Slashdot Mirror
A Night in the Hotel of the Future
Roland Piquepaille writes "Michael S. Lasky was lucky enough to test the amenities of the "Room of the Future", Room 267 of the Hilton Garden Inn in El Segundo, California. Among other things, the room provides a wall-mounted, 42-inch flat-screen HDTV Panasonic plasma television, a biometric room safe, free broadband, accessible via laptop or the TV, or a Panasonic massage chair. Needless to say, Lasky didn't have enough time to test everything during his one-night stay, but was quite pleased. Check this column for a summary and a picture of the "Room of the Future.""
... There was still a slot for the coin-op vibrating bed.
Some things never change
--
The 42 inch plasma screen on the wall cannot be turned off or the volume adjusted, and it constantly plays patriotic music to sooth you....
42" Plasma television - Good for watching porn
Biometric room safe -- so that the prostitute you bring in doesn't steal your stuff while you're sleeping
Free broadband -- surf all the porn you want on the big screen, or lookup local call girl services
Massage chair -- need I say more?
Have a good laugh like I did.
Newsfollow.com
Gotta love the 'executive toy' on the desk in the picture.
how are you supposed to know it's an executive's desk unless there's a kinetic sculpture on it? Truly, this is the future.
Kevin Fox
The last time that I stayed in a hotel I decided to make a long-distance call to my aunt (who happened to live a two-hour drive away).
Instead of walking down to the payphones, I thought I'd call from the room. When I got the bill, it listed the normal long-distance charges plus a $15 connection fee.
In-room broadband will end up costing $10/hour plus $2 for every Google search made or e-mail sent.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
Big Deal. Hotel rooms should basically have a nice bed and nice bath. Personally, if I am going on vacation, I want to spend as much time OUT of the hotel room as possible but when I come back I want to get a good nights sleep and get clean the next morning. This type of stuff is designed to attract the people who bought those old Acer computers just because they had a black case.
In other news, Fred G. Sanford was lucky enough to test the amenities of the "Junkyard of the Future", Room 1 of the Sanford Arms in El Segundo, California.
Amenities included a bottle of Ripple, automatic heart monitoring equipment, and the neighbors goat.
Sounds a lot like the Le Meridien in Minneapolis.
d ation_us1788.shtml
Info:
http://www.lemeridien.com/usa/minneapolis/accommo
Ah, Smell Segundo, I remember it well. Bordered by a huge sewage treatment plant to the west, with it's lovely aromas, LAX to the north, with it's wonderful sound effects AT MAXIMUM VOLUME, and, to the south, the second oil refinery built on the West Coast (hence, the city name), with it's wonderful plumes of burning gases.
Home to more engineering firms & Friday night Happy Hours than I can remember.
I found this to be most interesting:
a compressor-less mini-refrigerator that is completely silent
I want more and more quiet appliances, including computers. Everything is so freakin' noisy now! I wish more industrial design took this into account. Yay future!
I hate to say it, but I'm a little tired of things that pawn themselves off as "of the future," when they're just showcases for the most expensive, newest stuff that's already floating around.
Maybe it's because the real "hotels of the future" won't be any more exciting than they are now. If they're motels, they'll be cheap - if they're five star hotels, they'll simply emulate what's in the best houses, plus a feature or two (whooo, biometric safe).
This must mean that he actually slept during the stay... Who'd waste time sleeping at such a place? :)
Be an elitist - read Slashdot at +4.
"...and my attempts to shut it off only caused other nozzles to splash me as if I were in a penitentiary riot. (Hilton's plan to install a voice-activated control could be just the solution.) Another surprise: Despite all the high-end design, the shower lacks a soap dish."
So that's how all those riots start. Someone drops the soap from not having a dish to put it in!
Another of life's age old mysteries solved.
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
What's so futuristic about a room that uses technology available for the household for at least 10 years (broadband not withstanding). OK the tv is plasma, but it's still just a big tv. Anybody could offer a room like this if they could get away with charging the extra amount it would cost to pay for it.
Now when you can get a room like this at Motel6 for $39.95 at night, then wake me up.
-T
Just a little behind a cell phone with a video camera on my list of things I need. But I am sure there are plenty of people looking for new ways to spend money.
Just sounds like a a room filled with crap from Sharper Image. Hardly the future.
Sleep is for the Weak
(booming voice, 2ms echo) without the Hookers and Blow of the Future?
