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Technology

Wired Homes of the Rich 246

Posted by CmdrTaco from the allright-thats-pretty-interesting dept.
Ant writes: "This article talks about It talks about the famous hightech people's home's." Includes multimillion dollar home automation systems for folks like Larry Ellison, among others. I thought I was high-tech for having a couple of x10'd lights, and the ability to watch and control my TV from my kitchen or living room.
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Wired Homes of the Rich More

Wired Homes of the Rich

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  • Well, I would have to say yes if you used the house only once a year and had to rebuild it each time. Fortunately, homes last quite a bit longer than holidays.

    (end comment) */ }

  • I was amused by the description of the home with 4 ethernet jacks in every room so the owner could plug in wherever he was. Haven't these people heard of wireless networking?
    --
  • I'm one of those people who says that from time to time. I don't consider it ignorant. However, I do tend to look at the problem from a slightly different angle:

    I do not owe anyone a goddamned thing.

    You want to give your money to charities and humanitarian efforts? Fine. You do that. Best of luck to you. But don't try to tell me, or anyone else, what they should be doing with their money. The social issues are irrelevant. The economic issues are irrelevant. It's my money and I'll do with it what I damn well please. If some people in third-world countries die as a result, so what? It's not really my problem. Chances are the socio-economic structure in that country is not capable of handling that many people, and the population reduction might do more good than anything else. If Homeless Joe kicks the bucket, it doesn't affect me in the slightest.

    Life's not fair, and sometimes people die. That's why we make more.

  • Wrong. If sold, the subwoofer will probably be used to finance an upgrade of Larry's boat.

    You might use the money to feed the poor, but Larry might choose to do something else. If you're whining about how Larry spends his money, it makes no sense to whine *after* he has earned it. Where were you when Oracle's sales were doubling every year?

    See my point?
  • Truth is something that stands apart from the person who speaks it.

    I may be stupid, maybe not. The truth of my statements is determine not by my intelligence, but by their logical truth value.

    Fine if you don't believe me. It's not my purpose to educate the world in logical fallacies.
  • answers (reasons for) to I know a couple of tidbits about Bill's home:

    1.when bill "paints the ceiling" he likes to see where it hits. (room equipped with black lights for easy location in low light)
    2.wood room for screaming at top of lungs that house just crashed. (wood has one the best sound resilliancies)
  • Everytime I hear someone ever-so-modestly say, "Hey, nobody ever helped me, everything I got I earned ... if someone's in the shit, it's probably their own fault", I think, "There's goes someone goes someone without a fuckin' clue ... and proud of it."

    Oh bullshit. I grew up poor. My dad walked out when I was two, and my mom raised us on her minimum wage job and food stamps. I lived in an extremely poor part of town, and had friends just as poor as I was. But I didn't want to deal with that, so I slaved away at my schoolwork and hacked on my TRS-80 while all of my friends were "hanging out" and wasting their time.

    Today, I make more money in one year than my mom did in fifteen. And my old friends? They're just as poor as ever, and rather envious of the fact that I can buy practically anything I desire while they scrounge for the money to eat with. But I DO NOT feel sorry for them. I pulled myself out of that situation, and I tried to help them do the same, but they were not willing to invest the time and effort to improve themselves. They'd rather sit around bitching about the "inequity of wealth" than do anything to improve their situations.

    Nobody ever did help me. I paid for my own education, I kept myself motivated, and I raised myself out of poverty. Everyone I know who is still in that situation is there because they refused to do the same thing. The system is giving them exactly what they put into it...nothing.
  • The installer of Larry Ellison's system said something that I think is important: "Make the technology invisible and magical." Perhaps designing systems that are "invisible and magical" is a key to minimizing cost and complexity.

  • Re:Community responsibility? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Like, perhaps, the pockets of the guys that made all the crap he bought?
  • (So I'm not generally one to get all riled up about environmental issues, but DANG. I hope Mr. Ellison stays up nights realizing that Mother Earth wants to rape his ass...)

    The one thing that struck me about these systems is the alarming lack of wireless technology. Maybe it sounds more impressive to put 30 miles of cabling through your walls, but it seems that a more elegant (cheaper, more flexible, less intrusive, generally much more effective) solution must exist. But then, these guys are CEO's, not scientists or engineers...
  • Alaska is for people who are freezing for a reason, or who like freezing.

    I'm toasty warm right now in my woodstove heated cabin without running water in interior alaska. And i'll bet my machine density is greater than yours, 5 nodes on 100mbit ethernet, DSL to the outside world, in a cute little log package. errr...mush?

  • It's nice to know that Larry Ellison has a pool sized subwoofer while a bunch of poor people will either freeze or starve to death this winter.

    But not the employees of the speaker manufacturing company. And nobody in the U.S. is going to either freeze or starve this winter unless they're actively working at it. The only people who have died of freezing in recent years have been substance-abusers who were unconscious, or people (generally elderly) who were too proud or stubborn to go to a shelter and died in their unheated homes.

  • I read somewhere that the only thing that motivates human beings is selfishness. You might say, "Giving money to charity isn't selfish." Wrong. You give money to charity to feel good about youself or so others think well of you. The only argument I've heard that stands up against this is throwing yourself on a grenade, but even that is arguable, you could do it to make people think well of you, just posthumously. That being said, I think the fact of the matter is, we're all selfish, some just try to hide it more than others. After all, we're just animals, and how many animals do you see that will give up food to save another animal? Very few.

    "// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

  • I have no respect for Larry or anyone else who can't realize what's good for the earth.

    The solution to whatever environmental problems come up is not to return to the caves, the solution is produce more power more efficiently and cleanly. Techological progress IS NOT intrinsicially bad for the earth.

    In other words, the solution to technology's downsides is more technology.

    I wish people would just deal with the fact that we are not going to stop using energy. We are not going to stop being mobile. And these needs will be ever-increasing. "Conservation" is ALWAYS going to be a losing strategy, and it deserves to lose.

    Once people deal with this fact of life, then we can get on to identifying whatever problems exist, and simply construct solutions for them. That's how it's always been, and how it will always be.

