I've got a great idea. Pay for said car or motorcycle or whatever with a magical check with disappearing ink. After 4 hours, the ink all vanishes.

When they confront you, say, "Oh, read the small print on the back. To make sure you get the most out of your check, you needed to cash the check within four hours; and if you fail to do so, then you give up all rights to the item you traded for and are no longer eligible for payment. I'm sorry, we don't do returns. Personal policy. But hey! You still have the piece of paper, so don't count it all a loss."

sounds like a plan alright

Sony have been trying to pull shit like this since the 90s with proprietary technology that meant (at the time) Sony stuff only works with other Sony stuff. I still don't trust them because of that.

The coffee machine is basically the same deal as printer ink, but in a slightly better tasting form. On that note I'd like to see the printer market collapse. It's been going backwards for 20 years now thanks to these greedy practices. Nothing of value would be lost if the whole lot of them were forced out of the market.

Renault's Zoe sounds fucking horrific. There needs to be a major backlash against shit like that before companies get even more out of hand. Companies should be bending over backwards to please us and win our custom in a competitive market. Instead many think they can piss on us and we'll love them for it. I hope Renault get slammed right out of the market before it spreads.

I tried the Nespresso capsule coffee at my work, and it tastes like shit. And since coffee made with those capsules costs so much, I presume these capsule coffee machines will end up to a similar short-lived fad as home bread-baking machines one or two decades ago (at least they were all the rave here back then, suddenly everyone wanted to bake their own bread).

Yeah yeah I get it, it is easier and faster to make one cup of coffee with a capsule machine than with a filter machine, but if I want crappy coffee fast just to get my daily caffeine fix, I can always use instant coffee.

A while back i bought some of the little capsules since they were very very very cheap. I think it was like 10 cents per cup, and it was for coco.

Curiously i've cleaned and kept the cups and made some fixn wax and use them as little molding containers, which worked very well i might add.

But yeah, seriously it's an expensive fad. At least Soda Stream is marginally cheaper in the long run (as long as they don't jack up the prices too much on my energy drink mix stuff...)

This made me think of this thread: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/12/22/2348254/an-automated-cat-litter-box-with-drm

...oh god that thing is real http://www.catgenie.com/

My life is complete now.

gee its just 320 dollars

It is a legit thing for people with dust allergies though. But somehow seems kinda .............extreme to me. But $320?

And DIY stuff or simpler things cost considerably less. Just bloated prices everywhere.

I've heard if you have an area in your back yard you can dig up, you want to get very coarse sand, then the cats will use it, and the sand will break down the poop, and when it rains it self-cleans... Not so good for in-doors mind you.

People anymore have no clue how much stuff should cost, or how much you can get away without.

HDCP? Can't say I've heard about it before, that's because I stopped watching TV over 8 years ago, everything I need can be found online.

Its like Early Access. You could get games made with MS Paint pics for free; but those golden days are over now.

Actually there's a very good reason to keep the cat litter box locked down with DRM. We don't want the cats to replace us with auto-cleaning cat boxes, so we need to keep the DRM chip in the cleaning cartridge to justify our existence by earning money to pay for more of those carts. You don't want the cats to think we're expendable, do you?!?!?

http://hackaday.com/2015/03/16/beating-drm-to-extend-the-life-of-an-anti-ageing-therapy-light-mask/ There must be an environmentalist case against that...