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."
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)
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
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Ok, so it's almost a month out of date, but this at least lets you know what it looks like.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
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!
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!
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.
EAm 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!
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.
Well, here's a coke machine.. That's pretty cool :).
http://www.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/services/drink.ucc
Get a sense of humor, jeez.
Actually, people who know me think I've got a pretty good sense of humor. I just think that a lot of stuff that gets posted is silly crap (in this case, literally) while I know from experience that good stuff gets ignored. The twin articles from Security Focus, for example, one saying Linux could be more secure due to more third party support and the other saying OpenBSD was more secure by design, would have been good for days of debates and flames, and is actually significant, at least if you run either. This current story is just dumb.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
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
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.
They measure how often the toilet gets flushed, and for how long (I guess you can work out statistics on "difficult flushing jobs"
By the way, if you want privacy, don't use a PUBLIC FUCKING BATHROOM!
It is the bathroom of a dorm building. I would guess that the folks who live there have to use it. Unless they want to run down the street to go.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
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
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.
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
The article noted included the point of view that Linux could be MORE secure due to the availablitlity of more 3rd party software in that regard - a point of view that is clearly new to you, given your comment.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
But a web server monitoring bathroom usage - that's interesting? Sheesh.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody