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Wired Homes of the Rich
Ant writes: "This article talks about
It talks about the
famous hightech people's home's." Includes multimillion dollar home automation systems for folks like Larry Ellison, among
others. I thought I was high-tech for having a couple of x10'd lights, and the ability to watch and control my TV from my kitchen
or living room.
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I was amused by the description of the home with 4 ethernet jacks in every room so the owner could plug in wherever he was. Haven't these people heard of wireless networking?
--
see shy jo
I'm one of those people who says that from time to time. I don't consider it ignorant. However, I do tend to look at the problem from a slightly different angle:
I do not owe anyone a goddamned thing.
You want to give your money to charities and humanitarian efforts? Fine. You do that. Best of luck to you. But don't try to tell me, or anyone else, what they should be doing with their money. The social issues are irrelevant. The economic issues are irrelevant. It's my money and I'll do with it what I damn well please. If some people in third-world countries die as a result, so what? It's not really my problem. Chances are the socio-economic structure in that country is not capable of handling that many people, and the population reduction might do more good than anything else. If Homeless Joe kicks the bucket, it doesn't affect me in the slightest.
Life's not fair, and sometimes people die. That's why we make more.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Wrong. If sold, the subwoofer will probably be used to finance an upgrade of Larry's boat.
You might use the money to feed the poor, but Larry might choose to do something else. If you're whining about how Larry spends his money, it makes no sense to whine *after* he has earned it. Where were you when Oracle's sales were doubling every year?
See my point?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Truth is something that stands apart from the person who speaks it.
I may be stupid, maybe not. The truth of my statements is determine not by my intelligence, but by their logical truth value.
Fine if you don't believe me. It's not my purpose to educate the world in logical fallacies.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
answers (reasons for) to I know a couple of tidbits about Bill's home:
1.when bill "paints the ceiling" he likes to see where it hits. (room equipped with black lights for easy location in low light)
2.wood room for screaming at top of lungs that house just crashed. (wood has one the best sound resilliancies)
a/s/l here. Sorry, adding domain tags to your s
Everytime I hear someone ever-so-modestly say, "Hey, nobody ever helped me, everything I got I earned ... if someone's in the shit, it's probably their own fault", I think, "There's goes someone goes someone without a fuckin' clue ... and proud of it."
Oh bullshit. I grew up poor. My dad walked out when I was two, and my mom raised us on her minimum wage job and food stamps. I lived in an extremely poor part of town, and had friends just as poor as I was. But I didn't want to deal with that, so I slaved away at my schoolwork and hacked on my TRS-80 while all of my friends were "hanging out" and wasting their time.
Today, I make more money in one year than my mom did in fifteen. And my old friends? They're just as poor as ever, and rather envious of the fact that I can buy practically anything I desire while they scrounge for the money to eat with. But I DO NOT feel sorry for them. I pulled myself out of that situation, and I tried to help them do the same, but they were not willing to invest the time and effort to improve themselves. They'd rather sit around bitching about the "inequity of wealth" than do anything to improve their situations.
Nobody ever did help me. I paid for my own education, I kept myself motivated, and I raised myself out of poverty. Everyone I know who is still in that situation is there because they refused to do the same thing. The system is giving them exactly what they put into it...nothing.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
The installer of Larry Ellison's system said something that I think is important: "Make the technology invisible and magical." Perhaps designing systems that are "invisible and magical" is a key to minimizing cost and complexity.
No data, no cry
Like, perhaps, the pockets of the guys that made all the crap he bought?
(So I'm not generally one to get all riled up about environmental issues, but DANG. I hope Mr. Ellison stays up nights realizing that Mother Earth wants to rape his ass...)
The one thing that struck me about these systems is the alarming lack of wireless technology. Maybe it sounds more impressive to put 30 miles of cabling through your walls, but it seems that a more elegant (cheaper, more flexible, less intrusive, generally much more effective) solution must exist. But then, these guys are CEO's, not scientists or engineers...
I'm toasty warm right now in my woodstove heated cabin without running water in interior alaska. And i'll bet my machine density is greater than yours, 5 nodes on 100mbit ethernet, DSL to the outside world, in a cute little log package. errr...mush?
somebody bent my whookey.
But not the employees of the speaker manufacturing company. And nobody in the U.S. is going to either freeze or starve this winter unless they're actively working at it. The only people who have died of freezing in recent years have been substance-abusers who were unconscious, or people (generally elderly) who were too proud or stubborn to go to a shelter and died in their unheated homes.
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
I have no respect for Larry or anyone else who can't realize what's good for the earth.
The solution to whatever environmental problems come up is not to return to the caves, the solution is produce more power more efficiently and cleanly. Techological progress IS NOT intrinsicially bad for the earth.
In other words, the solution to technology's downsides is more technology.
I wish people would just deal with the fact that we are not going to stop using energy. We are not going to stop being mobile. And these needs will be ever-increasing. "Conservation" is ALWAYS going to be a losing strategy, and it deserves to lose.
Once people deal with this fact of life, then we can get on to identifying whatever problems exist, and simply construct solutions for them. That's how it's always been, and how it will always be.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Aliases, sure. Mailbox space, no. :)
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
A good place to look for automating your home along with other gadgets is Smarthome.
~ fact is not dependant upon your belief therein. ~ ~ Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?
Mud would be more ecologically sound.
DNA just wants to be free...
Just idle curiousity... what do you plan on doing with all these accounts? Are you mad at slashdot for something? Don't like people? Job sucks and can't find meaningful employment? Can't find employment? Student with nothing worthwile to do? Like I said just idle curiosity. I see a lot of people trolling this website like they were advocating wife beating or something.
The home of any geek in the middle class neighborhood of Latrobe, PA, should have at least 4 computers, one of which must be a 386 or lesser model.
The basement apartment of Art XIV, rented for two-hundred dollars a month from his great-aunt, prominently features a Mac Plus computer that silently greets vistors from one corner of the living room.
"I just don't have the heart to throw it out, even though the power supply burned out nine years ago." says Art, a Pittsburgh-area web-developer/whore.
Visitors are also greeted by a human-sized plastic blow-up replica of Godzilla. Not the big Iguana in NY one, but the dance-and-shimmy-while destroying-Tokyo Godzilla.
"That piece is a real conversation-starter. I got it a few years back at a Cracker Barrel."
Many visitors are also startled to find nearly every piece of furniture covered with boxes. Boxes and boxes filled with books and magazines.
"This, " explains Art, "is my personal filing system. This box contains all of my old 'Dragon' magazines... every issue since #56. This box is full of books on Apple II computers. This box is full of U.S. Army field manuals and survival guides. You never know when this box will come in handy...
The apartment, though full of interesting items, is poorly-lit and smells moldy. An unhealthy-looking cat coughs dryly from a spot between boxes.
"That's not a problem. All of my friends like to come over here for gaming on Friday nights. They call my place the 'Bat-Cave'
And what do the ladies think of Art's castle?
"I wouldn't know."
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
You would be wise to also make your posts of a Spartan nature. Few people could glean an intelligent idea out of that morass of run-on sentences.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Bill G. (he of the Borg image at the top of the page and the perennial scourge of /.) has endowed his foundation with over $20 billion dollars. His foundation gives away over $1 billion a year. Do you think better of him now? I'm sure he couldn't give a damn, but...
Get real. That makes me sick, taco.
Should have, would have, could have. The point is that whether or not someone has money depends entirely on their effort on behalf of themselves. Do I think people should starve or freeze to death? No. Do I think it is anyone's obligation to help them? No. Does this make me a bad person? No, it just makes me a rational, self-sufficient one.
Just look at all that waste. 16 phone lines? Do you know how much electricity each additional phone line adds to a house's electricity load?
Yes I do, Each phone line adds exactly 0 to the electricity load of a house
You are a fucking retard
That is, unless it is just a complex tax shelter to provide for King Bill the XIIIth's retirement in the year 2300. Or maybe funding a secret project to download Gates's brain onto a Zip disk and freeze his body when he kicks it, so he can be revived to celebrate when the first bug-free Microsoft software is released.
To splurge on oneself is one thing. To behave like 21st century royalty is another. We rejected a king in 1776, and ever since then the "owners" have constantly tried to set themselves back in the throne, by buying up political power and buying or building their 'castles.'
IIRC William Randolph Hearst was vacationing around Europe when he saw a monastery that he particularly liked the looks of. He bought it from the monks, and built them a new one worth 10x the paper value of the old one. He then had the old monastery torn down, crated up, and stored. It remained in a warehouse until Hearst's estate was auctioned off. Also I believe there was some story about how Hearst once circled a picture of an art piece in a catalogue or newspaper, and wrote a memo to his assistant; "Do I own this? If not, buy it." In a word, pointless.
In a capitalist system, money becomes what blue blood is in a monarchy; license to behave like a god on earth. Being in the right place at the right time is the Divine Mandate.
It stands to reason that the wheel of fortune turns for everyone; the phrase "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations" comes to mind. The names Astor, Morgan, or Gould don't necessarily mean much any more, but at one time these people were powerful enough to play hardball with the entire government.
However, just wait until life extension technology comes to market. Bill doesn't have to worry about his great great grandchildren frittering away their inheritance, if he's still alive to shake his finger at them. And at that time, Ol' Bill can order President George W.W.W. Bush IV to change his soiled diaper, since he already bought and sold the government several times over.
Just my two cents, cunt.
Love,
Slashfucker
Gee, looks like somebody doesn't want
Oh, that's a riot. So we're going to pull people off of a speaker assembly line and put them to work as carpenters and teachers? What if they LIKE working on speakers? Are you going to tell them that they are no longer allowed to do the job they enjoy because it doesn't benefit your vision of a Utopian society? What are you suggesting, that people be enslaved and forced to work on whatever "society" deems an acceptable project? I seem to recall something like that happening in recent history...in Nazi Germany.