    --

  • Aliases, sure. Mailbox space, no. :)

    -Chris
    ...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
  • A good place to look for automating your home along with other gadgets is Smarthome. [smarthome.com]

  • Why don't we only build efficient houses made out of unpainted concrete.

    Mud would be more ecologically sound.

  • Just idle curiousity... what do you plan on doing with all these accounts? Are you mad at slashdot for something? Don't like people? Job sucks and can't find meaningful employment? Can't find employment? Student with nothing worthwile to do? Like I said just idle curiosity. I see a lot of people trolling this website like they were advocating wife beating or something.
  • STATUS SYMBOLS OF THE POOR & GEEKY

    The home of any geek in the middle class neighborhood of Latrobe, PA, should have at least 4 computers, one of which must be a 386 or lesser model.

    The basement apartment of Art XIV, rented for two-hundred dollars a month from his great-aunt, prominently features a Mac Plus computer that silently greets vistors from one corner of the living room.

    "I just don't have the heart to throw it out, even though the power supply burned out nine years ago." says Art, a Pittsburgh-area web-developer/whore.

    Visitors are also greeted by a human-sized plastic blow-up replica of Godzilla. Not the big Iguana in NY one, but the dance-and-shimmy-while destroying-Tokyo Godzilla.

    "That piece is a real conversation-starter. I got it a few years back at a Cracker Barrel."

    Many visitors are also startled to find nearly every piece of furniture covered with boxes. Boxes and boxes filled with books and magazines.

    "This, " explains Art, "is my personal filing system. This box contains all of my old 'Dragon' magazines... every issue since #56. This box is full of books on Apple II computers. This box is full of U.S. Army field manuals and survival guides. You never know when this box will come in handy...

    The apartment, though full of interesting items, is poorly-lit and smells moldy. An unhealthy-looking cat coughs dryly from a spot between boxes.

    "That's not a problem. All of my friends like to come over here for gaming on Friday nights. They call my place the 'Bat-Cave'

    And what do the ladies think of Art's castle?

    "I wouldn't know."

  • You would be wise to also make your posts of a Spartan nature. Few people could glean an intelligent idea out of that morass of run-on sentences.

  • Bill G. (he of the Borg image at the top of the page and the perennial scourge of /.) has endowed his foundation with over $20 billion dollars. His foundation gives away over $1 billion a year. Do you think better of him now? I'm sure he couldn't give a damn, but...

  • We are living in a material world and I am a material Girl...

    Get real. That makes me sick, taco.

  • Should have, would have, could have. The point is that whether or not someone has money depends entirely on their effort on behalf of themselves. Do I think people should starve or freeze to death? No. Do I think it is anyone's obligation to help them? No. Does this make me a bad person? No, it just makes me a rational, self-sufficient one.
  • Just look at all that waste. 16 phone lines? Do you know how much electricity each additional phone line adds to a house's electricity load?

    Yes I do, Each phone line adds exactly 0 to the electricity load of a house

    You are a fucking retard
  • glad you mention BG's charitable contributions; I believe it was $7 billion in the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation? I'm still waiting to see what the net effect of that is. $7B should go a long way towards solving ANY social problem it is applied to.

    That is, unless it is just a complex tax shelter to provide for King Bill the XIIIth's retirement in the year 2300. Or maybe funding a secret project to download Gates's brain onto a Zip disk and freeze his body when he kicks it, so he can be revived to celebrate when the first bug-free Microsoft software is released.

    To splurge on oneself is one thing. To behave like 21st century royalty is another. We rejected a king in 1776, and ever since then the "owners" have constantly tried to set themselves back in the throne, by buying up political power and buying or building their 'castles.'

    IIRC William Randolph Hearst was vacationing around Europe when he saw a monastery that he particularly liked the looks of. He bought it from the monks, and built them a new one worth 10x the paper value of the old one. He then had the old monastery torn down, crated up, and stored. It remained in a warehouse until Hearst's estate was auctioned off. Also I believe there was some story about how Hearst once circled a picture of an art piece in a catalogue or newspaper, and wrote a memo to his assistant; "Do I own this? If not, buy it." In a word, pointless.

    In a capitalist system, money becomes what blue blood is in a monarchy; license to behave like a god on earth. Being in the right place at the right time is the Divine Mandate.

    It stands to reason that the wheel of fortune turns for everyone; the phrase "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations" comes to mind. The names Astor, Morgan, or Gould don't necessarily mean much any more, but at one time these people were powerful enough to play hardball with the entire government.

    However, just wait until life extension technology comes to market. Bill doesn't have to worry about his great great grandchildren frittering away their inheritance, if he's still alive to shake his finger at them. And at that time, Ol' Bill can order President George W.W.W. Bush IV to change his soiled diaper, since he already bought and sold the government several times over.

    Just my two cents, cunt.

    Love,
    Slashfucker

  • Bill Gates home (Score:5)

    by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @11:15AM (#575443)
    Sources close to SV.COM were reporting that Bill Gates home wasn't left out of the article due to a vendetta, or refusal of the billionaire to play nice, but rather because the reporter couldn't make heads or tails of 273 40" monitors all displaying a medium blue background covered with cryptic messages in white text. Since Gates couldn't give a definite time frame for the the so-called "BSOD" to be fixed, the Gates home was not covered.

    --
  • I think you have it backwards. I support nationalization of industry. But I am not a socialist. I am a monarchist.

  • Mister House (Score:3)

    by davemabe ( 105354 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @11:17AM (#575453) Homepage
    Wired homes aren't for only the rich. Check out Mister House [misterhouse.net], an open source project for home automation written entirely in perl and runs on linux and win32. Very cool stuff. Voice activate and everything...

    Dave [runningwatch.com]
  • At least they're pumping their money back into the economy through their excessive spending...

    -Nez

  • > Perhaps even make the lives of others better

    I imagine the lives of the folks that sold all these toys are better...
  • That sounds very nice, but for a simple coder such as myself, an air conditioned room with a caffeine fridge within reach and my sweet midtower box hooked to a T1 pipe is all i'd ever need =). It'd probably take longer to make me bankrupt too.
  • I was thinking that if I ever had enough cash to waste on such an endeavor, that it'd be really kinda insane (and yet stupid) to build a house entirely out of wires - big insulated bundles of wires and cables. Put in some various plug boxes every 6 inches, and bingo - you've got the ultimate wire-networked house. Then E! could come and do a True Hollywood story on how during a nervous breakdown, some loon with a fat wallet bought a crapload of technology because they thought it was cool - not that they really needed it or anything - just because it was cool and would impress people.

