Slashdot Mirror
Apartments for Techies?
thedistance asks:
"I'm wondering if anyone has heard of companies retro fitting any
of the failed telecom hotels for apartment use? It sure would be nice
to find an apartment complex that was designed just for the tech
croud with a fiber/cat5 infrastructure throughout. It sure would make
it a lot easier to setup highspeed internet access, video on demand,
and wlans... not to mention an easy way to borrow the spare NIC from
your neighbor... (we can just leave the sugar borrowing to the rest
of the non-techie world)" If you know of an apartment complex
offering high bandwidth, please post a comment, below. Aside from
bandwidth, what other amenities would make an apartment complex ideal
for the high tech worker in the 21st Century?
Such an apartment would be really nice indeed ... any offers?
Life sucks.
Campus Housing.
A sorority full of tech-worshipping nymphomaniacs living next door...
...maybe not so realistic, but a good idea none the less.
Who did what now?
WaldenWeb has a few apartment complexes in the Houston area; they run an OC-3 from an ISP to their NOC, and run OC-3 from their NOC to each of their apartments. My apartment has 3 RJ-45 drops (only one of which I can make active at a time, but that's what a hub is for). Rent is reasonable, Internet access runs about $50/month.
Having an apartment complex like this would be a social disaster. There would be people who would never leave their apartments, spending hours and hours surfing the web, playing Everquest, and posting continuously in online news forums...
Wait, never mind.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
A beer keg storage room ? a Pizza Hut outlet downstairs ?
that'd be perfect for LAN parties :-D
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
Ok thats cool, but their would be loads of restrictions and all that crap. i mean for christ sake, most UK university admins get jumpy when you downnload mp3s theses days......
A friend of mine who just moved to Virginia, is planning on doing just that. He going to purchase an apartment complex (his family has lots of money) and outfit it to be geek friendly. He's planning on running gigabit ethernet to every apt for apt-to-apt networking and use highspeed ADSL with several static IPs (one for each apt) for outbound internet access. Then start playing with video-on-demand and other cool technologies on his apt complex as a testbed for others. Once he gets it right he'll start outfitting other apartment complexes for other realtors. Of course he'll be using Linux and FreeBSD for just about everything from the router to the "apt game servers" and video on demand servers.
E-paper, e-paper, e-paper and e-paper! On the walls! On the ceiling!
Imagine reading /. on the ceiling while falling asleep, instead of at work! Now *that's* productivity!
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
I'm sure there are countless amongst us who would gladly pay through the teeth for lots and lots of dedicated bandwith. If you have a building where every tenant is going to use it, you can really cut your costs, not to mention that these buildings already have the infrastructure in place, so it's only a matter of flipping the switch. So what would the per-user bandwith costs come out to if you were just plugging an entire building into, say, a T-3, based on how much bandwith you would want to dedicate to each apartment.
Also, how difficult would it be to set up QOS for each apartment, so that one guy couldn't hog it all and piss everyone else off? This is much more important for home users than for businesses.
Synergy is your friend
Gävle Sweden got a pretty nice infrastructure.
:-)
:-)
100MBit switched net in most of the apartmentbuildings and Gigabit backbone.
The city wide NAT is highpreformance and really nice.
The Uplink to the net is 2x 135MBit which is enough for most needs. The NAT-community offers serveral FTP:s that contains what you need (and don't need). A fresh Linux ISO in 10 min is nice enough for me
When I lived there I used to watch movies from my friends harddrive without problems
Anything that is as techie friendly as you describe isn't going to be setup for individual billing. There wouldn't be any separate meters for utilities, so how would you know what to pay for gas/water/electricity? I sure wouldn't want to pay for the juice to power my neighbor's huge racks of drive arrays.
Also, anything that was a former hotel or business complex would be zoned commercial, thus not allowed for apartment rent/lease, right?
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I can't resist to once more point out that we are accessing the Internet per 100 Mbps full duplex fibre link to our home.
I have a very detailed description on this page on how we installed a very high-tech network in our entire block.
The page have been slashdotted once before, so the visitor counter have passed 52 000!
Best regards, Tomas
I have 1 Gbps Internet access@home
Aside from bandwidth, what other amenities would make an apartment complex ideal for the high tech worker in the 21st Century?
More bandwidth!
What were the skies like when you were young?
Washer/Dryer on each floor with sandbox security on each appliance so your neighbor's kid cant throw dye in your wash. Until that, you can count me out. ;)
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
I've always wanted to get an OC192... of Jolt! lets pass an electric current through that nectar and still be able to tap the pipe for the precious stuff ;P
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
My video gets the shakes when the neighbor's AC fan is turned-on on the other side of the wall.
Don't be ashamed; that happens to a lot of folks, especially geeks who've been getting free broadband through their educational institution for four (six, ten..) years, and are somewhat scared of a world where they've heard that some folk still use dialup.
Your idea has merit, though... if it were me, I'd model it as a 'halfway house' for recent grads who aren't quite 'equipped' to make it 'out there' just yet. It would be somewhat similar to a YMCA, except without the fitness opportunities. You could call it the 'Y' Adapter, and you'd probably fill up all your cells in no time.
Amenities could include communal laundries, in-house cafeteria, and a 30-terabyte KaZaa! mirror in the basement. You could offer regular field trips to local social establishments and real apartment communities, as well as social counseling and maybe dance classes.
Oh, and after you've been there a month, you lose network connectivity between 4 and 6 AM. After two months, no connection between 2 and 6 AM. You lose one more hour per month until after 6 months, you can't get on the 'net after dark. This would offer an excellent incentive for finding your own place, negotiating your own broadband connection, and starting a real life on your own.
I'm not sure why, but many apartment complexes near college campuses have high speed internet connections in each apartment. It's worth a look. Besides checking local apartment listings, see if a university nearby has a guide to apartments nearby. Virginia Tech, for instance, has a database that includes things like internet connection, LAN, etc.
In Philadelphia, PA, in West Philly at 43rd and Locust, there's the Fairfax. The best part of it is that they have the building networked for high speed connectivity, for $30/month (when I was there, around a year and a half ago). They didn't have any technical info on what kind of connection it was for me or anything, but I would get speeds of around 120k/sec fairly regularly. Other than the internet connection, though, the apartment was a real piece of crap... my sink and toilet would regularly create small black fountains in them, someone tried crawling in my window one night to rob the place while I was sleeping there, and the maintenance man was kind of a jerk.
If you're willing to put up with the bullshit though, you can get an efficiency place there pretty cheaply ($550/month) and have a pretty good connection without having to live in dorms. When I was there, cable modem and DSL weren't available widely yet, so it was about the best access you could expect and for a pretty affordable price.
Oh, and, uh, don't use me for a reference, I ended up getting kicked out because of a rather schizophrenic pets policy that I don't really want to get into explaining. Just don't move there if you have pets, regardless of them saying it's okay. It isn't. They'll tell you in person it's okay, and let you in, but if they ever decide they don't like you, since it's technically against the lease they'll use it against you.
Well, they'll need to do *something* with all the laid-off techies, since they won't be working anything other than McJobs...any economic stimulus package that might have helped has been trashed by Daschle and his Nazi cohorts. Here in Colorado, the Denver Post ran a story about former techies driving TRUCKS, for Pete's sake. *WHY* do we need H1-B's, again? Not that they were every really needed even in the late-90's....
I notice Daschle doesn't have anything to worry about, since he makes 175K - I think congressmens' paychecks should be tied to the economy - we all have to tighten our belts, why don't they? Nah, they'll play politics to dick over EVERYONE, and then they run off to their nice vacation with their great big, taxpayer-paid paychecks, not to mention other perks that fall outside of a salary.
