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.

Comments

Bill Gates home

[sharkey]

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.

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Re:where's bill

[mat catastrophe]

unfortunately, running Windows and all, Bill's house crashed while the article was being put together....

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....

Re:Not as impressed as I should be...

[Lemmy Caution]

I couldn't agree more. But you make a mistake, or even implicitly a series of mistakes, that a lot of people make.

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.

I was hoping someone would bring that up

[HMV]

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".

Call the STAFF????

[Mike1024]

Hey,

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.