EL SEGUNDO, CALIFORNIA -- Admittedly, the Hilton Garden Inn's gadget-crammed Room 267 is not your typical lodging. But stay just one night there, and you'll want it to be.
The invitation-only "Room of the Future" is housed in a special Hilton University wing of the property near Los Angeles International Airport. It comes furnished with a legion of next-generation products to enhance guests' business productivity, comfort, and entertainment.
Futuristic Features
"Not all the devices that we expect to be a hit with guests are," notes Barbara Bejan, the hotel's general manager. "But that's fine, since the room's main purpose is to see what guests like and dislike."
Among the niceties of this high-tech hotel room are:
a wall-mounted, 42-inch flat-screen HDTV Panasonic plasma television connected to a Technics receiver with surround-sound Bose speakers;
a Philips DVD/CD player;
a second, smaller flat-screen LCD monitor next to the Jacuzzi bathtub;
motion-detection lights that activate when guests enter the room;
a biometric room safe that uses a thumbprint as the lock and key;
free broadband, accessible via laptop or the TV;
a Panja touch-panel remote control that manages lighting levels and room climate; opens and closes the drapes; controls the TV, radio, and DVD player; and even repositions the head and foot of the king-size bed;
a compressor-less mini-refrigerator that is completely silent;
a Panasonic massage chair, a heated toilet seat/bidet, a computerized five-nozzle shower, and a defogging bathroom mirror.
Features that click with customers may eventually be implemented in other rooms in the Hilton family of properties, which also includes Doubletree, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inn, and Homewood.
Already a hit is free guest-room printing, Bejan says. Hilton teamed with PrinterOn, a site that enables remote printing. After guests log on to the PrinterOn page devoted to Hilton Garden Inn, they can send a print job to the hotel business center's color printer, which is available around the clock. Or, guests can forward the print job to another hotel in the chain, which will secure the printout until they arrive at the location.
PC World Tests the Room
When Hilton invited PC World to stay a night in the Room of the Future, I jumped at the opportunity. It might be work, but it's work in what Bejan calls "a boy's playroom."
A Smart Card reader lock system allows entry with an enhanced credit card such as the American Express Blue card. I used the hotel-supplied card and immediately spotted the TV camera by the front door. The camera was handy later that evening, when I used the room's Airphone to view and talk with a visitor before opening the door.
Security extended to the in-room safe, which was large enough to hold my laptop. A single flick of my thumb was all I needed to secure my belongings. Another touch of my thumb opened the safe, an easier method than remembering a combination or trying to properly punch buttons.
The wood-paneled room's T-shaped wood desk with its ergonomic chair offered adjustable lighting and a convenient ethernet port for the free Internet access. No notebook? I could have used the wireless keyboard to surf, with the 42-inch plasma TV as a monitor (for $10 a day).
But it was difficult to sit behind a computer with so many other toys available to test. The Panasonic massage chair, a leather recliner with a remote control, seemed uncomfortable at first. After I started its massager, the stress of the day melted away. Wait--now the room was too bright! Using the Panja universal touchscreen remote, I closed the curtains and blinds, dimmed the lights, turned on the TV, and switched channels. I was all but ready to move in permanently.
High-Tech Bathing
I walked to the bathroom, which was replete with a glassed-in shower offering five nozzles and computerized water-temperature control. While it sounded luxurious, it proved ultimatel
Old fashion courtesy masseuse?
I think I'll take the cute hotel-staff masseuse, you can keep the chair of the future.
Yeah, honestly. Wow, a plasma screen TV, oooh a broadband connection. Why is this at all impressive? It's just a bunch of expensive crap put in one room.
â¦until the Gideonâ(TM)s Bible is provided in pdf and pdb formats.
This isn't the hotel room of the future... it's the hotel room of today, if you're rich enough.
~Berj
Give me a nice beach just outside my sliding-glass door, and you can keep all this other crap...
someone better alert epcot that their room of the future is a bit out of date. "LITTLE BOBBYS SHOE IS FLOATING IN SPACE! WHATEVER SHALL WE DO NARF NARF!" I've never gone on a ride there where it hasn't broken either.
NJ Local Music Scene
What did he get for breakfast ?
Space pills or mutated fruits, milk from transgenic cows and radiation-cleaned coffee seeds ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Seems less like the room of the future, and more like the room of people with too much freakin' money in their bank account.
I think only the broadband access has a shot at becoming common, the rest of that stuff is just too filthy expensive for all but the most expensive hotels to be installing.. much less putting it into people's homes.