Anyway, it'd beat living out of your car or the local Y. There were already horror stories like that last spring, why we are still importing workers (H1-B's) and doing no tax cuts is a real mystery. Hopefully, all you voters remember to speak out about this crap...H1-B's should be on a ballot for the PEOPLE to vote for in a state-by-state basis, not some representatives to decide to do what never would be chosen by the people. I mean, who would vote to have more foreigners (and I'm not talking about immigrants here, I'm talking about the new class of indentured servants that the H1-B creates) taking jobs that hardly exist in the first place, and who the hell would NOT vote for lower taxes!!!
Rents are expensive though - around $1500 for a one bedroom.
I lived in an apartment complex in Phoenix, AZ that had apartments wired with 100Mb ethernet. They charged everyone that used it $30 a month for 1 IP and another $10 for every IP after that. It was a really good deal and they didn't restrict bandwidth amounts. The only rule was you couldn't run servers, at least not on ports 21 or 80. All in all it was a really good idea and I only had downtime for about 10 minutes in over a year.
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Pla
A group of apartments that targets techies
Actually, There is a hot trend in college dorm, and campus living with 100mbit cat V throughout, They are just now starting to do apartments. I would look to see more of this coming forward as colleges become more and more wired. If you dont mind living near a college (where the target tenants are students) Im sure you could find a place like this.
-enigmabomb-
Some people tell me I am sleeping my life away, I simply tell them I am living my dreams.
Now if only Cox or Comcast could do what you've done, we just might have something!
Harbor Steps in Seattle has to be one of the best wired apartment complexes in the country. This is also one of Blockbuster's test sites for video on demand over IP. I'm pretty sure each apartment comes with cat 5 with 100baseT to a switched network on multiple OC-3's. Not to mention the fact that they are next to the Pike Street Market and over looks Eliot Bay.
He's planning on running gigabit ethernet to every apt for apt-to-apt networking and use highspeed ADSL with several static IPs (one for each apt) for outbound internet access. [...] Of course he'll be using Linux and FreeBSD for just about everything from the router to the "apt game servers" and video on demand servers.
It sounds like either your friend doesn't have a good handle on the technologies involved with this, or there was some miscommunication between the two of you.
It sounded good up until "use Linux and FreeBSD for the router".
You need something better than a PC to route many apartments' worth of gigabit ethernet to each other. A PC doesn't have the internal bandwidth for more than one gigabit connection. If you're using an off-the-shelf gigabit ethernet hub or router, it'll be running its own embedded OS from the vendor (if it's complex enough to run anything at all). If you're using a souped-up non-PC workstation as the router... you're spending far more than you have to for a simple router.
In a similar vein, you'll have an interesting time getting enough static IPs for a medium-sized apartment building without a fight. Maybe when IP6 finally takes over.
This sounds like a really cool project, and your friend deserves praise for trying to pull it off, but he'd better take a close look at the tools he's planning to use for it, and make sure that he's using the right tools for the right parts of it.
Network connectivity is nice, but the basics need work: Power protection & monitoring, environmental management, etc. You need to include a UPS with backup power generation, air conditioning, & facilities for monitoring.
Build a computer room so that tenants can have so many RU's of space in a cool clean powered room with security. A relay closure interface so that your gear can handle blackouts cleanly. Stick your servers there and X/VNC/whatever from your apartment.
In the past week or two, we've had questions about
a. Building a house for networking from the ground up (if cat6 isn't enough for your damn HOUSE then you have problems)
b. Putting a server room in your house (hint: walk-in closet. If you have enough hardware to cause heat problems, you are beyond help.)
c. Living in a fucking HOTEL, because there's a network drop in your room?
Gimme a break! Think about living in a hotel for a second. It's ONE ROOM, first of all. No kitchen. No living room. No den, no dining room, and I'm pretty sure there's NO FUCKING SERVER ROOM. Do you want to live in a hotel room?
So what does that date think when you ask her to come over to your place for dinner, and bring her to a hotel? Are you gonna break out the foreman grill and cook up some burgers for her? Just cut straight to the streaming porn, over that 'LEET "data port" conveniently located in your PHONE. Folks there are reasons that most people don't live in hotels.
in New Yorks east village. If you don't mind paying several million dollars for a condo you can have access to the buildings OC3. Great location too, if your willing to shell out the ridiculous amount of money for manhattan real estate.
I'm tired of bombing the universe
Roadrunner makes a respectable internet connection for my apartment (i got lucky in living in an unsaturated area) but the one thing thats lacking is good power lines. I have only one circuit for my living room / computer room, and i cant turn the tv on without a brownout (so nicely declared by my 2 UPSs beeping at me). What i want is 40A circuits, or more than one circuit per room, to keep all my equipment well fed.
My neighbour lives in a high-tech house already. Oh, it's not that fancy being built 50 years ago with its original kitchy furnitures. From outside, it looks like it's falling apart as no one has been maintaining it. Last month, his toilets broke and I found out that they are not flushing anymore last time I visited him. Recently, his kitchen has been invaded by cockroaches because the dishwasher needs to be fixed. His lawn has grass about 5 feet high. Newspapers and junk mail are building up a barricade outside since he doesn't even bother fetching them anymore. Sometimes I bring him some food, but the rest of thet time he gets pizza delivered. However, the one thing he is proud about is that he's got a top notch DSL connection that I am sure bits everyone else online experience in the street. He is able to play online games as no one else can really do around here. Nothing else seems to matter to him. He looks so happy facing his screen all the time.
PPA. the girl next door
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
I recently graduated from the Uni. of KY and am now moving to Irvine, CA (beach, desert, mountains, tech companies, girls in bikini's, etc.). apartmentguide.com has an option you can set to help search for apartments that have highspeed internet (which is something I had to have.) Of course whether its any count, who knows. The service I will be getting is Cox@home, soon to be Cox@cox.
A place like that could be the home of the world's greatest LAN party. Especially if it had a convention center on it... :-)
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Why don't you just rent a 5 bedroom house with your friends, set up a cable modem or DSL connection, and then wire up the house? That's what I did to our 5 bedroom house that we're renting. We have a fast cable modem hookup for $75/month, so it costs $15/person per month. Every room is wired with a high speed category-5 cable, connected to a fast ethernet (100 MBps) switch, and in addition, we have wireless network access too, so you can bring your laptop outside into the garden or the the roof, surf the net and drink your morning coffee.
You DO realize, there's a difference in all 3.
One is looking for a hotel/isp. A hotel may not necessarily BE an ISP. He's looking for a combination package. Not necessarily a studio like you badly imply.
Wiring your house is a VERY different project. Discussion involved the type of wiring to buy, which is VERY different than finding an internet appt building. Your house doesn't necessarily mean you'll be an ISP.
Building a server room is a bit of a task. All the user was looking for is cheap rack equpitment.
If you can't deal with the ask slashdot's, how about turning them off, eh?
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
http://www.tower801.com
Features at Tower @ 801
View balconies outside every livingroom and bedroom
Outdoor deck with pool
24 hour fitness room with separate saunas
Club room with DVD home theater system and large laundry room
Cafe Lado open from 5:30 am to 11:00 pm
Laundry facilities
High speed Internet access
Digital cable
Secured underground parking
Storage facilities
Small pets allowed (larger pets upon approval)
Concierge Services
Onsite dry-cleaning pick up and drop off
Package acceptance/delivery
Fax/copy service
Concert and Broadway ticket packages
Restaurant packages
Dog walking
I believe they also have a video library you can check stuff out of. AND, if you're got good enough line-of-sight, you can easily snipe major bandwidth from all the wide-open 802.11 networks downtown! Mwuahahah!