    Sudden inspiration - if you would build such a house using poorly insulated wires, you wouldn't need to buy a heater due to all the radiation keeping you warm.

  • Re:where's bill (Score:5)

    by mat catastrophe ( 105256 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @10:51AM (#575470) Homepage
    unfortunately, running Windows and all, Bill's house crashed while the article was being put together....

    the writers showed up at the Blue Front Door Of Death, only to discover that not even the Ctrl-Alt-Doorbell was working.

    so they left....

  • At least, nowhere else than in James Bond's movies have I seen such twisted/fucked up/unnecessarily expensive sweet homes.

    Maybe Larry Ellison is part of SPECTER, after all (he already has the right temper, apparently). Which number? I bet on #6.

  • For a man worth in excess of $40 billion, multiplying his electric bill times 100 isn't going to make running his thin clients any more of an economic decision.

    For him, an economic decision is whether to have custom crafted solid gold cases for those thin clients made by children in Ecuador, or machinists in San Jose.
  • Someone needs to write a book about how Bill's Masterpiece house was built.
  • Did anyone ever conclusively prove that power lines caused brain tumors? If not, I think we've found them a volunteer...
  • X-10 sends signals through A.C. wiring to tell devices to turn on and off. Most commonly implemented as small boxes that plug into an outlet, and you plug the lamp or appliance into them. Wall-mounted devices also available.

    Last night I was outside wiring up Christmas lights. I'd already tested the lights, but sometimes a bulb breaks during installation. So after I hung a string I'd reach in my jacket and turn on the lights to check them (I had connected a radio control). It's handy having the lights all turn on at once even through they're plugged into different outlets.

  • Oh please (Score:3)

    by zlite ( 199781 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @11:18AM (#575484)
    These guys are in the tech industry. They're hardwired to do this stuff and it's good R&D, too. This is not gold-plated bathtubs; it's solid bleeding edge tech, which will eventually trickle down into better products for all of us.

    If you've got a problem with wealth, go beat up on Donald Trump. These guys are just geeks who were in the right place at the right time. If you had a billion dollars in stock would you do any different?

    (And yes, most of them give generously to charity, too)

  • I don't need no stinkin home automation system (Score:4)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @11:18AM (#575486) Homepage Journal
    I went to the CES, last January in Las Vegas, and it's so amazing all the networking and gobbledegook Philips, Microsoft and others are trying to push as essential.

    Ok, I fess, I'm a curmudgeon, I like to make my own mess and wallow in my own filth at home and don't need a computer to tell me how deep the pile of junk is around my desk or how much of it is recyclable. The day I can't remember how much food I have in the fridge is the day I subcontract my nutrition management to Archer Daniels Midland Co.

    I've reached a point with technology that the more I have of it the more likely that one piece is going to be the weak link and go. I can hardly change a lightbulb without remembering to buy relacements and gradually moving the bag of new bulbs closer to the dim lamp.

    Saturday: buy bulbs, set inside front door.

    Monday: move bag containing bulbs from door to base of stairs.
    Tuesday: move bag upstairs to within 5 feet of lamp.
    ?: change burned out bulb - or - find I have wrong wattage and start over

    It's greatly amusing to see what home entertainment, security, networking, etc. will be assumed normal in a few years. Keep in mind, that CES is about marketing, convincing people they can't live without© said stuff. Get what ya need, dump what you don't. Keep it simple stupid.

    --

  • I agree. I also think that we should just let people die when they are sick instead of trying to cure them; after all, if all sick people die, we will have practically eliminated disease from the world. I'm not sick right now and I made my health the way it is because of my integrity and All-American hard work, so why should I care if some poor slob dies?

    </sarcasm>


    --

  • Re:Money could be used for better things (Score:3)

    by grappler ( 14976 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @01:02PM (#575495) Homepage
    Well, you never know when a technology could spawn something truely groundbreaking and useful.

    Say, for instance, that the subwoofer company, having never had any requests before for something that would put out that much bass, does some research in the area of amplifier and woofer technology. Perhaps something they learn about the huge magnetic field which would drive such a beast turns out to have an application in medicine? Sure, it sounds stupid, but often this kind of unexpected cross-field discovery is how breakthroughs happen.

    Granted, I abhor the materialistic culture we have today - especially its impact on the environment. But there is a positive side of it. With a culture that spends so much, it keeps the economy nice and healthy. What matters is that money is _moving_ around everywhere. Every time money changes hands, extra value is created for both parties (ok, not _every_ time). This net increase in wealth does trickle elsewhere a ceratin amount.

    If we didn't have that kind of culture, I think the poor end of the spectrum would be far greater in number, and most would be worse off than they are now.


    -------

  • What a cheapskate (Score:4)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @01:03PM (#575497) Homepage Journal

    From any of 26 zones in the house, Ellison can use color touch screens to activate his 350-disc CD jukebox

    Willing to put up with latency when CD changes because you can't afford a hard disk and an Ogg or MP3 encoder?

    According to Green, when Ellison had trouble reading the fine print on the touch screens, an assistant purchased more than 20 pairs of glasses and hung them by each screen.

    Can't afford larger monitors, or to hire programmer to change the code to use a larger font?

    Poor guy. Ellison needs our help. Send your check today.


    Oh, and what's with this? From the John Seely Brown page:

    This is the hub system, so every room has its own set of wires for networking, phone, fax and DSL lines,"

    DSL lines to the rooms? That doesn't make sense; he should use ethernet. I suspect the reporter got confused.


    ---

  • Re:Not as impressed as I should be... (Score:5)

    by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @12:16PM (#575499) Homepage
    I couldn't agree more. But you make a mistake, or even implicitly a series of mistakes, that a lot of people make.

    Larry Ellison is not the second richest guy in the world because he's a brilliant tech. He's a CEO. (He actually did a stint as a programmer of sorts, but not a particularly brilliant one.) CEO's aren't as a rule all that bright - they're charismatic in the way that effective bullies are charismatic.

