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Gadget Guru Builds High-Tech Haven
Alexander Burke writes "In the 27,000-square-foot Carmel, Indiana home of Scott Jones, head of Escient Technologies, fireplaces ignite and drapes close on demand, televisions appear as if by magic and the ceilings play music. Touch-screen panels throughout the house run lights, security, heat and cooling systems, and video and audio libraries. Speakers are embedded in the walls and ceilings behind the plaster. The home includes a movie theater that seats 20 and has a wine cellar accessible only by fingerprint scan. Ted's outfit brings us more information."
What will Martha Stewart do now?
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Black Firs
I wonder if he's using soundbugs?
Mr. Gates have something like this? If you have enough money all of these things are possible.
I wonder about the quality of the sound from the speakrs, given that they're behind plaster and all.
Everything mentioned is pretty much 20 year old technology.
I guess this is one of those stories where you are just supposed to drool and say "wow".
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
More information? Hardly. That article was 278 words long, including headline and byline. The slashdot synopsis just about covered the entire thing.
No wait, let me quote it here (it won't even overflow a slashdot comment):
By Jeff Flock, CNN:
Yup. That's all folks. : )
Yeah, just wait till he comes home to find his house all burnt to hell because of some 6 year old h4x0r.
"Welcome to the United States of Microsoft"
Speakers are embedded in the walls and ceilings behind the plaster.
Oh, if these walls could talk!
You gotta love this statement at the end:
Why does Jones need a home that includes a movie theater that seats 20 and wine cellar accessible only by fingerprint scan?
According to Jones, "I like to build things and change the world."
Sure, I like to build things and wouldn't mind changing the world, where is my 27,000 sq ft mansion? But really, how does this mansion change the world? I'm sure a lot of progress is being made to help the world out while he lounges around, having shades opened and lights turned on for him automatically, while he listens to some classical music on his hidden speakers as he heads to the wine cellar to get something tasty to drink. Yep, lots of progress going on there, I can see the world's problems just dissolving away.
Can't you find something better to do with your money? People like this make me sick, although if I had the money, I must admit I'd be tempted to do the same. It's easy to be frugal with other people's money.
Pretty fucked when there's a power cut then... What size of UPS could cope with that?
- - Sha la la la . . .
Does having all that technology really improve the quality of life? Touch screens to turn on the lights? Whats wrong with a light switch? Speakers in the walls? Thats nice, so not only does it sound like the sound is coming from... well... the walls, but every room in the house would pretty much hear whatever you're listening to as well.
I guess if you got enough money to spend...
I can do everything that guy did in his oversized ampatheatre he calls a house for probably 1/10-th the price he did with much more flexibility. www.misterhouse.org is a good start. and Look at the applied digital for some of the best home automation core systems available at really good prices compared to the overpriced DMX/panja stuff. Whole house audio is easy and cheap if you can live without concert quality sound in every room.. www.smarthome.com has tons of that stuff.
.YES I had to wire everything (doesnt take a rocket scientist to do that) and yes I had to design and maintain it.. but hey... I have something that the ultra-rich like to flaunt that they usually only are allowed to have.. and you can too!
a "wired" home as to speak of takes nither genius nor requires buttloads of money. I have pretty much the equilivient for around $1500.00 spent with another $1500.00 to be spent on the whole house audio next month. I have a massive 1285 Sq foot home with a mind boggling 10 rooms (excluding the garage and back yard) so I am way above what most people can even dream of (Ok the sarcasim is a bit thick) Yes, I had to program misterhouse for my needs..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What I love about the article the most is the picture of the outside of the house. Too bad there isn't anything of the inside of the house and the streaming video is only for paid subscribers. Otherwise, the article is a total fluff piece. No real substance to it at all. It's like a short "House of the Future" blurb right out of the 1957 issue of Popular Mechanics. Changing the world indeed...
"I like to build things and change my world."
Call him an arrogant rich bastard but he is a geek like the rest of us.