Well written, got a great laugh from that last bit, but not nearly enough information, too bad the writer did not go into more detail, or maybe spend more time there.
I hate all sigs, even this one.
www.quietpc.com
www.quietpcusa.com (their US branch)
www.silentpcreview.com
quietpc.com has products ranging from acousticly dampend cases, to speed-regulating fans, to fanless cpu coolers, to hard drive enclosers.
Making my pc silent is one of my current side projects... fan by fan.
no comment
The e-mint on my pillow wonâ(TM)t activate without my credit card number.
The recirculation of Malcolm as icon during the late 1980s and 1990s got its biggest boost from the commercial marketplace, as retailers, publishers, and Hollywood cashed in on the popularity of hip-hop music and culture. And as Afrocentrism achieved respectability among black urban (and suburban) professionals, Malcolm's face and name became a central staple among the "Afro-Chic" products that made up their casual attire (see Afrocentricity).
The rush to purchase "X" paraphernalia affected not only African Americans but also suburban whites, Latinos, and Asian Americans fascinated with black youth cultures. Dubbed the "X" generation, ad agencies boldly marketed "X" products without even mentioning Malcolm. "Malcolmania" reached its high point with the release of Spike Lee's cinematic rendering of Malcolm's autobiography in 1992. Following Lee's lead, retailers sold millions of dollars worth of "X" caps, T-shirts, medallions, and posters emblazoned with Malcolm's name, body, or words.
Not surprisingly, the selling of Malcolm X in the 1990s generated pointed debate among African Americans. Some argued that marketing Malcolm undermined his message, while others insisted that the circulation of his image has prompted young people to search out his ideas. Some utilized his emphasis on black community development to support a new African American entrepreneurialism, while others insisted on seeing him as a radical democrat devoted to social justice. His anti-imperialism has dropped out of public memory, whereas his misogyny has been ignored by his supporters and spotlighted by his detractors.However these disputes evolve, it appears that Malcolm X's place in U.S. history, and in the collective memory of African Americans, is secure. Ironically, some of his centrality can be attributed to the mutability of his own viewpoint. Because his ideas were constantly being renewed and rethought during his short career, Malcolm has become a sort of tabula rasa, or blank slate, on which people of different positions can write their own interpretation of his politics and legacy. Chuck D of the rap group Public Enemy and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas can both declare Malcolm X their hero. Truly an American icon.
Join Tor today!
I've always been happy with a 13" TV and 1 channel of pr0n as long as it was "billed discreetly to my hotel bill".
Why does he need all this stuff in his room? Is the city he's visiting not exciting enough? Why did he go there in the first place, then?
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Since I couldn't see what buttons I was pushing, the crotch-level nozzle blasting 102-degree water came as a shock--and my attempts to shut it off only caused other nozzles to splash me as if I were in a penitentiary riot. (Hilton's plan to install a voice-activated control could be just the solution.)
I hope the voice command to turn it off will be 'OMG MY WANG ARRRRRG!!!!!'
Polaroid. See what develops!!
Or is it just lots of luxury?
I mean, he wasn't flying around in his personal broomcopter that folds into a suit jacket. When I burgle your rich yuppie house, I don't call it time traveling! Although maybe that would work as a legimitate defense in court...is anyone here a physics attorney?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Exactly! I've been in a lot of rather expensive hotels with guilded lobbies, liveried doorman, etc., but had rooms that were not soundproofed from road noise, the elevator, or the ice machine around the corner. Several times, I've unplugged the ice machine in the hallway in the middle of the night just to get some sleep. Unfortatenly, unplugging the elevator is a bit more difficult. Ding!
Plasma-shmasma, but what about the minibar? There's not a word on that in the article. Does this mean there will be no booze in the future? Now that's what I call dystopian sci-fi.
Malda spends a week in the House of Next Tuesday! In the world of Next Tuesday, humanity has been conquered by giant ants!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Protected with Microsoft Passport.
RFID embedded potato chip bags. $5
GPS enabled water bottle. $6
$7 Liquor bottles featuring HP inkjet technology. Cannot consume liquor and fill bottle back up with 3rd party tap water, the bottle will still register empty. Attempts to reset liquor usage on said bottle will be a DMCA violation
Now c'mon minibar, gimme another beer, and shut that damn screen, I wanna go out now !
... please relax and enjoy your night.
I can't let you do that, Dave
So how is this the room of the future? This all sounds like stuff that's around already. The only part that's somewhat unusual is the biometric safe -- but when there are already biometric PDAs on the market, it's just not as impressive.