Besides, your vision is fundamentally flawed. You are assuming that because people work one job, they are unable to do something else that might benefit mankind. Well, why don't you hop in your car and drive to your nearest slum. You'll see lots of people there that aren't working on anything at the moment. By your logic, since these people aren't busy building products to cater to the rich, shouldn't they be building houses, or teaching, or doing "more useful things"? They don't because that doesn't interest them, just as it doesn't interest the majority of people in the world. You assume that our fundamental nature is to help each other, and that this nature is being opressed by capitalism. Society has shown again and again that this assumption about our nature is fundamentally untrue...beneath everything else, we are greedy. No social policy is ever going to change that.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Sources close to SV.COM were reporting that Bill Gates home wasn't left out of the article due to a vendetta, or refusal of the billionaire to play nice, but rather because the reporter couldn't make heads or tails of 273 40" monitors all displaying a medium blue background covered with cryptic messages in white text. Since Gates couldn't give a definite time frame for the the so-called "BSOD" to be fixed, the Gates home was not covered.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The solution to whatever environmental problems come up is not to return to the caves, the solution is produce more power more efficiently and cleanly.
Agreed we will need to generate more power more efficiently and cleanly. But this will need to go hand in hand with conservation.
Techological progress IS NOT intrinsicially bad for the earth.
Amen.
In other words, the solution to technology's downsides is more technology.Pretty much.
I wish people would just deal with the fact that we are not going to stop using energy. We are not going to stop being mobile. And these needs will be ever-increasing.
Oh yeah. However, we will find ourselves altering the heat balance of the earth in a serious way as the ever-rising standard of living of the industrialized world is extended to an ever increasing percentage of the population - unless efficiency (AKA conservation) increases continually also.
"Conservation" is ALWAYS going to be a losing strategy, and it deserves to lose.
"Conservation" is USUALLY a winning strategy, and it usually deserves to win.
It is also completely compatible with the market, more so than is the status quo, in which we externalize so many of the costs of energy production. If you are a typical American, your ROI on increased energy efficiency around your home can approach 20%, much safer than the stock market, too.
If you like to leave your antique incandescent lights on all day, and run your collection of 80's vintage VAXen as your webserver and space-heater it's fine by me. Or rather, it will be when you pay the full costs of doing so. Until then it annoys us market conservationists.
Well, this might not be entirely accurate.
Bill is really into art, which you probably know from his corbis junk. In his home he has large LCD panels on the walls that display these "paintings". How many he has, exact size, etc, I'm not sure. I'm fairly sure this is true since the company I work for supplied some hardware to the people who set these up, and this is what we were told the use was going to be.
Also, I have heard a rumor that he has a river, yes, a river flowing "through" his house. I want to say you can even fly fish in it, but that might just be my imagination getting carried away.
Regardless, yeah, this guy is wired.. I have never heard much about Paul Allen's digs though.. I'll bet out of any of those Microsofties, he's probably the most wired.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
journalists love to write about zillionnaires' homes, but the middle class and poor people have way more to gain through the new technologies. Larry Ellison can hire servants to do everything he needs, or send the private jet (like Elvis) for a pb and banana sandwich. most of us can't. the more amazing story (and why can't the press GET it?!?!?!) is how even today's technologies improve life for ordinary people. a sensor that tells old people when there's mail in their mailbox so that they don't have to risk breaking a hip crossing a snowy street unnecessarily impresses me more than all the zillion-dollar bachelor pads. *That's* the real story, and that's the one that the media should be covering. Technocopian1
www.technocopia.com
And some wanker with a trust fund could buy and sell your ass. Wow, all that hard work, and has it really made you free?
Or, to put it another way, I come from a similar background (not quite poor, but a single income blue collar family). I hardly touched my schoolwork, and I preferred hacking my TRS-80 to hanging out, and when I did, we talking about hacking CoCos and Commies and PCs. The government gave me shitloads of money to go to college. And I'm right where you are. Man, I'm so glad I didn't have to bust my ass to get here.
So far we've established that obsessively hard workers, those with rich parents, and those with a high IQ achieve success. Well, that about covers everybody who deserves it!
Since there are no barriers to entry for anyone capable of achieving success, I guess we can quit that whole wealth redistribution thing. You know, food stamps, public schools, grants, subsidized loans, etc.
Hmm.. but then you and I would probably still be in debt, with less education, and producing less wealth...
Maybe you'd better rethink that righteous indignation you feel everytime someone suggests that maybe, just maybe, some people need a little help to get the ball rolling.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
And often, technological progress and conservation can go hand in hand. My own house has thermal imaging sensors in every room. When someone walks into one, it checks the ambient light level to see if additional light is needed, and turns the room lights on if they are. 30 seconds after leaving the room, the lights shut themselves back off. The system is also tied into my thermostat, so that when no people are detected in any rooms, the house temperature can be adjusted to reduce unneeded heating/cooling. It also doubles as a handy home security system :) It's a simple advance, and a neat trick to show people who enter my home for the first time, but more practically it serves as an excellent example of advancing technology making our lives easier while saving money and energy at the same time.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Sure it makes sense... If I can convince him to sell his subwoofer and give the money to charity, I'd say it makes a lot of sense.
Ranessin
And which oracle (no pun), O wise one, does one consult to find out whether one has given enough of oneself to be able to indulge a childhood dream? It's his money. Even though he earned it by shady means (including those that put my dad's company out of business), he can do whatever the hell he wants with it. Anything else leads, ultimately, to slavery.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
At the prices they mention, they still need a remote control or some kind of touchpad/touchscreen to control the system (I only read Larry Ellison and Scott Jones, though). Isn't it much better to have in-wall microphones and voice recognition software? I can do this with my old PowerMac already: "Computer, lights!" (with X10 interface of course). The latest MacTech even has an article for the do-it-yourself voice-command home automation.
I think you have it backwards. I support nationalization of industry. But I am not a socialist. I am a monarchist.
I do not have a signature
Wired homes aren't for only the rich. Check out Mister House, an open source project for home automation written entirely in perl and runs on linux and win32. Very cool stuff. Voice activate and everything...
Dave
You can get DSL in Alaska? I'm THERE, dude!
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The welfare situation in the united states has for the most part only served to keep the downtrodden(sp?) in the same position throughout their lives. And impoverished nations that recieve a sudden influx of material and subsistence goods end up worse off than before we came in.
I by no means am a religous man but something said in the bible stuck with me from sunday school all those years ago: "Give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime"
What I mean by that is this: If the government actually imposed a realistic tax structure in the united states where the poorest get the least taken out and the richest get the most then we might actually be able to afford to pay for education for the impoversihed folk who couldn't afford it otherwise. And by impoverished I don't just mean Joe Streetwalker but every person who could meet a less stringent set of criteria than the ones we currently use. When I ried going to college I was living with a friend making under the "official" poverty level each year and I still couldn't get federal assistance to go to college. All because I hadn't been off my parents taxes for more than 4 years. 4 YEARS! That's an insane amount of time considering the average college student is out of school by that time. If your parents can afford to send you but won't then that should nullify all official (taxes, etc..) ties with that family.
Teaching a person to be productive costs less in the long run than feeding that same person for a lifetime.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
--jb
I would never suggest that all aid to the poor be cut off. Without food stamps, I probably would have starved or ended up in an orphanage before I was 5. So I guess we can agree that offering minimal assistance (food, clothing) to the poor is a good thing for society.
What I don't care for is this left leaning socialist bullsh*t that seemingly wants to punish people BECAUSE they have been a success. I raised myself out of poverty because I didn't want my children to experience childhood in a home with a perpetually leaky roof, no light or heat (when my mom couldn't afford the bills), and cockroaches all over the place. All through my childhood I dreamed about living in a large, comfortable house with a good heater, and a really big color TV. Rather than driving around in a smoking rattletrap like my moms old AMC Pacer, I wanted something a little more modern and comfortable. And you know what? I got them by working my ass off. And now you socialists want to PUNISH ME because I'm successful? You want to take away my money because I'm not spending my money on what YOU think it should be spent on? You want to tax the hell out of me because it's unfair that I got off my ass and did something to improve myself, while others didn't?
Where exactly is the fairness in that?
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
-Nez
But my dreams they aren't as empty, as my conscience seems to be...
Corn chips??? Do you know how much energy it takes to make a corn chip? Think about all the machinery to pick the corn, grind it up, bake it, bag it, and ship it to your greedy mouth.
Have you no shame, sir? Have you no shame?
Clearly all you care about is your hedonistic pleasure, and to hell with the earth.
I'm going to go back to my raw, organic, home-grown carrot. Nothing like a good carrot for lunch. Mmmmmm mmm!
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
> Perhaps even make the lives of others better
I imagine the lives of the folks that sold all these toys are better...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Actually the accounts[1] suggest late summer (given the sheep would be ranging in the hill country at the time, among other things), rather than late December. The celebration was moved to December 25th much later largely to supplant pagan celebrations at that time of year.
---[1] we'll not argue about their veracity just now
DNA just wants to be free...
That sounds very nice, but for a simple coder such as myself, an air conditioned room with a caffeine fridge within reach and my sweet midtower box hooked to a T1 pipe is all i'd ever need =). It'd probably take longer to make me bankrupt too.
I am !amused.
Sudden inspiration - if you would build such a house using poorly insulated wires, you wouldn't need to buy a heater due to all the radiation keeping you warm.
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
The Soviet Union tried to use your reasoning on doctors; a doctor got the same pay as a factory worker. As a general rule, their doctors were about as good at medicine as the average factory worker, too.
I don't place the Capitalist "System" above human rights. I place Capitalism as being PART OF human rights. Along with the right to self determination, the right to free speech, the right of assembly, of religion, and on down the list, I have the right to earn money for my use and the use of my family any way I can, as much as I can, for use as I see fit.
You morons don't seem to get that freedom and responsibility are intimately linked; if you have the freedom to determine your own career, you have the responsibility if you fail.
A ton of people have said that Ellison's purchase is keeping the speaker making people warm for the winter. The problem with that logic is that it ignores half the entire equation.