    And the story that the article told of the tech-support visit to his house - where Ellison threw a temper tantrum that broke a remote - indicates what we already knew: that Ellison is, at heart, an infantile bully. (I know Oracle v.p.'s and senior management types socially, so I'm not talking entirely out of my tuchus). Most CEO's have an elements of this personality type - glibly positive when things are going well (and since they get paid millions even when the company is tanking, they always seem to be positive in a professional context), childish and pathetic when they are not.

    In many ways, I don't think the greatest tragedy of our times is that we've become too materialistic, or the inequity between the rich and the poor. I think it the characteristic tragedy of our era is that people like this are held up as heroes.

  • ...there's just nothing cooler than a trampoline room with 20 ft. ceilings. Actually, if you want to see his house, it's right on a lake near Seattle, and they have boat tours that go by. I should point out, EVERYONE on this lake is fabulously wealthy (pro basketball players, CEOs, you name it), and yet when you see Gates' house, it's still obvious.
  • Forget about nice architecture for a moment.

    Forget about tasteful furniture.

    Forget about the "listenting spot."

    (Side note: go _out_ to listen to music every now and again, ya freak!)

    Go read the business section of a newspaper or a news site. Tell me how many people got laid off last week, this week. How many people will get laid off next week?

    Now, take the $1 million you're putting into your house and hire 20 people back at $50K/year. Or whatever proportion you'd like.

    Or don't build something into your house that's going to consume all the power in California. Or how about that asshole who has a 300 gallon/minute shower. Nice concern for the environment there.

    What amazes me is human beings' capacity for selfishness and complete and utter disregard for others' needs.

    If you have that kind of money, put it somewhere where it can help others.
  • Why not charge everyone the same rate for his usage, i.e. what it costs to produce. That's like saying that apples are 50c, unless you buy them by the bushel, in which case they're 75c. Socialist.
  • Lessons in opportunity cost, number one:

    They would have worked on something which would have benefitted more people than one hyper-rich CEO. It's not about the waste of "money" as an abstraction, it's about the waste of labor on one person.

  • Sadly, a lot of it is just gadgets, which take the place of something tried and true and more efficient, such as my mother yelling up the stairs for us to get up for school. Who needs a network, streaming A/V and a monitor for that? If I were me (and I'm somewhat sure I was) I would have unplugged the thing to save me from the bother.

    Probably not a bad time to check out an old video: Ma and Pa Kettle, not sure if it's Go to Town or Back on the Farm. Corny tho, as they live in an automated hi-tech futuristic house. Probably a reason all this 1950's stuff is still not so hot. With housing prices what they are, I'll run my own ethernet cables under the floor if I need em.

    --

  • The government is for keeping foreign attackers out of our country [I note that today is Pearl Harbor Day -- did you observe infamy today?].

    Non-profit organizations are for helping people who don't deserve to starve or freeze.

  • Obviously *you* are the one who still doesn't get it. I you get a topic that I am interested in, then I'll give you a serious argument. On this particular topic, YHBT.

  • Yeah it's neat and everything, but the protocol it runs on is like NetBEUI for Home Automation. I think slashdot should have a round up on home automation that covers some of the non-X-10 stuff.
  • The audiophile had horrible early reflection problems from his mondowonderfulspiffy speakers. The picture plainly showed 'em right up near the walls, and I didn't see any Sonex in there- in fact I didn't see any room treatment at all.

    On the other hand, I'd happily kill for his speaker stands :) 200ft columns of concrete? That should do nicely. Add another for the turntable :)

  • It sure must be nice to have a jillion bucks to throw around to hire other people to wire up your home, but IMHO it's much more satisfying to roll up your sleeves and do the tinkering yourself.

    My house mutes the stereo and announces who's calling when the phone rings, tells me who sent the e-mail that just arrived, tells me when my friends pop online if I'm not signed on, controls every commonly-used light I have, controls the A/V setup in my bedroom, and does lots of other things. And I set it all up myself, and had a blast doing it.

    "Why, when I was young, we had to automate our own homes! And by gum, we liked it!"
  • Now, you too can join in on all the fun and excitement of having an automated home. Check out Smarthome [smarthome.com]. Lots of excellent geeky stuff.

    Would you like to pet my Penguin? The Linux Pimp [thelinuxpimp.com]

  • I'm picturing it now- 3000 cubic foot concrete enclosure and two long excursion 8" woofers *g*

    Seriously, if my studio mains turn out to have more cone area than Larry Ellison's 3000 cubic foot subwoofer, I will _never_ stop laughing. Does anybody know what he's got in there? He'll have to beat 4 12"s and I'll bet anything I get a more even, accurate response even if he's 20db louder. Silly bugger. Not that I would object to having enclosures that big myself :) I just don't think he has the faintest idea what he's doing with them.

    I suppose he probably has about 8 EV 18" PA drivers in there. That should be fun but he should rent it out for raves, not just watch Jurassic Park on it :) maybe some club designers can learn from his silliness. Screw PA stacks, the subwoofer enclosure is the basement :)

  • This is what should've been posted in place of that article. Here is something that really shows home automation, and how it can be done by anybody, not just the "rich and famous".

    And damn! Talk about features! This is one heck of a software package! Voice control and feedback! Event handling, remote control, GPS - damn!

    Double damn!

    Makes me want to break down and buy a ton of X-10 and play, play, play - too bad I already have more projects going on than - what's that old saying? - "than Carter has pills!"

    There ya go!

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • Would you accept the following alteration of your statement?

    "I'm not saying people should starve, except for those people who don't do anything to benefit society themselves."

    I don't see how money has anything to do with it. Never mind artists or weird backyard inventors constantly playing Tom Swift, consider that Mother Teresa should've starved by your original statement. Wouldn't it be better to look beyond money and the indirect effect of money benefitting society- and consider how a person might be trying to benefit society directly?

    By the same token, if someone figured out (through, for instance, stock market manipulation- see Cisco, MS) how to gain huge amounts of money at _no_ benefit to society at all (the stock pyramid strategies themselves are no benefit, the products might be), shouldn't those people starve because they are actively choosing to be no use whatsoever to society?

