Slashdot Mirror
The Type-A, High-Tech Bathroom
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Hard-driving homeowners have converted their loos into virtual satellite workspaces, with retractable desks or waterproof touch-screen monitors, the Wall Street Journal reports. Among the features: showerproof computers and mirrors with stock quotes. But beware the accidental 'BlackBerry dunk' in the toilet or sink. 'Audio One says about all of the 30 home-automation systems it's installed near its Miami head office in the past year--prices can reach $200,000--have featured TVs in the bathroom. "It's become a given," says company engineer David Sussman. "There's not much sanctity left." '"
to the phrase core dump.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Given that I seem to get my best ideas while brushing my teeth, having a computer to distract me would eliminate my last chance for an original thought.
People are starting to use web cams for video calls. Now they may be calling from the bathroom. How long until it becomes legal to use cameras in public restrooms?
If you can't even cut the umbilical to the television long enough to take a dump, you need to seriously re-examine your priorities. Next they will be putting computers and refrigerators in there and nobody will ever have to leave the throne room.
I was interested in those mirrors with built in lcd tvs until I found out they cost between $2,500 and $6,000 for a smallish mirror and 8-10" screen. If anyone knows where this stuff comes cheap, please let me know.
Come on ladies, how hard is it to raise the seat after you're finished using it?
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
The type which have the electronically controlled bidets? My wife is Japanese and naturally we visited (and stayed with) the in-laws in her home town...one time I hit that damn bidet button while having a crap and I swear water sprayed out my nose. They have it cranked up real high. It's really just an enema. But it works! None of that 30 minutes on the can stuff in Japan, or that feeling in your guts as you drive to work 15 minutes later that you didn't spend enough time cleaning out...those water spray jets make sure you don't need to crap again for at least the rest of that day. So you get used to it, especially once you figure out which buttons control the pressure level!
(Oh, and the female 'front shower' is the reason Japanese chicks spend so much time in the bathroom, and why they always look so satisfied afterwards...)
...to watch a television program in the bathroom while doing your business, I might recommend a bit more fibre in your diet.
In a world without walls, there is no need for Windows.
I can take a shower without having to stop playing EVE.
Someone save me from this sanity.
...or at least more than usual.
Not to be pessimistic about the technology on display, but does anybody really crave this? At my workplace I'm lucky if you manage to squeeze in (or out?) the time to use the facilities in peace, let alone being able to carry on working while present.
I think it would be about time to sit down and seriously assess your throughput (haw) if you'd reached the point where you could honestly say you need that kind of information present while attending the throne. I see the bathroom as the last calm and sensible place in my home, possibly to the point of insulating the walls so the mere presence of wifi can't exist in such a sacred space.
After a 60 hour week with a myriad of after hours calls, notifications exploding into inboxes and pagers like hand grenades, and the proverbial generally hitting the fan (or the terminal in this case), I'd soon choose to walk a few blocks to a public loo than step into a wired bathroom. You never know what you might be walking into.
My bathroom has everything a person could ever need for complete fullfillment in the bathroom experience. I sink, whirlpool, toilet, toilet paper, handsoap, towel, a few misc hygene supplies, a door which left open will allow you to see the tv in the bedroom, and one latest copy of THE READERS DIGEST. What more could you need (by the way my type in word below is condom, how ironic)
TVs in the bathroom. Why? Do you hate your spouse and kids that much?
Seriously, if you find yourself watching that much television you need to reassess your priorities. Not that I care, the fewer people out there DOING/CREATING stuff the better. They can all sit like pigs watching TV, their brains gently decomposing in their heads (that isn't earwax coming out of their ears!) whilst I do stuff* and feel accomplished and happy.
*Well, I would, but there's a good comedy show on tonight that I can't miss, and might as well watch the news afterwards, and then there's a film with killer robots in it.
There's pressure controlls on those things? wow, I just thought they were temperature settings for the seat warmer...
There have been days I was sick but had to work, and I just brought a tray table into the bathroom, my wireless notebook and a cordless phone. Nobody's going to know where I am unless the wrong sound makes it through the phone.
The stuff in the shower's a step beyond this though.
(On the Internet nobody knows you're taking a crap.)
We don't have much water here in Israel. If someone imports enough of those "front showers", in one month, we'll all die of thirst.
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
Man who daytrade sitting on toilet may earn stinky surprise sitting on couch.
Was "head office" intentional?
Only question now is..what are those three sea shell for?
I knew that I didn't like the first guy they interviewed for this piece. In TFA, he claims to have a blackberry, two cell phones, three office computers, wireless internet for his car, a speakerphone in his shower, a waterproof laptop, and is able to answer the front door from the bathroom. Then I googled his company... "Exigen Group is a provider of business process optimization services, technology and outsourcing that generates financial returns for our clients. " Now it makes sense. He's one of those asshats that uses technology to send our jobs overseas.
I checked out that site...The table on the page didn't format well at all with firefox. The wall street journal site can't format to accomodate IE AND FF? I wouldn't want to be surfing the net on the crapper and run into a site that I couldn't read with Firefox. By the time I surf back to the same site with crappy IE (pardon the pun), I would be finished and ready to go back to a laptop/desktop where I was supposed to be.
How do these people get to be company presidents?
Do they think 'where's a good place for my bag
All I can hope for is that these people will work themselves to death early on in life, and have no children.
So when will fax machines be able to print on toilet paper? Such capability gives new meaning to receiving a fax.
At the job I left back in Sep/Oct, for the number of people on the floor (5th), we had too small bathrooms. The last thing we have needed are gadgets to keep people longer than necessary. Our building was also shared with mostly dental offices. Our company had the whole 4th and 5th floor. The 3rd floor as partially ours and had their own facilities in addition to standard bathroom. In the building, all the standard bathrooms were in the center of each floor by the stairs and elevator.
If I needed to take a dump, I usually went to the 3rd floor since the only people who used the facilities were dental patients which were rare. Therefore, you can count on a peaceful dump there versus the 4th or 5th floor bathrooms which were very busy.
Towards the time when I was getting ready to change jobs, my manager and I were on pretty bad terms with each other. One of his golden boys reported me that I was going to the third floor to use the bathroom (take a dump) and I got called into his office got a new @$$hole chewed into me. He told me that I was not to use any bathroom except the 5th floor bathroom. He told me that he didn't care if I had to wait 30 minutes to use the can. He then said that the company didn't have to provide bathrooms but they provide them out of the goodness of their "heart". What an ass !
In an era where some kids have to walk miles through some of the poorest and toughest neighborhoods in the world, just to do email at a library..... we're talking about $200K conspicuous consumption 'tech' bathrooms.
Somehow, out-of-control capitalists just can't stop from writing about their new awesome dead-end look-at-me wicked hot toys. What a waste of digital space.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I have to wipe with the other one but very accute observation young 733t slashdot/yahoo troll.
I cringe whenever I see ads for technology to take your workplace anywhere. With _______ you can be at your desk wherever you go!
That just means you're always at work. I'm sure executives want to be able to reach employees at all times, but there's some value in being unreachable when you're not on the clock. Yes, for certain applications it's important for certain mission critical people to be always there, but I don't think most business is like that.
Read The Electronic Sweatshop by Barbara Garson. It's a very quick read and eye-opening.When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
The bathroom is missing this. I saw it in person at MacWorld in January. I believe we have now officially crossed the line on acceptable iPod accessories/gear.
Showers show stock quotes.
Mirrors with tickers instead of stickers.
Jacuzzi with hotline to Yakuza.
Stock of news-toilet-paper.
You will know that MSFT dropped by 0.02 points but you won't know where your towel is.
Ah, the modern world where even sanitation devices can drive you to insanity.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Perhaps, but maybe if enough of them were imported to the region everyone would be a bit more relaxed.
My favorite news outlet was reporting on this like 7 years ago.
Truly, the cyberdump was heralded long ago.
From that article:
Scoscia noted that "Number 2.0," as Silicon Valley insiders have dubbed it, will be cross-platform compatible and fully 2K Flushes compliant. In addition, he said, it will feature significantly wider, more comfortable bandwidth to accommodate even the most massive user download.
This is about embarrassment.
I agree that it's anyone's right to spend money in whatever way that makes them feel like royalty.
And it's also my right to point out that spending $200K on a bathroom is plainly ludicrous and without merit. It reminds me of other noveau riche, grandiose stupidities.
No, I'm not in academia. I just have sensitivities towards irrational excess.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Not really. The guys will not get laid. Then, you will have some REAL problems.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why bring devices with you to somewhere that may have microscopic particles of urine and feces? Some which may be airborne. I'd prefer to keep my hands empty.
Teet?
Nothing new here. My Dad was a policeman in Kansas City Missouri in the 1970s. During morning drivetime, he'd do traffic reports for WDAF - from our bathroom. He'd listen to a police scanner for cops reporting accidents or stuck in traffic. Hundreds of policemen everywhere all over the metropolitan area were a lot more effective than one lone traffic reporter in a helicopter or airplane. He'd jot down what he'd heard and extemporize a report via phone every 15 minutes. And at the same time he'd be doing his morning routine of bathing, shaving, etc. He'd do the afternoon drivetime as well, from anyplace where he could plug in his scanner and get a phone (this was pre-cell-phone). He did this for years, and was considered the most effective and reliable traffic reporter in the market.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I always thought it was pretty unsanitary to have a toilet in the bathroom.