Those places can have the foulest BO stench you can imagine.
I'll tell you something else. There comes a time in a man's life when his space and the people who chooses to share company with start to matter in different ways. A better idea, I think, or at least a safer idea would be to encourage geeks to all buy houses in the same community and set up a wireless network or something. I still can think of better things to do with my time but atleast you'll have your own building and space.
To ween you off the slow connections, they'd hook you up with an even better setup, and take care of some of your basic needs.
God spoke to me
Most of the 'high tech' hotels did not go out of business, they just lost their high-speed internet access, or dropped it because it was not adding to their bottom line in a time of hard business conditions. (Remember: hotels existed for years without high-speed internet and will continue to exist without it in the future.)
Bottom line as it regards your question: Those hotels are still hotels with RJ45 (or whatever) connections in their rooms that don't go anywhere particularly useful.
I own a company that is doing just this in the Salt Lake City area. I have done a couple cat5 installs, and some wireless lan installs, (not quite a neat as cat5 cause its slower, but some of these buildings just don't take cat5 (being 60+ years old, plaster walls instead of wallboard). If any of you live in Salt Lake and want your Apt done up, tell your landlord to give me a call, paveraware inc. is the company name.
As a student at McMaster (Canada) there's a tonne of houses around the University that are 'swiss cheesed' with wires running here and their through walls, taped to walls (God bless duct tape) baseboards or anything else you can think of.
To break away from university life - but who would want to - you are going to have to move into a new complex. Who can afford a new home though, not this poor student?
The cheapest and most efficent way I'm sure is to get a dedicated line, T3 perhaps and share the bandwidth with other neighbours in the area (5, 10 people should bring the bill down). Check contracts for that though, some providers don't like you networking too many computers because you turn into an ISP. Don't get your connection though them if that's the case.
Competition is great.
Cheers.
Yeah, feeding the trolls.. Maybe you're right. I guess I've been on slashdot so long I'm just descending into troll zone out of boredom.
Along the Jersey City waterfront, in a development called Newport, the 5 newest high-rise apartment buildings are wired for ethernet. The network connects to the 'net by at least one T3. I regularly see 300KB/s. It costs 49.95/mo for one static IP.
I lived in the first site they brought online - I never saw speeds over T1. I've been told that they've corrected that problem though. The owner doesn't strike me as the type to "share the wealth" by lowering the rates - they increased rent 30-60% after the Inet access came online which is one of the reasons I left.
I get some pretty killer data rates, in the hundreds of kb per second. There are probably more than 200 users, but statistical multiplexing works. Sure, 200 users all downloading MP3s at the same time gives a theoretical 230kbps, but if everyone offsets their download by just a little bit, average latency on a 5MB file is not long enough to even worry about waiting for.
No firewall. I think it rocks-- it allows you to run arbitrary servers. People often get their boxen 0wned; I see a lot of attacks against my server from .waldenweb.com addresses. It's the price you pay for completely open access, and you can always run your own firewall.
Hey this sounds just like my old office at Microsoft. Nice stereo system, privacy, free sodas and food in the fridge down the hall, lots of bandwidth, 6 brand new computers and a sofa to sleep on when I needed to crash.
-- Social life? Who needs a social life when you have computers.
there is cambridgeside near kendall square in cambridge - they are pretty damn expensive (last I looked was a year or two ago and they were $1600 for a 1 bedroom) and they have like 8 billion phone lines per apt, lots of outlets, and a T1 in every room...
I'm plenty happy in my place with cable modem - but I only have one outlet and the place is old so the power sucks...
I'm out in Somerville (slummerville)
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I live @ in Philly at an apartment building called The Left Bank. Right now, i get synchronous 640k wireless ethernet w/ 802.11b (11mpbs to the access points, of course), for $50 / mo. The building was originally going to wire all the apartments w/ ethernet, but they switched when the realized a wireless infrastructure would be much cheaper. One thing that bugs me no end is that they don't use WEP at all, although they restrict access to the network to known MAC addresses. Anyway, i'm pretty happy w/ it. I wish the downstream were a bit faster, but i challenge you to find an ISP that has 640k upstream for so cheap.
Apartments with high-speed are nice, but you need a consierge or something. The really high tech apartments around here in seattle have a guy you can call for stuff. Food, Movies, Car wash...
Everyone at work used Kozmo till they went out of business. Was a shame, they sure had alot of business...
Of course the apartments that come with a consierge are 3x the price of a normal apartment. Doable if your 3 guys all working at startups. (-;
Actually, I live in the room over the garage.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
What sort of firewall do they provide, or are they the targets of the next DDOS kiddies?
Wow. I've got a few points of view on this. My first reaction? None, hopefully. When I buy access - that what I want, RAW ACCESS - Each user should provide their own security, I can certainly run my own damn network. Now for the reality. This won't work unless you live in a complex full of people in the know about network security/admin'ing. I know that I certainly dont trust my current bozo neighbor to provide ANY security except the never updated norotn anti-virus prog he runs. Which would of course leave a shared link open to rampant abuse. I dont want my bandwidth killed because his computer is busy sending gargantuan pings to me or the target of some ddos'er. So I would say that some sort of firewall should be provided. But by the same token, I dont want my ports filtered, blocking services i want to run, I mean, who wants to spend a month trying to convince the landlord to call the network guy out to open up some port... I wish you could be cited for a blatant security problem (read: email virus propagators)that affected other users, then be banned from the network until you attended some basic security class and proved your network was at least decently secured....
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
>Do you realise the amount of retro-fitting...
Not to mention the fact that very few providers or Telcos would want a bunch of techies crammed into a building, what with all the wireless antennae strung out the windows and on the roof, cat5 all over the damn place, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry with their own private WLAN.
Yep, like they are ever gonna let us get our hands on that kind of fiber. Upload cap at 250kbps, NO servers. Like having a hotrod that won't fit through the garage doors.
I don't want Cat5e or anything else that will be outdated *eventually*...
I want conduit.
I've been running the stuff in my house as I remodel rooms. This way I can pull anything wire-like in the future whereever I want it.
Conduit.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
Issaquah Highlands has fiber run throughout the entire neighborhood. There are apartments, condo's, townhomes and houses in that neighborhood. Used to live there...pretty much kicks ass.
Silly Rabbit...Sig's are for kids.
With wireless becoming cheaper and more effective, all geeks in an apartment complex will "find" each other anyway.
I don't see the point of putting in special cables for computer networking. Between phonline networking, powerline networking, wireless networking, and 100Mbps optical networking, I can get pretty much all the connectivity I want. High-speed internet access comes in through cable, DSL, or fixed wireless in most places without any special "techie" allowances. Computers have gotten small and powerful enough that I don't need a separate room or closet anymore either. If you want to get equipment at night, move to a civilized area where electronics stores are open when you may need something.
I had a consultant that lived in an apartment complex that had a T1 for all the tenants. They just split the cost. I never got around to find the specifics, only that the tenants were much happier than the DSL lines they had before.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
100Mb ethernet. A subnet scheme that would allow me to have 2 IP's (maybe private addresses, you can always host your stuff somewhere else) at the very least. A decent power line, stabilized, backed up by a no-break (not for everything, just for the computers). Lots of conduit. Particularly one running straight to a big flat roof, just in case. But most important, the complex should be laid out like one geek buikding for each two ordinary ones, or else it would be a social aberration. And preferrably close to somewher one could walk to so as to relax, be it a mall or a park.
Isn't this what we're supposed to use apt-get for?
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
Oh, and they pay all the friggin' utilities, too! Life is good.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
Here on the Eastside of Seattle there are scads of wired apartments. Ironically, there's also a surplus of technology businesses. But you probably are only interested in an apartment near to (insert backwater Walmart town here). Gee, sorry I couldn't help.
BTW, I'm looking for a great pizza place. Anywhere in America's fine with me. TIA.
but Comcast wired my complex with fiber to each building, they offer telephony, cable and cablemodem to each apartment. The telco service is cool enough, it has all the same features as the Bell(verizon), it's a few bucks less and i've never had any problems with it.(knock on wood)
The real depressing thing is that 90% of this community is retired, (not that retired people can;t use bandwidth) but there aren't many teenagers or young couples. I doubt that their utilization in this complex has really inspired them to do this in other neighborhoods. On the upside i'm the only one on my pipe in my building. *grins*
Partly, I'd assume, these features help people feel comfortable leaving their dorm rooms. But also, these features are expensive to setup for only a semester or two, so the management sets them up in bulk (i.e. cheaper) and uses it as a marketing tool.
The general setup is an Ethernet drop in every room, along with cable, phone, and panic alarms.
While some of these apartments are strictly local to Purdue, some companies are even doing this similar community complex idea at several campuses across the country.
Hey,
I am not sure where you live, but in Vancouver, almost all condo developers have been building their buildings with the "techies" in mind since around 1997 (when i started looking for a condo). Most are providing some sort of high-speed internet access (cat-5 to your unit, with a fiber drop to the building sort of thing) and some are even offering cable TV using this infrastructure, among other things.
-farshad
...and remember in your brain boggle, wrong starts with a wubble-u.
....
;)
if you ask what besides HighSpeed would be useful: Power Outlets... Right now the "office" that is part of my apartment comes with 2 power outlets. Not enough by far and yes, that's a NEW building (less than 2 years old).
Apparantly they recently put a wire of Internet Access in, it's normal CAT5 but when I opened the outlet the other day it looked more like it's just another Telephone Jack.....
Oh well.
Power to the Servers!
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Many (about 30) condo and apartment buildings in the downtown/midtown metro Atlanta area have Internet access from Biltmore Communications:
http://www.biltmorecommunications.com/
In my condo building, they have hubs/switches in the mechanical room on each floor and run cat5 to each unit. The buildings are interconnected via a wireless network.
Anyway, he has an unusual approach to running his business. He doesn't rent out whole apartments or houses. Instead, you rent a bedroom and you agree to help take care of any common areas. The whole business evolved out of the hippie commune the landlord himself lived in back in ancient times.
Anyway, one of the perks of renting from this guy is free DSL service. Which turns out to be his main way of keeping his tenants in line. Fall behind on the vacumming, or allow the kitchen to get too toxic, and the DSL goes away until things improve. Now that is social engineering!
- High Speed Internet (1.5 - 10Mb+)
- Building Area Network (100Base Switched)
- Server Room (Racks, UPS, Cooling)
- Exercise room and equipment
- Common Room (Big HDTV, THX Sound system, etc.)
- Game Room (Pool table, Fussball, etc.)
- Outdoor Party Area (Pool, Bar-B-Que, etc)
- ???
Any sgguestions?I live in one (The Enclave, San Jose -- http://www.theenclave.com). CAT5 drops to every room, RJ45 in every wallplate. Two 3Com CoreBuilders and a Cisco 7500 as the gateway to an AT&T fiber drop from their backbone. Only problem is, it's expensive ($2000-$2500/mo. for a 1000 sq. ft. 2-bedroom), and the net feed is currently through ATTBI, even though there aren't any cable modems in use here.
.@.
I was browsing thru rent.net about a year ago and I saw a small building with Condos in it in the Denver area that had 2 T1 lines going into it with ethernet connections and the building had it's own website(for newsletters,...etc) but it was geared more for upscale clientale than techies. Guess I can dream....
A couple years ago a complex off the Lawrence Expressway and 101 in Sunnyvale, CA (San Jose area) was supposed to have T1 access in each apartment. Last thing I heard there was T1, but the main feed was insufficient as many tenants decided to put up servers and maxed it out. An upgrade was supposed to be forthcoming, but I haven't checkin on it lately. Complex name was Tuscan or Tuscany something. ~2400/mo, IIRC
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Late night quake sessions? That new Squarepusher 12" dying to be played at 4 AM? Cut the midrange, drop the bass?
Any good geek hovel must have good soundproofing. Even if you aren't the type to play loud music all the time, common everyday sounds can get annoying (particularly if people are keeping erratic schedules, as many of us like to do). Soundproofing is a must.
Most college towns such as Gainesville, Fl have tons of apartment complexes with high-speed internet access found in every room. Check out http://theplacetolive.com/ for an example.
I still can't see why anybody would want to run public servers out of their house. That's what hosting companies are for. Let somebody else fix the servers.
A great amenity would be the positioning of soda machines, stocked bi-weekly, at both ends of each floor. Caffeinated beverages preferred.
Apartment community features that I would want to see on the list...
1. divx server
2. quake server
3. unreal server
4. mp3 server
It would also make it so much nicer to see 1000mb/s on gnutella when I pull from my neighbor instead of the typical 15kb/s from the guy down road.
Bandwidth's not the most important thing in a geek-friendly apartment by a long shot. In many American cities, you can get a cable modem connection for $40-$50 a month, which is plenty of bandwidth. Having the apartment wired with cat5 is a plus, but it's not hard to do yourself and wireless 802.11b also works pretty well.
What you really need in a geek's apartment is lots of power. Well-placed outlets in every room are key, as is not having to worry about blowing a fuse if you have a whole bunch of equipment running at the same time. Pretty much anything else you can set up yourself if you need to, but if the wiring is lousy and the landlord's not interested in improving it then you're probably screwed.
Other sites you may consider include near Broome, with it's fabulous beaches, or Denmark, much colder and more crowded but with many lovely large trees, or perhaps somewhere along the scenic vehicle-destroying Gibb River Road.
(some Hamersely views included here, mostly from Transmission Hill (AKA Wireless Hill or Radio Hill depending on sobriety levels) at Paraburdoo, Western Australia, some Broome views in the earlier sessions).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
My boyfriend is going through the dorm withdrawal phase, and he's moving in with me. Both being geeks, we have come up with a decent plan to turn our apartment into geek heaven.
Current setup: I've lived in this apartment building for a while, so I've had time to settle in and get my own network going.. The only problem is, he's got his own network setup with a different configuration.
DSL connection from Verizon (640k/90k for $39.99/mth), firewall/gateway to handle multiple computers, 10/100 switch and one wireless hub.
The wiring in my building is scary. It's an old hotel from the 1800s that was transformed into efficiency apartments. I once tried to open a wall switch to put an X-10 unit in and promptly closed it back up and decided not to fry myself. There are only so many power outlets that are grounded, and yes, there are computers in one or two of those (thank god for Radio Shack). The walls are plaster, so all cabling has to go along the baseboards and duct taped to walls.
4 computers strains the power, we're waiting to see what 6 computers will do to it.
Although I recommend finding an apartment with better (read: newer) wiring, yuo can turn any place into a geek heaven... and with more money, you can buy faster DSL.. we've considered purchasing business class DSL (but not from Verizon)
Just what the stereotypical tech needs - less socializing with real people and more with the same kind of poeple you see at work . . .
Display some adaptability.
I'm a lonly single sig, who likes to show myself, see me on my webcamat http://www.Imaprostituesig.com/
In about a month, I'm moving to a "wired" apartment complex in Cherry Hill, NJ (about 15 minutes from Philly)
The rent includes broadband Internet access. Each room in the apartment has a jack with a DSS, cable, and 3 or 4 RJ-45 jacks for network/phone. There is a patch panel in the front closet where everything ties in. See http://www.roselandmgt.com/ and look in the "Roselink" section for more info)
Here are some of the items that I would look for in the ideal apartment setting (tech or not)
Sound Dampening:
There's nothing like the rumble of Quake at high volume, but don't inflict it on me in the wee hours of the a.m. I would want to protect my neighbor from my own noise as much as I would protect myself from his. Abundant sound dampening would be a big plus.
Air Filtration:
With all of the different lifestyles (smokers, non-bathers, obscure candle lovers) I want to make sure that I only get the scents that I invite into my apartment. I currently have neighbors who smoke like chimneys, and it has seeped into every fiber of my carpeting. Then they installed a bunch of air ionizers, so now my apartment smells like a mix between an ashtray and a public pool.
Multiple Multi-Connector Outlets:
You can never have enough power/cable/telephone outlets.
No Exterior Stairs:
Either give every apartment ground floor entry, or provide an elevator. The stairs should be an emergency exit only. I've had too many drunk neighbors stumble home late at night.
Package Safe Deposit:
I hate getting home to find a note that the office is holding my package. I have to plan my day around the office hours so I can get my shipment of penguin reds. Not good. Give me a large safe deposit that I can give the FedEx/UPS guys access to.
Thick Window Coverings:
Most apartments come with your typical set of slat blinds. These are great until you try to watch a movie on your big screen at 5 pm and find the glare obscuring your view. The ideal apartment would have blinds capable of completely shutting out outside light sources.
Independent Hot Water Heater with Large Capacity:
Let me adjust my hot water to the temperature that I like, and make sure that I never run out. Same goes for the HVAC system.
And for the ideal techie apartment I would add
Electronics Closet:
An extra closet with a monster UPS/Line filter. Run all of the CAT-5, speaker, KVM, S-Video, etc. cables here. This is where I would keep all of my A/V equipment, big iron/Beowulf Rack, High Bandwidth uplink, and a router. This room would also need an independent temperature setting, as all of this equipment will be generating a lot of heat.
Pre-Routed CAT-5:
I don't want my apartment complex supplying my internet access, as I wouldn't put my faith in their capabilities. But if they would run CAT-5 throughout the apartment and leave the connections exposed next to the washer and dryer so I could hook up a router: fabulous.
Pre-Routed A/V wire:
Run speaker wire throughout the apartment. Run S-Video/Optical/and component outs throughout each room as well. Make sure the outlets are on multiple walls on each room so I have a choice of where to put my equipment, but also provide covers so the unused ones aren't exposed.
Remote Control Extenders:
Since all of my A/V equipment is in the closet, I'll need some RF/IR repeaters to get my remotes signal in there.
Plenty of jobs? Where? Doing what? I am plenty competent, with over eight years of experience, yet only one call - and I'm hardly the only one with this problem. Hell, I used to be revered by managers and co-workers alike at one point. Now, I can't even find ANY job. And yes, I'm quite willing to compromise on money. If by "competent", you mean knowing someone or being lucky enough to be applying for a job that is a perfect match (I've applied to several such jobs) AND you get selected out of the dozens of resumes that they get that are also perfect fits, then, okay, maybe I'm not "competent". For Pete's sake, the president of DJUG was laid off for three months.
I can tell you plenty of horror stories, some involving me directly, some involving close friends I have lots of respect for. I don't mean to come off like I have a large ego, but I am quite good at whatever I tackle.
If there are so many jobs, why does the paper keep running stories like the two they recently put in there dealing with laid-off techies? Even before I saw the one recent story, I was actually considering doing the driving course. I sold some tech books on Ebay that were bought locally by a fellow developer laid off back in the spring...he's working at Home Depot now. I'm sure he was quite willing to compromise, too, but he ended up at Home Depot, anyway - I guess I can't speak for his skills or experience, but it still says something, IMHO. A friend of mine called unemployment line, and the fellow he was talking to at unemployment office used to be a developer.
Sorry, it's been tried. I live in a complex that was built brand-new with built-in broadband connections to every unit (for an extra cost turned on, of course) but the company that provided it (and the service for a number of other similar complexes) went kablooey in the Spring of 2000 in the dot-com crash.
No I didn't get any warning from ReFlex Communications, although there were 3 days between when they filed and when they shut off the service.
Too bad, it was pretty sweet and a very good deal.
The last thing that we need is to waste money on bush's backassward plans.
;) But if I had to choose someone to give me economic advice, let me tell you: it wouldn't be a Democrat, that's for sure. I think they confuse their budget with the economy way too much.
Well, I'm not sure which plan(s) you are talking about - the one that I think GWB had in mind was cutting capital gains taxes, as well as cutting other taxes across the board. Any honest economist will tell you that these will help. What ended up coming out in a mushminded compromise with the Democrats was quite another matter - just to cover their own asses, even though the stimulus package was so crippled, the Democrats didn't sign it in case it actually would have helped - they very much want a bad economy, make no mistake about it. They are more worried about their own political power than any of their subjects, er, I mean, citizens. And to have a bad economy next fall would be the only way they could have very much success at the polls - Bush is overwhelmingly popular right now, so they need a chink in the armor.
BTW, I agree: GIVING money away to corps who are bleeding money is wrongheaded. But a tax cut is not a "gift" to corporations. Class warfare rhetoric will do nothing to stimulate the economy - as much as the rich are despised/hated/reviled by the left, think about it: when's the last time a poor guy signed your paycheck?
And the giveaway you are talking about was a bipartisan effort, was it not? Many conservatives disagreed strongly with the giveaway, since it is corporate welfare, not the free market. Personally, I'm a Libertarian, so I'm above all the Democrat/Republican infighting.
Our business in Madison, Wi does exacly that! we offer short term corporate housing with resort style services, including free broadband in every apartment, as well as internet appliances, computer room, etc.
Sig this.
One of the more obvious ones is the hideous green painted ex IBM building near the Harbour Bridge exit (city end). It has full cat 5 wiring and (if you want it) centralised Net - BUT as all city apartments you had better have a lot of cash around to be able to afford it ..
Jon - TheSpork
Have you ever been inside a "telco hotel"? They would need a lot of work to be human friendly. In the process, most of the infrastructure be in peril.
Under our new guidelines for defining historical eras, anything that predates the release of the 80286 is considered archaic.
"Oh, well, what the hell!" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Must be speaking of the pricey lofts on Peachtree St. The sign out front says each apartment has T1 access (Shared I assume, doesn't sound so spiffy these days). I just bought my own house in about 2 miles from 5 points and I'm in the process of running gigabit ethernet (2 outlets to every room in the house). When I can find a fellow techi with the same aspirations as I, there'll be a 1.5mbit SDSL as opposed to the current ADSL (DirecTV DSL). At my last place (Post Renaissance) They had a wireless WAN for the entire complex but my former roommate and I opted for Speakeasy DSL (The best I've delt with so far) with 3 static IPs. We had cat5 running throughout the place (it was a mess).
-Narff
On site pizza and ATM.
A friend of mine moved into a new apartment in San Jose a couple of years ago and was shocked he too was seeing these enormous download rates.
