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Geek-Chic Power Houses
nakhla writes "Wired.com is running a lengthy article on wired houses of celebrities. The article describes some of the tech that has gone into the houses of actors, businessmen, and professional athletes, outlining the steps they've gone to in order to obtain techno-nirvana. Included in the article is a profile of JAG's Catherine Bell (my vote for sexiest geek), and her use of a wireless network to connect her to her TiBook, Gateway Laptop, and...get this...Sharp Zaurus Linux PDA. For those of you who are just dying to string fiber around your entire house, this article will have you making a run to your favorite networking hardware store."
I thought it said Geek Chicks.
Who doesn't want to show her their hard drives
and give her some good RAM.
Bite me if it's cliche, but you know you're thinking this.
.smell my feet.
Who cares? The world needs more geek chicks!
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
The article talks about how Tony Hawk has a special PS2 that will play anything he burns. Game-makers FTP him games, he burns them and plays them as a beta-tester. Do I have to learn how to skateboard to get that job?
No, you just need a mod chip and some warez sitez.
On a pseudo-related note, Catherine Bell is a Scientologist.
So can she still be a 'geek'? Of the Slashdot kind?
:)
(She is hardcore into Dianetics, and at least somewhat under "church" control... This is from radio interviews I heard with her, so I wasn't distracted by her looks.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Seriously, I think the doorbell webcam/image pusher is the most interersting aspect, not that she has a Zaurus (more than likely she gets these gadgets as promo items so they are seem by the 'cool crowd')
It can't be easy to have parties and sleep with multiple partners and fiddle with your home network system.
I guess semi-celebrities like those on *snicker* JAG have the time.
Actually, one of the cheapest and easiest things I have done with our house is to set up an older Powerbook with a minimal installation of OS X and iTunes. Our entire music collection from CD is now 40GB on the hard drive. The Powerbook is hooked up to the stereo system so it can be piped anywhere throughout the house and the Powerbook is equipped with an Airport card so one can access it from anywhere in the house. Pretty easy and certainly cheaper, yet more sophisticated than many of the other high end stereo systems I've seen. In fact, our next door neighbor (an orthopedic surgeon and her husband who have a VERY expensive home multimedia system with dual 300 CD changers etc...etc...etc...) are absolutely blown away by this simple solution. We have mixes on it for dinner music, work out music, punk, bluegrass, classical and on and on. The other cool thing is that you hook your iPod up to it and you can synch driving music mixes when you plug the iPod into your car stereo system for road trips.
Pretty cool.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
But keep both feets on the ground, because you're not and (probably) will never be rich enough to spend millions on toys.
This is nice and all... but it remains toys. I dont think anyone really need a plasma screen instead of a regular mirror for shaving, but hey, its cool.
We're like mechanics looking at a movie star's custom ferrari.
this article will have you making a run to your favorite networking hardware store
Some suggested stores:
Networking Hardware USA
Networking Hardware Emporium
Hardware Networking Only, Inc.
No We don't have any Computers, Just Networking Shit, Asshole! LLC
Oh what a dream. Reading this article makes it all seem so joyous and wonderful. Especially when you don't have budget limitations and have the monetary freedom to completely scrap something that becomes obsolete in a couple of years and replace it with the latest and greatest thing out there. *Drool*
Speaking from the experience of going through the ups and downs of building a new house this year - trying to determine what technologies to use now and how to leave room for future upgrades/changes with such obstacles as:
1. A realistic budget
2. An uninformed contractor
3. Conflicting opinions from all directions
It is tough to know where to jump in and what is cost effective and useful technology that can be expanded and upgraded without costing an arm and a leg.
Typically a contractor is very informed about housing issues (plumbing, electrical, etc.) and can be a great source of information and recommendations but when it came to the tech infrastructure it was hard to find someone knowledgeable in the small town that I live in.
I pretty much had to do all the research myself and inform him on what I thought would be best. It was all a little odd considering I'm not a builder by any stretch of the imagination.
Ugh, makes my head hurt. We ended up going cat-5 with pre-wiring and space for wireless access points in the attic and conduit in the walls to pull fiber (or something else) later when it becomes feasible. It seemed best for us at the current time, hopefully it will continue to be a good decision a few years down the line.
Are you bovilexic? Moo!
Not to rain on your parade, but that's not so much a "claim to fame" as it is a "claim ticket from the pawnshop two blocks down the street from fame."
Ah yes, just what I was lacking. Hollywood fiber-optic gossip and token rings of the rich and famous.