Can somebody explain me why we need TOUCHSCREEN monitors in a BATHROOM? :-S
I'd rather have voice recognition, thanks.
So sure. Technology-gilded bathroom will somehow be commercialized, and the masses will soon be able to enjoy this.
This sort of rationalization is what makes people do really dumb things, all in the name of a lie they told themselves.
Imagine if trust funds could find real use.... instead of techno-tasties for bored rich kids. Sigh.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Along comes the 21st century, and with it, immense knowledge to build really cool gadgets. But rather than step back and ask, "Do we really need this?", we take it on faith that the marketeers wouldn't lie to us: we just can't live without these newly developed toys.
In another 300 years, I'll probably be able to surf the internet with an optical implant in my eye, talk to my stock broker on the holograph-phone, while nanorobots wipe my bum after the dump I just took.
But will I be any happier? No, probably not.
Could also be that some people want to surf for porn while they're in the shower. But I'll sleep better at night NOT knowing if that's the case.
Stock quotes in the mirror? Come on.
/. or the online edition of my local paper instead of a book while I do my business.
I admit I take my iBook in with me sometimes, but that's just so I can read
Now you can watch p0rn and clean-up in real time.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Why not stop trying to put everything from outside the bathroom in it, and just take the functions of the bathroom with you everywhere you go? Soon, people will be wearing adult diapers all the time, and the ultra-rich will have catheters and colostomy bags.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
You stupid overachievers eat some fucking fiber, get some damn excercise, get out of the office for a little bit, and you won't be so fucking constipated that you need a computer to accompany you in the bathroom.
What's really needed is a cellphone that automatically directs incoming work related calls through a 1-900 number outside of normal work hours.
I grew up with magazine rack in the bathroom, and it has been my experience that most home bathrooms still have some reading material, even if its just a stack of Reader's Digests on the counter.
We still have the magazine rack but since my wife got a Palm T5 with a wifi card it's been largely ignored in favor of the internet.
they made a provision that Americans couldn't accept titles of royalty without an action of Congress. This anti-dynastic move was designed to help buck the mindset that some are better than others, a very populist move.
In a similar way, and without the titles, we use trust funds to create dynasties, ersatz royalty. These incorporate bodies of funds only occasionally serve the purpose of protecting those that need protection-- youth, the handicapped or misfortuned. Today, they're bags of money to hand to the kids. Some use it wisely, others not. I have no quibble with what they do with it, or that they're endowed.
My truck with a $200,000.00 bathroom is that it's far over the top. Trusts are another issue for another time. This issue, one of excess, hubris, all rationalized for the sake of the extreme, benefits no one except the twit that will now try to make a $250,000.00 bathroom. In the interim, many needed things will remain unfunded. Like a cure for AIDS, or an alternate fuel from petrochemical-based ones, or a way to better mental health, or a method re-enthuse people about governance, or a better programming language than Python... Who knows what might happen? But a goddamn quarter-mil bathroom? Your defence of it is lunacy.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I never did understand why some people seem to spend so much time in the loo, it must be a blocked up meat eater thing....I guess they can use the time to surf the net and learn about colon cancer. ;-)
Who spends enough time shitting to warrant this? If it takes that long for people to take dumps, don't they have serious hemroid problems? Isn't it a waste if 30% of your life is spent shitting?
Twinstiq, game news
So where is the line then. A few years ago, we expanded our home to add another bedroom and replace/expand the master bath. The cost of the project was about $50,000. A bit over half of that was for the bathroom. Is this exhuberant; it is if you live in an apartment and can't afford anything else, but not if you live in a bigger house that already had a large master bath.
It might exhuberant, but it's plausibly exhorbitant. So, that's $25K for each bathroom. Very McMansion-ish, but not irrational.
Likewise, undoubtedly the first indoor bathrooms were considered rediculous wastes of money. The first outhouses were probably seen that way as well. But at least in civilized countries, not too many people crap in the woods or in outhouses any more.
Thank heavens for that.
The real issue here is jealousy, and if it isn't, lead by example. Calculate the average worldwide annual income (I believe around $5k in 1999) and every cent you make over that, give to someone who earns less than that average. Socialism starts with you.
Balderdash. You still cannot, with a straight face, rationalize a $200,000.00 restroom. If you do, you've lapsed into a vortex where the unreal live. You can rationalize any idiocy, and somehow justify it. A decent capitalist or economist would cringe. I know I do.
The fact that some peoples parents left them some money, and they want to use it on a bathroom, doesn't really bother me. I want to build a giant luxury home some day, it's a good goal to keep me motivated in my business.
We agree that it's ok to have been left money. But it's anti-capitalist to believe that such dynastic approaches to wealth conservations are good, as in good for either the recipient or the economy.