Instead of:
- people employed making 10' speakers
we could have:
- people employed making houses
- more people being able to afford housing
or better yet:
- people employed teaching people something useful
- more people doing more useful things
I could go on and on. What's Larry Ellison's speaker going to do from today onwards for anyone except Larry Ellison?
.
Hmmm, maybe he's really a luddite at heart.
------------
---------- You are not the contents of your sig.:-p
Read about this in Silicon Valley magazine on the light rail on Sunday on the way home from SJCIA to the one-bedroom apartment in Sunnyvale that I share with 3 other people... It makes me sick to see that the technology kings have that kind of money to waste on little more than very expensive toys, when the individuals who make them rich are forced to deal with high Silicon Valley rent, insane cigarette prices, and 10-12 hour work days.
He who walks on burning coals is sure to get burned. -- Sinbad
Yes they are equivalent.
Just as poor starving people would not get more corn if our digestive systems are more efficient, poor starving people will not get more corn if these people didn't build the houses.
There is also another equivalent argument: Eat all your dinner, Billy. Think of all the starving children in China. The fallacy of the argument is that no matter what Billy does, the starving children in China are not going to get more food.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
At least, nowhere else than in James Bond's movies have I seen such twisted/fucked up/unnecessarily expensive sweet homes.
Maybe Larry Ellison is part of SPECTER, after all (he already has the right temper, apparently). Which number? I bet on #6.
About six years ago, I spent a year hitchhiking around the country and living in homeless shelters and missions, just to get a real good idea of what it was like. You know what I discovered? That the vast (read: >80%) of the people on the streets are there because *they want to be*. No responsibilities, no mortgage, no screaming kids. They usually can find a roof over their heads and a hot meal, and can even come across free money from the government to get their alcohol and drugs. Life is grand for them. Of course, they won't fess up to this to just anyone, only one of "their own". If people knew what the homeless really thought about life, charities and welfare would disappear over night.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
From article: "I thought I was high-tech for having a couple of x10'd lights, and the ability to watch and control my TV from my kitchen or living room"
:}
Ya, I carry my remote around with me and have a few lamps on a clapper as well!
My inferiority complex isn't nearly as good as yours!
For a man worth in excess of $40 billion, multiplying his electric bill times 100 isn't going to make running his thin clients any more of an economic decision.
For him, an economic decision is whether to have custom crafted solid gold cases for those thin clients made by children in Ecuador, or machinists in San Jose.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Someone needs to write a book about how Bill's Masterpiece house was built.
OIC.
/. about six months ago), I decided to come back and, through the use of brute chaos, try to undermine the system -- which seems like what you're doing, too. (Project Mayhem of the Internet, if you will.)
.. need.. time.. to ... set .. up ... webpage... :) :)
The quote is beaten from "Cecil B. DeMented," which is John Waters most recent flick. It's about an underground filmmaker who wants to destroy mainstream moviemaking... his "call to action" is "Power to the people who punish bad cinema!" Having gotten quite fed up with moderation (it was one of the reasons I left
Summary: Yay!
Just for reference, a future home for anti-karma warriors will be located at http://www.karmawhore.com. I just
-Chris (62 points and falling quickly)
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
I am astonished. Why is yelling light so much harder (or harder at all) than walking over to the lightswitch? The more I think about yr post, the weirder and less convincing it seems. What on earth do you mean by "internet on my fridge." There were no internet-enabled fridges till recently, and maybe none in the US right now. If you did the wiring yourself--WHY in the absence of apps?
www.technocopia.com
Fuck you, I know plenty of places that have that many phone lines with no PBX, and anyways, phone lines dont consume very much at all even when on a PBX, so fuck you asshole. and good by karma...you were worthless anyway
Oh, you mean a Randite. Never mind ;)
Last night I was outside wiring up Christmas lights. I'd already tested the lights, but sometimes a bulb breaks during installation. So after I hung a string I'd reach in my jacket and turn on the lights to check them (I had connected a radio control). It's handy having the lights all turn on at once even through they're plugged into different outlets.
Short answer: Despite looking since the '80s, there is no solid evidence that any kind of EM field from power lines cause cancer of any sort. There is a slight correlation between working in an electrical profession and cancer, but that is probably due to the chemicals used, or something.
Check out the Power Lines and Cancer FAQs maintained by John E. Moulder, Ph.D, Radiation Oncology prof of the Medical College of Wisconsin. Doc Moulder also has some other EMF / cancer websites.
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
These guys are in the tech industry. They're hardwired to do this stuff and it's good R&D, too. This is not gold-plated bathtubs; it's solid bleeding edge tech, which will eventually trickle down into better products for all of us.
If you've got a problem with wealth, go beat up on Donald Trump. These guys are just geeks who were in the right place at the right time. If you had a billion dollars in stock would you do any different?
(And yes, most of them give generously to charity, too)
Was anyone else repulsed reading this story, or am I the only one? A $107,000 van? 300 gpm shower? Swimming pool-sized subwoofer? Here's a message for the rich boys and girls with more money than brains: you need to learn that there's more to happiness than playing 'My home theater screen is bigger than your home theater screen'. Perhaps even make the lives of others better, rather than adding another plasma screen in the bathroom so that you can watch Matrix while flossing....
Ok, I fess, I'm a curmudgeon, I like to make my own mess and wallow in my own filth at home and don't need a computer to tell me how deep the pile of junk is around my desk or how much of it is recyclable. The day I can't remember how much food I have in the fridge is the day I subcontract my nutrition management to Archer Daniels Midland Co.
I've reached a point with technology that the more I have of it the more likely that one piece is going to be the weak link and go. I can hardly change a lightbulb without remembering to buy relacements and gradually moving the bag of new bulbs closer to the dim lamp.
It's greatly amusing to see what home entertainment, security, networking, etc. will be assumed normal in a few years. Keep in mind, that CES is about marketing, convincing people they can't live without© said stuff. Get what ya need, dump what you don't. Keep it simple stupid.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hey we've got the same thing, but we went the even cheaper route!
Actually, work paid for everything but the DSL connection (I'm just "testing" it, you see), but still, that's pretty impressive....
You must count yourself among those who 'couldn't glean an intelligent idea of that morass of run-on sentances', as you didn't respond to the substance of the post. Try reading it again, and then commenting... I'm sure you'll get it someday.
this is one of the last places i would expect to find fellow motorhead devotees. . .
!-- wit --!
You could have just touched tip and ring together and seen if it sparks. That would tell you if it is a wet (POTS, high current) or dry (low current) line. Then you can find out if it is active by using your tongue.
I agree. I also think that we should just let people die when they are sick instead of trying to cure them; after all, if all sick people die, we will have practically eliminated disease from the world. I'm not sick right now and I made my health the way it is because of my integrity and All-American hard work, so why should I care if some poor slob dies?
</sarcasm>
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Yeah, John probably told them "I have a DSL internet connection," then later "all the rooms in my house have networked computers, so all of my computers can get onto the internet via my DSL." The reporter assumed that meant each one had a seperate DSL cable. Oh well, reporters aren't known for being techies.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
This is a fallacy of proportion. Just because you are talking about large items and I am talking about small ones does not make you right and me wrong.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Well, you never know when a technology could spawn something truely groundbreaking and useful.
Say, for instance, that the subwoofer company, having never had any requests before for something that would put out that much bass, does some research in the area of amplifier and woofer technology. Perhaps something they learn about the huge magnetic field which would drive such a beast turns out to have an application in medicine? Sure, it sounds stupid, but often this kind of unexpected cross-field discovery is how breakthroughs happen.
Granted, I abhor the materialistic culture we have today - especially its impact on the environment. But there is a positive side of it. With a culture that spends so much, it keeps the economy nice and healthy. What matters is that money is _moving_ around everywhere. Every time money changes hands, extra value is created for both parties (ok, not _every_ time). This net increase in wealth does trickle elsewhere a ceratin amount.
If we didn't have that kind of culture, I think the poor end of the spectrum would be far greater in number, and most would be worse off than they are now.
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
the rich can all die horrible deaths. if i become rich i'll kill myself -- honest :-)
Willing to put up with latency when CD changes because you can't afford a hard disk and an Ogg or MP3 encoder?
Can't afford larger monitors, or to hire programmer to change the code to use a larger font?
Poor guy. Ellison needs our help. Send your check today.
Oh, and what's with this? From the John Seely Brown page:
DSL lines to the rooms? That doesn't make sense; he should use ethernet. I suspect the reporter got confused.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
From any of 26 zones in the house, Ellison can use color touch screens to activate his 350-disc CD jukebox...
High-tech, my butt. He doesn't even use MP3s.
Larry Ellison is not the second richest guy in the world because he's a brilliant tech. He's a CEO. (He actually did a stint as a programmer of sorts, but not a particularly brilliant one.) CEO's aren't as a rule all that bright - they're charismatic in the way that effective bullies are charismatic.
And the story that the article told of the tech-support visit to his house - where Ellison threw a temper tantrum that broke a remote - indicates what we already knew: that Ellison is, at heart, an infantile bully. (I know Oracle v.p.'s and senior management types socially, so I'm not talking entirely out of my tuchus). Most CEO's have an elements of this personality type - glibly positive when things are going well (and since they get paid millions even when the company is tanking, they always seem to be positive in a professional context), childish and pathetic when they are not.
In many ways, I don't think the greatest tragedy of our times is that we've become too materialistic, or the inequity between the rich and the poor. I think it the characteristic tragedy of our era is that people like this are held up as heroes.
It's almost fun having a conversation on slashdot, with the mystique that it's right in the open but the fact that almost no one will click all the way down to read 0 and 1 scored posts. I wonder how many eyes out there have been following this silently... or better yet, will follow it months from now when the posts are archived and set in stone?