  • Alaska is for people who are freezing for a reason, or who like freezing.
  • Much like parvenu: one that has recently or suddenly risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it

    I remember learning those terms in 7th grade French class, and thought it applied to the cheerleaders in my class who all had to have Gucci bags.

    It's all so clear now: A bazillion dollars on a home theater, and media selections from the bulk bins of Columbia House. Does it make sense to contain a $6 million stereo in walls made from fir 2x4s, plywood and sheetrock, picked up at the local Home Depot?

    Why can't one of these bazillionaires build a castle or an architecturally unique dwelling out marble and iron that will last for centuries? That would be so much cooler.

    It reminds me of the guns before butter cliche.

    I'm so jealous.

    How about combining the Jacuzzi and the subwoofer into one giant, human cocktail mixer? Instead of hot and cold water taps, vermouth and bombay gin taps. Genetically engineer some giant cocktail onions. That'd be cool.


    ---
  • Try not to contradict yourself in the same post. You first called the guy a libertarian, and then you complain about all the government spending to fund the building of useless nuclear subs.
  • In many ways, I don't think the greatest tragedy of our times is that we've become too materialistic, or the inequity between the rich and the poor. I think it the characteristic tragedy of our era is that people like this are held up as heroes.

    I'm sorry... remind me again of the last time Larry Ellison was held up as anything other than the 2nd richest man in the world. A hero? Since when has he been called that?
  • I have no respect for Larry or anyone else who can't realize what's good for the earth.

    Puhleeze... "what's good for the earth"? You don't care about the earth, you care about you. Does the earth need electricity? Are we in danger of the planet slowing down or something?

    No, you want Larry Ellison to use less power because you are worried that eventually this will effect YOU in some way.

    I want Larry Ellison to use as much electricity as possible. And Bill Gates, too. I hope they leave all one million lights on in their houses when they go to work in the morning. Why? Because stress on any system is GOOD. It promotes CHANGE. If you want more efficient electricity, then BREAK the current system.

    No, instead let's all huddle around a sterno for Christmas, huh?

    The earth will be here a loooooooooooong time after we're gone... don't be so self-righteous.

    -thomas
  • These sorts of serendipity do happen, and they are great things. They happen a lot more often in research being down in the military and space exploration sectors, since non-security-threatening discoveries are more freely passed on, because there isn't a push to lock up anything that might possibly be profitable and put it in a vault somewhere.

    However, the best way to get research results is simply to not to build toys for multi-gazillionaires. Bell Labs, UIUC's labs, the MIT Labs, and the Lawrence Labs have discovered unimagineably, infinitely more by spending money on pure research than by catering to some plutocrat's whim.

  • I thought I was high-tech for having a couple of x10'd lights, and the ability to watch and control my TV from my kitchen or living room.

    Speaking of which, I'm hoping the advent of Bluetooth will finally get the manufacturers of TVs, VCRs, and other infrared-controlled devices off the dime. Controlling these things from other rooms means having to put one of those bloody IR-forwarding devices anywhere you're likely to want to do the controlling. What a pain, even when they do work. If Bluetooth lives up to its billing, maybe this situation will finally change and we'll be using RF like God intended.

  • I think the excite people (second to last on the list) are pretty much in line with you and most slashdot people, probably. They are not the whiny asshole execs that ellison and billg are. They're smart tech guys from stanford that built a successful website and did a big part of the programming themselves. They just happen to like playing video games on a 7 foot screen with surround sound. who could argue?


    -------
  • A recent study (read it in a newspaper, I think L.A. Times but unsure) shows a small $80 per year tax on all tax payers would go a long way to solving the United States poverty siuation.

    If you took all the money that the US currently spends on social programs, and just GAVE it to poor people, there wouldn't be a single person left in America below the poverty line. So why is there still poverty?

    1. Government doesn't do anything efficiently.
    2. Poverty is more than just not having money; thus, throwing money at poverty won't necessarily solve the problem.

    That said, if I invent some whizbang widget, IPO and make G$, and I donate millions to charity (or billions, in Bill Gates's case), why shouldn't I splurge a little on myself? What's the point if I can't?

    For all you neo-communist whiners out there, every super-rich tech CEO is doing far more to help solve poverty than you are, just by paying their taxes. Most of them also donate more to charity in a year than you do in your life.

    Finally, these CEOs have created an entire industry (which probably employs hundreds of slashdot-reading techies like us)--the high-end high-tech installer/system designer industry. The next best thing to having one of these setups has got to be building one...
  • I was amused by the description of the home with 4 ethernet jacks in every room so the owner could plug in wherever he was. Haven't these people heard of wireless networking?

    Give me a 100 megabit wireless network, and I'll consider it. Until then, I'll stick with wires.

  • The main thing that comes to mind seeing this is: it's pretty pathetic. Do these people really have so little imagination to think that a nice, comfortable house is one with miles of cables, enormous numbers of video screens, and computers everywhere? And this kind of technology becomes obsolete so fast that they'll spend more time planning and updating their homes than enjoying them. I suppose it's a hobby like anything else.

    Here's a suggestion: spend the money differently. Instead of a gigantic stereo system, hire real musicians. If it seems to aristocratic having musicians play for you privately, invite your friends over. Instead of a big video screen with tacky furniture, get some decent interior design advice and tuck the video safely out of sight. And instead of whiz-bang gadgets that don't work most of the time, hire some human household help; they may get sick occasionally, but they usually have a fully-functional, self-installing replacement available quickly.

  • I was hoping someone would bring that up (Score:5)

    by HMV ( 44906 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @11:27AM (#575574)
    Unless these guys take their gazillions and bury it in what would have to be an awfully big backyard, any money they have is either 1) employing someone else in exchange for goods or services or 2) being invested and providing someone else's capital.

    Whether gazillionaires spend money on a box of Tic-Tacs(TM) or a swimming-pool-sized subwoofer, someone is benefiting from that purchase. In this case, those who supply swimming-pool-sized subwoofers will not freeze or starve to death this winter. Or maybe they will...if someone were to force Ellison to direct his wealth towards "better things".
  • ...starving college students like myself...

    Why are you spending all that money at your school instead of feeding yourself and other hungry people?

