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DRM

An Automated Cat Litter Box With DRM 190

HughPickens.com writes: Jorge Lopez had always wanted an automatic cat litter box, and finally found one called the CatGenie, a fully automated self-washing litter box connected to water, electricity and the sewer that cleans itself with water and soap. "It's the Rolls Royce of cat litter boxes, a hefty device that scoops, cleans, and disposes of the waste all on it's own. It's completely automated, even senses when a cat poops and cleans up afterwards." But there's trouble in paradise. "Life with the CatGenie was great, but not quite perfect," writes Lopez, after discovering that CatGenie uses a smart cartridge that is only available from the manufacturer. "I found that the "Smart" in SmartCartridge is that it has an RFID chip inside of it to keep track of how much solution it has, and once it runs out, well, you can't refill. I honestly did not believe this and tore one of the cartridges apart, and there it was, looking back at me, a tiny chip holding up it's little metal finger." Fortunately there are some amazing people helping the CatGenie community who have released products like the custom firmware CatGenious and CartridgeGenius, which allows you to use whatever solution you want. "The cost savings is great, but isn't the biggest driver for me, it's mainly the principle that I don't own the device I paid for, and I'm really tired of having cat litter everything in my home."

Comment Re:Information density (Score 1) 150

Here's some more handy links about this research:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

Unfortunately, Latin was not one of the languages they investigated in this research, but I do find it very interesting how Latin, which is one of Spanish's parent languages, is far, far more efficient (in dI/dS terms) than Spanish is, and in fact is probably more efficient and complex than any of its derivatives.

Comment Re:Information density (Score 1) 150

Everything I've ever seen in both English and Spanish looked about 1.5-2 times longer in the Spanish version.

Don't take my word for it; some linguistic researchers actually looked into this, which you can read about here.

Here's an excerpt:

For all of the other languages, the researchers discovered, the more data-dense the average syllable was, the fewer of those syllables had to be spoken per second — and thus the slower the speech. English, with a high information density of .91, was spoken at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second. Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94, was the spoken slowpoke at 5.18 syllables per second. Spanish, with a low-density .63, ripped along at a syllable-per-second velocity of 7.82. The true speed demon of the group, however, was Japanese, which edged past Spanish at 7.84, thanks to its low density of .49. Despite those differences, at the end of, say, a minute of speech, all of the languages would have conveyed more or less identical amounts of information.

Comment Re:people still watch that crap? (Score 3, Interesting) 106

Enterprise was actually surprisingly good, with a few exceptions; I only watched it a few months ago, since I had turned my nose up at it when it was new. It did start out a big rough and had a little too much gratuitous sexuality at first, but when it settled down it was pretty good. The main problems with Enterprise are: 1) the opening theme music. It's absolutely horrible. I don't know WTF they were thinking with that whiny emo crap. But there's an exception here: the two mirror-universe episodes in Season 4 had excellent music and intro scenes of humans blasting everything and conquering. And 2) the whole Xindi attack plot arc in Season 3 was too much. It was an obvious parallel to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and just didn't go over that well.

I also didn't bother with the second Abrams movie; the first one was too much of a disappointment.

Google

Google Sues Mississippi Attorney General For Conspiring With Movie Industry 114

ideonexus writes: Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has called for a "time out" in his perpetual fight with Google in response to the company filing a lawsuit against him for conspiring with the movie industry to persecute the search giant. Leaked Sony Pictures Entertainment emails and documents obtained under FOIA requests this week have exposed how the Motion Picture Association of America was colluding with and lobbying state prosecutors to go after Google, even going so far as to "assigned a team of lawyers to prepare draft subpoenas and legal briefs for the attorneys general" to make it easier for them to persecute the company. Here's the full complaint (PDF).

Comment Re:Under US Jurisdiction? (Score 1) 281

Now, on to the fight: America is explicitly NOT a democracy.

Yes, it is. You even say so yourself:

America is a democratic Republic.

"Democracy" in modern parlance == "democratic republic". When the word "democracy" is used in regular conversation, NO ONE is talking about Athenian-style direct democracy, unless they explicitly say so. It's only pedants like you who even think of this.

It was formed that way EXPLICITLY to prevent mob rule.

Democratic republics exist for several reasons. One is because no one citizen can possibly be competent at voting on every single issue that faces a large and populous nation, nor can every citizen be expected to invest that much time into the governing process. So we "outsource" most of the work of governing to politicians called "representatives", and elect them to represent us and do our bidding. The rules you talk about do exist to make sure there's a longer feedback loop, so people's short-term reactionary tendencies don't make a mess of things, and so that there's a rule of law: people have to follow laws, until the laws are changed.

The Constitution and Bill of rights spell out what America is supposed to be. If there is a true need for the Republic to change the rules it is built upon, then there are mechanisms in place to do that... but THEY HAVE NOT BEEN USED.

Yes, they have. The Constitution has been amended dozens of times since it was written, and countless Supreme Court cases have further changed laws. And if you have some kind of problem with a court effectively legislating and deciding law, then you have a problem with English Common Law, which this country was explicitly founded upon.

Why? We can argue about that forever. Regardless, the basic rules from which all other rules rest upon, have not been changed. That means a police state is incompatible with American law; both in the letter and spirit of the law.

Completely incorrect. If case law and legislation (at all levels of government) have resulted in a police state, then a police state is indeed compatible with American law, by very definition.

It's sad how poorly educated in basic Civics most Americans are these days.

Comment Re:Under US Jurisdiction? (Score 1) 281

Don't be stupid. Anyone who's an American Citizen is by definition an American, whether you like it or not, and whether you agree with them (and their idiotic ideas) or not. They certainly are "welcome" in America, they're Citizens and they were born here. Whether something is against the "spirit" of the founding laws is open to debate, and quite frankly, totally irrelevant since, as a representative democracy, this country (and any other with the same form of government) is supposed to reflect the will of the citizenry. If the citizens are a bunch of fools who vote for police-state laws, then that's what they're supposed to have. You're obviously the one here who opposes democracy and wishes to have an authoritarian government, because any government which does not reflect the will of the voters can only be authoritarian.

Comment Re:Skin deep, but that's where the money is ! (Score 1) 175

The several times I used Uber, it was great too. They picked me up in luxury cars (Mercedes, BMWs) and had much nicer cars than the towncar services I tried. They used GPS and took me by the most direct route, while the towncar service took weird back roads that took a lot longer. The towncars were also older and in poor shape, whereas the Uber cars were rather new and clean.

Comment Re:Quoted from TFA (Score 1) 200

You're not too bright, are you? Congress has ultimate authority over NASA, and over everything in the entire government. They control funding for everything, and write laws to that effect.

If your boss at your company tells you to do something wasteful and unethical, then you either do it or find a new job.

Comment Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score 1) 150

It is terribly inconsistent, true, however it's also extremely adaptable, which is why it has a much larger vocabulary than any other language. Basically, English is the Borg of languages.

Spanish is crappy because it has a ridiculously low information density compared to just about every other language. It's horribly verbose and has too many syllables to say the simplest things.

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