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Microsoft's Home Of Tomorrow Has No Bathroom
Starman9x writes "Over at the The Toronto Star
reporter
Rachel Ross
got a tour of
Microsoft's home of the future.
She writes with an appropriate amount of humor, given all the easy targets Microsoft has set up. While the writeup is light and witty, there is an unspoken Orwellian undertone to it -- after all, do we really want Microsoft to have that much control over things?"
I guess that's for consistency...windows leaves all kinds of shit all over your system, so why not your house as well?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
"The house of the future has no bathroom.
And I really have to go."
Sorry, please install Service Pack 1b for the crapper.
Have a nice day.
its not a bathroom, but a recycle bin. it can go for awhile without emptying, just until you fill up a certain percentage of the house that you allow. actually, each partition of the house has one, though reliability can be flakey at times, oddly sucking away at all the other resources of the house (electrical, water, etc..). though for the most part works, but keeps you forever wondering why they call it a recycle bin
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
No shit!
Now where am I gonna put all my bathroom reading material?
All cool till you have several generations of people who grew up with this stuff and know no other way of life and all of a sudden a big wind storm and the power is *OUT*.
:)
Generators would be even more necessary than now
Fuzdout
..My sig ran away. Has anyone seen my sig?
Apple: The house would be see-through.
Sun: The house would look like absolute shit asthetically, but it'd be stable, and never be able to be knocked down.
Novell: I don't know, but there'll be a lot of guys in black ties and white shirts ringing the doorbell.
Some have already been tested in senior centers. It's still in the early stages of development, but such a system isn't entirely a fantasy
Speak for yourself, lady, but my fantasy isn't monitoring seniors all day.
Ugh. Microsoft house. Other than the obvious "Security comments" and pissNshit
...demonstrates how a resident might enter using a retinal scanner instead of a
jokes, lets get down to some seriousness. And by the way, what's with ChrisD NOT allowing comments on creation??
---Visitors to the house can leave a message via the touch-screen monitor built
into the exterior wall or record a message if no one's home.
What?? We already have voice intercomms, and some have a rudimentary X-10-like
cam in there. Other than being a node on a network, what's soo special? Hell,
I've even speced up a security network using Linux and such tools.
key. Any such biometric screening device could be used...
Retinal, yeah, but what about "Any biometric device"? If it's a hand print,
gelatin (thanks to the japanese guy who 'found' it out). And to beat ANY
biometric crap, all you need is the following:
Eyes : Spoons
Hands : Saw, axe...
Face shape: Axe and cutting block... (eww)
Point is that biometric doesnt matter. A key would probably stop that unnessary
dismemberment.
---All of the home's basic functionality is available in a pocket
PC-turned-light-switch...
Yeah, and we can trust the wireless protocols? We cant even trust the 802.11
encryption people, let alone MS for security. Who's to know that you could walk
near and hijack a house computer system?
---It's like Web TV and a personal video recorder combined (add~~ read email
wherever)
Why would you want a tether like a PDA to haul around the house to control basic stuff? The last thing is to be harassed by email for this and that when my girlfriends over. Hell, I WANT CONTROL OVER EMAIL only when I'm sitting at my computer. I could give a shit less. And if it's really important, they'll call.
And about that TV setup... Soo it's like MythTV?
---would monitor her activities to make sure everything's okay.
And how would we prevent that those same sensors wouldnt be in a non-invalid
house? Any audio/video sensor (read nearly everything) is that kind of sensor.
If I'd have that kind of hardware, it'd be on a NON-INTERNET'ED network, with no physical connections to any network, with exception to the phone line. And that would be only for emergency phone calls (like fire sensors in roof have been set off...).
Another thing is this auto-cooking shit. I wouldnt expect any computer can give
reasonable instructions on how to cook. Cooking's an art, mastered by those with
experience. How can some 2 bit computer deal with recipe substitutions cause you dont have that one good it demands? Or will it DEMAND KRAFT CHEESE when you
bought that slab of american for 1.4$ per pound? Computers should follow MY
rules, not the other way around.
---All of the computer displays in the future house will be hooked up to a
central computer that coordinates their activities. This is critical for
broad-based features such as homework lock-down, which parents can use to
disable TV, music and other home entertainment until the schoolwork is done.
Uhhh, cant that already be done with X-Windows and cron jobs?
And of course, you gotta have that SoHo stuff for those never-off-the-clock
business users. That's a slashdot article in all its own. Still, all this GPS
here, Voice analysis there and add yet more buzzwords.
Point: There's tons of stuff in any house that you dont want ANYTHING taking
control of, with the exception of the person there. I sure dont want some
windows security system that goes in lock-down mode whenever the cat jumps
around knocking some book down, or have it call the fire department on a bad
computer cooking stint. And what about errors? There's tons of bugs in this
kind, no, ANY kind of system on this magnitude. I wouldnt trust ANY OS, even
Linux to take care and log every little transaction in and out of my house. And
the last thing I want is a transaction log that some law enforcement agency can
download if they have the certain e-signature allowing such search and seizure.