  • Call the STAFF???? (Score:5)

    by Mike1024 ( 184871 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @11:30AM (#575578)
    Hey,

    And for Silicon Valley's ultimate party animal, Green engineered a "one-button party mode" that instantly sets the right mood for entertaining -- no matter who shows up. When Ellison calls from his car announcing his impending arrival with a celebrity or business executive, the staff opens a drawer in the catering kitchen that hides a special touch pad.

    Man, that's old-tech. I can call my linux-based cd-quality answering machine from my GSM mobile, it Call-IDs me, then I can just use the touch-tone functions to identify my settings to the computer, which deploys my settings over 100Mbps Ethernet to each device's inbuilt Transmeta Crusoe processors, then calls the GSM telephone built into my car's onboard computer, which interrogates the car's GPS system and online traffic reports to project my time of arrival, and schedules my house systems to power-on just before I arrive.

    Also, I don't have one of these old-fashioned 'door-knobs'. I have a webcam on my drive, and another on my porch. It detects image changes, and uses OCR to identify car registration plates and face-recognition technology to identify people, and then searches my address book to identify whether to greet them with the door opening automatically, the lights coming on and a videophone connection to the room I'm in, or a Comprehensive Armed Response incorperating camoflaged minigun turrets and model helicopters armed with air-to-ground missiles and guided dropped ordinance.

    (This message has been psted in jest)

    Michael

    ...another comment from Michael Tandy.

    • Most of this stuff is just stupidly absurd. Mr "Head End" with his mondo server array just sounds like a complete idiot with a lot of people laughing their asses off while they bleed his easy come easy go cash out of his account.
    • That's one nasty looking suit Mr. Nicholas.
    • Mr. Audiophile again looks like an ass who is being raped by his "experts". Some of the best sounding speakers are 2-way, very simple speakers for personal enjoyment. You can always tell the clowns who can't tell the difference between a 96Kbps MP3 and a DVD-audio by the fact that they slobber over a 40-way "digital ready" speaker.
    • There are a LOT of posts in here that have absolutely no comprehension of economics. Let me just put it this way : The next time you see some rich guy "wasting" money -> SAVE THE RHETORIC ABOUT THEM FEEDING THE HOMELESS OR SAVING AFRICA. Economics don't work that way. It would be a long, convoluted conversation to go into it but please don't presume that there is a finite amount of "money" in the world and these guys are using it up buying their goodies. Every dollar they spend fuels a continuing economy which keeps thousands of people with jobs, each of those people supporting thousands of other people, etc. Bah.
    • Most of these homes are in the Valley or San Francisco or thereabouts, which to me explains the exclusion of Bill Gates and any other Washington state rich guy. Did I miss something though?
    • Technology will do a lot for homes. Something as simple as the FreeBSD box I have in my basement providing firewalled, shared connectivity through a 100Mbps switch through several rooms in my house makes my families life easier and more convenient, and that's what it's all about. Apart from the obvious home automation I'd like to put some effort into better "home conditioning" in the home environment to eliminate hot or cold spots during the work, asymmetrical heating, etc. Technology definitely has a place in modern homes and it will only grow. Not to the degree of some of these clowns, but it is inevitable.
  • I know a couple of tidbits about Bill's home:
    1. In one room, there is a black ceiling. He wanted to have black smoke detectors in that room so they woudln't stand out. But, non one makes black smoke detectors and simply paining white ones black would break their FCC approval. So, some special black smoke detectors were made and then approved by the FCC (not a cheap process) for Bill's room.
    2. In another room with fancy wood panels -- including the ceiling -- he didn't want obtrusive sprinkler heads (presumably required due to the nature of the room) uglying the looks. So, special drop-away wooden ceiling panels were used that would hide the sprinkler heads until a fire broke out.
    So, there's more to a fancy house than just high-tech gadgets for the sake of high-tech. There's also aesthetics involved.

  • The idea behind conservation is not to impede technological progress but to eliminate waste.

    Well, there are two things to say about that. First, I think a lot of the "conservationists" have very expansive ideas of what constitutes "waste". Look at the original poster: She thinks that having a roomful of computers in a house is wasteful. Others are attacking the whole idea of Christmas lights! The point is that the drumbeat of conservation never ends. Even if we did everything they wanted, they would start all over again. To them, ANY energy use beyond the bare minimum of survival is unacceptable.

    The second point is this: What's wrong with waste? Why is it intrinsically bad to leave all the lights of my house on whenever I want to. Notice that this question is different from the question of pollution or landfills. That is a clean versus dirty environment problem; the question of "waste" is a different question. And that's where a lot of environmentalists go wrong. Instead of focusing on the real problem, which is cleaning up messes, they choose to focus on limiting technology, progress and convenience.

    Environmentalists should focus on clean production of energy, not reducing the production of energy.


    --

  • Re:No (Score:2)

    by bmajik ( 96670 )
    The voltages on a phone line in different electrical-states are well documented. The peak voltage is over 100 though (at ring time). There is actually something called "black box" iirc which simulates the voltage condition of an idle line while keeping the connection physically usable for voice transmission - the phone company doesn't bill you for the true length of the call, just the base fee + the amount of time before you switch on the box.

    Fwiw, i was working on a handset and was holding the circuit board while the phone rang. It was _quite_ a shock. Furthermore, i was working on smallish box (20 lines) outdoors standing on very wet ground in my boots. Even so, i would occasionally have to take breaks because i'd feel the current starting to freak out my hands.
  • With the help of a new company called Voxeo [voxeo.com] and an X10 [x10.com] firecracker, I created something [216.190.84.74] that allows me to control my own house lights and appliances for free with my cell phone or a web browser.
  • It's nice to know that Larry Ellison has a pool sized subwoofer while a bunch of poor people will either freeze or starve to death this winter.
  • It was corrupt and ignored human rights (though there is nothing communist about that: by far most dictatorships are right-wing)...
    You are mistaking the idea of political system with the idea of what you believe is right and wrong. In theory both systems benifit all people, but in practices they must be dictatorships. The idea that there is hatred in the right wing is because of the holocaust. The holocaust a way for the nazis to maintain power. By creating a common enemy, the government can maintain control. This also happened in the USSR. There has never been a communist regime that has not involved a dictatorship. Everything positive about a communist system is in theory, but none of it translates into reallity. The Soviets had a consitution that argueably gave more rights to it's citizens, but that didn't stop the government from ignoring them. The Americans could have started their space program far earlier than they did, but there was no motivation to until the soviets started. It is also far cheaper to start a nuclear energy program when you didn't have to develop the technology from scrap. Considering the amount of effort the soviets put into agraculture, and the results that they got, I think it can be said that the soviet union was quite unproductive. I do not like everything that the Americans do, but this is simple social science, and you should have paid more attention in that class. In summery. Neither left of right implies dictatorship, it is how the country is governed, and most extreams, both left and right, will be dictorships.