(insert twilight zone music here)
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Kraus has an impressive little MarioKart 64 setup there. Back at Purdue we wired a projector from a treehouse that pointed at our roof. Looked great (at night) and we used headphones for sound. Worked great except whenever we knocked Jon into the Lava in big donut and right before he hits the lava a balloon floats off of Wario's little head signaling a double, he jumps up and screams. The tree would shake, hence us, hence the picture, and our neighbor would come out and give us dirty looks. Wonder if Kraus wants to have a sleep over?
No, Larry Ellison is as rich as he is today because he did the right action in the right place at the right time. There are lots of people who have been "in the right place at the right time" but not all of them are as rich as Ellison. One of the requirements of a functional communtiy is that people are held responsible for their actions. That is, people get rewarded (or penalized) for their actions, not the actions of others. If I shoot someone, should you be put in jail? No, I should. If I make a billion dollars, should you get a roof over your head? No, I should. Responsibility works both ways. It protects you from my mistakes and protects me from you leaching off my acomplishments. Im not saying that it is good that people are starving while Ellison lives in a mansion, but it is not Ellison's fault that they are starving so dont blame him or try to make him fix the situation if he doesnt want to. As the saying goes, credit where credit is due.
...there's just nothing cooler than a trampoline room with 20 ft. ceilings. Actually, if you want to see his house, it's right on a lake near Seattle, and they have boat tours that go by. I should point out, EVERYONE on this lake is fabulously wealthy (pro basketball players, CEOs, you name it), and yet when you see Gates' house, it's still obvious.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I think it was ol' Burroughs sofa that was alive, wasn't it? I know it tried to eat him.
Yeah. 1337 j03 craXX0red the Soft House in Lawrence and redirected Burroughs's sofa to goatse.cx, back in '97. Swallowed the Old Bull whole. Sad, sad day.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Pg1 - read what I wrote. hard work etc. is valueble, but so is luck, especially when you're speaking of people with millions or billions of dollars. ... And I quote - "The right to life, liberty and the presuit of happiness" (emphasis mine). Note how happiness is last on the list.
Pg2 - what? my reasoning is that people shouldn't starve because they didn't work. read what I wrote.
Pg3 - I place Capitalism as being PART OF human rights. Along with the right to self determination, the right to free speech, the right of assembly, of religion, and on down the list, I have the right to earn money
Pg4 - Well, you poopyheads don't realize that the right to life is one which is equal for all, and the most important of all. If you don't get that, you don't get it.
Forget about nice architecture for a moment.
Forget about tasteful furniture.
Forget about the "listenting spot."
(Side note: go _out_ to listen to music every now and again, ya freak!)
Go read the business section of a newspaper or a news site. Tell me how many people got laid off last week, this week. How many people will get laid off next week?
Now, take the $1 million you're putting into your house and hire 20 people back at $50K/year. Or whatever proportion you'd like.
Or don't build something into your house that's going to consume all the power in California. Or how about that asshole who has a 300 gallon/minute shower. Nice concern for the environment there.
What amazes me is human beings' capacity for selfishness and complete and utter disregard for others' needs.
If you have that kind of money, put it somewhere where it can help others.
Why not charge everyone the same rate for his usage, i.e. what it costs to produce. That's like saying that apples are 50c, unless you buy them by the bushel, in which case they're 75c. Socialist.
I didn't realize there WAS a lameness filter.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
They would have worked on something which would have benefitted more people than one hyper-rich CEO. It's not about the waste of "money" as an abstraction, it's about the waste of labor on one person.
Why not just learn how to write clearly? You've got a lot of balls expecting people to parse bad writing.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
All that money,
All that equipment,
and the same problem for all of them:
No time to play with any of it.
I'm crying for them, crying because I'm laughing so hard.
Everytime I hear someone ever-so-modestly say, "Hey, nobody ever helped me, everything I got I earned ... if someone's in the shit, it's probably their own fault", I think, "There's goes someone goes someone without a fuckin' clue ... and proud of it."
Know anyone who has a proven capability to earn $35/hr but can't keep themselves together long enough to have a pot to piss in?
I do. And it is their choice.
Right... I already pay around $20,000 in taxes every year. If the government can't take $80 of that to solve the poverty problem, then I really doubt giving them another $80 is going to make much of a difference.
Of course, if it really could make a difference, then I certainly wouldn't mind paying it...
Get off it, man. You're acting as if it were written in Greek. If you can't read it, then don't bother reading it; I don't really care either way. In itself, however, it was not unlike most posts I write when half-asleep - but it was grammatically correct, if a bit run-on. I'll decipher its for you. When translated, it reads : "The post you made in response to the one which started this (lengthy) thread (the 'original thread' for clarity's sake) took the original thread too literally.". And, reading this line of argumentation, I can see that what I spoke of was not an isolated incident.
Uh, none?
I didn't take the original idea too literally. What I did was demolish the original idea as being completely idiotic. Anyone who would think such a thing has no ability to think logically. The poorly constructed replies to that idea is further evidence that I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG.
All my points were made earlier in the thread. If you cannot understand logic, then it's not my job to provide what you missed during your education.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
All you're saying is that, assuming he would have spent the money on himself anyway, how he spends his money is of no consequence to the poor, and will not affect them.
If you need to have it affirmed, YOU ARE RIGHT about his money not helping the poor if you assume he would have spent it on himself no matter what. You are wrong if you accept that he had the option, before breaking ground on the house, to spend all that money on others.
Non-profit organizations are for helping people who don't deserve to starve or freeze.
Obviously *you* are the one who still doesn't get it. I you get a topic that I am interested in, then I'll give you a serious argument. On this particular topic, YHBT.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
New IPO millionare builds first fully automated, digital home powered entirely by Microsoft systems
A week later
Garage door kills New IPO millionare in freak automation accident... Cops arrive on scene and find a BSOD on the remote.
You seem to be drawing a lot of attention here, especially from the AC community.
I wanted to ask if you have any relation to Nurit Sela. There was such a girl in a Fidonet-style mail network called UltiNet.
The main difference between UltiNet and the newsgroups/forums/weblogs on the 'net is that in UltiNet (and in FidoNet too), people were expected to write under their real names, except in several forums (mainly designated for jokes and flames) where handles were allowed.
Like you, Nurit Sela (a female name. Nurit == Buttercup, Sela == Rock) was drawing a lot of attention, but after a while, the suspect arrised that she's not a real girl, because nobody actually contacted her on the phone and she never showed up in the meetings (yes, Ultinet had user meetings!). Nurit had to disgracefully leave the network, quoting a song about her blood dripping on the flowers, or something.
Hmm.. that's all. I just felt I wanted to write that. I would have written it to you in a private message, had I known your email.
By the way, UltiNet still exists. They have something like 15 participants now. :)
-- The ballad of arrivederci
It's nice to know that there are some kernels of undigested corn that are just being flushed down toilets, while a bunch of poor people are going to starve to death this winter.
Your argument is equivalent to mine. Do you see why it is unconvincing?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Yeah it's neat and everything, but the protocol it runs on is like NetBEUI for Home Automation. I think slashdot should have a round up on home automation that covers some of the non-X-10 stuff.
Huh? Please explain.
:)
I hate moderation and would love to help your fight in any way possible.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
You have done well in a system which has left all the people you knew as a child in the same positions their parents were in in society. I am doing well in a system which is leaving most of the people I knew well as a child in the same positions their parents were in in society. You grew up in a lower-class household; I grew up in a middle-class household.
This can't be right. Any system which leaves behind all but one of the people in any given neighborhood in the social position their parents were in is not a system in which social mobility is easy. Yes, simple handouts arn't always, or even often, the best way to go about things and yes, the wealthier shouldn't be taxed so much that they gain no extra benifit from their increased output to society. But at the same time, those who can give more to society (i.e. the wealthier) should do so, forced or not, and opportunity should be made more available to those born into poorer families. If you have done as well for yourself as you describe, why not sponsor a scholarship. Or give money to your former school. Or something - but it will always remain that people who percieve no likely benifit from a course of action are less likely to attempt to carry out that action. If a poor person sees a white-coller career as a very remote possability, he is more likely to abstain from trying - making it the job of those who know this and have means to improve the situation to do what they can to lower the barriers to social mobility.
On the other hand, I'd happily kill for his speaker stands :) 200ft columns of concrete? That should do nicely. Add another for the turntable :)
No, they are not equivalent. You assume with your corn-in-the-toilet-bowl that the corn has been eaten, while the argument concerning the waste with Mr. Ellison's house is that, had he spent the money on other endeavours, more people would benifit, and perhaps, had the money been spent in certain places, more people would have their lives today. (how's that for a lengthy sentance, eh? 5 commas!) Poor people would not necessarily get more corn had the houses not been built, but they would get more corn had the money used to build the houses had not been spent on the houses, but rather on (in one of the many ways on can do this) helping the poor. I will admit, however, that in the tight constraints of the precice wording of the original post that you are correct. But you are incorrect if one preforms the simple extrapolation intended by the author, which one can make when the substance of what he wrote is related to his thesis. Commenting on such a minor flaw is, while interesting as a logic game, at times confusing to those who don't read slashdot posts with such a precise (and by precise I don't mean wise - just to be as accurate as I can be. You understand.) eye, especially when your comments are of such a Spartan nature.
1. Post a lame attempt at humor.
2. Watch it get modded up to 5:Funny.
For an extra fast ascention, bash Bill Gates and/or Windows.
Moderators, just because you find something slightly amusing is no reason to mod it up. And if you DO find something really funny, could you please look at where it's already at score-wise and ask yourself if it deserves to be higher?
- Have a picture
Exactly. I don't find anything wrong with the idea that some people do better than others. The idea that someone should pay with their life for not working hard enough is as wrong as saying that no person should have more than anyone else, no matter what they do in life. As always, the middle ground has the best foundation.
We need to draw the line on our pandering to children and simpletons at some point.
Yeah, God forbid we have beauty in the world.
I've got an idea... you'll like this. Why don't we only build efficient houses made out of unpainted concrete. Think of the efficiency! We could just have a single, standardized slab size that could be placed and stacked into nice, efficient cubes. Cut a door and you're done!