The Hotel Room of the Rich, maybe, but not Future. Sounds like Lasky was desperate to add some hype to a story.
A Hotel Room of the Future should be something that attempts to guess and then mimic how future innovations would tie in with the setting. (mimic being the keyword, because the object here is to show what hasn't been produced yet)
For instance, a room where the fabric-upholstered walls were made of ultra-thin flexible LCD sheets, and displayed a database of exotic settings. (faked for display with a simple projector) And a AI assistant that could order food from various restaurants, book theater tickets, or call a cab. (faked for display with a pre-recorded sequence) And a three-dimensional television set. (faked for display with iMax technology, requiring the use of glasses for demonstration)
Then I would be convinced that I was in a room of the future, or at least a mockup room of the future.
.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
god damnit /.ed again!!!!
Most of the /. readers read about the 42" plasma and the broadband access but they forgot how the hi-tech shower nearly burned the authors balls.
"the crotch-level nozzle blasting 102-degree water came as a shock."
I had a hunch,
Ali said, "Pay for lunch"
So I did it
Pulled out the wallet and I saw this wicked beautiful lady
She was a waitress there
Put the wallet down and stared and stared
To put me back into reality, here's Shaheed:
"Yo, Tip, man, you got what you need?"
I checked for keys and started to step
What do you know, my wallet I forget
Technics receiver with surround-sound Bose speakers???
If this is the future then I'll happily stay in the present.
water coming out at the crotch leve, this guy is not having kids anymore.
Room of the future: We sterilize you in the shower!
It is funny how fast epcot went from "whiz-bang this is the future" to total comedy. Robobutler would be amused.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
The oil refinery there is tiny, it's a joke. The guys in Texas City would have a good laugh. And the proximity to LAX is a plus for business, not a minus. El Segundo also actually has a train stop, not that the train actually goes anywhere you'd want to go. Too bad the taxi drivers defeated the attempt to connect the train to LAX, it might actually be useful.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It figures that everything is still in wood grain... blek.... why not aluminum with glass or something
I suppose a wood hotel room is better than wood in a car though... (wtf are people thinking putting wood paneling in vehicles)
I don't know about other people, but I hate warm toilet seats. That's because around here it means that someone's just made use of it, and I don't like that thought (or smell.)
Interestingly, El Segundo recently made it to Relocate America's Top 100 places to live.
I have no idea why.
bp
These "things" of the future (homes, rooms, toilets) are always the same thing: They are not the Whatever of the Future, but simply the Whatever of the Very Rich.
I firmly believe that our futures hold simplicity, non-intrusiveness, and ease of use where technology is concerned. If television still exists in 100 years, it will be a nearly invisible unit, projecting onto a wall or an image floating in midair. Technology will dissolve into the very fabric of our lives as such that we will appear to be living in the 17th Century, when in fact we have lots of technology at our disposal.
I also do not believe that the capitalist system will disappear anytime soon. There will always be the rich, the middle class, and the poor. Most people cannot access high technology until it drops to commodity prices.
If you want to see what the future holds for technology, study the markets for the types of components that make up that technology. That which becomes cheap becomes widespread and ubiquitous.
# Erik
...my room at home;oPPP.
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Maybe they have something similar in the hotel room. It's way quieter than our normal fridge.
My wife bought one of these coolers for camping. No compressor, but it does have a small fan to drive out the warm air.
Frankly I was strangely miffed that I wasn't the first one to bring a Peltier cooler into the house.
If you're into Star Trek, you can get extra kicks from reversing the polarity and turning it from a cooler to a heater. Instead of cooling the contents to 40 degrees below ambient, it warms to 80 degrees above.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
I think it's funny that "The Room of the Future" has a *corded* phone in it.
I didn't see an orgasmatron in the list... When do we get that?
My hotel of the future would have:
No safe, you won't need one everyone provided for and there arn't any thiefs.
No HDTV, T.V. a popular form of brainwashing and keeping the plebs occupied between the mid 1900's and late 2000's. In the future people prefer social interaction.
a heated toilet seat/bidet, just wait for someone else to use it, you do know someone else don't you?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
That damn "Apache" subject got stuck on there again. Mozilla's form cache is so fun.
In traditional Slashdot manner, I posted before even reading the article or looking at the picture. After looking at the picture, I have to say - well done. All that technology seems to dissolve well into the background of the room, giving the appearance of not very much tech at all. The Way Things Should Be Done.