  • Re:X'10td Lights? (Score:3)

    by Jon Shaft ( 208648 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @10:59AM (#575602) Homepage Journal
    Remote controlable lights... x10 is pretty neat

    here's a FAQ [nomad.ee] right here...

  • I think I would need one fully Spark III E10000, maxed out with 64 CPUs. Actually, I'd need two of 'em.

  • Re:No (Score:2)

    by zlite ( 199781 )
    Uh, maybe I missed this semester, but voltage has got nothing to do with it. See, power=amperage, not voltage. Don't use the phone and power consumption is zip. Use it and power consumption is still practically zip.

    Do this experiment. Put a telephone wire on your tongue and call the number. Perhaps a tiny buzzing sensation? Now put your tongue in an light bulb socket with the power on. Different, no?

    The original poster is, sad to say, an idiot.
  • Aaaah, Slashdot. Where suggesting that economic disparity might be something worth commenting on is a "Troll", but talking about how people who freeze "deserve to freeze" isn't.

    Everytime I hear someone ever-so-modestly say, "Hey, nobody ever helped me, everything I got I earned ... if someone's in the shit, it's probably their own fault", I think, "There's goes someone goes someone without a fuckin' clue ... and proud of it."

    Go ahead, lusers, moderate me down ... that'll prove something.

  • possible to do it yourself? (Score:3)

    by b1nd0x ( 206244 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @11:35AM (#575612)
    well this marks one of the first times, given all the whining on k5 about how they don't want to mirror slashdot, that i have seen a story migrate the other way (albeit i haven't been on k5 long)

    that's an aside though...here's what i thought last night about the prospects of a DIY "HeadEnd" (what a wonderful term).

    Well certainly hooking up a home network of PCs (in the personal computer sense, i.e. whatever OS, architechture is not a job that requires said millions and large groups of routers. However, setting up a home network to interface with your home still seems to me a formiadable job.

    First, the simple stuff, like lights. I don't know much about the ethernet protocol, but i'm assuming it would be easiest to hack something together that controlled the lights with a fluctuation in simple voltage, i.e. a relay. Still, you have a wire per light to run, presumably. Of course you could just use x10 light controls, and i remember my father used to program some of the lights in our house on an old IBM 286, but if you want every light in every room to be controlled, perhaps a hack like this would be better...i have no experience with x10.

    but that of course immediately leads to the question: "but what about dimmers." For that, perhaps another Ethernet/usual electrical circuits kludge would do, i.e. have the light brighten quicker the pulse to the switch. As a goal you of course want as much computer as possible to be done on the "server," not at the aparati, but still, e.g. hacking the networking to pulse an IR LED to interface your stereo through the remote receiver instead of having a proper node of the network with some computation done at the stereo.

    But the heating system! I'm guessing servos of some sort but this would definitely require a bit more EE than the stuff already discussed, not to mention all the different things that would need to be controlled in order to effect the desired change...a plug into the thermostat would be the simplest, and least needing of motors etc., but if you want full room by room control you either get an expensive heating system or build expensive (i'm guestimating) interfaces thereto.

    And of course controlling the system itself...i'm assuming a PDA with a self-written program communicating via IR. The program's the easy part, you still need IR receivers in every room running back to your computer.

    So even with a small house you're talking about a lot of wires, though perhaps, with ingenuity, you will barely need any true nodes to the network at the execution end (i.e. a jerryrigged ethernet card to run your toaster).

    arthhhhhhhhur

  • Why would I ever want "miles of wire" in my home? Isn't home where you go to relax, not deal with PCs crashing and phones ringing in every room?

    Sheesh.

  • Re:No (Score:2)

    by zlite ( 199781 )
    yeah, and I'm an idiot too, or at least a hasty poster. Yeah P=VI etc. I know, I know. Still, you get my point....
  • *sigh*

    Voltage is not the same as Power. Voltage is like electrical pressure. You can have a canister of highly-pressurized gas sitting beside you for a long time, but if you don't open the canister, it's not going to do much.

    When you get a "static shock", the voltage drop between you and the object you've brushed can be as high as several thousand volts. Yet you don't die because the current is so miniscule. Hence, since Power is the product of current and voltage, the effect on you is minor.

    Likewise, when a telephone line is not in use, it's power requirements are exactly 0. And even when it IS in use, the current drawn is minor (for several reasons - not the least of which is efficiency).

    --

  • Perhaps since electricity is billed based on usage, they should raise the rates on usage above a set amount (like the amount required to operate an average late model fridge, reasonable climate control device, one television, two clocks, and ten 60 watt bulbs for 15 hours a day) to a larger rate. This would enable Larry to keep his house turned on, but make the decision to operate frivolities like Christmas lights or thin clients in every room of the house a direct economic decision. Or for those of us who wear lots of sweaters, sit in the dark, and eat only corn chips and drink water... we'll be able to get the power for our wired homes at a cut rate.
  • If you go to "Smarthome.COM [smarthome.com], they have pretty much all the gadgets and interfaces: switches, dimmers, sensors, thermostat interfaces, voice control, etc. For interfacing it with a computer and for getting all the home networking, the new wireless 802.11 networks (like this [zdnet.com]) give you everything you need without expensive cables, and you can control X10 devices using the X10 serial port interface. x10.com [x10.com] also has wireless audio, video, and remote control transmitters/receivers. Even a really fancy system will only set you back a few thousand dollars.

