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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?"
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?
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.
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!
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.
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...
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.