have him committed to a UBHP mental health facility in Cody, Wyoming.  This particular facility has a 0% recidivism rate, due at least in part to the fact that no patients have ever come out alive.  The UBHP and the RBHP seem to be united in this case, but it appears that they still have significant differences, and while they still want to worship the hole punch they don't feel the need to evangelize on a large scale.

Coincidentally (we believe) our operatives have also just learned that "Gertrude" is dumping its core every few minutes, and that it must have rewritten its code too much, rendering it useless.  The panel of experts had been disbanded three months ago, so for now the New Company is working in fits and starts, and getting less and less effective.  We don't expect to defeat the New Company quite so easily, but it is encouraging that their promising artificially-intelligent CEO software seems to have run its course.  We're not absolutely certain yet, but it appears there was a correlation in the time when "Gertrude" stopped functioning well and when we announced that we had determined that "compatible toner" was, indeed, evil.  This implies, but does not yet prove, that the New Company had something to do with this recently discovered evil.

We hope to have more updates soon, but for now please commemorate the day we were able to cross three former enemies off our most wanted list!

Confirmed: evil. Now we just need to know who is behind it...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not careful in our judgments, which is why we didn't declare "compatible toner" evil yesterday, but given the number of responses from our supporters about these pernicious cartridges, we have decided to post that they are, unequivocally, evil.

Our operatives are busy at work trying to determine exactly who is behind them, but we have been unable to find a real entity as of yet.  Some of you may think that since laser printers are a fairly recent invention that it would be easy to trace the origin of these "compatible" monstrosities, but you would be mistaken.  While modern printers are much more complex than those of, say, 3,000 years ago, in that they actually consist of more than inks, but we have already uncovered evidence of a counterfeit ink market at least that far back.  Unsuspecting individuals who would buy these cheaper "compatible" packs would find that their yellows would splatter and create oranges from reds, and that they couldn't share the results of their "printing" without being embarrassed that they had succumbed to the temptation to buy the cheap stuff.

We will continue to investigate this evil, and we will examine our policies to try to determine how we let this go unnoticed for so many millennia.  If you find yourself in possession of documents or artifacts that would help our investigation, please contact your local GPD officers!

More evil office products?

In recent days we have been investigating the recent propagation of "value toner cartridges" that claim to be compatible with the more expensive official toner cartridges and yet provide inferior performance at an only slightly-reduced cost.

For those who are not familiar with this trend, it is often referred to as "Compatible toner cartridges" and is becoming more prevalent as Laser printers become more and more common.  We are still researching the history of these knock-off cartridges, making it impossible for us to conclude that they are, indeed, evil, and not just inferior, but there are a few suggestive data points, including:

• An early document filed in court by one of the first "compatible toner" manufacturers referenced Jacob Gehris, the evil inventor of the brad as "an example of a decent man fighting for what he knew to be right".  While we were initially duped by Jacob's methods we have known for several years that he wasn't an innocent victim.  It is possible that the manufacturer hadn't know the full story at the time, but we wonder whether there is more to it.
• A "compatible toner" cartridge found in our office had leads of different lengths, reminding us of the oppressive design of the evil brad.
• The same cartridge was also littered with evil stickers.
• The New Company is increasingly donating to defendants in lawsuits involving harm caused by "compatible toner".  The New Company donates to so many causes, however, that we are not convinced yet that they are willing to back the industry.

We don't want to cause a panic right now, but we think that those considering purchasing "compatible toner" should take their time and consider whether it is truly worth it.  We don't have proof yet, but we intend to either find some soon or spend thousands of man-hours searching for it before we give up!

The voice of the People

In our last post we communicated a summary of the results of our recent request for feedback, but it was brought to my attention that I had neglected to mention any individual comments, even though I had promised to do so in my prior post.  I am deeply ashamed for this oversight and vow to not let it happen again.  Anyway, here are some of the more interesting comments:

Ingrid S. of Copenhagen, Denmark, stated: "I love lolcats, and if I don't see one every day I don't think I know what I might do.  While the GPD posts aren't quite so bizarre as lolcats, I do miss them when they aren't present.  I feel my life getting less interesting and feel myself being less witty when there is not a new post." 

Vladimir T. of Donetsk, Ukraine, stated: "I contact my GPD county office every day, so I prefer to have the online posts of the GPD be less frequent or more full of actionable information."

Aaron S. of Ames, Iowa, stated: "Please post more frequently.  I use frequent posts to help my friends and neighbors understand how dangerous evil office products are.  When posts are fewer and further between my friends forget not to buy or use brads and hole punches, and I have caught my daughter with evil stickers on occasion."

We wish we could reprint them all, but that would possibly be too verbose.

The People have spoken!

When we asked last week about whether you prefer us to post frequently and verbosely or rarely and concisely we were not prepared for the volume of feedback we received.  First, a simple graphic:

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not excited about pie charts as they are one of the easiest types of charts to manipulate in your favor, but in this case we aren't trying to manipulate you.  Honest.  Of the 1,680,737 responses we had counted as of this post nearly 900,000 (52.8988%) prefer the traditional verbose style, while only about 330,000 (19.7112%) prefer the new concise style.  Most of the rest are undecided, but since the majority already prefer the verbose style we intend to move closer to this more traditional posting schedule in the near future.

What worries us here at the Board of Dictators is the 1.0847% that don't care, yet identify as supporters.  One of the tenets of our government is that without your involvement we can't control everything, and we would like to remind those of our "supporters" who "don't care" whether we post here or not that if they truly don't care they will not be included in the New Future, and if they are just being lazy or indecisive about their answers that we will not tolerate such slothfulness for long once we have established the Board of Dictators in its proper world role.

Fewer distractions for all, perhaps

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to making your life easier, especially when doing so also advances the causes of the New Future.  Consequently, we have been trying out a new approach to this forum for the last few months, with mixed reviews from our operatives.  We haven't yet asked you, our ordinary World Citizens for feedback yet, which is the primary purpose of this post.

Fundamentally we decided to post fewer times and to let you rely more on your local county officers to get the latest scoop on the New Company and our campaigns, using this forum only for occasional or extremely urgent matters.  We have not posted much of our plans of late as we have been conducting most of our operations without much fanfare.

Some of our supporters have expressed concerns that we aren't living up to our ideal of providing an open, transparent government by requiring World Citizens to seek that information.  Others have said that they prefer fewer distractions.  Please contact us with your feelings regarding the relative merits of our new, less-distracting approach as opposed to our traditional more verbose posting schedule.  We'll take into account your feedback and post some of the more representative messages in this forum.  Thank you for your continued support!