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Ok, genius, we put you in charge of who gets to starve. From your comments, I gather it will be people who are unable to make money through some handicap or disability. Of course, given the power, I would pick you first.
If my thoughts could be seen, they'd put my head in a guillotine... -Bobby Zimmerman
It sure must be nice to have a jillion bucks to throw around to hire other people to wire up your home, but IMHO it's much more satisfying to roll up your sleeves and do the tinkering yourself.
My house mutes the stereo and announces who's calling when the phone rings, tells me who sent the e-mail that just arrived, tells me when my friends pop online if I'm not signed on, controls every commonly-used light I have, controls the A/V setup in my bedroom, and does lots of other things. And I set it all up myself, and had a blast doing it.
"Why, when I was young, we had to automate our own homes! And by gum, we liked it!"
If I got wealthy, the last thing I would spend money on is extra people to live in my house...
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
"I can be watching four football games simultaneously while enjoying a beer and the view," Nicholas boasted.
"Have you ever done that?" I asked.
"No," he admitted with a laugh. "I have no spare time. But friends who've come over tell me it was great."
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
Would you like to pet my Penguin? The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
aside, your emphasis is just plain wrong. maybe in canada, lists of human rights are in decending order of importance, but in our consitution, all of those rights are equal and supposedly inseperable. it's my right to choose how to spend the money that i earned, just like it's the right of someone else here not to work.
And I thought I was cool with my Cisco 12000, my old Gandalf PACX 2000 (bought from a local college, stripped of all internals and converted into a beer cooler) and my Atari ST (heh). Sigh. At least I have 100Mbps WaveLAN. :)
:P)
Speaking of which, I use Nokia C020 cards for networking. Works great. Why don't high-tech moguls use that type of technology instead of drilling holes in their walls? At least, if I have to move, I don't have to rewire my new home completely. (Don't ask about the Cisco rack and the Gandalf
Seriously, if my studio mains turn out to have more cone area than Larry Ellison's 3000 cubic foot subwoofer, I will _never_ stop laughing. Does anybody know what he's got in there? He'll have to beat 4 12"s and I'll bet anything I get a more even, accurate response even if he's 20db louder. Silly bugger. Not that I would object to having enclosures that big myself :) I just don't think he has the faintest idea what he's doing with them.
I suppose he probably has about 8 EV 18" PA drivers in there. That should be fun but he should rent it out for raves, not just watch Jurassic Park on it :) maybe some club designers can learn from his silliness. Screw PA stacks, the subwoofer enclosure is the basement :)
This is what should've been posted in place of that article. Here is something that really shows home automation, and how it can be done by anybody, not just the "rich and famous".
And damn! Talk about features! This is one heck of a software package! Voice control and feedback! Event handling, remote control, GPS - damn!
Double damn!
Makes me want to break down and buy a ton of X-10 and play, play, play - too bad I already have more projects going on than - what's that old saying? - "than Carter has pills!"
There ya go!
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Damned good points.
One of my biggest downfalls, and I'm quite sure that I'm not alone in this, is my occasional inability to understand non-geeks. My post is a good example of this, and also illustrates that not everyone looks up to Ellison and people like him.
Although I sure as hell wouldn't turn down some cash from the man. Especially whilst Bernie Ebbers' beast is swallowing my company whole.
Midwatch Industries
"I'm not saying people should starve, except for those people who don't do anything to benefit society themselves."
I don't see how money has anything to do with it. Never mind artists or weird backyard inventors constantly playing Tom Swift, consider that Mother Teresa should've starved by your original statement. Wouldn't it be better to look beyond money and the indirect effect of money benefitting society- and consider how a person might be trying to benefit society directly?
By the same token, if someone figured out (through, for instance, stock market manipulation- see Cisco, MS) how to gain huge amounts of money at _no_ benefit to society at all (the stock pyramid strategies themselves are no benefit, the products might be), shouldn't those people starve because they are actively choosing to be no use whatsoever to society?
Alaska is for people who are freezing for a reason, or who like freezing.
Much like parvenu: one that has recently or suddenly risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it
I remember learning those terms in 7th grade French class, and thought it applied to the cheerleaders in my class who all had to have Gucci bags.
It's all so clear now: A bazillion dollars on a home theater, and media selections from the bulk bins of Columbia House. Does it make sense to contain a $6 million stereo in walls made from fir 2x4s, plywood and sheetrock, picked up at the local Home Depot?
Why can't one of these bazillionaires build a castle or an architecturally unique dwelling out marble and iron that will last for centuries? That would be so much cooler.
It reminds me of the guns before butter cliche.
I'm so jealous.
How about combining the Jacuzzi and the subwoofer into one giant, human cocktail mixer? Instead of hot and cold water taps, vermouth and bombay gin taps. Genetically engineer some giant cocktail onions. That'd be cool.
---
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The voltage across the tip and ring is, if I recall correctly, approximately 12V DC. Except when the phone is ringing, at which point you get about 40V AC. And the phone isn't drawing any current (well, negligible in most cases) unless it's actually in use.
How much total energy (in kilowatt-hours) do you really think is consumed by the phone(s) in your house each month? Compare that to your monthly electric bill and get back to us.
When it's Ellison's 3,000 sq. foot one. This really should be called something else
My UID is prime!
"From any of 26 zones in the house, Ellison can use color touch screens to activate his 350-disc CD jukebox ..."
He should have just bought an MP3 player for crying out loud. However if we can somehow hack into his house and use the spare bandwidth to run streams of music we will never need napster again. Of course his taste in music probably sucks :(
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
Is it just me, or is this stuff just not impressive? It's nice to see who can write the biggest check, but how much of this stuff works, let alone is really useful?
Come on now, network hook-ups in every room? Didn't /. do a story on that a few weeks ago...only then it was people talking about frat houses and apartments? It just doesn't cost that much to wire up a house.
Puh-lease, nigga. If I spend enough money on my home network that someone is writing an article about it, don't bring me "network jacks"--that mother better be wireless. (As an aside, does he use those "network jacks" with one of them there new "computers"? Network jacks are not that obscure or bleeding edge. Quotes are entirely unnecessary.)And what is up with Larry?
And that's the home that "surpasses all others" *gasp*I have the ability to change screen resolution and font size with my junk celeron system. Can we get Larry a UI make-over?
And my favorite:
Ooh...his house has...push buttons! They may not work, but boy are they obscure. Of course that's not as good as the guy who strapped a monitor onto his exercise bike. That must of cost millions.The guys from eXcite seem to be the only ones in the bunch with any clue.
Sean "I may be poor, but I don't have to change glasses just to read my screen"
Try not to contradict yourself in the same post. You first called the guy a libertarian, and then you complain about all the government spending to fund the building of useless nuclear subs.
"And like that
In many ways, I don't think the greatest tragedy of our times is that we've become too materialistic, or the inequity between the rich and the poor. I think it the characteristic tragedy of our era is that people like this are held up as heroes.
I'm sorry... remind me again of the last time Larry Ellison was held up as anything other than the 2nd richest man in the world. A hero? Since when has he been called that?
"And like that
I have no respect for Larry or anyone else who can't realize what's good for the earth.
Puhleeze... "what's good for the earth"? You don't care about the earth, you care about you. Does the earth need electricity? Are we in danger of the planet slowing down or something?
No, you want Larry Ellison to use less power because you are worried that eventually this will effect YOU in some way.
I want Larry Ellison to use as much electricity as possible. And Bill Gates, too. I hope they leave all one million lights on in their houses when they go to work in the morning. Why? Because stress on any system is GOOD. It promotes CHANGE. If you want more efficient electricity, then BREAK the current system.
No, instead let's all huddle around a sterno for Christmas, huh?
The earth will be here a loooooooooooong time after we're gone... don't be so self-righteous.
-thomas
"And like that
However, the best way to get research results is simply to not to build toys for multi-gazillionaires. Bell Labs, UIUC's labs, the MIT Labs, and the Lawrence Labs have discovered unimagineably, infinitely more by spending money on pure research than by catering to some plutocrat's whim.
I don't think anybody wants those who "don't conform to the system they were born into" to die. However, they don't want the government to give these people handouts. There's no conspiracy to prevent charity. The government has simply shown that they are incapable of providing for people without massive corruption and waste which nobody can be expected to pay for. The UN can spout their human rights propaganda filth, but they just want to seize power, just like sleazy politicians who say they will provide for the people.
The truth is, capitalism doesn't work for some people, but communism doesn't work for anybody because the nature of communism requires a dictatorship in order to stay in force. It looks like an classic but unfortunate case of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. Well, now that I've proven myself to be worse than the "most rabid of the old communists," I'll end my rant.
you know who you are.. hell, im talk 99% of the posters here! Criticizing people for being supergeeks!?? what-da-funk-ever!
i ch mode, then you need help! serious help!
you need help. If your brain automatically went into jealousy-critic-save-mother-earth-down-with-the-r
I think each and every one of us has had a fantasy/dream about having the ultimate geek home with all the relevant and psycho toys available and even new ones...
I dont know.. maybe I'm just the freak here, but having a 3,000 sq ft sub, and 50 terminals in my home with touch-screen interface, and ten 20-foot video screens with voice activation etc etc WOULD BE THE DAMN COOLEST ACHIEVEMENT IN THE WORLD... right behind finding a beautiful intelligent chick to share it with...
so be "non-conformist and anti-establishment" all you want, but then step back realize you are 100% full of shiznit...
-Vanguard
ps: ill see you in my mobile-internet-audio-video-heaven-flying-saucer SOMEDAY....
"I think, therefore I get paid."
It's not enough to just spend their money there by legitimately helping the economy, rich people must be made to feel guilty. It's not fair that they have more than others and they must have gotten it by being evil. Poor people are good and rich people are bad.... oh wait a minute never mind.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Speaking of which, I'm hoping the advent of Bluetooth will finally get the manufacturers of TVs, VCRs, and other infrared-controlled devices off the dime. Controlling these things from other rooms means having to put one of those bloody IR-forwarding devices anywhere you're likely to want to do the controlling. What a pain, even when they do work. If Bluetooth lives up to its billing, maybe this situation will finally change and we'll be using RF like God intended.