Even still, such a room is likely to cost a fortune. I travelled to Albequerque by motorcycle with a band - 5 people in a Van and no money between any of us - and we haggled down the cheapest damn hotel rooms we could find. People like us will always exist, and probably make up the majority.
What About Business Travelers you say? Sure.. when's the last time you were on a business trip and the company insisted you get the most expensive room possible? Uh huh.
# Erik
Biometric room safe -- so that the prostitute you bring in doesn't steal your stuff while you're sleeping
Unless the reason you are sleeping is because she wacked you in the back of the head with the desklamp so she could press your thumb against the scanner. Maybe they need to add a voiceprint analyser too.
Technoli
Heh heh.
He said BROAD BAND!
Heh heh heh...
free broadband, accessible via laptop or the TV
I think he means: "Included in the price of the room", not "free".
eMelody Web Directory add your site today!
I've never found a pair that was both effective and comfortable. Do you have any recommendations?
really. So they bought a lot of expensive, geek shit (don't get me wrong, if i had the bank, i'd buy it too) and put it in a hotel room.
yeah, real futuristic.
friday's a slow news day huh?
I'm getting a little annoyed at refering to references that refer to referenes that refer to a source article.
The content on Roland Piquepaille blog is always worthless. This is at least the third story he submitted (and was approved) that links you to his site, where they quotes from the article, and then says a very obvious sentance about that quote.
This all started back in Nov of 2002 see: for his articles
I don't get it. If you find something intresting, and you want to submit it to slash dot, then do so. Why make a blog, so you can submit, so you can refer to your blog.
I'm not getting into conspiracies about money or ads or anything. Near as I can tell none of that is involved here.
I just get annoyed going to his blogs to find he just quots the article, and has no real insight or other information.
-Malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Wow, that is a crappy list. Trust me, there is no place in Florida on that list that deserves its place except Sarasota. West Palm Beach in the top 100? Somebody obviously hasn't been to West Palm in twenty years.
In The Hereafter Hilton, (short story) Omni Sep '80
(Poor bastardized Babelfish English->Russian->English follows, which oddly, is still readable)
First, nothing begins if not opening
I think it made it because the real-estate agent linked to paid for it. Just a guess. That site doesn't look like a real evaulation of places to live, it's just advertising.
I can guarantee that my dream room of the future sure as hell isn't in El Segundo :)
--D
If the room is to be shared (correctly), I'd want certain things: there should be a large, comfortable bed, extra pillows, sheets and blankets that don't constantly fall off the bed (!!! arrgh !!!), and a microfridge stocked with actually decent food. There should be a bathroom for each player, well stocked with necessaries like mouthwash, extra toothpaste, deodorant, linens, large comfy terry robe, etc. Television etc, eh, maybe, but should be smaller than the gigantic DO NOT DISTURB sign. No alarm clock.
If the room is *not* shared in the sense implied above, that is, if it's just a place to work, sleep and eat while on the road or after having been kicked out, the things it needs are different:
- wireless broadband
- pizza slot
- microfridge again, well loaded
- big honkin' alarm clock
- temperfoam pallet or maybe a straw tick.
- TV via projector; projector should have a VGA input, too, to hook up laptop.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Exactly what biometric data would a guest be leaving: fingerprints, retina scans, blood samples?
Why you would want to leave any of this behind on any odd server in any odd place in the world is beyond me.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Yes, but does it have broom robots that chase you around the room, and does the DVD player hurl DVDs at you? It wouldn't be the Hotel Room of the Future without that! And does the muzak always play Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse?"
(note for the non-cartoon damaged, this is all a reference to two classic Warner Bros. shorts, one a remake of the other)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Plasma, Check
Broadband, Check
DVD Player, Check
LCD, Check
This is not a room of the future, just a really expensive room of today. This is just marketing drivel.
The interior design of that room looks like any other nasty three star chain hotel.
Try the Mondrian in LA or even a W Hotel for a room that looks like it might actually be from the future.
My Philips WebTV has a black case.
My matching HP WebTV printer is also black.
Even my matching beerladen Laz-Z-Boy WebTV E-Cliner is black.
what's so wrong about sitting pretty?
but it seems to be the missing detail...
...
How much was the 1 night stay?
i know of a few places in wisconsin that are ~$200-$500 per 8 hrs of day-light (a room with its own full sized swimming pool) (i forget what the 1 nights stay was)
so is this $500/night, 1k? 2k? 10k? a small-contry?
hahahahaha taco n cowboy kneel in a hotel
Why is this room "of the future"? The amenities are all items from this day and age and in working order aren't they? Usually when I hear product "of the future" I think of a concept product that is shown emulating it, but not really function.
