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Freshman MIT Students Automate Dorm Room
Inessa writes "Two freshman MIT students have automated their dorm room, complete with a big red party button which generates an instant party. Their custom-engineered system is called MIDAS, the Multi-Function In Dorm Automation System. According to the MIT News office, "Gone are the light switches and glaring fluorescent lights of a typical dorm room. Zack Anderson and RJ Ryan's room has several lighting schemes, remote web access, voice activation, a security system, electric blinds and more ... With the touch of one red button, their dorm room becomes a rave. The lights go out, the blinds close, the displays read, "feel the energy" as a voice repeats the same phrase over a deep bass beat.""
And I mean that in the good way, not in the bad at sports way.
This inculcation of curiosity and resourcefulness is what makes studying at MIT truly unique. No wonder it is one of the premier educational institutions in the world.
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they couldn't solve the "where do we get chicks from?" problem. or maybe, these oxygen gas bottles are of some use after all..
Why, when we were in college, we couldn't afford to have all of that expensive automation gear. We had to get up off of our asses and actually turn lights off on and on, and we liked it that way. In-room fridge? Hah! We were so poor, we had to keep a little piece of Velveeta frozen on the dorm room window sill, saving it up for our big Friday night celebrations. But tell that to kids today, and they won't believe you. No sir.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
in other words, how does it scale?"
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Why is it I get the feeling that there is a reason these guys have that much time on their hands?
Nice work and all that, but most decent parties at college include three staple ingredients
1) Alcohol
2) Women
3) Alcohol
Though alcohol appears twice this is on purpose, once to get you drunk enough to ask, then a woman to ask, the second to get her drunk enough to agree. Now an automated party system that achieved that... the guys would be millionaires by next Wednesday.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I bet their dorm room still smells like dirty laundry.
the party button pushes you!
Build it and they will come... Or was that baseball?
Deleted
While they're at it, they'd better install that Korean female robot wearing something slinky - because they'll never get any real women in there... and at least she won't collapse in hysterics when told to "feel the energy"...
All programmers are lazy. Why do people program? To make things easier... because we're lazy!
Hey, 1989 called, they want their party terms back...
What, MIT is co-ed now? Mortifying.
the "off" button.
Be sarcastic if you must, but their next upgrade is to integrate a chick magnet into the system. Activating 'party mode' by default spawns a Babe-Level Management Routine (BALMER), which controls the Magnet. Preset desired peak and sustained chick levels are set in the Application Data Layer, and MIDAS carefully manages the Chick Magnet to maintain the ambient babeness at the level desired for the activity. When the security cameras, IR sensors, or seismographs determine that levels are exceeded, the Magnet is taken off line or dropped to a lower power level (From "Ferrari" to "Porsche" all the way down to "Ford Fairlane").
It all looks very impressive on paper, but they're having trouble getting enough juice to those magnets, and as yet have been unable to give the BALMER anything but a dry run.
The lights go out, the blinds close, the displays read, "feel the energy" as a voice repeats the same phrase over a deep bass beat."
Appearantly, these "freshmen" haven't been out of their dorm room since the early 90's
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
"feel the energy" . . . I'll bet THAT never gets old!
Adherence to the truth is a form of disloyalty.
Now comes the hard part: make friends to utilize their party room.
Someone gets in through remote web access and continually makes it party mode.
sent from my slashdot browser.
I am pretty sure the same button inflates their "girlfriends" as well!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It's all a nice setup, but when happens when these kids have to move out of that dorm? (Due to a pile of dirty laundry growing legs and chewing on wires)
After running a few LAN parties, I know full well, set up is half the time of take down.
So assuming these boys have been at this whole Dorm Party System for a couple of months, dare I say a year? How are they going to take all this down?
I bet everything has been screwed or nailed in, modified and altered to accommodate all this equipment. Who allowed them to do this? Last time I checked you weren't allowed to mess around with dorm rooms.
So are they going to sell the whole system to the school as an example to future students how useful MIT is? Or will they sell it to another group of freshmen?
They are going to have to move out sooner or later. I feel bad for the system. Its either going to be torn down or abused as a teaching resource.
Nice system and all, but -10 practicality. Maybe it would have worked better in a house or apartment. They should have worked more in how it looked and how it was to be set up instead of just building it.
With some planning they could have made some money, but I won't mess up my dorm and forfeit my damage payment for the system.
-10 Practicality, -5 Damage Deposit, +5 L337ness...
You can watch a video here of it in action.
we had to keep a little piece of Velveeta frozen on the dorm room window sill
When I went to school, Velveeta hadn't been invented yet. We had to walk in all manner of weather conditions to the vetrinary science buildings, uphill both ways, and steal milk from the cows, which we then had to curdle in the bathroom sink. Only then could a Friday night celebration be had.
paintball
As a student, I don't have the money to go buying lots of expensive hardware (but I wish I did...) so how do these guys? Oh, and the text to phone alarm thing, wasn't that in Veronica Mars?
At a single voice command the door swings shut and locks, bars secure the window, the lights dim, room oxygen is reduced by 20% creating a lightheadedness, and the audio system repeats the phrase "Give in, you know you want me".
Quickies. Empty classrooms. The shower. Behind the bushes. Right on the main campus lawn if she has the right kind of skirt or dress... not that I'd know about THAT one. :-)
Usually you can pay extra to ditch the roommate, but this may involve a much longer walk to class. If the school is uncrowded and/or you claim to have some sort of mental issue (Asperger's, severe ADD, etc.) you might be able to get a regular double to yourself, with or without paying double.
