Slashdot Mirror
MIT's Bathroom Server
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Some of the undergrads wired Random Hall's (an undergraduate dorm) bathroom system up to the net so that you can visit http://bathroom.mit.edu and see which stalls on which floors are vacant, and if they're in use, how long whoever's been in there. It's a pretty good idea-- you can scout your stall from your dorm room, and watch it to make sure nobody's taken a s$#% there recently."
i wonder when they'll put in webcams to know who's in the bathroom ;-) .. atleast you'll know how approximately how long you'll have to hold it ..... aaaaaaaaaaaaaarh i gotta go NOW
but in anyway this is a nice idea
Vanderbilt University put up a bathroom monitor page that turned out to be a page to monitor the number of people that would investigate such a page back in the mid '90s.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
Sounds a little anal if you ask me.
Hehe. I mean, this could get interesting. Imagine what pranks you could pull - the most obvious would be to "cheat" the sensors so that the casual user would think that all the bathrooms are in use at some critical time - say 7am on finals week!
Now waiting to hear the Beowulf joke...
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
A bathroom o-meeter, wonder how they detect if its occupied or not. Hmmm... now if they would only add in remote flushing capabilities, that could make for some really uh "interesting" reactions.
For peats sake, Michael, you Slashdotted someones bathroom. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Burn Hollywood Burn
So, if I've been wanking for the last 20 minutes, the whole world gets to know about it?
dinner: it's what's for beer
Ok, so it's almost a month out of date, but this at least lets you know what it looks like.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Site slashdotted, google cache.
0 :b athroom.mit.edu/fusion+&hl=en
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:8EknSqPV1b
This is the text-only version, too.
-enneff
Most Original!
The Active Bat location system from AT&T, Cambridge doesn't invade bathrooms but locates people down to 3cm.
http://www.uk.research.att.com/bat/
This bathroom sensor would certainly be useful for waiting in line on aircraft...
lyndsay williams
http://www.research.microsoft.com/users/lyn/
I smell a shoe
I can't really see what practical use this has, but I'm sure it was a nice excersice getting it up and running.
good ol' Random. It's too bad there's no webpage yet about Mjolnir, the homemade big-ass speaker built from a linear induction motor from a dishwasher-sized hard drive, a cone of sheet metal, and a cabinet of medium-density fiberboard.
what a bunch of 31337 H4X0R5
-------------------- the list is long. dirac angestung gesept
As if it wasn't enough crap on the net already!
I wonder if slashdotting this server will make the toilets back up . . .
I wonder if they could add a smell-o-meter to monitor the toxicity of the air.
- DB
What would ever happen then?
Do we really want to know?
;)
Human Civilization has reached a new low.
but what would be even nicer is if we had a way to find out if the bathroom smelled before we went in. They could probably use the technology that's been developed by Digi Scents, which would transmit scents over a computer. I think that they've gone out of business (correct me if I'm wrong), but their iSmell Personal Scent Synthesizer would be pretty handy. It basically consists of a speaker-sized computer device that attaches either to the serial or USB port and plugs into a standard electrical outlet. And with a click of a mouse, the device would release naturally based vapors. Now that'd be cool!
I can't wait to see what a race condition looks like!
I tried to go to the site, but with all the /. hits there seems to be a lag. ;)
So people at MIT that need to go to the loo, sorry for the lag guys
42 + 1 = 42
I need to take a dump NOW, but I can't tell if it's available. Damn you Slashdot!
It would be great to know how they implemented the monitoring in order to apply it to other useful daily needs. For example:
- HTCPCP: Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (RFC2324)
- Coke machine monitoring: I remember the frustration of being in the computer lab, willing to get a cheap coke and having to go to the next building (coke next to the computer lab was damn expensive) and then finding NO COKE in the coke machine.
ENah... I've got an alarm that wakes me up every time a new message gets posted.
it's not nice to slashdot a page concerning information of wether you can actually take a dump or not. now the server is down and people at mit are probably panicing, not knowing when and where to go...
;)
I hope they wont become desperate
----
"I believe in karma. That means I can do bad things to people and assume they deserve it" - Dogbert
Yeah slashdot labels this as funny when it's done by some college students, but I'm sure you won't think it's all that funny once Microsoft start bundling the same functionality into the next version of windows.. (Windows TP?)
Somewhere in the heavens... they are waiting.
Am I the only one who thinks that slashdotting a bathroom is a bad idea?
"Mr peters, it's happening again. Slashdot has ddos'd our shitter. Dave and Frank have been locked in for 30 minutes since it went down... Mr Peters?..."
