The $54M Pants and Other News of The Week Ending June 5, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) – A judge who was seeking $67 million from a dry cleaners that lost his pants has loosened the belt on his lawsuit. Now, he’s asking for only $54 million, according to a May 30 court filing in D.C. Superior Court.
Roy L. Pearson, a District of Columbia administrative law judge, first sued Custom Cleaners over a pair of pants that went missing two years ago. He was seeking about $65 million under the D.C. consumer protection act and almost $2 million in common law claims.
From The Advocate – CA State Assembly passes same-sex marriage bill
The California state Assembly voted Tuesday to allow same-sex couples to marry, challenging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has said he will veto the bill if it passes the full Legislature.
Legislators approved the measure on a party-line vote of 42-34, with the majority saying lawmakers should not to wait for the state Supreme Court to act on the issue.
From PC Magazine – Future of Ink Jet Printing
According to an article on PCMag.com, a small newcomer, Silverbrook Research, has come up with completely new ink jet printing technology that could revolutionize the market. They claim their Memjet technology will allow them to print an 8.5 x 11 page at 1,600 x 1,600 dpi at sixty pages per minute (one page per second). They will produce a photo printer that prints 4×6 images at 30 ppm.
For their page printing they estimate costs per page at approximately 2 cents for a monochrome page to 6 cents per color page. The cost of the printer would be $200 – $300 each. The cost for photo printing would be 10-20 cents per photo, and a cost per printer of approximately $150.00.
The printheads are a major piece of Memjet technology, spanning the printer’s page width so they can print across the entire width at once. They consist of an array of individual microchip segments, with 6,400 nozzles in each 20mm-long chip, and as many chips as needed for the width of the particular printer. That means there are fewer chips in a dedicated photo printer, for example, than in a letter-size printer.
These printers are supposed to on the market in 2008. Skeptics point out that when it’s too good to be true, it usually is, so it all remains to be seen, but this could be revolutionary.
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