The great thing about America, is that there is no dynasty or caste system. My grandfather started out living in the ghetto of Baltimore city. Through years of hard work, he moved out of the city into a nice area he could afford in the suburbs. He built the house himself so that he could afford it.
Good heavens man. Working hard, then reaping the rewards are fine. But there is a dynasty in the US, numerous ones. The death of the Death Tax is just one more brick in the wall of dynasties. The Bush dynasty is an other good example. (and I fondly hope that Hilary stays away from the White House, too). Let's take Balitimore as an example. An incredible difference between the downtown areas, the the McMansions of the burbs. Gated communities, rife with a shrinking middle class. The uber-rich carefully conserve it all, and the poor have little capacity to rise up. Some do, and good for them. Others languish in the abyss called downtown Baltimore. A good example of the increasing amount of dynasties that permeate the landscape.
He motivated his sons to do better for themselves, and they went to college, got a good education, and good white collar jobs. They did the same with there sons. My cousin graduated from high school, college, and then law school first in his class thanks to his fathers motivations. He is now a very successful lawyer. I started a business with the help of my father, and am becoming successful as well. Every generation in our family has worked a little harder, been a little smarter, and tried a little harder to get where we are today.
Excellent. I love success stories.
My point is, if I make enough money to be able to afford a $200k bathroom someday, I am going to have a $200k bathroom, because I earned it. I fully expect that someday I'll be able to groom my son into being a self sufficient and successful person as well, hopefully even moreso than myself. All of those things you mentioned will ultimated be cured by capitalism. If AIDS becomes enough of a threat, it will become a big enough cash (or glory) cow to be worth curing. Alternate fuel sources are also starting to be addressed by the free market.
Here we depart. You do indeed have the right to spend your money in any insane way you desire, and a $200K b
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
That's why there's a pressure control; one side says 'weak' (yowai), the other side says 'strong' (tsuyoi). In Japanese, of course.
I had the pleasure of trying the cybernetic toilet seat (of the FUTURE!) out in my rental apartment this winter, and I *want* one of those things! It not only heats the water up, but you end up clean as a whistle down there, which is a godsend if you decided to go out for Mexican food the night before. Unfortunately, said toilet seats are horribly expensive; I looked at a department store, and they ranged from $500 to over $1000 (equivalent USD) if you wanted the deluxe model, with washer, heater, *and* starfish-dryer.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Those who spend to much time reading/playing/straining on the toilet should beware giving themselves a hernia. Painful, and expensive to correct.
..the nasty viruses you can get using the computer on the crapper?
This sigline left intentionally blank.
We're close, I believe.
Your knowledge of AIDs is pretty dusty.... it's gone beyond needle users and gay anal sex into the mainstream of Africa. But people are people, and the infection vectors around the world will disfavor the promiscuous/practitioners of sex where vectors commonly exist. In this country, four of my friends died in the early stages of the pandemic. Nothing could help them. Today, they'd be alive, but with difficult prognosis.... and they were all insured and had money. That money and their insurance was gone, spent, by their deaths.
Uneeded surgery? We're a beauty culture, favoring the young, hung, or well-breasted. No wrinkles. New and/or straightened teeth. Nip, tuck. Make up. Razors to shave things. Dye. Clothing. Jewelry. We're not that far out of the Stone Age. Media permeates the sense that we must all be young to be vital. But these things are rhetorical, and won't be easily changed.
It was the article, seemingly extolling the virtues of the described madness that set me reeling. Written as though this was a marvel somehow. Sure, the failed concept of trickle-down economics is at play. Stolen, as it were, from purposes less grandiose, less Taj Mahal. Less conspicuous consumption.
There are superlatives, and there are sick superlatives. This one ranks among the ill, this monument to rooms to poop and shower in.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
He doesn't know what the sea shells are for!
Captain's log.
*ta dum tssss*
*crickets*
Oh, screw you all!
I would have modded you insightful. I bet there's a good correlation between the promiscuity of the women at a given society and its militaristic tendencies.
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
A television in the bathroom?
Sitting on the commode watching an entire show of "24" including commercials.
This is what happens when there is nothing else to do with the millions earned in a year.
What's next?
webcasts and podcast from the community urinal.
brought to you by: eliminator, oder eliminator.
... is whether the toilet paper should unwind over or under the roll.
Local public house here thought it was a good idea to have tv screen embedded into the urinals so you could watch football while you went.
;-)
Most took the chance to GO on their most hated teams......
Some got after game angst and......... FZZT
Maybe the Open Source Pub (ostm) could have a looping Bill Gates video presentation
Paul.
Some households aren't keen on their dogs drinking out of the toilet. Others have small children, and have to worry about drowning.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack