One look from his blazing eyes was enough to send the Imagineers scurrying. They didn't even take their prototype with them. Hackelberg closed the door behind them. "Hello, Samuel," he said. "Nice to see you. Can I offer you a glass of water? Iced tea?" Hackelberg waved the offers away. "They're using your boxes to print their own designs," he said. "What?" "Those freaks with their home-made ride. They've just published a system for printing their own objects on your boxes." Sammy rewound the conversations he'd had with the infosec people in Imagineering about what countermeasures they'd come up with, what they were proof against. He was pissed that he was finding out about this from Hackelberg. If Lester and Perry were hacking the DiaBs, they would be talking about it nonstop, running their mouths on the Internet. Back when he was his own competitive intelligence specialist, he would have known about this project the second it began. Now he was trying to find a competitive intelligence person who knew his ass from his elbow, so far without success. "Well, that's regrettable, obviously, but so long as we're still selling the consumables..." The goop was a huge profit-maker for the company. They bought it in bulk, added a proprietary, precisely mixed chemical that the printer could check for in its hoppers, and sold it to the DiaB users for a two thousand percent markup. If you tried to substitute a competitor's goop, the machine would reject it. They shipped out new DiaBs with only half a load of goop, so that the first purchase would come fast. It was making more money, week-on-week, than popcorn. "The crack they're distributing also disables the checking for the watermark. You can use any generic goop in them." Sammy shook his head and restrained himself from thumping his hand down on the desk. He wanted to scream. "We're not suing them, are we?" "Do you think that's wise, Samuel?" "I'm no legal expert. You tell me. Maybe we can take stronger countermeasures with the next generation --" He gestured at the prototype on his desk. "And abandon the two million units we've shipped to date?" Sammy thought about it. Those families might hang on to their original two million forever, or until they wore out. Maybe he should be building them to fall apart after six months of use, to force updates. "It's just so unfair. They're ripping us off. We spent the money on those units so that we could send our message out. What the hell is wrong with those people? Are they compulsive? Do they *have* to destroy every money-making business?" Hackelberg sat back. "Samuel, I think it's time we dealt with them."