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
A Microphone. No, I'm serious! Stream the audio out of the bathroom, and set up a greatest, err, hits page.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Wouldn't it be nice to let the computer
unlock the door when someone has spent
to much time...
rh
"A dinky 100BT ethernet connection"?? What do you want, OC-192 to your desktop? I doubt bandwidth is the problem.. the webserver itself is probably maxed out on CPU power or threads.
That we just /.'d a bunch of toilets. ):
as about 15... interested in shitter monitoring.
I've suspected Slashdot management and staff were very immature and trying to seem much more sophisticated than they really were, but I never expected to see such incontrovertable proof as this story. This is a new low for Slashdot - linking toilet sites. What's next, upskirt cams? Do grow up.
Even a slow news Saturday night doesn't deserve posting this. Not that it's offensive (though some might think so), but it's simply too banal. Who's manning the controls, someone's 9 year old kid? You might just as well rebrand Slashdot as "News for Adolescents. Stuff that Sucks." This sucks.
Another bizarre coincidence in the current story and the current quote:
"Your step will soil many countries."
Next step is GPS for the toilets. You get to find out which is the closest open toilet to your dorm room, accurate to the foot.
I wonder what kind of statistics you could gather from this data... You could see which gender spends more time on the can. (I vote men) Simple statistical analysis would be neat. I'd like to know the arithmetic, geometric, and Gaussian means for duration. If you really applied yourself, you could probably differentiate between number one and number two, as that would most likely produce some sort of binodal distribution!
Does it also differentiate between riding the saddle and driving the porcelain bus? Those would make some interesting stats as well. OK, now I'm just being gross. It's late.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Alright; It's a cool idea, well implemented and well suported. The question then automatically becomes: how does it violate the DMCA?
Give this story a -1(toilet humour)
*rimshot*
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
here is a page on Mjolnir, the VVLS (Very Very Large Subwoofer)
Bo
This thing reminds me of a rather sick use of a webcam for porn. Without mentioning the site, which was listed as a "sponsor" in one of the MP3 download sites, this site allows users to use its downloadable software for peeping into toilets. These kind of sick applications should not be allowed to exist. But then, enforcing such a thing is just going to be difficult...Talk about technology advancements and humanity!
"Do something man. Right now."
but I think we've slashdotted their bathrooms !
The reason that you need a bathroom server at Random is that there are only 2 bathrooms per floor (14 residents), and the bathrooms are private (1 person at a time, usually). So on busy weekday mornings, it is some times necessary to go to a bathroom on a different floor. With the bathroom server, you can tell which bathrooms on other floor are open before you go down there. It can make the difference between being on time to class and being late (and thus getting those dirty looks from your profs).
/.ed. :P The institute ripped out our wiring, but I glad to see Jim, Riad and company did such a great job with this new version.
:)
There was a bathroom server before this one that my friend Ben built. We only had about half the dorm's bathrooms wired though and no pretty graphics interface. But we also didn't worry about being
The laundry server is the coolest, still. It was down for a few weeks last year and I think that half the dorm actually stopped doing laundry.
And Mjolnir literally shakes the whole dorm when you turn it up. Good times.
Ol' Random Fogie
Yay, they gave me my -1 back!
Go me!
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
All they need now is face recognition software, a tie-in to the student database and some statistical analysys software and with information on the average times each person takes to do their "business", the system could provide an ETA to bathroom availability!
Here are some articles I've submitted:
* 2001-03-16 18:07:27 EFFer vs. SPAMCOP: "Spam war gags Gilmore" (articles,news) (rejected)
* 2001-05-17 01:24:28 Why Linux|OpenBSD will never be as secure as OpenBSD|Linux (articles,linux) (rejected)
* 2001-05-19 01:31:39 Forrester Research: Death of Web 'inevitable' (articles,internet) (rejected)
I'm sure glad trivia like mine was rejected so that there'd be room for fascinating stories like this one. Makes me wonder who you have to blow arounde here to get an article accepted.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Well, here's a coke machine.. That's pretty cool :).
http://www.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/services/drink.ucc
The foot is a unit of measure taken from the foot of an English king. We Americans are very modern in our measuring systems.
The U.S. government changed the system, so now GPS is much more accurate.
Is to put ethernet jacks in each stall! I'd love to be able to bring my laptop in with me!
Linux Rulez!!!!!!!!!!!
The funny thing is if this was a corporation, it would be considered a huge invasion of privacy, and the only replys that would get modded up would be about the horrible place the U.S. is turning into.
Mind you, I have no personal love for the U.S., just thought I'd point it out. Something to brood over.
