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On Thursday 31 October 2002 08:51, S�bastien Taylor wrote:
> Uh, ok, how about all your money disapearing with no trace that it ever
> existed? Yet I assume you still use banks, which are all computerized.
except it's a lot easier for them to detect the fraud and reverse the charges
than it is for them to put your house back together from ashes or replace
your food that spoiled in the freezer =)
more to the point, computerized banking offers a lot of real benefits: you
don't have to carry cash, you can get cash whenever you want, you can perform
transactions (e.g. paying bills) with the bank over your computer.
managing the temperature of your freezer in this way doesn't offer the same
benefit/risk ratio.
> And you /would/ want to lower the heat during someone's out of town winter
> holiday.
yes, but is it necessary to do it over a public network? or even prudent?
> And you might not have a choice anyways, some of these things might be
> installed by the power company.
and probably remain off a public network.
but on or off a network, the real hurdle to smart homes is the interface.
until cheap and ergonomic purpose-built interfaces for sophisticated computer
controls become affordable, we'll never see the devices themselves become
common in usage. the challenge is that they are competing with some seriously
effective interfaces: changing the heat means dialing a nob on the wall,
which also has a handy real-time meter showing the current status. that's
everything most people need and want.
- --
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"
- Albert Einstein
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