No. Communism feeds off itself too much for a middle ground to hold. Are people living off the government going to vote for somebody that isn't going to give them more? Of course not...they will vote for the person who will give them more handouts, and in this fashion the nation falls further into communism until private property is completely gone. Nice thought, but human nature just doesn't allow for a middle ground.
Yo, you fucking trippin' My boy Larry knows what's up. See, his highrolling ass is spending mad scratch. That autonomous expenditurez is having wack effects on the GNP. That because of this here Multiplier Effex. Mo demand mean straight up mo supply.
All you playa-haters be hatin on my boy Larry, when he be helping yo bitch ass!! He even helping those broke ass crack hos that be starving to death.
Greetz to my boy H-Dog in accountz-reecevable.
Josh
I think the excite people (second to last on the list) are pretty much in line with you and most slashdot people, probably. They are not the whiny asshole execs that ellison and billg are. They're smart tech guys from stanford that built a successful website and did a big part of the programming themselves. They just happen to like playing video games on a 7 foot screen with surround sound. who could argue?
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
A recent study (read it in a newspaper, I think L.A. Times but unsure) shows a small $80 per year tax on all tax payers would go a long way to solving the United States poverty siuation.
If you took all the money that the US currently spends on social programs, and just GAVE it to poor people, there wouldn't be a single person left in America below the poverty line. So why is there still poverty?
1. Government doesn't do anything efficiently.
2. Poverty is more than just not having money; thus, throwing money at poverty won't necessarily solve the problem.
That said, if I invent some whizbang widget, IPO and make G$, and I donate millions to charity (or billions, in Bill Gates's case), why shouldn't I splurge a little on myself? What's the point if I can't?
For all you neo-communist whiners out there, every super-rich tech CEO is doing far more to help solve poverty than you are, just by paying their taxes. Most of them also donate more to charity in a year than you do in your life.
Finally, these CEOs have created an entire industry (which probably employs hundreds of slashdot-reading techies like us)--the high-end high-tech installer/system designer industry. The next best thing to having one of these setups has got to be building one...
To sum up. Spending on labor: hard to argue against that, under our current system. Spending on resources: you have not made your case.
I will also point out that there is a major problem with the system when more labor is good. The fact that we need to build stuff we don't need (for instance, nuclear submarines in CT where I am -- we kept building them for years in spite of no need, just so we wouldn't lose the jobs. The world would have been better if we had just set up a 10 year severance package -- at least then we wouldn't have wasted all that steel, and all the workers' time. God it's absurd), just so that people won't starve, is from any rational-technical criteria absolutely insane.
Please read Bertrand Russell's "In Praise of Idleness", Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" and "A General Statement of the Tragedy of the Commons" (whose author I forget) for more thinking along these lines, from minds greater than mine. (All three are available online. Use google)
__
Here's a suggestion: spend the money differently. Instead of a gigantic stereo system, hire real musicians. If it seems to aristocratic having musicians play for you privately, invite your friends over. Instead of a big video screen with tacky furniture, get some decent interior design advice and tuck the video safely out of sight. And instead of whiz-bang gadgets that don't work most of the time, hire some human household help; they may get sick occasionally, but they usually have a fully-functional, self-installing replacement available quickly.
Unless these guys take their gazillions and bury it in what would have to be an awfully big backyard, any money they have is either 1) employing someone else in exchange for goods or services or 2) being invested and providing someone else's capital.
Whether gazillionaires spend money on a box of Tic-Tacs(TM) or a swimming-pool-sized subwoofer, someone is benefiting from that purchase. In this case, those who supply swimming-pool-sized subwoofers will not freeze or starve to death this winter. Or maybe they will...if someone were to force Ellison to direct his wealth towards "better things".
Why are you spending all that money at your school instead of feeding yourself and other hungry people?
you honastly don't see any middle ground between a communist revolution and a (nearly) unregulated capitalist system?
Uh, has he not heard of VPNs & Switches? Perhaps fiber & Gigabit Ethernet?
My fiance & I can both work from home and be into our companies' LANs at the same time with only the following:
Sure, we're not getting 100Mb, but it's not like we're running IBeam out of our house....
And for Silicon Valley's ultimate party animal, Green engineered a "one-button party mode" that instantly sets the right mood for entertaining -- no matter who shows up. When Ellison calls from his car announcing his impending arrival with a celebrity or business executive, the staff opens a drawer in the catering kitchen that hides a special touch pad.
Man, that's old-tech. I can call my linux-based cd-quality answering machine from my GSM mobile, it Call-IDs me, then I can just use the touch-tone functions to identify my settings to the computer, which deploys my settings over 100Mbps Ethernet to each device's inbuilt Transmeta Crusoe processors, then calls the GSM telephone built into my car's onboard computer, which interrogates the car's GPS system and online traffic reports to project my time of arrival, and schedules my house systems to power-on just before I arrive.
Also, I don't have one of these old-fashioned 'door-knobs'. I have a webcam on my drive, and another on my porch. It detects image changes, and uses OCR to identify car registration plates and face-recognition technology to identify people, and then searches my address book to identify whether to greet them with the door opening automatically, the lights coming on and a videophone connection to the room I'm in, or a Comprehensive Armed Response incorperating camoflaged minigun turrets and model helicopters armed with air-to-ground missiles and guided dropped ordinance.
(This message has been psted in jest)
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
>You have poverty, not because people are lazy (yes there are plenty of those), not because of jobs going overseas (yes there are plenty of those too, but because we as people allow it. Do you honestly belive that poverty cannot be eliminated? A recent study (read it in a newspaper, I think L.A. Times but unsure) shows a small $80 per year tax on all tax payers would go a long way to solving the United States poverty siuation.
Basic economic law: you subsidize it, you get more of it. See: War on Poverty.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
That waterfall shower is sweet. That is the only thing that impressed me out of all of those homes. Screw those ridiculous, complex, pointless functionality home networks.
Go read the UN declaration on human rights, though you probably think it's too liberal or someting.. go talk to one of those people you think deserves to die for their sloth, and tell them that to their face like a man, if you really believe it. If you place the capitalist system above human rights, you're worse than the most rabid of the old communists. noone should die because they don't conform to the system they were born into. noone should die because larry ellison wants to hear the dinosaurs roar as loud as they did in the jurassic period - something he dosen't need, something he wouldn't miss if he had never had it, unlike food. Besides, isn't asking for charity a way of gaining money for yourself? Government is for whatever the people under it want it to be for. Just remember - the capitalist system isn't fair, and it can never be. Larry Ellison is as rich as he is because he was in the right place at the right time, just like Rockefeller, just like Gates, just like any superich person in the us.
This is America we're talking about. Our hedonistic pleasures have always taken priority over common sense. Take a ride in a 1972 Olbmobile Cutlass Supreme with the 454 engine package. We have always made things bigger for the sake of making them bigger. That's our thing. On the way home from work today I think I'll pick up a Double Quarter Pounder meal, super sized with the 48 oz Coke.
-B
I wouldn't try that phone-wire-on-tongue trick if I were you... if there's enough juice in there (even non-ring) to shock your hand while wiring (as i just found out again a few minutes ago), I wouldn't want to give my tongue the same treatment ;)
BRTB
quick question, trying not to piss you off.
I'm not sure how you can have an objective opinion on how much taxes are being taken from you. From you own admission, you've admitted that all the money you've made has been your own, how would you know the difference? How much % exactly is taxing the hell out of you? And does it matter that much if the percentage goes up when the total does? Like you said, without the food stamps, you wouldn't have made it.
Just not exactly sure where the argument is here. How much do you think you should pay in taxes?
--
+&x
No river going through his house. It's in several "modules", which allows him to have an impressive entranceway to his yard for parties separated from the family compound (private), more formal sit-down kinds of parties (e.g. the annual CEO summit), and the less-formal entertainment areas. It is VERY wired, also with a lot of security and cameras. Almost everything can be controlled remotely. He has surfaces that can display digital art and rotate it. Visitors and residents can have badges that customize the photos, environment, etc. according to their preferences. Custom company that Bill started put together most of it, and a part of that company was acquired by Microsoft and worked on Microsoft home and consumer electronics prototyping. They used a variant of DCOM to have distributed control systems in the house. He has a multiple projector screen wall. He has had a host of unforeseen problems, some of which we've shared (see my other post in this section.) It's actually less palatial than several estates owned by famous celebrities... Michael Jackson's comes to mind.
The idea behind conservation is not to impede technological progress but to eliminate waste. I don't see how curbing unnecessary electricty usage is the path back to the stone age. What's the advantage to leaving all the lights on in your house? If we can't see that, then we are following losing strategy and we deserve to lose.
...also has the electro-whatever glass. It's normally translucent bordering on opaque, but when he wants to see who's there, it can turn clear.
:)
Cute place. My cousin, a disgruntled former Oracle employee, took me by there when I was visiting SF.
Of course, none of us east coasters could get used to those tiny shacks they call "homes" out west.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Phone lines do not draw power from your powerlines. How else can the phones still work at times of emergencies when cable, and electricity dosn't
Power is provided from the phone company itself, and is mostly constant. Its nothing that a power generator that an average large circus sized tent uses for power.
And if resistance was a big problem how did we get to where we are today? its not a real big deal.
The bottom line is that wired homes suck.
Why? Because they are basically custom jobs, and therefore need to be reprogrammed every time you change the system. Take a simple example: the unified control system. When you move from a dual stack CRT projector to a DMD projector, or from an analog high end 5 channel audio system to a fully 8 channel digital audio system, you have to revise the control system. What order things turn on and off. The power systems. The layout of the UI of all control panels. Possibly the interfaces to the stack of media changers. The media selection systems (of which Escient is a major provider) are also proprietary and closed.