Hey, how many of us bought the friggin X-10 cam bundles for 99.99? So we can see what our servers do while we are at Comdex?
How many of us don't have gigs of mp3's in the car? Even built one before commercial players were for sale?
The guy is just ab ubergeek who made some cash and modded the shit outta his house. More power to him!
I would kill to have my own theater. John Carpenters The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, big screen cheese fests for me and the bodies. And imagine Ron Jeremy on the big screen? Yikes.
We would all do something similar if we had the cash. We all got some weird wants.
What are some of the weird things you would do with bucks? Besides being altruistic?
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Check out scottajones.com for actual information about the house, not the short CNN blurb.
- Blowing the speaker system about once per month, completely automated.
- Firing DVDs at high speed out of the changer as someone walks by
- Shutting the curtains in front of the screen, usually during highly suspenseful and/or very cool scenes
While the theater setup is cool, Escient's stuff, at least in that theater, always has something a bit off with it even when it's mostly working. I honestly don't know whether anyone except Escient offers that kind of thing (since I live in Indiana, Escient does seem to be the only option here), but if there are multiple options for you, I would at least consider them before going with Escient. I should emphasize that the theater is not mine and I have only had extensive experience with that one, but since there aren't a ton of these lying around, I thought I'd give my two cents anyway.While Jones is traveling, he can check in on his abode via the Internet. As part of the security system, cameras are trained on every room of the house and every entrance. He can go on the Web and with a few clicks, zoom in on parts of the house or unlock doors from half a world away.
Now is it just me, or is this asking for trouble?
well, I would prefer putting a fingerprint scan on my beer fridge instead. When you are rich enough to buy wine you should share your collection. When you can only afford cheap beer you need to protect it ;)
William Gibson typed 'Neuromancer' on an old, beat-up typewriter.
'Nuff said.
Speakers behind the plaster: "The woofer needs adjustment. Get the hammers!"
THIS is a data haven.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
I can do everything that guy did in his oversized ampatheatre he calls a house for probably 1/10-th the price he did with much more flexibility. www.misterhouse.org is a good start. and Look at the applied digital [appdig.com] for some of the best home automation core systems available at really good prices compared to the overpriced DMX/panja stuff. Whole house audio is easy and cheap if you can live without concert quality sound in every room.. www.smarthome.com has tons of that stuff.
.YES I had to wire everything (doesnt take a rocket scientist to do that) and yes I had to design and maintain it.. but hey... I have something that the ultra-rich like to flaunt that they usually only are allowed to have.. and you can too!
a "wired" home as to speak of takes nither genius nor requires buttloads of money. I have pretty much the equilivient for around $1500.00 spent with another $1500.00 to be spent on the whole house audio next month. I have a massive 1285 Sq foot home with a mind boggling 10 rooms (excluding the garage and back yard) so I am way above what most people can even dream of (Ok the sarcasim is a bit thick) Yes, I had to program misterhouse for my needs..
...that i am the first person to get to make a joke about "Jones" in "Indiana"!!! I mean, I saw that and thought the house was gonna be sued by Lucas....
This guy's company Escient turned CDDB into a commercial product and later spun it off as a separate company (Gracenote).
This is nothing more than promotion for his company and the excuse to brag about money. Please, save your gushing for those who do make interesting things.
Besides, this asshole owns CDDB, fucking parasite.
Is this guy an idiot? This sort of thing is like hanging a sign out front and asking the script-kiddies, "Pleaze, dudez, hack my house. Hack my shower."
Why in the world would I want my appliance merged with anything having to do with the internet?
So some pimply faced kid named 'Dakota Flushboy' can come and make my convection oven turn on instead of my toaster?
"Hooo-boy, Dakota, you got me. You really did."