The supreme court has shown that they dont care for our rights.
Oh well, this has turned from a objection by point to a obnoxious rant. This is
just stuff that I worry about when "shit from the future" happens to be
partially true. It makes me think that there's actually a way to stop it.
Heh. Actually, AppleHome would be see-through and striped, and come in all the colors of the rainbow or a cool titanium finish that would scratch and dent. =] You could only have 1 or 2 Rooms in it (5.25 bays), but the Rooms would do everything (Superdrive/combodrive) You'd only be permitted to run AppleHomeOS on it, until someone came out with LinuxHomeOS For the AppleHome. AppleHome users would account for only 10% of the population, but would be MUCH more vocal about their love of the AppleHome than MS users.
And if you used something in Beta, you'd erase your bedroom (iTunes, Safari)
It would definitely have better aesthetics than Microsoft-Home, though. Eeek.
-Sara
Imagine walking home... it's been a long day.
As you enter, you are greeted by a warm Muzac entry sound. "Welcome Home" It chimes in an even, an unoffensive voice.
As you walk in, you are followed by wall mounted screens delivering custome tailored advertising. Who knew I could grow another 6" safely and without any effort?
You hang up your coat and you are chimed by a tone, that says "Thankyou for using MS coat rack" Ding!
You go to the kitchen to put away groceries, but before you get there a 6 foot holographic paper clip stops you. "Your grand mother is not eating her food. Do you wish to feed her"
"No it's ok, I'll talk to her later Mr. Clippy"
"Are you SURE you dont' want me to feed her. It's not healthy for her not to eat"
"She's made it 80 years on her own Sir, she knows when to eat"
"Older peopler need to eat, human, or they could starve!"
"Fine, what ever. Give her some food"
You can hear sounds of mechanical arms wurring in the distance, and an old woman screaming... ugh just another bug.
You go to put away the food, but as you insert some fruit and turn around, you see it spit out of the fridge. "What now?!"
"This fruit is not compatible with this refridgerator"
"It's a banana you talking box of ice, just take it"
"MS Fridge 3.1 does not recognize this typen of fruit. Are you sure you want to store it in MS Fridge?"
"YES!! I want to store it in MS Fridge!!"
"Open the door manualy to continue."
You put away the rest of the food, with only a few more discussions regarding the unlicensed eggs, which aparently were not grown at McMSoft Farms, and therefor do not have the correct nutritional value. And the fit the cubbard through over you buying flower... It insists that MS Breads are a more efficient use of your leasiur time.
As you go to the TV, you realize that you won't be watching TV tonight since all that's on is the BSD show.
Sudenly out of nowhere a lazer shoots you inthe pocket and burns a hole, destroying a tape you had in your pocket. "Hey!! what was that?"
"You were carrying ilegaly coppied music. I have corrected the issue for you."
"It was a mix tape from a friend!!"
"All copyrighted materials must have digitial copy right signitures, or they may be stolen. You don't want to steal do you?"
"It's from his band you nit! Never mind, I'l just go take a shower"
You dissrobe (hoping the computer isn't watching this time) and turn on the shower.... ICE cold.
"Computer turn up the heat, please"
"The heat is on"
"No it's not, it's freezing"
"The watter is hot at 37 degreees"
"In Celcius!!"
"Error: Unknown variable.... Reporting bug.... Bug fix will be available when you upgrade to MS House XP: The Next Generation"
You scream into the night as you run naked into the woods, trying to escape the MS Tree 3000's (better greener foilage). You find your self a nice cave and grow hemp in the field. Not because you like hemp, but because you heard it causes memmory loss, and you want to forget.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
With a Microsoft-Home: if you threw a party, once the nineth person entered, the house would shut down util you upgraded your licence.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
These digital homes of the future will only be as smart as the owner. People will yell and scream and curse at their house just like they do to their printer. The main server that runs the whole party will require pretty good knowledge of computers. Unless of course, you are rich and have a 24 hour geek squad a phone call away. Technical difficulties will arise, upgrades will need to be done, and to do it yourself (economically) will require *wanting* to know the guts of the system. Not to mention, a bit of knowledge about whatever language is making everything tick. The interesting thing about these "future" homes is that they are just a concept right now. They will become widely built and used only if simplicity is pursued by the people designing and building them. Whoever comes up with a very simple GUI for some "master controls" that doesn't require every single appliance, light, alarm, and garage door opener to be compliant to only one protocol, or worse, MADE BY MS, will be a very rich person. Of course, the average /.'er could handle the 'super house' (and most likely would not let any other person put their muckers on the design and implementation of it), but the average 'i have 40 gigabytes of ram!' person won't be able to.
More importantly, Microsoft doesn't have a single view of the future. The tours present possible scenarios, not a blueprint for product development.
This is the most important part of the article. Not everyone will want *everything* that MS's digital home showscases... but customizability (is that a word?) of these future homes will be the key. Opting for the econopackage presented by your home builder would be a bad idea. A home owner would end up without enough features that they could make good use of, and too many things that they don't need, or worse, don't know how to work.
It will be interesting to see how these become mainstream.
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My wife and I are nerds and have designed automation into our home. We have systems for security, lighting control, media equipment control and HVAC all talking to each other via serial and Ethernet. We are programming everything ourselves, because we can and because we think we'll do a better job than anyone we could hire.
We've been in the house for six months and haven't finished the lighting controls. It takes a while to figure out how you want things to work. Everything works reasonably well and some things are really cool.
However, anything more complex than having a button that turns out all of the lights when you're ready to shutdown for the evening gets surprisingly subtle.
For example, we programmed the system to automatically turn on the hall lights when we get home. The rule is simple enough, if this door opens, and it's between sunset and sunrise, turn on this light. But then, we have a warm winter and get a lot of bugs on the entry and when I take out the garbage, I turn off the light so the bugs don't swarm into the house, then open the door and the light comes back on!
We easily fixed this, but what happens to tomorrow's consumers who buy a mass-produced system that tries to be a LOT more clever than what I just described and it goes wrong? These are the people who couldn't figure out to set the time on their VCR, who don't know how to turn off Word's autoformatting "features" and instead have to learn how to work around them. How are they going to live in a home that is complex beyond their comprehension and that does things they don't want and can't fix?
The answer is they won't. This high-tech home automation for the masses is a fantasy. Software is going to have to get orders of magnitude better before it's even thinkable.
I thought Microsoft's animated *assistant* appears after you drop a hot load on the sofa.
"It appears that you have moved your bowels in a most inappropriate way. Would you like to add the turd to the clipboard for later use?"
If you think
In the Apple House: You would always be better than your neighbors.
In the Sun House: You would always be smarter than your neighbors.
In the Novel House: Neighbors?
In the Linux House: You have to rebuild it from scratch every few months but at least you got 45,312 people who will help you out (or at least call you a newbe until you read up enough to build it your self)
In the Minux House: You wouldn't have one big house to hold everything but instead many smaller separate houses, one for each purpose.
-Jason
All the more reason to opt for a Linux-house or BSD-house. Everything's made with open technology, so when you don't like something you just have to poke around at it until it changes. You have your choice of how you want your house to look, and you can tweak it quite a bit. Plus, since it's open you don't have to go to the locksmith's when you want to change the keys. Just grind your own.
/me exits
Applehouse and MSHouse are a tad bit too restrictive for my tastes. I'll stick it out and wait for GPLHouse, even if it won't always support the latest and greatest new House-ware.
And, of course, RedHouse will make every House-UI look alike, which will confuse you to death when you expect something to act one way, but it acts a different way... Until you realize you're in Gnome-House and not KDE-House.
Gentoo-house would be interesting.... Quite interesting. But somehow I think that most of the population would end up making a mistake and locking themselves out of it.
And bloody hell, the Everything-Drake Mandrake house with Toilet-drake, espressomachine-drake, chair-drake... Ok. I admit it, even the Linux-Houses will have their issues.
This is corny.
-Sara
This EULA grants you the following limited use rights...
Microsoft does not need^H^H^H^Hdeserve this much control.
/. troll becuase "Hotfix Q1873672 has been out for your microwave for 3 months!!1 It's your own fault you can't walk upright anymore!!". Hmm.. must be time to patch the house again.
It's bad enough the world has to deal with things like the SQL Slammer, but there's no way in hell I'm going to risk waking up one morning to the Toaster Twister and Coffee Cruncher, visit the bathroom to great the Rectal Reamer, and find out my mailbox says STOP ERROR 0x00000e24 - INACCESSABLE BOOT DEVICE.
Only to be topped off by being yelled at by some
NO SIR.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Scenario One:
Heath : Computer, why did you select the quantity for four. Its just me in here..
Computer : Sweetheart, I thought I should cook for the three gentlemen hiding in the attic with guns too..
Scenario Two:
Heath : Please select quantity as two for myself and my boyfriend.
Computer : Your boyfriend was here with the blonde from the coffeeshop. Believe me sweetie, he ate.. Oh how he ate!!
Rapid Nirvana
methinks the computerized home of the future is more about technology "fading into the background", making things more convenient but in an unobtrusive way; not the technology being the centerpiece of a "gee whiz" kind of house that would appeal most to a 14-year-old.
but maybe its just the dissonance between a "showcase house of the future", where tech is the centerpiece, and the tech we all really will want and/or need.