The reason dates back something like 7 or 8 years ago. Pacific Bell (our local Baby Bell) picked that small corridor of new development in San Jose to do a field test of an everything-and-the-kitchen=sink broadband system. This included digital telephone service, digital cable tv, and broadband data comm. They were gunning for TCI at the time that had an antiquated two-coax cable system and no serious plan for getting things fixed (btw, even with AT&T's takeover of TCI, the situation hasn't really changed even today in San Jose). So they laid in a state of the art infrastructure and basically priced it at the prevailing low-tech rates.
That meant a gigantic OC-3 connection to his complex that would someday carry a building's worth of video on demand on top of everything else. But the other services never came, and even with a building full of nerds, it was a rip-roaring pipe.
PacBell eventually gave up on their cable dreams, and TCI/AT&T annexed this entire system, but two years ago, they were still serving giant bandwidth (perhaps there's no savings in providing less connectivity to the existing hardware?). I've fallen out of touch with the guy, but I wouldn't be suprised if it's still the same.
I don't know if this is exactly the same thing, but my friend's apartment is basically a large network. When he took a job as a game programmer in San Diego and was searching for apts, one of them offered cable internet access as a drawing point. From what I understand, each apt is wired with a cat5 drop [not sure on number or placement] and the entire apt is on one large network [allowing for ease of sharing between neighbors I suppose, but security?]. I don't know about speeds or anything else really, but wired apartments do exist, at least in San Diego.
-bZj
.sig
Housing, Uncertainty, and Doubt?
I think i heard someware that a place here in dublin was doing it. Dont know where. Some company ordered too much bandwidth and offered it to an appartment block beside. they took it needless to say and the price of appartments doubled! Now a nice appartment in dublin is uasally anything from 100k Euro +, and these ware selling for about 300k Euro! Anyway, if i was to get a nice 21century appartment i would require backup power! Definate requirement. lots of bandwidth is also required!
Lotas T Smartman www.lotas-smartman.net
Where is this at?
This is not really not what the article was about but I will share my story.
My wife and I were on the apartment hunt and the only thing that I absolutely required was DSL. Every apartment that I went to said that, "I don't know... not a techie... not sure". That was not good enough.
Found an apartment building that was completely brand-new and in-between Dallas and Fort Worth. When asked about DSL, I got "Yes".
That is all I want. A definite answer. I cannot begin to imagine if I moved somewhere and I then could not get broadband.
The problem is not getting service but rather is the apartment managers up to snuff on what services are offered on the complex.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Some amenities I would like would be a soda machine that had Bawls, Mt.Dew, Dr.Pepper, Jolt, Red Bull, and other natural/un-natural caffeine drinks in it.
It would be interesting to setup a filesharing service throughout the apartment. Probably gnutella or something could be set up to search the apartment complex before the whole Internet, thus if whatever you want to download has already been downloaded by someone else in the apartment building you could get it from them off the gigabit Ethernet instead of off some guy with an upload capped 128kbit Cable line....
It would have to have anonymity though, you wouldn't want your next door neighbor being able to find out exactly what sick fetishes are in your pr0n collection.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
The apartment has a shared kitchen/living room and four separate bedrooms (each bedroom has a full bath in it).
Rent's not terribly bad (from what I've heard from friends, and considering I live in the middle of Hick-NoWhere). It's $265/mo, you get a 12 month lease. Internet's only about $24 a month (about $10 more than I was paying for dial-up a few months back). And the cable tv's thrown in w/ the deal...
It's kind of a college-apartment place.
If you want to know more, it's www.theplacetolive.com
All your nightmares are belong to us!
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Noone has mentioned a building sized UPS with a building sized backup generator. What good is a broadband connection when you don't have the juice to use it?
I rejoice that there are owls.
my apartment doesn't even have a computer in it.
And I like it that way.
It's a nice change of pace from working all day
in front of a computer.
I agree, sorry if my comment was mis-understood. The idea is to use a gigabit switch for apt-to-apt connections and a linux router for outbound traffic going to the ISP. I would not dream of using a PC as a gigabit switch, just think how many PCI slots you'd need for an apt complex!!
Also, I really don't think the IP's will be a problem, it really just depends on the ISP. For example, my ISP sells a high speed DSL package with 30 IPs. The apartment complex I live in has only 20 apts.
Neat. Sounds like the project is well in-hand, then.
In Town:
Northlake Pizza
Medusa (in Columbia City -- real Italian pizza!)
Portland:
Bridgeport Brewery (amazing pizza which floats off the plate).
Eastside:
Bwahahahaahaa! The Eastside is HELL! The only thing non-toxic to eat there is Chinese food!
(I actually think it's pretty funny. 200,000 people with money coming out of all nine holes, working like dogs, and there's nothing to eat but fast food, sandwiches, and teriyaki).
I don't know about any other people out there, but I prefer the "industrial" touch myself, and I must have non destructable spaces for my works (arc welders aren't good on carpets after all ;)) not to mention the fact I dislike carpet for anything hardware related, too easy to lose small parts in and find them the hard way (in your feet) But having a whole large setup of fiber or a bunch of cat5 is good. My prefrence leans towards large factories, not as easily converted for living in, but they've got some great use for machinery facilities if you aren't totally into computers, not to mention the fact they've got much better electrical service then a hotel myself, and if you're a real nut about it they've got 3 phase 480, but that's a mixed blessing when you get the bill! (I'm an electricity junkie mmmmmm, more power)
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
The majority of GWB's tax cuts benefitted the rich minority. People who already had more money than they could spend. People like Bill Gates stated that they didn't need the tax cut and that it wouldn't help. If Bush really wanted to kick start the economy, the tax cuts would have gone to the lower paid brackets. Those measly checks obviously were never going to make a difference, but they made good politics. GWB hid behind a shield of lies just like Reagan did. It took well into the Clinton years to recover from Reagan's tax cuts for the rich. It seems in America that it is the Democrats who are the economic conservative. It is the Democrats who understand the economy and how to implement prudent fiscal policies.
You are right - not prison but Orange Country Jail for all the days after the 'car chase' until the not-guilty verdict
There was no bail to post since he already ran
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
well my grandmother coded for a living...
Your signatures belong to me.
all u need is a good l0pht and yer set. Lofts are usually located in business districts, so access to business grade communication resources isn't difficult. Space is abundant, and usually a freight elevat0r for moving the big stuff. Not to mention that lofts are totally cool. All of you highly paid e-commerce developers can afford lofts.
No offense but TANSTAAFL.
It irks me that people try to pass off something whose costs they've hidden (in rent, etc) as "free".
Like my apartment. The only utilities I pay for are electricity and telephone.
I don't pay for separate heat (but the HVAC is electric and hooked to my meter).
I don't pay for hot water (but the cost for the water is folded into my bill, and heated electrically).
I don't pay for gas (electric stove).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Aside from bandwidth, what other amenities would make an apartment complex ideal for the high tech worker in the 21st Century?
An upstairs brothel that's open 24/7 and accepts payment via PayPal would certainly be a hit :-)
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
Its really no big deal. There is no immediate advantage to this service other than being able to use a standard ethernet card and not having to purchase a cable modem or DSL router. As a techie, I would be running my own servers and would have no use for the server in the building. And I can't imagine liking my neighbors enough to make use of the 100 Mbit building-wide LAN. The chances of any of my friends living in the same building as me are pretty slim. Although I think the posibilities for video on demand are intriguing...
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Then why the hell are you still reading/posting on it?
Jim
WeFunk
There are a few places in Austin Tx that do this...
One was... COllege park, or something. It was sort of south of downtown, and everyone was on a DHCP scheme. Not sure about static/QOS/etc.. A friend lived there, and she frequently downloaded at around 120K per second.
