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.""
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'
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."
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!
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 can't believe people fall for that sort of crap. Do you think the business is just going to give you stuff at a loss just because they're nice folk? No! It's as transparent a marketing gimmick as charging $19.99. It's twenty freakin' dollars!
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
What he said was, and I quote, since it's still in my subject and yours, is "Free broadband? Not for long!"
In his opinion (and it wasn't really a troll), broadband prices will shoot through the roof in the not-too-distant future. Other people have pointed out that they do not yet, which is OK but has nothing to do with his post.
A much more interesting comparison would be long distance charges from hotel phones over time. When the phone was relatively new, did hotels have cheap phone access? Did it then later skyrocket in price to what we have today?
His opinion could well be correct - as hotels figure out how to bill it and people are more likely to demand such access, the price will quite likely go up.
You did mention one hotel chain having a service called "Wired for Buisness" that includes "unlimited" long distance calling. (Does that mean "free"? Or does that mean that you can call for as long as you want (but have to pay for it)? I'm assuming it's free.) That still does not necessarily defeat the original poster's point - was that service well advertised? Do they charge $15 to connect the phone if you make a call without purchasing the service?
I expect that eventually, broadband in hotel rooms will cost money. I'm expecting it will be cheap - something like $0.10/MB or something along those lines. I also expect flat-rate services will likely be offered as well. Broadband is still a "new" technology, and hotels are likely to be unsure of how to bill it for a while longer. Once it becomes more main-stream, expect to be asked to pay for it.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The biometric safe might not work if you've got a particularly hard-up prostitute on your hands.
According to one of my hand surgeon colleagues, muggers in NYC have on occasion used trauma shears (we use them in the ER to cut clothes, watches, belts, chains, etc off of people. They cut almost anything) to cut off your finger at the base in order to get any rings you might be wearing.
Instead of being horrified at the story, the hand surgeon was actually commenting about the nice clean cuts trauma shears produce... makes repairing the amputation much easier, apparently.
Prostitutes will often work in tandem with male associates to "roll" their client. As you may or may not know, as humans approach orgasm, they lose peripheral vision, their hearing becomes less sensitive... easy to get snuck up on.
One knock on the head and a pair of trauma shears later... so much for the biometric safe.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
You mean someone actually buys something at Sharper Image?!?!?!? I thought you were just supposed to go in, marvel at the expensive crap, and walk back out!
In probably 20+ visits to Sharper Image stores around the country, I have yet to see anyone actually buy something while I was there.
The same goes for Brookstone and all of the other Sharper Image clones.
Five Dolla Moddy-Moddy?
that is correct. this is the room for the rich - today. but ever think maybe...just maybe...this is the room of the future for the *average* person?
... room of the future.
as this technology continues to drop in price, maybe some day there will be a plasma tv in every motel 6. thus making this the
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!"