Talk:Trojan Room coffee pot

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Client-Server in X

I just added the names of the people involved together with their roles where known. I'm a trifle confused about the Client-Server terminology as applied to X Windows: apparently it's the other way around from "normal". However I'm assuming that most people are going to approach this on the basis that the Server sends out the pictures and the Client receives them. Phil 12:50, Dec 2, 2003 (UTC)

The client-server terminology is the same as how that terminology is used for networks. When a network connection is made, the host that is initiating the connection is the client and the host that is waiting for a connection is the server. In the X Window System, the running program that has the program logic, here xcoffee, initiates the connection to the X server over the network. The X server accepts the connection and has video output and keyboard and mouse input. The X server sends keyboard and mouse events through the network to the client program on the other side of the network. The client program processes the keyboard and mouse events and sends display instructions back over the network to the X server. The X server then updates its video display based on those instructions.

Picture needed

I think the nature of this article requires a picture of the object in question. 131.247.98.181 (talk) 14 July 2005‎

I'm asking all four of the people concerned. Hopefully at least one of them has a working email address. :-) GreenReaper 05:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

And three four replies, all positive! Images uploaded. :-) GreenReaper 22:15, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Coffee pot or coffee machine?

An editor just changed "coffee pot" to "coffee machine", citing (not unreasonably) the title of the original page. Sometimes it is called pot, however, as in this site: [1].

What do folks think? Should we rename it? (Note that Internet coffee machine redirects to this site. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:13, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I feel it should remain coffee pot, since the focus was on the pot (and its contents), not the entire machine. GreenReaper (talk) 19:56, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

True, but the site itself is called Trojan Room Coffee Machine - perhaps "machine" vs. "pot" is a Britain/US divide? As a USAnian, I would never say "coffee machine."- DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:42, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Why turned off?

The article doesn't say why it was turned off. It seems a strange decision given its iconic status. Why didn't they leave it running to this day? Beorhtwulf (talk) 22:35, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I put in one sentence, mostly lifted from a Spiegel article. They moved the office; it doesn't say why they decided not to move the pot - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:31, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

File:Trojan Room coffee pot xcoffee.png to appear as POTD soon

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Trojan Room coffee pot xcoffee.png will be appearing as picture of the day on August 22, 2016. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2016-08-22. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:21, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Picture of the day

The Trojan Room coffee pot was the inspiration for the world's first webcam. The coffee pot was located in the corridor just outside the so-called Trojan Room within the old Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. The webcam was created in 1991 to help people working in other parts of the building avoid pointless trips to the coffee pot by providing, on the user's desktop computer, a live 128×128 pixel greyscale picture of the state of the coffee pot. The webcam was shut down on 22 August 2001, following the Computer Laboratory's move to the William Gates Building.Picture: Quentin Stafford-Fraser

Question

Following on from seeing the POTD, I was curious about this reason for setting up the webcam: “To save people working in the building pointless trips to the coffee machine, in case it was empty”. This may mean something to coffee-drinkers, but the rest of us might need a bit more of an explanation.
If someone wanted coffee, why wouldn't they just go and make some? Or, if the coffee was provided by canteen staff, wouldn't it just be continually refilled? Are coffee drinkers so averse to actually making the stuff that they would willingly wait for someone else to crack before swooping in and claiming a cup? Or were they all so isolated that the camera really offered them a chance of some social contact? Was it an experiment in slow television, or a kind of wallpaper for caffeine-fiends?
Can someone enlighten us? Moonraker12 (talk) 13:56, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

It takes several minutes to brew a pot of drip brew coffee. While you might be willing to do that if you're there already, nobody wants to make a journey and then wait even more time for it to brew if you can just wait for it to be full later. Arguably Terry Tate had the right idea - you kill the joe, you make some mo' - and this may have been an unspoken first step towards the surveillance state necessary to identify and punish violators of this rule. GreenReaper (talk) 23:23, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

@GreenReaper:: Thanks for that! I had wondered if my third thought had any merit, though I have to say, turning it on it's head and seeing it as a breach of coffee culture etiquette hadn't occurred to me. On that subject, the etiquette advisor you mentioned wasn't known to me, but your link to his motivational video makes the error very clear! Thanks again, Moonraker12 (talk) 14:56, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Distinction between "Internet" and "Web"

From the first paragraph of the article:

Put on the Internet in 1991 by Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky, it was migrated to the web in 1993 becoming the world's first webcam.

This doesn't appear to make sense, especially since the article goes on to state that the webcam feed was originally made available to computers within the building. This would seem to connote a local-area connection, more properly an "intranet" rather than the Internet. I'm not sure of the distinction made between the "Internet" and the "web" and I think this could be made more clear from sources. 98.53.183.126 (talk) 20:15, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

The two main sources say that it was a laboratory ATM network, so I went ahead and removed that claim. I think it is more accurate now, good catch! Strangerpete (talk) 20:43, 3 January 2022 (UTC)