I lived in teh Hunters run complex. They obtained their High speed thru www.bbnow.com a company that wires up a crapload of complexes around Tx. I paid around $800 a month (back in 1998) for a 2bedroom place that was right next door to IBM... (off of MOPAC). We had a shared T1, and outages were rare. I averaged around 100K per second downloads in Netscape. Sometimes the bandwidth went down when some bastard ran a Half Life server.
I think it was $80 per month extra for access, that included 2 static IP's.
Owell, none of it matters now. I now live in the ghetto in Zion, Ill, trying to barely survive off of minimum wage, and ramen noodles. At least I can afford my ATTBI cable modem. All this, after 5 solid years od Solaris admin experience. Fucking new economy my ass.
http://thepoliticalgeek.com/blog/ Politics for Geeks.
In toronto, right at the lakeshore on queensquay it seems all of the new condominiums being built claim to have acess up too 2000 times regular dsl
What we really need in a techie apartment is a caffiene tablet dispenser instead of a soda machine.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Most areas around large colleges have apartment complexes with such wiring...so far the ones I've seen though really aren't worth living in. The apartments themselves are overpriced, generally crappy, and you're very likely to end up with 3-4 rather noisy and inconsiderate neighbors. The "broadband" access they offer is usually a T1 or 3 for the complex...or in some cases complexes. The one I lived at had our bandwidth capped at 150 k/s (up and down) and during the day and peak hours our rates would drop to sub dialup rates (2 k/s and less)...
I live in a part of the city Örebro in Swden called Varberga. The apartments around here cost between $170 too $370 /mount and to all the apartments you can get 10Mb connection (with dynamic ip) for just $20/mounth...
And the fun part is that the ISP(Bredbandsbolaget or the Broadbandcompanie in Eng) is planning to use Varberga as a testarea for there upcoming 100Mb. Im telling you, this is the place to gather up all techies.. =)
"Love the life you live, Live the life you love!"
The building was designed in the mid 60's by Seifert for central London but planning permission was refused so it was dumped instead on the regency seafront of Brighton causing much upset to local conservationists.
Cable TV was introduced about five years ago and the supplier (NTL) has only just started to offer broadband across this. I think it's unfortunate that we cannot club together to buy one connection and share it amoung the 100 apartments.
Since I moved in there are cables running up and down the hall way carrying audio, video and ethernet and I have yet to find suitable ducting/trunking solutions to hide all this wire. I am surprised at this since I can't be the first to attempt cable retrofits without digging into the floors and walls, but even the recent askslashdot about home networks did not get close to this aspect.
"Aside from bandwidth, what other amenities would make an apartment complex ideal for the high tech worker in the 21st Century?" How about a way to get away from all this techie crap. The last thing on my mind when I get home from work is sitting infront of another crt.
Hey, I really got an appartment of that type. It is kind of a student flat and the people in the house have built up a network infrastructure (100Mbit) and we are connected to the world over the University like most of the other student dorms in our city.
:-)
PS: I feel good
In such a geek hovel, you need to make sure that you have adequate power, not just in terms of outlets but at the fuse box as well. In my old one room apartment, I'd blow a fuse if I tried microwaving some food while had both my 486 router machine and my desktop on: really convenient when I had 92% of a 600 meg ISO downloaded and got a sudden hankering for ramen.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
there are these Studentappartements over here in Munich/Germany. It is sooo great, they are a bit out of the city and every room has their own Lan-Connection (I think the Uplink is a shared T1 as well). Whats more theres a cigarette machine in the lobby and a 24/7 Store in every building. In the basement there are different kinds of pubs, cafes and partyrooms, it is so great that i almost wish i would study something. People really live together in there, they learn, eat, hack, and party together...
;-)
Then again, I live in a small backyard building in munich and we got DSL a few months ago and wiring the old House was a blast and our small Lan is really a lot of fun ever since. Even better, a coworker of mine just wired his own house he was building. He also included a dedicated Serverroom...cost him a bit though
Have a fun xmas everyone...
There are a variety of apartments, townhouses and free-standing homes in the Dulles Tech Corridor.
.bomb era and anchored by more stable techs, like TRW, NEXTEL, and Oracle.
Caution: in Reston, stick with the north side of the tollroad, in Herndon the south side seems to be wired better.
You have your pick, from do-it-yourselfer hack apartments like mine at The Summit of Reston: washer and dryer in apt with outlet that is suitable for SGI Crimson, cable modem service, DSL available through everybody except AOL (no loss there), decent insulation and sound dampening between apartments, etc. There are also apartments with extensive internal networks, huge bandwidth, etc.
Part of the "charm" is there are very few old buildings around here, most of the construction has been leading into and during the
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
"Aside from bandwidth, what other amenities would make an apartment complex ideal for the high tech worker in the 21st Century"
;-)
Two Words: Beer and Women
Merry X-Mas
S.t.e.v.e.
...to share spacious 20x30
U-Stor-It unit in Inglewood,
California. Includes fiber-
optic cable connection to
the Metaverse.
Contact:
hiroprotagonist@snowcrash.org
When I was hunting for an apartment here in Calgary, Alberta, one of the buildings was boasting about "In suite high speed internet". The company providing the service, Suite Systems was just a subsiduary of the management company. It looked very promising, so I started to do some research. There were claims of 100Mbit fibre to the building and unlimited usage. When I finally got a hold of someone in the know, (I called their tech support department), it turned out that you recieved an internal (not-routable) ip, and the link in your apartment was actually throttled WAY down. I can't remember what it was exactly, but it was equivalent to cable roughly. I decided not to rent the place, but rather just get DSL in another apartment.
Check out MainSail Village - PricewaterHouseCoopers now defunct (thanks economy) international training facility's on site housing for MCS trainees turned luxury suite's hotel (or Apartment if you want) - "developed to a level of quality you would expect from a dynamic and sophisticated company such as PricewaterhouseCoopers."
You know it's hightech.. check it out!
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Most college focused apartments, especially here in FL, offer ethernet access standard to compete with the dorms. Most come with utilities, cable, etc included in a single monthly bill and have swimming pools etc to remind you what life away from a CRT (or LCD) is like. The apt ethernet setups are well supported, and have good bandwidth available at off peak times (I'm usually up coding at 3 or 4 in the morning, so I get lightning access).
How about the other way around. Restrict a large portion of your access until you have successfully completed a 'training' course. There could be an extensive multiple choice test so that somebody will the ability to secure their own pc would not have to take the course. And then for all the people that don't pass the test you could provide a short-course about opening email attachments, blah blah blah and then they could provide a shareware firewall package for the users to install. And at the end of the class they should of course administer another 'dumbed-down' version of the first test as to guarentee that users have at least been coherent during the class.
I don't know how big these apartment complexes are but they might be able to set up an agreement with a medium-sized company to provide personal firewall software at a discounted price.
Well as a techy my best advice for an apartment is got get a wireless switch. Hook it up to your Cable/DSL modem. And put wireless eathernet cards in your PC/Laptops. That is probly be the easiest so that way when you are apartment hunting you can look for things that can actually impove your quality of living. Including Location, Heating, AC, Size of rooms, A non leaking roof, well insolated. Dishwasher, Fridge, Stove. Bathroom. With a wireless and some broad band internet. You are all set to do all the cool stuff you normally want to do without having to find a plug.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm getting all this info from New Toronto Homes. There's also the builder's website CityPlace, but it requires Flash 5.
It's a 20-building complex called CityPlace, and is going to go at Spadina and Front, next to SkyDome, near the financial and theatre districts, and Harbourfront. They're calling it a "digital neighbourhood," and residents will be able to "order movies, access a "virtual concierge" and connect to the Internet at speeds up to 50 times faster than high-speed cable."