You know with all the privacy advocates around here you would think someone would think this is an invation. I mean how long you are using the can for is a rather private thing. OK yes your dorm mates may know from time to time as they wait for you. But does the entire world need to know when and for how long you are using the bathroom.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Is the toilet sensor GPL'd?!
I bet it will be funny when the MIT lawyers lower their panties down around their knees and drop their their cockring on the floor by accident. IT would even be more funny if a lawyer accidentally dropped a vibrator or a but plug don't you think?
I'll see ya all this comin fall,
. . On The Big Rock Candy Mountain .
Seriously though. This is like many other things on the internet: kind of cool, kind of weird, and completely pointless. We've seen wired coffee makers, Coke machines, and now this. Cool! Where can I find plans to wire my mousepad to figure out which part my mouse is over most of the time? Or how to wire my fridge so people on the other side of the planet can find out the average fat content or my frozen meatloaf?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
http://bathroom.mit.edu/cgi-bin/flush.pl?stall=1
;-)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Thanks, Michael, finally the crapflooders have an article where they can go nuts without the risk of being off-topic. I have to say Slashdot has proven to be a very inclusive society indeed.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
The Switzerland Coke Machine
Actually, it doesn't seem to be working now. Oh well.
Last night my friends and I were up until 2:30 am setting up our bathroom server! We were trying to get debian on a P133, 420 meg hard drive to be a mail server that would go on the window ledge in our bathroom, (for no reason at all other than to block outsider's view of the inside), giving all of us user@bathroom.res.cmu.edu email addresses. As well as a small write up at http://bathroom.res.cmu.edu This article is like an insult to our failure :)
Hopefully we will have finished the project by late Sunday, so we can say things like:
"Dude, have you flushed the logs yet?"
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
$ finger @bathroom.mit.edu
... ... ... ... Clam Lounge: vacant for 28 min
[NW61-310-8.mit.edu]
Random Hall Bathroom Server v2.1
Bonfire Kitchen: vacant for 15 min
Bonfire Lounge: vacant for 3 sec
Pecker Lounge: vacant for 2 hr
Pecker Kitchen: vacant for 24 min
K 282 L 290 K Clam Kitchen: vacant for 22 min
| o : o | o : o | BMF Lounge: vacant for 48 min
| o : o | o : o | BMF Kitchen: vacant for 44 min
| o : o | x : o | Loop Kitchen: vacant for 58 min
| o : o | - : o | Loop Lounge: vacant for 2 hr
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Black Hole Lounge: *IN*USE* for 3 min
Black Hole Kitchen: vacant for 29 min
o = vacant! Dragon Kitchen: vacant for 25 min
x = in use Dragon Lounge: vacant for 57 min
Foo Floor: vacant for 13 min
For more information finger help@bathroom.mit.edu
You know with all the privacy advocates around here you would think someone would think this is an invation. I mean how long you are using the can for is a rather private thing. OK yes your dorm mates may know from time to time as they wait for you. But does the entire world need to know when and for how long you are using the bathroom.
And how exactly would the people looking at a webpage know it's YOU? All they know is SOMEONE is in the bathroom stall #1.
By the way, if you want privacy, don't use a PUBLIC FUCKING BATHROOM!
"And like that
There is actually an open spec to interface to the bathroom server, and other people have built interfaces (take pmitros.mit.edu/bathroom/, for example, which is an overly graphical mess with a several humour sections)
Quite useful, actually. Especially finals week when everyone gets up at the same time.
They measure how often the toilet gets flushed, and for how long (I guess you can work out statistics on "difficult flushing jobs"
magnetic sensor on the door. i didn't do it. blame jim.
stephanie, a MIT girl
Yeah, just be sure to wash that finger when you're done!
$0.02 (CDN)
for a mirror in a bathroom server?
..the privacy crowd on this one? I don't mind my personal information being sold, but man, no one needs to know this...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Oh shit. The bathroom's been slashdotted.
My other car is first.
As an entering frosh at MIT, I've already seen bathroom and laundry. But it wasn't until I moved to 3rd East that I came upon sodalord.mit.edu. We've got a really old soda machine in the hall, and it's connected to a server. Log in to your account, get your soda, put it on your tab. Check out the hall's habits, or any member thereof, on the web. Fun.
-InsaneFolder
My other char is '!'
Wow. We weren't ready for Slashdot. We knew that our server couldn't take more than a handful of requests at once, and were planning on fixing that before sending anything off to Slashdot.
I moved the IP address to a faster machine that performs proper caching of the generated images, etc, so this one should have absolutely no problem handling the load (assuming that our building's network can take it).