Main Entry: guru
Pronunciation: 'gur-(")ü also g&-'rü
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural gurus
Etymology: Hindi guru, from Sanskrit guru, from guru, adjective, heavy, venerable -- more at GRIEVE
Date: 1613
1 : a personal religious teacher and spiritual guide in Hinduism
2 a : a teacher and especially intellectual guide in matters of fundamental concern b : one who is an acknowledged leader or chief proponent c : a person with knowledge or expertise : EXPERT
Hmm
Two chicks at the same time.
it's just so.... FUCKING UGLY
bad taste American style - the worst there is!
That was classic intercourse!
Escient uses Lutron stuff. Only problem is that it's a closed architecture / proprietary thing. Why of why these guys refuse to work with open standards is beyond me. It limits you to only technology supported by Lutron.
An alternative is open technology supported by companies like Leviton, Samsung, Siemens, Philips, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Trane, Cisco, and Many others world wide. See Echelon who developed the technology, and the Lonmark site which has info on integrators, manufacturers, etc.
Sign agreements that later own get them voted out of office because their electors are too lazy to be arsed to care about sustainable development....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
FYI: Scott Jones is the dude behind Gracenote's transition to fee-based CDDB lookups.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
/.'ing a house has to be a new one :)
I caught the CNN piece on television yesterday. The most amusing part about it was the way the anchors were making jokes about how far overboard Jones had gone. Someone actually put up the blurb, "Yes, But Does He Have a Girlfriend" at the bottom of the screen during the story. Not used to seeing sarcasm on CNN. It was almost refreshing.
and another thing - judging by the look of the "Jones Boys", he's got (or HAD, didn't see her in any of the pics...) himself a mail-order bride. Nice one, Scott. His portraits would seem to indicate he's one of the world's smugest twats. Dear oh dear. Remind me to never personally enrich this fucker.
That was classic intercourse!
and ANOTHER thing:-
When you are an inventor, community leader, philanthropist and entrepreneur, every minute of your day is valuable. Even with a magnificent home full of modern technology and a state-of-the-art corporate center, Mr. Jones still needs to be plugged in at all times, even during road trips.
...what a CUNT!
That was classic intercourse!
When they mentioned the alarm clock opening the curtains and playing music, I thought of that whole slide-out-of-bed-into-your-trousers-t -with-an-oatmeal-cannon thing from W&G...
and-get-sho
"..waking up in the morning is a high-tech venture. His alarm clock neither beeps nor buzzes; instead, music begins to play, curtains open on sunshine and lights switch on. And in the bathroom, the shower starts flowing."
This sequence of events could just as easily end in a rising flood and death by electrocution or drowning.
Just wait until he has to install a patch to his house because his air conditioner has a security hole or his theater shows a "blue screen of death" (tm Microsoft).
Now I'm going to hack into his wine cellar and spoil his chablis...
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
For a TV fanatic (just about everyone), the large TV coming down from the ceiling is a good idea. However how much of the rest is useful?
The switches in my house work just fine, I walk into the room and turn it on. No looking, because they are all standard I can walk into just about any dark room and turn on the light, and little effort is required. (Note, europe seems to run on a different standard and I can't always find their switches). How is a touch screen different? When a mechanical switch wears out I can fiddle with it a few times until I get the parts to replace it.
The reason the "House of the future" has never caught on is that most of the ideas are not really better. A mechanical light switch is cheap (50 cents), and uses no power. A touch, voice, or motion switch is much more exepnsive, and needs power to operate. In other words, it wastes electrisity without providing functionality we need.
That isn't to say all new technology isn't better. Most houses should be built with sorround sound, because people would use that.
Remember, when building a house, consider what you would really use. It might be interesting to know what the tempature of each room it, but in the end who cares?
... who is the REAL Indiana Jones!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Seems like he's making some progress in the field of non-obvious remote residence observation. Just the kind of technology that gives our friends in Justice an Orwellian woody. I don't know about you, but I like to be the only one with keys to my locks and passwords to my hidden cameras. Funny, doors can be unlocked from anywhere but no scr1pt k1ds are getting any of his booze.