Is it because in the future it will be commonplace?
Among the niceties of this high-tech hotel room are:
- a wall-mounted, 42-inch flat-screen HDTV Panasonic plasma television connected to a Technics receiver with surround-sound Bose speakers;
- a biometric room safe that uses a thumbprint as the lock and key;
- free broadband, accessible via laptop or the TV;
- a Panja touch-panel remote control that manages lighting levels and room climate; opens and closes the drapes; controls the TV, radio, and DVD player; and even repositions the head and foot of the king-size bed;
- a Panasonic massage chair,
- a heated toilet seat/bidet,
- a computerized five-nozzle shower,
- and a defogging bathroom mirror.
Or are they implying that the commonplace habits of being on the road will be
- Still watch alot of TV, but demand better quality of delivery
- Be Paranoid
- Be a geek
- Be a lazy geek
- Be a lazy geek with tension problems
- Be a lazy geek with tension problems and a cold ass
- Be a REAL geek
- Now you're spending way too much time in the bathroom. it's my turn.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
If you look at the picture you will see that there is a phone with a cord!
Come on, it's not even a long cord!
You haven't been to Destin in a few years.
funny munging
I think Las Vegas might have a leg up here with the Venetian. Daily Planet has had this story up for a while. Everything from satellite linked checking at the Airport, to self calculating bar tab, to well, a wireless network where you can call the valet from anywhere.
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
This is pretty dumb. These are just the latest toys. And many of them are not new at all.
t m is the "amazing" silent refrigerator.
-a second, smaller flat-screen LCD monitor next to the Jacuzzi bathtub;
--Not new -- just getting cheaper
-motion-detection lights that activate when guests enter the room;
--I had this when I was 12. (1990 or so) Bought something at radioshack to do it.
-a biometric room safe that uses a thumbprint as the lock and key;
--Not new -- just getting cheaper
free broadband, accessible via laptop or the TV;
--Not free (paid a premium for hotel room)
a Panja touch-panel remote control that manages lighting levels and room climate; opens and closes the drapes; controls the TV, radio, and DVD player;
--Can set this up using devices from http://www.smarthome.com
and even repositions the head and foot of the king-size bed;
-http://www.craftmatic.com/ Craftmatic has been around forever.
a compressor-less mini-refrigerator that is completely silent;
-- and here http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/BB52.h
a Panasonic massage chair, a heated toilet seat/bidet, a computerized five-nozzle shower, and a defogging bathroom mirror.
ahh nevermind
i guess it is kinda cool.
But it seems a bit much to get THIS excited over.
blah, blah, blah. im tired of typing
I Encrypt My IM's
Please. The place lists Dearborn, MI as well, which is conveniently bordered by steel plants and oil refineries. Parts of Dearborn are also very very crime-ridden. Don't get me wrong, some parts of Dearborn are very nice, but I wouldn't exactly list it as one of the top 100 places to live.
My journal has hot
sounds like any typical hotel in Seoul, Korea
Those really are some great toys, but there seems to be some missing information... does the mistress come WITH the room, or do you still have to bring your own with you?
In case you're either really naieve, or just braindead, it's obvious that this list is full of poo. It's sponsored by realtors, so obviously the people who sponsor it must have some pull in which towns are selected. I'm from NJ, so I'll give you a list of the towns in NJ that they list.
Keyport, NJ
Long Valley, NJ
Princeton, NJ
Ringwood, NJ
Sparta, NJ
What do all these towns have in common? Except for Princeton, they were all mostly either forest land or farm land 15 years ago. Buy a house in one of these towns, and you'll be buying a small, crappily built with a big fat garage instead of a front door. (Any house you can afford to buy in Princeton will be a stone's throw from US1 and has the traffic to boot. No, you probably won't be walking distance from the Uni or Palmer square) Forget walking anywhere, none of these locations have public transportation or sidewalks in the residential areas.
disgusting and inapropriate, but funny too.
to room of the rich...
nothing is "the future" in there. every bit of it is off the shelf available to the obscenely rich.
Show me self opening doors, lights that work when i say "illuminate" and the ability for me to issue a search command verbally to an avatar to search for information to display on that TV... then it's the room of the future.
hell give me the hotel room abiliteis that are in Johhny Mnenomic.. let me dial from, check messages, net,etc from the tv and it's remote.
