Slashdot Mirror
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.
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."
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...
Get real. That makes me sick, taco.
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.
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
-Nez
But my dreams they aren't as empty, as my conscience seems to be...
> 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!
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 writers showed up at the Blue Front Door Of Death, only to discover that not even the Ctrl-Alt-Doorbell was working.
so they left....
sig not found
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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.
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
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.
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.
...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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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!"
Would you like to pet my Penguin? The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
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
"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
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.
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.
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...
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?
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
- In one room, there is a black ceiling. He wanted to have black smoke detectors in that room so they woudln't stand out. But, non one makes black smoke detectors and simply paining white ones black would break their FCC approval. So, some special black smoke detectors were made and then approved by the FCC (not a cheap process) for Bill's room.
- In another room with fancy wood panels -- including the ceiling -- he didn't want obtrusive sprinkler heads (presumably required due to the nature of the room) uglying the looks. So, special drop-away wooden ceiling panels were used that would hide the sprinkler heads until a fire broke out.
So, there's more to a fancy house than just high-tech gadgets for the sake of high-tech. There's also aesthetics involved.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
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.
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.
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....
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
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.
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
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.)
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