Does that mean all I have to do to potentially kill the guy is set up an endlessly repeating loop of ear-damaging sound and hit "play at maximum volume" on some master computer somewhere?
Check it out here. Oh well, at least now I have more goals to shoot for. I'll probably have to forgo the movie theatre for now. His house is about 10x larger than mine. :)
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
But.... in the event of a big solar flare or a nuke going off his house becomes just like mine!
Then again, I suppose if either of those events were to happen, maybe audio/video on demand and cool touchscreens wouldn't be your biggest worries.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Am I the only person who thinks that this would be nothing but a target for hackers all around the world? I mean, come on, the department I work in has attacks on its web server on a daily basis, like clock work, and it's just Agricultural Economics at a University! I'm sure something like this would be a 'golden cow' hack for any well versed h4x0r...how much effort would you put into hacking if it would let you have that much control over someone's.....house???? Making something like this available to the average consumer at this point in internet security, would outweigh the convenience aspect of it with danger....at least I think so, what about you guys?
"Welcome to the United States of Microsoft"
Why does Jones need a home that includes a movie theater that seats 20 and wine cellar accessible only by fingerprint scan?
According to Jones, "I like to build things and change the world."
Translation: "Because I've got more money than god and I can't think of anything useful to do with it."
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
According to his site, Jones does do a fair amount of philanthropy. Maybe not in the most humble way, but at least he is being charitable.
All I can say is we need fewer jerks giving tech and America in general a bad name with 27,000 square foot houses.
I don't think those are his kids. He reminds me of Jerry Doyle. His "serious look" photo especially reminds me of Jerry Doyle playing Micael Garibaldi under Bester
The real reason you have water restrictions in Virginia is not because the world is running out of water, but that people in your area aren't willing to pay enough money for the operations necessary to get properly conditioned water in your area.
I love gadgets too, but they're a real headache. My house is only 2500 or so square feet. I've only got one car. But it seems like I'm constantly debugging the damn things. My car stereo, for instance, has a fancy automatic security panel to disguise it from thieves. It sounded cool, but now it won't work in the rain. Humidity jams it. My cordless phone battery is starting to suck. The list goes on and on.
indicate ... Finally found the paragraph in the bio... He probably adopted them...
A little background, I did all the programming/GUI design etc.. on this project so let me put to rest all the various misconceptions that a few people seem to have.
1- His system is on a UPS so it doesn't go down with a power outage.
2- It uses proprietary hardware and is behind a couple firewalls so don't expect to hear about some 13 year old getting in.
3- Don't try to compare your activehome X-10 to this system. It is much more modular, tons more reliable and when a hardware manufacturer comes out with a new product they actually work with AMX on protocol. Lutron is a rock solid product, there's a reason we call X-10 press-and-pray.
4- To the guy talking about his friend's Escient system that doesn't work, then just call our full-time service manager who will take care of it ASAP. Screen curtains are on a relay so it's pretty unlikely they'd just close during a movie. You might be confusing a system with Escient Convergence products with one Escient Solutions installed.
5- Scott dates.
6- Scott donates to a bunch of non-profit organizations sometimes involving isntalling AV systems or kiosks.
7- Something else I'm probably forgetting...
how much power does this place consume? also how long would he have to use such a system to recoup the time investment in installation from time saved not walking to a thermostat and adjusting the air manually? i bet he'll be spending a lot of time troubleshooting/fixing this place.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
This is the bastard that invented the acursed voicemail system and this is his rewards? Next thing you know, the guy who develop Windows is the richest guy on earth. Wait....
A quote from CNN.com:
"He can go on the Web and with a few clicks, zoom in on parts of the house or unlock doors from half a world away."
Anyone got the IP-adress to that site? I could really need some nice touchscreens...
Seriously, this definitely is a huge security problem , dont you think?
I have a real problem with getting adequate bass out of my in-wall $5000 speakers. You see, I live in a cardboard box and the roof tends to cave in and the garbage cans outside rattle a whole lot. I plan to heavily network it soon, though. Once I find a few more refrigerator boxes I should have enough room for LAN parties. I don't need a fingerprint lock on my wine cellar, because when I can afford a bottle of port, it doesn't last too long anyway.
Freed slaves might think otherwise, for example.
Wine cellar. Right. I mean, how naive can journalists get?
"Everyone who believes in telekinesis, raise my hand..." - James Randi
I would *not* want this guy automating my house. No imagination.
I have spent a good deal of time now reviewing everyone's comments. This is my first time visiting Slashdot....a friend pointed me to it today since I have a strong connection to the home that is being discussed. My first impression of this site SHOULD be a lot of technical people interested in technology...trying compare ideas and learn from other technical people. I'm getting a different impression however. It appears to be a lot of people who aren't doing as well financially or professionally as they would like, and have chosen to use this site as a forum to talk badly of those more fortunate. I'm sure there are other sites on the internet that would serve these individuals better. I would venture to guess that the same people you are bad mouthing on sites like this, are the same people who provide you employment and sign your pay checks! For those who are truly interested in technology, I would love to hear from you. I have been in the custom installation business for about 12 years now. It never ceases to amaze me what people want to do (and pay for) in there homes. I would love to hear from those who have issue with some of the product chosen. Believe it or not, there are reasons for the equipment that we chose to use in our client's homes. X-10 is great for my 1100 sf home, especially for somebody like me who enjoys messing around with its quirks. But when a wealthy homeowner wants that same type of control, reliable, stable, user friendly, in a home 30 to 50 times bigger than mine, we have to use equipment designed for that application. I'm done rambling. If you have an legitimate questions or suggestions, let me know!
I drive past Scott Jones' house 2 or 3 times a week on my way to my colocation facility.
Scott Jones is just trying to catch up with Steve Hilbert (remember, the ex-CEO of Conseco) who happens to live right across the street.
He just moved his driveway up the hill from Hilbert's last fall (and spent a pretty penny on it too according to local gossip).
Hilbert's place still rocks Jones' though.
Actually, I would live in any house along the street (116th between US 421 and US 31 for those of you who want to go check it out). It's called Millionaires' Row and sports names like Steve Hilbert, Scott Jones, Robert Ursey (owner of the Colts) among others. VERY NICE houses in a VERY HIGH DOLLAR area.
{Shudder} - I'm having flashbacks to cabling offices with 10Base2, how flaky it could be, and people crawling all over looking for the cause of network degradation... Aha! It was the coil of cable over in the corner of Bob's office, acting as an antenna!
Yeah, my boss just finished a contract job moonlighting as a network tech, mysterious problems with a coax network, standard MO, coils everywhere, T connectors used as splices, total segment length 1000 feet or so. Replaced it with CAT5 and problems all went away. This company is still using 386s for their main workstations though. Medical billing company, legacy text based apps, and no need for more. I had to give my boss a pile of ISA 10Mbit TP cards out of my junk box to finish the job with.
One could do pretty well running a niche company just to support legacy systems like that. I know we have had to order twinax supplies from such companies for our S/36 (now thankfully gone), and they can charge outrageous prices because of the lack of competition. Funny thing though, when we went to sell our Twinax equipment, none of those types of companies wanted to pay us enough to make it worth shipping a pallet of boat anchors, we wound up tossing most of it out.
Anyway, this is way offtopic, thanks for the exchange.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Oh, come on. It's not like we don't already have enough conveniences to make us fat and lazy. What's wrong with getting up out of your chair to close the blinds? Jeez, this stuff may be cool to look at but it's way too much money to spend on something you don't need that didn't really warrant a /. thread. If you've got the money to protect a freakin' wine collection with a thumbprint lock, I can think of at least a thousand other uses for you!
You are all fartheads.
Every since yesterday's Adverpost for the Cappucino, I know I'll be suspicious of any pointless story that has advertising potential...