    Is it worth it? I bought some X10 controllers because it was cheaper and more convenient than having an electrician do a lot of rewiring. The thermostat may help save you energy since you can leave your heating off and turn it on remotely with a telephone call or via the Internet before you get home. Beyond that, it seems like it's a gimmick.

  • Not as impressed as I should be... (Score:4)

    by Sentsix ( 128268 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @11:03AM (#575634) Homepage
    Great, an ultra-rich geek can pay someone to come in and techno-pimp their home for $750K-3 million...

    But wouldn't it be somewhat more cool to find out that these folks built out their network, wired the place for sound, and tuned the home theater on their own? Sure, people will say these are CEO's and they've got better things to do, but I'm a purist.

    After spending a month ducting AC and building a rackmount into a closet I have an appreciation for my pimped out geek house. All this article said to me was "Nyah nyah! I got more dough than you do!"

    Midwatch Industries
  • And if the induced fields around your house are repelling the rain and snow, you've really got too much cash for your electric bill.
  • Actually healthcare is a very bad example when you wanna do capitalist evangelism. Turns out that the doctors in the Soviet Union were pretty good, as they were in Cuba before its massive empoverishment. In Russia, things got really bad when the USSR collapsed and the healthcare system was, say "privatised" (understand: it disappeared).


    America, as the most market-oriented society, is pretty damn good at many things, but that their healthcare system is blatantly inefficient [who.int] (go to Table 1, and look at the "Overall health system performance" index) for such a wealthy and well-equipped country.

  • This is mainly just aimed at the capitalist remark. The thing is, it shouldn't force people to starve or freeze. Unfortunately, for people to succeed in capitalism, someone has to fail. It's just the way it works. The fact that Larry Ellison is rich has nothing to do with starving kids. He got rich from stock, and I'm willing to bet if you have some stock, you're not starving...atleast not if it's stock in Oracle.
  • Ok, how about building your wire house, and then install all wireless networking, just to spite yourself.

  • Re:No (Score:4)

    by dbarclay10 ( 70443 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @11:58AM (#575649)
    I was working in a small business a while ago, and they had a Meridian phone system(don't know the exact name - fancy phones, though).

    Anyways, being the boy wonder in the building, I was told to re-wire everything. Great fun :)

    Anyways, to check to see if a line was live, I'd stick my tongue to it. No biggie, nice fuzzy buzzing feeling. These were the fancy-phone lines, so I figured they'd carre more juice than a regular phone line.

    WRONG. I was up on some scaffolding playing around in the big box where all the wires came/went from/to, testing lines. Put two of them to my tongue and nearly flew off the scaffolding.

    Yeah, that was the fax line - just a regular phone line(singled out because the fax machine needed a regular line).

    Regular phone lines have enough juice to case muscle contractions. To someone with any number of medical conditions, that could be fatal.

    Needless to say, I stopped testing the lines with my tongue. :) (okay, well I lie, I kept testing them with my tongue, but I was more careful)

    Dave

    Barclay family motto:
    Aut agere aut mori.
    (Either action or death.)
  • I hope you don't honestly think your analogy isn't crap.

  • There's no lit Christmas tree at California's capitol, this year, because of demands being put on the electricity network, and people are being encouraged [yahoo.com] not to turn on their christmas lights until late and turn them off early in order to save electricity and reduce burnouts and brownouts.

    Just look at all that waste. 16 phone lines? Do you know how much electricity each additional phone line adds to a house's electricity load? Miles of cable? Wires are resistors, and the resistance increases as the linear distance grows. All those servers chugging away and additional air-conditioning waste to make the server room inhabitable? Come on, people. Have we truly reached the point where our hedonistic pleasures and preferences take priority over common sense?

    I have no respect for Larry or anyone else who can't realize what's good for the earth. If everyone else is making a sacrifice [yahoo.com], then so should they. Being rich gives them no right to an exemption.
  • If this sort of stuff interests you, you might have a look at a copy of "Audio Video Interiors", which profiles big-buck custom audio/visual installs. It does not cover a lot of the other tech stuff, but is an interesting read.

    Link at http://www.audiovideointeriors.com/
  • The second point is this: What's wrong with waste? Why is it intrinsically bad to leave all the lights of my house on whenever I want to. Notice that this question is different from the question of pollution or landfills. That is a clean versus dirty environment problem; the question of "waste" is a different question. And that's where a lot of environmentalists go wrong. Instead of focusing on the real problem, which is cleaning up messes, they choose to focus on limiting technology, progress and convenience.

    Given that we don't have clean power, if I consume power that I could just as well not (e.g. you cited leaving the lights on whenever/at all times), then I am unnecessarily contributing to a "dirty environment".

    While part of the end solution may be to find clean power, as you suggest, it doesn't obviate conservation needs in the meantime.

    No one's attacking Christmas tree lights per se (or if someone is, s/he can shove it). As I undestand it, there are folks in California that don't have sufficient power. The official who had the town/city/whatever tree lights put out was making a statement--not to take power from the grid for decorative lighting when there are other folks who don't have adequate power to see by. Or something like that--I may be misremembering the article I read.

  • Now, take the $1 million you're putting into your house and hire 20 people back at $50K/year. Or whatever proportion you'd like.

    Why? Those who are laid off are not returning value worth their salaries. The money put into the house, though, is. And that money isn't buried in a pit--it goes to pay for servants, for engineers, for architects, for cable-spinners, for miners, for truckers ad infinitum.

    Or don't build something into your house that's going to consume all the power in California. Or how about that asshole who has a 300 gallon/minute shower. Nice concern for the environment there.

    He's paying for the water, you know. After we're kids and we get out of our parents' homes, water is no longer free. The cost of water more than covers the expense of extracting, purifying and delivering it. Various taxes are also tacked on, I believe, with the intention of limiting use.

    What should not be ignored is the things you set aside: æsthetic desirability, tasteful design: beauty. Why is it that we, the most powerful, most resourceful, most materially blessed of all generations, cannot come up with some attractive buildings? Give me an Edwardian home, in wood, leather, more wood, stone, wood and wood over any nasty piece of modern so-called design. Give me an overstuffed wingback over some Bauhaus pain-in-the-rump. Give me beauty over horror anyday.

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