Just dont try and pass off a bunch of high-priced things as "the future"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Did the room have ANYTHING that is not something you can go out and buy for yourself right now? How is that "the future" there in that room!?
One of the most popular features is very simple - two hooks on the inside of the bathroom door.
Hilton is doing this because they made an expensive mistake. They tried a smart card system in New York, using the same card to unlock rooms, pay for meals, and make phone calls. People hated it. So now they use their rather boring location in El Segundo (next to LAX) to debug.
Hotels have a terrible problem with guest-visible technology - all their users are new. They don't want to hand a manual to each guest, or get calls for tech support. So it has to be subtle. This is good; too many products come with far too many controls for things the system should be managing itself. It's a nice design exercise to design technology for hotels.
I left my Wallet in El Segundo
- I'm not exactly sure why a cheap slut is better than a hooker though, it's not very logical, but it is true...
- You do have to admit that charging a $15 hamburger to your expense account is rather satisfying.
Of course, such a room certainly wouldn't belong to Marion Barry.Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
But what if you leave your wallet there?
I forget what 8 was for.
Hotel rooms like this should have a built-in speaker system that automatically makes a cash register's "ka-ching" sound every time you use any of these expensive services.
I stayed at the Embassy Suites in El Segundo and their windows have blast shields you can pull down. Oh, yeah, and the place is crawling with cops, too, looking to prevent snipers from plinking at planes with SAMs, I guess.
It's really an experimental room to find out which of the new gadgets are worth rolling out into the other rooms as they become affordable. In this case future means commodified, not that someone dropped of a nano-replicator in their time machine to try out.
Michael
Being a member of the Hilton Rewards program AND a geek that gets PAID to be a geek looks like a novel situation for alot of soapboxer ./'s .
These features are just what I look for when I typically fly into a city for a network install. I'm not a 18 year chasing skirts/drinking/drugging so my needs are pretty simple: Food, a broadband connection so I can VPN back into work to refer to the latest design docs, check email, configure the far end of router interfaces, and coordinate meeting times with the rest of my crew thats arriving from 4 other timezones on three different airlines in a 12 hour window. Time is money for my company and class has nothing to do with it.
We the members of the Technocracy thumb our noses in your general direction. We produce, we consume, you benefit.
If I we're modding you I'd give you a troll -5 and flamebait -30.
..Will you still find jism *everywhere*?
Ewwww!!
...that in the future, we'll still have bidets.
"...a heated toilet seat/bidet..."
With all of our jobs being outsourced to sweatshops overseas,
the "Room of the Future" is that cardboard box that the massage
chair came in, and digging for scraps in the dumpster, out behind the Hilton.
The only difference between that room and a room in an Ibis hotel in Sydney is the HDTV and wireless. Get rid of the corny wood finish and do something more futuristic with chrome, halogen lighting, and a teleporter ala Logan's Run that brings beautiful stoned women to your room for free sex. Now THAT would be a hotel room from the future. This just looks like a hotel room from 1995. Borrrrring.
I'll stick with my 57" model.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
...where's my flying car? I want my flying car, you insensitive clod!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Room of the future? It's just some electronics and gadgets from the Sharper Image thrown into an ordinary hotel room.
All this calls for is more calls to the service desk: "How do I use the remote to turn the lights down, they are blinding me again!?"
This is a hotel room in which you can relax:
Ryoukan
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
its all about planet Arco further south on the 405. visions of hell with giant flames.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
For what that costs a night,
I'd rather stay at the Dolphin Bay Hotel in Hilo, Hawaii for a week.
The scent of orchids carried on the mild trade winds beats anything on plasma or sitting hunched over a desk with a laptop, regardless of bandwidth.
Build a beowulf cluster of these [ducks]
.. and you'd have a house! ;)
hmm.... /. episode 4A5B94CB : the Hilton webserver gets slashdotted!
Tonight in
jr.
its all about taking the 90 home instead of sitting on the 405 in traffic.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Masseuse = female
Masseur = male
Freedom: "I won't!"
He doesn't mention if the compressorless refrig was stocked with free beer. My guess it that it was stocked with RFID tagged items that were automatically charged (at premium prices) to your room when they are removed from the cooler.
I was thinking... for most of us, the hotel room of the future will resemble those Japanese coffin-hotels mentioned in William Gibson books. A 10 foot yellow polymer cylinder with a bed and a small TV in it. Residual body odour. Shared bathroom. Dangerous or at least unattractive neighbourhood.
