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Is the Toilet Free?

madebymany.com

91–100 of 126 posts

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#91
I hope the data that comes from the toilet is inaccessible to anyone until the end of the day.

Otherwise it would be easy to infer from real-time data how long a persons bathroom break is and maybe infer what they were doing in there, which, while obvious, I think people would be uncomfortable with others knowing.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#92
post #72
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're basically saying that you're only a "hacker" if you do stuff with hardware. That is completely upside down, if not borderline elitist. Building stuff and "hacking" has no requirement for hardware. It hasn't been that way for a long while. Now excuse me while I gladly take our Raspberry Pis, Arduinos and "software" thingimaggigs off your precious lawn.

Chill dude, call yourself a hacker if you wish, has no strict definition anyway. I believe "fun" and "easy" projects have no merits, them being hardware/software/whatever (unless you are in high-school) It's nice to make one once in a while, but if you only do fun and easy projects then you are wasting your life. You should try to push yourself to make things that are not easy. Get outside your comfort zone. Doing st…

Just because something isn't difficult, doesn't mean it isn't useful. And sometimes people just enjoying doing stuff. Do you enjoy watching a movie, or reading fiction, or just sitting and chatting with friends?

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#93
post #72
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're basically saying that you're only a "hacker" if you do stuff with hardware. That is completely upside down, if not borderline elitist. Building stuff and "hacking" has no requirement for hardware. It hasn't been that way for a long while. Now excuse me while I gladly take our Raspberry Pis, Arduinos and "software" thingimaggigs off your precious lawn.

Chill dude, call yourself a hacker if you wish, has no strict definition anyway. I believe "fun" and "easy" projects have no merits, them being hardware/software/whatever (unless you are in high-school) It's nice to make one once in a while, but if you only do fun and easy projects then you are wasting your life. You should try to push yourself to make things that are not easy. Get outside your comfort zone. Doing st…

Well, then we obviously differ in our definitions of "not wasting" our lives. I find time spent creating something/anything as worthwhile, whereas you find time spent being challenged as worthwhile. In the end we're both creating something; spawning usefulness from our own doing. It's still a learning experience, even if you're not overly technically challenged or frustrated.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#94

Just give each stall its own Instant Messenger id so I can check their status via my client

That would be a privacy invasion, as users, by polling, could figure out who is on each stall, and, from there, how long everybody spends there. It also allows everybody to recreate the detailed log that this system logs.

I would be careful deploying even the original indicator because of concerns that it might break some employment/privacy law. It is hard to prevent systems from leaking personally identifiable information, especially in cases where data is grouped over a relatively small number of persons, as appears to be the case here.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#95
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chill dude, call yourself a hacker if you wish, has no strict definition anyway. I believe "fun" and "easy" projects have no merits, them being hardware/software/whatever (unless you are in high-school) It's nice to make one once in a while, but if you only do fun and easy projects then you are wasting your life. You should try to push yourself to make things that are not easy. Get outside your comfort zone. Doing st…

Just because something isn't difficult, doesn't mean it isn't useful. And sometimes people just enjoying doing stuff. Do you enjoy watching a movie, or reading fiction, or just sitting and chatting with friends?

Yes I do enjoy movies but I'm not constantly looking at movies. Also, easy and useful is the best kind of useful. Easy and useless is well, useless.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#96
post #12

Random Hall (a dorm at MIT) has/had a `bathroom server' that did exactly that and also a `laundry server' that tells you whether the laundry machines are busy. The bathroom server used to be at http://bathroom.mit.edu (seemingly offline now) and the laundry server is at http://laundry.mit.edu

I don't know the current status of the bathroom server, but when I was living in Random, certain bathrooms would be taken offline on Jewish days of rest (since activating the door switch could be considered prohibited work). So it's possible that the server is offline today for Passover.

Work during Passover is not prohibited, though.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#98
post #12

Random Hall (a dorm at MIT) has/had a `bathroom server' that did exactly that and also a `laundry server' that tells you whether the laundry machines are busy. The bathroom server used to be at http://bathroom.mit.edu (seemingly offline now) and the laundry server is at http://laundry.mit.edu

I don't know the current status of the bathroom server, but when I was living in Random, certain bathrooms would be taken offline on Jewish days of rest (since activating the door switch could be considered prohibited work). So it's possible that the server is offline today for Passover.

It's also why East Campus had keys (which were great for giving non-residents) instead of the card entry system used on every other building (with keys not being distributed).

(41W)

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#99
post #60

Add a yellow light for when there are stalls available but all free stalls have recently been used for more than 2 minutes. So basically, yellow would mean "You could, but unless you really need to, you probably don't want to" ;)

Or a yellow light to reserve a stall for the short walk to the bathroom from your desk. Nothing worse than making the B-line to the stall, only to have someone cut you to the chase.

You could make it very simple timer that holds the stall for a brief minute or two.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#100
post #33

I remember, about 25 years ago, a HUD on each an ever train carriage would indicate whether the toilet was occupied. The HUD was located above the baggage section at the end of each carriage. Occupied was red, and unoccupied was blank. No Raspberry Pi was involved, but through careful social engineering, everyone in the carriage know what the sign meant, There was a physical hardware based fall-back also, which was a…

Passenger planes have had the same thing too.
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