Many places have dorms for married students, regularly visited by the stork.
I'm not sure how other folks do it, but in my year in a dorm, I introduced my roommate to my girlfriend's roommate, and they seemed to get along well enough that by the end of the year, girlfriend and roommate had basically traded rooms.
Reality has a liberal bias
friends. Although, judging from how they've tricked out their room, they're probably in short supply of those.
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Advice from a mother to her college age, Boston-bound daughter:
"Never go out with an MIT student; they are horrible dates. More than
any other college men, they are only after one thing:
Sleep."
-mkb
Those things aren't cheap, and most college students are about as destitute as one can be.
If you read the article, it mentions they got most of the gear off the "reuse" mailing list at MIT. Apparently, it's the equivalent of institutionalized dumpster diving, where they cut out the middleman and just hand equipment to people directly.
Sorry, but I would not dump all MIT grads in the same bucket. They're just like anyone else - there are the folks who can't work with others and need to do things their own way, even when their way is the hard way, and then there are the truly brilliant and personal folks. I've worked with MIT grads at software companies and some of them have been simply amazing - although not the best. The absolute best architects and programmers I have worked with were the folks who picked up programming out of necessity on the job back when standards were only beginning to emerge, and loved the work so much they went to technical schools to immerse themselves in good programming and design courses. I suppose it comes down to experience and practicality; if all you know is theory you're not going to be any good in solving real-world problems.
I would not discount all MIT grads based on one negative experience you've had.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I've spoken to a lot of managers at high-tech companies that won't hire fresh MIT grads because a)they don't know anything actually useful and b)they think they know everything, so when they're doing something wrong, they don't listen to coworkers, team leaders, and managers.
As a manager at a high tech company, my experience has been entirely different. While we don't get a lot of MIT graduates coming to the west coast, the ones who have worked for me have been fantastic in terms of being bright, energetic, as well as good with both working on technical problems and dealing with people. I'd believe that a school like MIT could produce some freaks, but I'd love to get more of the same of what I've experienced in the past.
well, if this wasn't mit it wouldn't be in the news, /. or otherwise.
I would however like to throw out to whomever listening that the interesting between-the-lines of all this is that this sort of DIY, as easy as this particular project was, behavior is not only tolerated but celebrated at MIT. where I went to college, a little place call Moravian, the students were barely literate. In fact they were stupid. Which wouldn't be so bad if they were all women and attractive, but they weren't. Building such a device would confuse the troglodytes that roamed about and perhaps induce rage.
sometimes i wonder how different my life would have been if i went to MIT, not considering whether or not i'm MIT material in the first place. The college I went to was so bad that I think I got dumber by attending. People I could learn from or network with later in life were few and far between, and the kind of experimentation that inspires technical thought leadership was shunned and in fact punished if brought into the classroom.
It's almost as if the social impact of computing is in fact as imporant as the craft itself.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
...I'll build my own party button. With blackjack. And hookers.
Forget the party button and the blackjack.
I'd imagine MIT grads are a lot like grads from other schools. They have a couple advantages: the reputation and difficulty of courses that they passed, and the environment. Being surrounded by people as talented and enthusiastic as you works wonders.
However, what's vastly more important than simply getting good grades for the top jobs and especially graduate work is demonstrating your ability. Come out of any halfway respectable school having published a paper in a decent journal (or at least written a good paper), done some sort of other neat research, written (and sold!) some great programs, etc, and you have a huge advantage over someone who's merely got the grades and the school rep.
Professors in college are mainly there to teach you how to properly teach yourself and give you the fundamentals in the field you've finally chosen. As long as you got a couple professors who know what it is to research and work in industry that aren't total bums, they should be able to impart all the necessary wisdom to you. Being instructed by Nobel Laureate Professor X. Winnar or Fields Medalist Q. Bert Hawtsauce is nice for letters of recommendation, I'll give them that, but in my experience hasn't shown much of a difference as far as undergrad learning.
To make up for the environment at my smaller and less tech-oriented school, I spent semesters and summers abroad at programs targeted to people in my situation. Going to those programs were invaluable, they were funded by the government, and they gave me a chance to really get immersed in my subject with students who felt as passionately about it as I did. It also gave me some amazing contacts in terms of notable names in my field, one of whom has offered to fund my grad studies.
So really, like most other things, it's your talent, the effort you put in, and lots of plain dumb luck. Had I chosen a more highly ranked school I would've come out of undergrad with amazing amounts of debt, and I don't know if I would've really improved on my grad outlook. This way, I have something like $10k in low-interest government loans and I'm getting fully funded with a very nice stipend at a good grad school.
Trust me- EVERY college has a drug and alcohol abuse problem. Even the goody-goody religious ones.
You only find this stuff at EC. After 4 years here at MIT, EC is definitely the most unique group of students. I have to give them credit for the creativity they have, from the disco floor, to their annual rollercoaster during rush, to their naked parties. If you think of MIT students you think of EC. Although, there are "normal" students and "normal" parties at MIT. Baker has the best dorm parties, EC the most unique, Senior Haus the most drug-filled, but they all contribute to the great diversity at MIT.
One of the most depressing but yet accurate statements I have every heard came from my SCUBA instructor. This guy was in the Canadian Forces and was the Canadian equivalent of the US Navy Seals.
:-(
After going cavern diving one day he told me:
"Women control half of the money, and all the sex in the world".
I want to slit my wrists
Libertas in infinitum
If you just look at women as sexual objects then I'm sure you'll end up with someone who will be manipulative. On the other hand, if you actually like women, and are careful in your selection process, you might actually find something more meaningful.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."