It's all going according to
Study and learning skills. The Study Technology, a breakthrough which eradicates barriers to study and learning, developed by humanitarian and educator L. Ron Hubbard, is utilized to enable the youth to learn any subject. The student is able to overcome the primary barriers to learning. He learns how to learn. Effective communication skills are also part of this procedure.
The Program
The Goals
RUN CHILDREN RUN!
Yes, the famous porn star is probably just as "hardcore" a geek as anyone in the Wired article, if not more. I bet none of those profiled builds their own systems, did their own web sites, kicks butt in UTK, has a 150 IQ and has starred in hundreds of high quality porn flicks. Oh yeah, Wired is a "family" magazine.
I read this article over the weekend. The bottom line is, any ultra-rich idiot can have an automated house full of cool gadgets, if they throw enough money at someone else to set it up for them. There's nothing particularly impressive about being able to write a check.
I'd rather read about systems people put together themselves, consisting of parts attainable by someone who makes a modest salary.
And yeah, Catherine Bell is a hottie, but she loses points for being married and a Scientologist.
~Philly
Every once in a while I'll pick up a wIrEd at an airport or whatever. This is shortly followed by memories of why I canceled my subscription years ago. In the same way that fashion mags set up these unreasonable (and arbitrary) expectations of what it means to be a woman, wired has set up this buy-buy-buy wannabe geek culture. Example:
Sure, you might have DSL and Wi-Fi, an Xbox and a TiVo, maybe a Bang & Olufsen stereo with 5-foot speakers and a six-CD changer, but you're still an amateur in the world of extreme home networking
Extreme home networking? Is that like extreme programming? I had this burrito last night then I hunkered down for an evening of Extreme defecation
The ad:article ratio in wired has to be as high as Cosmo's, not to mention the high number of thinly veiled ads in the fetish section. But, we do get insights like:
Stored as 1s and 0s, music, video, and even television can share the same network.
What insight! What's worse is that these freaks at the forefront of graphic design somehow manage to obscure deep insights like the above with layouts and graphics that make the articles unreadable. I had to hold this one article at an angle because the paper was reflective silver before finally giving up. I guess I'm not an extreme reader! Form over function in all they do.
The preceding was an extreme /. post
Spleen vented. whew.
She's not as wired as she would be. She's in the Cult of Greed & Power (Time, 1991). Which means she'll never go to that website there. She'll probably never go here either. I hope she doesn't end up here.
How can a woman so tech savy get duped by them?
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Seriously, "celebrity" in America has really been pissing me off of late, with all the goddam "reality tv" shows trying to make "normal" people into "celebrities", American Idol(gag!), "star" after "star" on Good Morning America, tabloids having nothing but celebrity rumors(what the fuck ever happened to good ol' Pres. Bush meets Aliens stuff?), etc.?
I refuse to believe that Americans really care so much about goddam celebrities; IMO, this is all just Hollywood pressure to keep themselves feeling like they're better than the average "joe", considering iMacs, free video editing tools, etc., becoming accessible to your average computer user must be making them piss their pants about their impending irrelevancy.
Anyone else in the states notice this trend, or am I imaging things; I realize "celebrities" have always been pretentious fucks, but it seems even more so lately.
Sorry, way OT I guess...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
does that not allow me to be a slashdot geek?
Excuse me but the fact that some slashdot readers disagree with scientology or it`s policies and that i happen to BE a scientologist does NOT make me a non "slashdot kind geek"
I think that you'll find that there is very very little love lost for scientology (I refuse to capitalize it; churches and religions don't have "trade secrets", IMO) on Slashdot. The people involved with the running of the "church" of scientology have been heavy handed in the extreme when it comes to things near and dear to the Slashdot readership. It is a hot-button topic, to be sure. Your "church" is not seen in a very positive light by those that come here. One could therefore argue that, by extension, this means that a healthy percentage of the online "geek" community harbors negative feelings towards your "church". So it's likely that you might get a little heat if you bring up scientology on Slashdot.
The reason you might not be terribly welcome here in most people's minds is because, for good or ill, they cannot separate what your "church" does with what you say -- when you mention scientology. If you don't bother mentioning it, it's probable that nobody will like or dislike you anymore than they would any other person here. It's not a First Amendment issue so much as a "cultural" thing. I certainly wouldn't start yelling about my PETA membership at the annual Meat Packers Association convention meeting unless I wanted to start a shouting match. Perhaps you feel differently. I don't know. It's a free country.
Whatever my personal feelings are about scientology, I really don't care one way or the other about your religious beliefs (especially if they have no bearing on the conversation at hand). To each his own, I say; I certainly don't bother mentioning that I'm an agnostic Libertarian every time I post here. I'm just trying to give out a little friendly, free advice: you'd do well to not bring up your religion in this forum unless you're participating in a discussion about religion. Assuming you don't want your conversation degenerating into a flamefest, that is.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
"Technology is like money....you know you have enough when you don't have to think about it..."
:)
Did it appear than anyone profiled in the article no longer thought about either?
Why are we impressed with any of this? If any of us had a virtual unlimited budget like these people, we could do a HELL of a lot more and not to mention do it ourselves. Quite frankly, people who throw a shitload of money at a problem/issue to solve it do not impress me. Someone who solves the problem in a both effecient AND practical manner are much more impressive. If Joe Millionare has the sickest network on the east coast, it is not because he is especially clever, intelligent, or anything else, it is because he hired a buncha techs to do it for him. Lets stick with admiring 'real' people doing 'real' stuff. Anyone with a crapload of money can do this sorta stuff. Slashdot should know this better than anyone.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
"Hello? Did I win?"
Yes! What's your name, lucky c-
"You're in my damn living room. You know my name."
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Check this site for a how-to on your own wireless computer and home theater setup...using iTunes & Mac, of course :)
In a pinch, just use your iPod to drive the house system...
What's wrong with this picture?
Does anybody here think that a static IP owned by Catherine Bell or Tony Hawk is any less likely to wind up designating a network 0wn3d by any number of people than one connected to an AOL broadband user with the usual level of home security?
While I'd be very surprised to find that Larry Ellison's home network wasn't designed for security first by the smartest bunch of paranoids he can hire, from what I saw in the article, I'd be equally surprised to find that the opposite isn't true for most of these systems.
The results of this article's posting to /. should be very, very interesting. I wonder how many of these networks have already been r00ted and how many people are heading for Beverly Hills with wireless laptops checking things out since the article was posted?
Any hardcore security types who know the high-end installers in this business probably should give them an e-mail very, very soon... there's some serious money to be made here.
And anyone who's got the kind of money who's reading this should think of how to secure their networks before ordering their home T-3.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Have you ever read, actually read Operation Clambake?
Scientology is, frankly, a company/cult. It is not even remotely close to being a religion. It was founded by a science fiction author who had been quoted earlier as saying "If a man truly wished to become wealthy, the best thing he could do would be to start a religion."
Techies have a legitimate beef with the Church of Scientology -- the CoS went on a series of attacks on USENET against people that had escaped Scientology. These people had been posting information about Scientology (the stuff that you aren't *supposed* to find out about until you're deep in debt and will believe anything that makes it look like you haven't been suckered.)
Being a real, tech loving geek and being a Scientologist may not be completely incompatible, but it's damn near.
May we never see th
that now its the things you own that makes you a geek.
Woo-hoo, I just paid a guy 10 grand to install a system! I'm a geek!
Fortunately for me, I'm a nerd, so I have to get by on my brains.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Bleh, all this waste, even in the 'do-it-yourself' section.
Without spending nearly so much, especially in a smaller home, you can get a lot. The key thing here is they suggest buying lots of small, dedicated pieces of equipment, and only two computers, and not even fully utilizing them!
Take that 'dedicated server' and make it a bit beefier. I built a fairly cheap (~1100 USD) server with 4 120 GB drives in RAID-5 config about a year ago. Up that a bit and your server can hold oggs and video like crazy, are even go FLAC if you are extreme audiophile. Put it next to your Entertainment system, and it can do PVR/Video/Progressive Scan functions. Eliminate the need for a lot of things. Run your internet connection through it, no more need for a separate router. Buy a cheaper USB wireless adapter and make it an Access Point with more control (why settle for mere WEP, when you can enforce IPSEC?). With all this functionality, a decent soundcard can dump anything you want to any receiver, so a lot of the digital-to-stereo equipment goes bye-bye. If concerned about control, buy a cheap-o lirc-compatible device.
The display is pretty decent, though I would think an entry-level projector might offer a better deal. The home automation stuff I have no experience with, though I would opt for an IP based camera and have my computer doing motion sensing when I leave the house (sending shots via VPN to a friends house in case the system is stolen).
The network solutions they suggest seem to hover around 11 mbps, same rate as wireless, why bother? If you want better than that, wire your house with some cat5 or better cable. 100 mbps is much more livable for streaming video than 11, and if you are really big on it, gigabit is *doable* at great expense.
Why would any house need a *rack* of servers? My household has a laptop per person, a desktop per person, and a single server handling routing/nfs/samba/apache/icecast/etc.... I plan to add one system to do multimedia stuff in the entertainment system, but that's it. The laptops+desktops are extravagant, but nice...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.