Freedom: "I won't!"
In the article it said that Hilton were thinking of installing a voice activated shower...
For all of you thinking this might be a neat idea go and grab dilbert_102_the_competition.avi and change your mind. Especially if you own a dog as devious as Dogbert.
Beep beep.
ramen and hot pockets for breakfast? I'm sick of eating crappy scrambled eggs and pancakes from room service.
get rid of the 2 toothed, hairy redneck at the front counter? When they do, THEN it will be the hotel of the future. Or at least buy her a tux ;)
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
At least it wasn't room 101 of the hotel. Please don't kill my karma... *cowers in corner*
SecondPageMedia - Wha
That last one is the kicker -- if rich-folks rooms start getting made with hifi stereos and Bose speaker arrays, I do *not* want to hear it in the next room -- especially if they're watching one of the "adult" channels and I'd rather not know about it. If all the money that went into these hi-tech toys went instead into better sound-proofing, that would be just fine with me...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I'll bet the towels are equipped with GPS units, so they can tell when you're stealing them.
*Splort*
The video camera discreetly mounted in the smoke detector captures liaisons. Additional revenue is derived from guests who are shown these videos, or, alternatively, from certain websites which stream them on demand for a fee.
I went there last year on vacation. And while I'll admit that the water's great and the hotel accommodations were nice, I still think it's just a well built tourist trap. Having vacationed there three times in a row, first in 1998 then in 2000 and most recently in 2002, I can tell you that Destin has been rapidly built up to support an influx of tourists. And thus most of it's prosperity is dependant on the whims of tourists. You might move there today expecting things to remain the same only to be suprised when the tourists discover the latest and greatest tourist trap and leave Destin high and dry.
"The moment "pride" is lost, "freedom" is also lost." - Ramza.
You're right, a lot of it is built on tourism, but a lot more is built on a combination of Hurlburt Field and rich people wanting to get away from the tourists. I'm related to someone in county politics there, and he often describes some pretty big arguments at meetings, between the businesspeople wanting to bring in more and more tourists, and the established or escapists wanting to keep things small and quiet.
I've been there several times a year over the past ten years or so, and it has grown wildly. My mother, born in Ft Walton Beach, tells now-unbelievable stories of what it was like in her childhood - nothing. Of course things won't stay the same, but I don't think it will completely fall through.
funny munging
We differ on the motivations but I think we are in some agreement on the relative worthlessness of this blog. In truth, the number of accepted stories is about 1100% higher than what you thought. For those who care to read it here's a recap of a prior comment and open letter that sums it up for me:
I'm curious why (with one exception) you never seem to point out that ''this column'' is YOUR BLOG?
If you want to be a karma-whore then that's your business. And that's the only conclusion we can reach considering the sheer number of submissions (33 as of this one, not counting however many were rejected) in the 2 months since you set up your account, and the frequency with which you discourage people from reading the original articles (always pointing them to your blog).
I find some of the articles you post interesting so by all means continue to contribute. But please don't pretend that you aren't pointing people to your blog.
Presumably you're trying to turn yourself into another Internet pundit or get the traffic on your site up high enough so that you can charge big bucks for advertising. That's cool too if you want to do that.
But please ... just stop pretending that you're directing people somewhere other than your own blog.
Sincerely,
HardcoreGamer
No hooker? C'mon, get serious...Has to be a hooker...
Or at least a blow-up doll...
No porn on the big screen TV?
C'mon...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Can you check under the bed... I left my wallet in El Segundo
(and I am ALL about the crotch-level shower head -- I'll make sure I get the water to temp before I step into the shower)
...but who wants to stay the night in El Segundo??? Blech!
....Bethanie....
I have seen this expensive beasties and the picture SUCKS! Sure, a big flat HDTV screen looks cool but the truth is the picture on a good flat direct view tube looks a lot better.
And you buy three or four for the same price!
Where is the high tech device to keep you from losing your wallet? "I Lost My Wallet in El Segundo" [www.atcq.com]
---
Mike
I'm going to kick the next person that I see with their karma rating in their sig.
...a Jacuzzi in the room, and a bidet in the bathroom. NOTHING. If this room of the "future" don't have those, guess who ain't stayin' there. :b
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
In short, I don't want the warming toilet, crazy showers, or hdtv. I just want what a person would want at home: Things to live on and live with.
-= Why can't I add 'Anonymous Coward' to my list of Foes? =-
Are there any that do 780p justice? They have to have, what 1280x780 rez...