Telus (Canada's second largest phone company) is installing a CDN$30million fibre-optic network, which will provide Internet access, HDTV, and video-on-demand.
There will also be a theatre, health-club, elementary school, daycare, community centre and library.
so in your mind a "professional" runs and hides from technology that isn't "secure"... nice...
being a professional isn't about saying something sucks... anyone can do that...
being a profresional means working with clients to solve security problems...
His point, you self-righteous boob, is that he (as the user) has NO control over the security of a wireless network in an apartment. Most apartments will get the system installed as cheaply as possible and security will probably be non-existent. As a user (what you would be in such an apartment building) you would not be able to change the network configuration.
Go ahead and mod me up. I dare you!
Toronto has a complex of high tech buildings near the lake.
living in a hotel isn't that bad. i lived in an extended stay hotel (with kitchenette -- more than what came with my current residence, a loft) for 3 months when i moved to LA. it was only $40 a month more than getting a month to month lease AND i got free toilet paper and coffee. it was weird though -- coming home to a made bed, the end of the toilet paper folded into a triangle, empty trash cans. and i had to hide my stash in my clothes which made my clothes smell funny.
i have thought about traveling a lot and living out of hotels and working from my laptop. i knew a guy who lived out of his car and programmed for 2 companies. for the occasional shower he snuk into hotel rooms when the cleaning crew did its thing.
fear is the mind killer
In the late 1960s, Toronto's Campus Co-op built a cooperative high-rise apartment building, called Rochdale (after the town in England where the co-op movement started). This building, which is located near the corner of Bloor and St George, was designed for cooperative living: groups of individuals could rent suites, which consisted of 2, 3, 4, or 5 bedrooms, and a common area. The residents elected a board that ran the building. The project was a catastrophe. It was the classic problem of socialism: property which belongs to everyone belongs to no one, so no one looked after it. Ultimately, the government of Ontario took over the building and converted it to an old-folks home. A residence like this might make sense if run by groups of techies with some money in their pockets, rather than by penniless students. Certainly, the idea of leasing bedroom suites rather than apartments makes sense for groups of friends or co-workers - assuming a landlord could find enough stable, extended groups to fill the building. And for groups of hackers (or other professionals), it would be a good living environment. But it probably is not viable economically.
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When did I start using technology to get work done?
You are right about the art and not science, but there are two specific examples of folks cutting taxes, and giving a huge benefit to economy: JFK and Reagan. For stuff about JFK's tax cut, here is one link that Google turned up: http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/03 01jfk.htm
As for Reagan (I know you didn't bring him up, but so many do), and the crap that we always hear about him not having a balanced budget...his tax cuts actually generated more money for government, because economy boomed, and even though they were collecting lower percentages, there was more to tax. The Democrats went into spending overdrive, and spent something like $1.38 for every dollar "earned" via taxes. That's why I'd never let a Democrat give me economic advice - you and I don't run our households like that, why should government run a country like that? I'm sure there were Republicans in there with some of their pork, too, but Democrats ran Congress. Also another oft-overlooked thing about the 80's: more minorities were lifted out of poverty during the 80's than any other period. The 80's was a win-win situation, and all the rhetoric to the contrary is largely bogus. Even the average Joe (usually) knows it - that's why Reagan is still the most popular prez in history. As a Libertarian, I think some of his social policies and stances were bogus (War on Drugs, for example). But looking at what was done during that time at the pure fiscal level, it was an outstanding achievement.
It's interesting that you say on the one hand that you don't want tax cuts to go to the top, but across the board. And yet you say you want a flat tax. Any flat tax will "benefit" the top the most, so I don't see how your two statements can make sense together, unless your flat tax is somehow "targetted".
Lower taxes are ALWAYS a good idea, but they are especially important right now. We have a higher tax burden than we have ever had in the history of the United States - there's no reason for this. How did we ever manage to run the country without such a high tax burden in the past?
I agree that cutting taxes won't help all businesses avoid bankruptcy or mass layoffs - I agree the bad ones SHOULD fail or scale back. Subsidies are always a bad idea esp. in the long run. Let the free market play out. Has Amtrak ever gotten out of the red, BTW?
But cutting taxes is not subsidies for the corps, or the rich, or whatever the latest spin is calling it...it helps everyone - like I said before: when's the last time poor person cut you a pay check? It certainly FEELS good to say, "well, at least the rich didn't just get richer". But if there are no jobs or only lower-paying jobs, how does that help the little guy, other than to make him beholden to a bunch of little bureaucrats who can hold his welfare check over his head?
I want conduit.
I've been running the stuff in my house as I remodel rooms. This way I can pull anything wire-like in the future whereever I want it.
Conduit...
I CAT5'ed my house and wish I'd read this advice before I did it. Running conduit is a damn good way of not having to take the walls apart again if you change your mind about your network layout
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I need a room to put my computer in, where the sun doesnt obstruct the vision of my screen. I need somewhere to piss and shit and shower. I need a door with a mailbox long enough that a pizza will fit through it so I can pay for my pizza without the pizza man falling wiitness to my grotesque atrophying body.
oh yeah and room to fit some huge ass speakers to listen to KYUSS all the WHILE.
How about virtual reality room,...security system that can be monitored from your computer. When someone buzzes to enter the your building,.. you can let them in without getting up from your computer and also view them on your monitor. Maybe instead of buzzing the door open you can play a funny little customized sound. Soundproof walls so I can play games without headphones. How bout USB chords wired throughout the unit so that you can control household devices from sitting your ass at the computer. Set your alarm from the computer incase you forget, lock the dooor, turn on and off lights. A small keyboard and monitor beside the shitter. Thats all for now.
Yeah, you know, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth. I refer, of course, to IBM mainframes!
My corporate contact from Nokia lives in an apartment complex that used to be wired with a full T1 here in Santa Cruz, CA. They disconnected it a few months ago, however..
"Make it idiot proof, and someone will make a better idiot."
At somewhat the opposite ends of the spectrum, friends of mine who lived in an apartment building Palo Alto a decade or so ago wired it for Ethernet (Thinwire, aka 10base2, aka Cheapernet.) They had a startup company with offices in one apartment and several of them living in various apartments in the building, so telecommuting was even more convenient. I think they had a T1 feeding the business at the beginning, and after the business moved out to a Real Apartment they shared some kind of fractional T connection among the interested tenants.
The first network wired house I looked at when househunting achieved its status in about the most minimal form possible - there were two adjacent rooms with 10base2 jacks on the wall connected by about 6 inches of cable
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes, Big Social Experiments inspired by Karl Marx and his buddies have mostly failed. But that's true of all BSPs, right wing and left wing. That's what "experiment" means -- you do something new and different, and end up either with a useful success or an instructive failure. The real danger of social experiments is that they tend to be supported by zealots who won't ever admit to failure, and often get quite nasty with anybody who suggests their ideas have flaws. The example you're probably thinking of is Osama. But there are others almost as scary, and not a few of them are in places of power in this country.
And let's avoid glib statements about "property which belongs to everyone". Life isn't that simple. Yes, socialists and communalists are often naive about how their fellow humans behave. But so are libertarians and free-marketeers. Whenever I tell a libertarian I'm not ready to disband the local police force, I get precisely the same childish assertions about expecting the best from people that I get when I tell a commie that I'm not ready to dispense with private property.
If your Toronto cyber-commune "proves" that socialism is absurd, what does the failure of Enron do? The fact is that neither experiment proves anything, except that selfish people will behave selfishly, if nobody's watching.