Each change is a major software job, and that job takes LONGER than the next revision of products, so you start to fall behind the innovation curve.
There is no dynamic plug and play control system that works end to end all the way to the UI. This is the major impediment to consumer control systems. It is the tyranny of static systems.
And you'd be surprised at how many systems that should work together but do not. And the stupidity of A/V architectures (like the lack of high quality end to end digital solutions in the video chain.)
Then there are the little things nobody thinks about ahead of time: like a stack of projectors may all (analog) drift differently, so although any single projector drifts imperceptably, the fact that they all drift in different directions make it very obvious.
I truly am a beta test site, and my systems is in perpetual beta. I have had the CEO of Runco thank me for being able to test configurations that his company can't test. I'm not complaining: the positive side of this is that I get the latest and greatest, even if they don't work quite perfectly. And I'm a geek, so that's OK!
So if you go for a wired home, be prepared for one of the following three situations:
1. You will almost never change anything, or if you do, you'll change almost everything together. OR
2. You will upgrade from time to time, but not everything will work at any given time. You'll have techs tramping through your house constantly, especially every time you have a party where you want to impress people. OR
3. You will take charge and program the systems yourself. You'll need an open-minded installer, because they hate it when you mess up the cables after they've neatened them, and A LOT OF TIME...
I assume the Slashdot community would fall into category three... ;-)
The idea behind conservation is not to impede technological progress but to eliminate waste.
Well, there are two things to say about that. First, I think a lot of the "conservationists" have very expansive ideas of what constitutes "waste". Look at the original poster: She thinks that having a roomful of computers in a house is wasteful. Others are attacking the whole idea of Christmas lights! The point is that the drumbeat of conservation never ends. Even if we did everything they wanted, they would start all over again. To them, ANY energy use beyond the bare minimum of survival is unacceptable.
The second point is this: What's wrong with waste? Why is it intrinsically bad to leave all the lights of my house on whenever I want to. Notice that this question is different from the question of pollution or landfills. That is a clean versus dirty environment problem; the question of "waste" is a different question. And that's where a lot of environmentalists go wrong. Instead of focusing on the real problem, which is cleaning up messes, they choose to focus on limiting technology, progress and convenience.
Environmentalists should focus on clean production of energy, not reducing the production of energy.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The voltages on a phone line in different electrical-states are well documented. The peak voltage is over 100 though (at ring time). There is actually something called "black box" iirc which simulates the voltage condition of an idle line while keeping the connection physically usable for voice transmission - the phone company doesn't bill you for the true length of the call, just the base fee + the amount of time before you switch on the box.
Fwiw, i was working on a handset and was holding the circuit board while the phone rang. It was _quite_ a shock. Furthermore, i was working on smallish box (20 lines) outdoors standing on very wet ground in my boots. Even so, i would occasionally have to take breaks because i'd feel the current starting to freak out my hands.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
With the help of a new company called Voxeo and an X10 firecracker, I created something that allows me to control my own house lights and appliances for free with my cell phone or a web browser.
It's nice to know that Larry Ellison has a pool sized subwoofer while a bunch of poor people will either freeze or starve to death this winter.
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
Sure wish I had a beowolf cluster of these!!!!
main(i){(10-putchar(((25208>>3*(i+=3))&7)+(i ?i-4?100:65:10)))?main(i-4):i;}
Folks,
When the world comes to this then its time to take a good look at ourselves. I am not saying that people who have wealth are bad. By no means so, in fact most wealthy people I know or have heard of are philanthropist of some form. But when people are starving not five (5) miles from where the house is then may, jusy maybe, some perspective is in order.
You have poverty, not because people are lazy (yes there are plenty of those), not because of jobs going overseas (yes there are plenty of those too, but because we as people allow it. Do you honestly belive that poverty cannot be eliminated? A recent study (read it in a newspaper, I think L.A. Times but unsure) shows a small $80 per year tax on all tax payers would go a long way to solving the United States poverty siuation.
One other thing, I know alot of you are starving college students like myself, who would love to have that house. The electronic doodads are cool but I wish they would've skipped on the aroma features and made a scholarship.
My two cents.
here's a FAQ right here...
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
I think I would need one fully Spark III E10000, maxed out with 64 CPUs. Actually, I'd need two of 'em.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Uh, maybe I missed this semester, but voltage has got nothing to do with it. See, power=amperage, not voltage. Don't use the phone and power consumption is zip. Use it and power consumption is still practically zip.
Do this experiment. Put a telephone wire on your tongue and call the number. Perhaps a tiny buzzing sensation? Now put your tongue in an light bulb socket with the power on. Different, no?
The original poster is, sad to say, an idiot.
Well, the real issue is that California is failing to manage its electrical grid properly. Of course heavy users needs to conserve to handle the temporary spot shortage, but this too shall pass. It doesn't necessarily make sense to forget about putting tech in your house, so long as you're willing to pay the bills, just because California is fucking up deregulation.
sulli
RTFJ.
that's an aside though...here's what i thought last night about the prospects of a DIY "HeadEnd" (what a wonderful term).
Well certainly hooking up a home network of PCs (in the personal computer sense, i.e. whatever OS, architechture is not a job that requires said millions and large groups of routers. However, setting up a home network to interface with your home still seems to me a formiadable job.
First, the simple stuff, like lights. I don't know much about the ethernet protocol, but i'm assuming it would be easiest to hack something together that controlled the lights with a fluctuation in simple voltage, i.e. a relay. Still, you have a wire per light to run, presumably. Of course you could just use x10 light controls, and i remember my father used to program some of the lights in our house on an old IBM 286, but if you want every light in every room to be controlled, perhaps a hack like this would be better...i have no experience with x10.
but that of course immediately leads to the question: "but what about dimmers." For that, perhaps another Ethernet/usual electrical circuits kludge would do, i.e. have the light brighten quicker the pulse to the switch. As a goal you of course want as much computer as possible to be done on the "server," not at the aparati, but still, e.g. hacking the networking to pulse an IR LED to interface your stereo through the remote receiver instead of having a proper node of the network with some computation done at the stereo.
But the heating system! I'm guessing servos of some sort but this would definitely require a bit more EE than the stuff already discussed, not to mention all the different things that would need to be controlled in order to effect the desired change...a plug into the thermostat would be the simplest, and least needing of motors etc., but if you want full room by room control you either get an expensive heating system or build expensive (i'm guestimating) interfaces thereto.
And of course controlling the system itself...i'm assuming a PDA with a self-written program communicating via IR. The program's the easy part, you still need IR receivers in every room running back to your computer.
So even with a small house you're talking about a lot of wires, though perhaps, with ingenuity, you will barely need any true nodes to the network at the execution end (i.e. a jerryrigged ethernet card to run your toaster).
arthhhhhhhhur
sell your certainty and buy bewilderment
Sheesh.
sulli
RTFJ.
I've dreamed about doing this sort of thing if I ever had the money. But these folks who are doing it--and admit it.. it's pretty neet--they are doing it just to have it done, not to enjoy it. They don't design it themselves, they need a staff of tech support to maintain it, and many of them admit they don't have the time to enjoy it. What's the point? Bragging rights? That's just lame. It's like watching some old rich guy crusing down the interstate in his brand new Farrari with automatic transmission, going the speed limit. Why did he buy it? Because he could. Does he like it? He really couldn't care less if it was a Toyota.
The Internet is generally stupid
Let's try "famous hightech people's homes." You should not make the plural of the word home by adding an apostrophe and an s, just an s.
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
Larry Ellison: Unfrozen Caveman CEO
yeah, and I'm an idiot too, or at least a hasty poster. Yeah P=VI etc. I know, I know. Still, you get my point....
Christmas decoration, OTOH, does nothing for anybody. We need to draw the line on our pandering to children and simpletons at some point.
Christmas lights themselves are wasteful and pollute the night sky. Christmas trees are generally produced in a ecologically sound fashion, but they also cause hundreds of fires, poison pets, and lead to household messes. Nonspontaneous gift giving isn't a particularly sound idea either -- WTF are you supposed to do with all that wasted giftwrap and those unwanted items? In the dumpster they go.
Besides, if I wanted to celebrate a fictitious character's birthday, I wouldn't choose one that was born on one of the darkest days of the year...
(well crafted troll, BTW)
(end comment) */ }
(end comment) */ }
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Phone lines are powered by the local phone CO and is DC current (48v IIRC), not AC from the power folks.
--
WHAT?! CmdrTaco wasn't on the list! Someone should really have a talk with those people...
Voltage is not the same as Power. Voltage is like electrical pressure. You can have a canister of highly-pressurized gas sitting beside you for a long time, but if you don't open the canister, it's not going to do much.
When you get a "static shock", the voltage drop between you and the object you've brushed can be as high as several thousand volts. Yet you don't die because the current is so miniscule. Hence, since Power is the product of current and voltage, the effect on you is minor.
Likewise, when a telephone line is not in use, it's power requirements are exactly 0. And even when it IS in use, the current drawn is minor (for several reasons - not the least of which is efficiency).
--
Perhaps since electricity is billed based on usage, they should raise the rates on usage above a set amount (like the amount required to operate an average late model fridge, reasonable climate control device, one television, two clocks, and ten 60 watt bulbs for 15 hours a day) to a larger rate. This would enable Larry to keep his house turned on, but make the decision to operate frivolities like Christmas lights or thin clients in every room of the house a direct economic decision. Or for those of us who wear lots of sweaters, sit in the dark, and eat only corn chips and drink water... we'll be able to get the power for our wired homes at a cut rate.
I do not have a signature
Wow, this is crazy.
... One would have a bedstand of craved oak and ebony, inlaid with gold, costing $200,000. Another would decorate his walls with enamel and gold at a cost of $65,000. ..."