Don't forget to try out the finger interface, much preferred by all here in the dorm. "finger @bathroom.mit.edu" to see it.
One of these days we'll get around to putting up a page describing how the hardware and software works for both that and our friendly laundry server.
jim@jtan.com, for Random Nerds
seriously, there is such a thing as trusting your remote sensors too much... (the main reason spysats haven't replaces human intelligence sources)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
As I write, one stall has been "in use" for 47 minutes.
Somebody better go check for either a body, or an alligator clip....
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
430 has been in use for 63 min
Boy howdy that would be embarrasing as all hell.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
"Boy do you have a crappy server"
...a Bowl-euf cluster of these?
How about something to detect water on the seats? Too many times in our dorms people would go into the stalls to take a leak and never lift the ring (I guess they were shy about using the more exposed urinals). Even worse was this Turkish guy who didn't use toilet paper...he carried a watering can in with him. Only problem was that he'd end up leaving water all over the seat and the floor, and never wiped it up.
Another thing would be a TP detector...if you knew you were going to take a particularly nasty dump, you could know which stalls didn't have enough TP to take care of you.
Now, for wired bathroom humor:
*Gives a whole new meaning to "core dump".
*Makes you glad you don't have to manually rotate logs.
*The fact that they implemented finger on this is just so wrong.
*Gives new meaning to "computer whiz".
*Is there anything to prevent buffer overflow?
*Is this application sold with "per seat" licensing?
*Hope their pipes can handle the load...
That'd be a shitload of power.
Great, now the cry of "First Dump!" will echo up and down the dorm halls.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
>Until then I'll abstain. (By the way, this is a
>100% serious message, I don't crap in public
>toilets!)
I know you're serious, I have a friend who is just like you. I'm still waiting for him to break down from an anxiety disorder. Until then, we all think he's a freak.
"Guys, I'm sorry, I have to take off."
"Where are you going?"
"I have to go home for a bit. I might be back in an hour."
Sheesh. That's right, an hour. It doesn't matter how far away we happen to be from his house.
My problem isn't that public bathrooms are dirty...hell, wipe the thing down yourself if it's been peed all over. As an adult, you should be fairly well-versed in cleaning your roommate's shit out of your own toilet by now.
The problem is that they're public. Most bathrooms are designed in such a way that if you fart, you can hear it (and smell it) all the way to the door. And everyone in the place can look under the stall and see how shit-stained your undies are.
You'd think that as Rich Americans, we could afford some level of privacy in our bowel movements. In an airport, who cares, but in a movie theater or restaurant, come on.
>Don't these dorms have private bathrooms in
>their rooms?
At MIT, are you kidding? MIT dorms are aging and lifeless, which is part of the reason why there are so many live-in frats (most of which will be pressured out of existence within 3 years, but I digress...) One of the dorms has suites, but there are about 10 that don't.
Anyway, you're fairly warned now...if you take your hygiene or self-respect seriously, don't go to school there. And I'm not just talking about the bathrooms.
As for the service itself, this is the kind of no-nonsense web app that used to impress me, back when the web used to impress me. About three years late, methinks. If it's not ActiveX with 4 columns of 8-pt text and a shitload popup ads, it has no business being on the web.
(BTW, try turning on ActiveX confirmation to see how many sites are using it these days. It's shocking.)
The class of drugs known as SSRIs are known to cause sexual dysfunction like you describe (SSRI = selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor). Prozac is a member of this family, as is Seroxat. When you consider that other drugs offer the same effects without the nasty side effects, you have to wonder why these things are so popular. Namely, Wellbutrin is an extremely effective anti-depressant and does not have the side effects of the SSRIs (including the sexual ones), and has been on the market for quite a while (i.e. it's efficacy and theraputic profile is well characterized). Some studies indicate it (wellbutrin) may actually act as a mild sexual aide, but as drug companies are generally extremely conservative and image obsessed, they tend not to point out the sexual effects (good or bad) of the drugs they produce. Newsweek did a story on this in the last six months or so, but damn if I can find it in their archives.
I don't advocate chemistry as a first line of defense against depression, but if you do end up using medication, ask your doctor about alternatives to the SSRI family. (I am not a doctor or psychiatrist but I am involved in pharmaceutical chemistry as a student, or at least I will be when I go back to school
And yeah, I know this is off topic, but if it potentially helps even one person out there I'm willing to burn a few karma.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
This definitely sounds like MIT. Like the coke machine way back when.
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
2k servers are powerful enough to handle e-commerce apps.
KULL LINEX
My son (he is not MIT student yet, only high school :)) suggested to install reservation system. Before you head off, change the state to something like "On my way..."