After speading two long years studying US History in high school, I guess it finally paid off. I think that it's fasinating how the behavior of the nuev-rich of today are almost identical to the nuev-rich of the 1880s. Check this out: (from Matthew Josephson's excellent book, "The Robber Barons", p. 332)
"In New York, "natue's nobleman" all joined together in the frenzied contest of display and consuption. Mansions and chateaux of French, Gothic, Italian, Barocco, and Oriental style lined both sides of upper Fifth Ave. (in New York), while shining and jigsaw villas of huge dimensions rose above the habor of Newport. Railroad barons and mine-owners and oil magnates vied with each other in making town houses and country villas which were imitations of everything under the sun, and were filled with what-nots, old drapery, old armor, old Tubor chests and chairs, statuettes,
The chapter goes on and on about the glories and excesses of the robber barons. Simply amazing!
Ok, this wasn't supposed to be a push for the book but I think that if you really want to know what Larry E. is going to build next once his home gets upscaled by his closest competitor, you should flip open a history book. If history is any indication, SF will have castles rising up along Pecific Heights in a couple of years.
Ben Schleimer
PS. I really think that these houses are a complete and utter waste of money. With the amount of money they are spending, I think they should hold random lotteries every month and make some complete and total stranger utterly happy.
Ben Schleimer Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
Is it worth it? I bought some X10 controllers because it was cheaper and more convenient than having an electrician do a lot of rewiring. The thermostat may help save you energy since you can leave your heating off and turn it on remotely with a telephone call or via the Internet before you get home. Beyond that, it seems like it's a gimmick.
Most of us will never end up as the next Larry Ellison. Few of us will ever get real geek-homes. In the meantime, it's just perfectly normal jealousy and sour grapes.
I always enjoy reading the Innovations catalogue. After the 50th page of ads for personalised carrot embossers, I realise that I just don't need this crap, and I feel much happier about myself.
Larry Ellison might be super-rich, and has two of the playthings I'd most like out of life (a Mig jet and the Oracle corporation), but he's still just a brat who loses his rag with a remote control handset.
Phone lines do not draw power from your powerlines. How else can the phones still work at times of emergencies when cable, and electricity dosn't
From the user info:
> 20 Year old Tcom Student
What's "Tcom" ? Please tell me it isn't telecomms.
Power is provided from the phone company itself
That's right. Inside every TXE, there's a little cold-fusion reactor to power it.
Where do you think telcos get their power from ? Barring the odd solar phonebox in Arizona, they get it from the grid, same as the rest of us. Rooms of lead bathtubs and standby generators are just that; standbys in case of power loss.
"Its all about the caffine"
Caff E ine
Get it right, idiot, that's a religious sacrament you're talking about.
I think that in 100 years time, metal and stone will be dead. We shall be living in fleshy wombs, that can adapt to our every desire. The smell will be a problem, at first, but I'm sure that as a species, we can adapt.
We shall not need to worry about our rubbish or body waste. The house shall eat them as nutrition. This brave new paradigm awaits the bold.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
And that's where a lot of environmentalists go wrong. Instead of focusing on the real problem, which is cleaning up messes, they choose to focus on limiting technology, progress and convenience.
Environmentalists should focus on clean production of energy, not reducing the production of energy.
The trouble is, clean production of energy isn't sufficient - heck, it's already possible and the problem's still there. Fossil fuels may be dirty (and in limited supply in the long term) but they're gosh-darned-awful cheap and convenient. As long as consumers - especially in the US - insist on their current lifestyle at its current monetary cost, they will need to burn ever-increasing quantities of fuel.*
What continually staggers me is the mindset. Developing alternative energy sources is an expensive business that takes years and years. Reducing consumption has immediate effect, cutting down on pollution without side effects and _saves_ money to boot. So why on earth is the US's oil use going up year on year? It just doesn't make sense to me.
I guess the summary of what I'm trying to say is: The real problem is not cleaning up messes, though that's important. The _real_ problem is stopping ourselves from making more of them - an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure and so on.
Cheers,
Mat.
* I suppose I ought to put in a disclaimer about the possibility of suddenly developing a magical energy source that solves the world's problems. I don't think that's going to happen any time soon - just look how long fusion power has been "only 50 years away", for instance - but you can never exclude the possibility. It's a bad idea to bank on it, though.
Because someone is rich does not make others poor. There is NOT a limited supply of money. Money is created by market demand, his company has a good product, people buy it, they are creating money.
Larry or Bill having 30 billions dollars does NOT mean that everyone in the world is out 5 bucks.
FunOne
FunOne
Great, an ultra-rich geek can pay someone to come in and techno-pimp their home for $750K-3 million...
But wouldn't it be somewhat more cool to find out that these folks built out their network, wired the place for sound, and tuned the home theater on their own? Sure, people will say these are CEO's and they've got better things to do, but I'm a purist.
After spending a month ducting AC and building a rackmount into a closet I have an appreciation for my pimped out geek house. All this article said to me was "Nyah nyah! I got more dough than you do!"
Midwatch Industries
That's an silly argument for many reasons, and smacks of perpetual motion, but i'll concentrate on your main point: whatever they do with their money, it's ok because it's being passed on.
there are important differences between different ways of distributing wealth. Giving large amounts to the makers of swimming-pool sized subwoofers and leaving it to them is not an effective one if your goal has anything to do with the well-being of others.
money has many virtues - divisibility, indifference to history, etc - but it is not independent of context. An amount of money in one setting can be negligible but in another the same amount can save lives or transform them. Larry Ellison has all of these options available to him and is consistently choosing the most trivial and immediately gratifying.
spending $50,000 on the plans for your home cinema is stupid whichever way you look at it, but most of all because that amount of money could put someone through college and it isn't going to.
if that's not enough, consider the way it's presented: the language of the article is all about competition and one-upmanship and these people are being presented to us as aspirational figures. imagine if everyone devoted their efforts to aiming for twelve-seater movie theatre thing. we'd be heading for extinction. oh wait, they do.
A bunch of people to watch me do the stupid shit I do everyday, not to mention anger them with my fabulous wealth. I'd end up dead.
30 more people to know security codes, travel times, etc, etc, etc.
Thats why we needs ROBOTS!
FunOne
FunOne
In this case, in shakey Cali:
Your house has moved, windows must be opened due to failed AC.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
I mean, $80 000 speakers on 20ft collums of steel which are set onto the bedrock. Not bad.
I was working in a small business a while ago, and they had a Meridian phone system(don't know the exact name - fancy phones, though).
:)
:) (okay, well I lie, I kept testing them with my tongue, but I was more careful)
Anyways, being the boy wonder in the building, I was told to re-wire everything. Great fun
Anyways, to check to see if a line was live, I'd stick my tongue to it. No biggie, nice fuzzy buzzing feeling. These were the fancy-phone lines, so I figured they'd carre more juice than a regular phone line.
WRONG. I was up on some scaffolding playing around in the big box where all the wires came/went from/to, testing lines. Put two of them to my tongue and nearly flew off the scaffolding.
Yeah, that was the fax line - just a regular phone line(singled out because the fax machine needed a regular line).
Regular phone lines have enough juice to case muscle contractions. To someone with any number of medical conditions, that could be fatal.
Needless to say, I stopped testing the lines with my tongue.
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
I'm all for home theatre, but causing avalanches all around the country seems a big much to me. Wow.
> Well, there are two things to say about that. First, I
/. reader and have the associated room full of computers, but i still devote my working life to cleaning up and reducing consumption. I don't want to return to caves and furs, just to be a little less destructive.
> think a lot of the "conservationists" have very
> expansive ideas of what constitutes "waste". Look at
> the original poster: She thinks that having a roomful
> of computers in a house is wasteful. Others are
> attacking the whole idea of Christmas lights! The point
> is that the drumbeat of conservation never ends. Even
> if we did everything they wanted, they would start all
> over again. To them, ANY energy use beyond the bare
> minimum of survival is unacceptable.
That may be true of some individuals, but what evidence do you have for the generalisation? I'm as geeky as the next
> The second point is this: What's wrong with waste? Why
> is it intrinsically bad to leave all the lights of my
> house on whenever I want to. Notice that this question
> is different from the question of pollution or
> landfills. That is a clean versus dirty environment
> problem; the question of "waste" is a different
> question. And that's where a lot of environmentalists
> go wrong. Instead of focusing on the real problem,
> which is cleaning up messes, they choose to focus on
> limiting technology, progress and convenience.
It's bad because the power you use is dirty.
You don't have the first idea what the environmental movement 'focuses on': you're only aware of that part which threatens your home comforts.
The problem is that we use too much power and too much stuff to achieve ends which must be regarded as trivial. We need to find ways of making power cleaner: until we do, we need to use less of it. We need to find ways of making the material we depend on cleaner: until we do, we need to use less of it.
actually, for me the real answer is that waste is inelegant. any programmer should appreciate that. a solution which is fast and clean and appropriate to its setting is far more satisfying that something which just about works right now, causes terrible maintenance headaches and which we know causes the entire system to foul up later.
> Environmentalists should focus on clean production of
> energy, not reducing the production of energy.
or maybe, you know, both?
There's no lit Christmas tree at California's capitol, this year, because of demands being put on the electricity network, and people are being encouraged not to turn on their christmas lights until late and turn them off early in order to save electricity and reduce burnouts and brownouts.
Just look at all that waste. 16 phone lines? Do you know how much electricity each additional phone line adds to a house's electricity load? Miles of cable? Wires are resistors, and the resistance increases as the linear distance grows. All those servers chugging away and additional air-conditioning waste to make the server room inhabitable? Come on, people. Have we truly reached the point where our hedonistic pleasures and preferences take priority over common sense?
I have no respect for Larry or anyone else who can't realize what's good for the earth. If everyone else is making a sacrifice, then so should they. Being rich gives them no right to an exemption.
-- Anne Marie
If this sort of stuff interests you, you might have a look at a copy of "Audio Video Interiors", which profiles big-buck custom audio/visual installs. It does not cover a lot of the other tech stuff, but is an interesting read.
Link at http://www.audiovideointeriors.com/
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
The new Bush administration is starting early...