A Wi-Fi/VoIP Phone Booth In the Burning Man Desert 214
Brad Templeton writes "I,
(of EFF/ClariNet/rec.humor.funny) along with
Brent Chapman
(Majordomo/Building Internet Firewalls) and the satellite dish of
John Gilmore (EFF/Cygnus/Cypherpunks/etc.)
put together an engaging hack -- a battery-powered free phone booth using
802.11,
VoIP and a satellite IP uplink. This was placed in the desert at
the Burning Man arts festival deep
in the remote Nevada Black Rock playa, exactly where you wouldn't expect
a working phone booth to be. With cheap VoIP people were able to call
all over the world. The reactions of people to such incongruous
technology were great fun and emotional as well. There's a
page about the phone including
details of
building it and
live experiences including totally non-gratuitous photos of naked people using technology. (There, that ought to stress-test my new server!)"
Cool (Score:4, Interesting)
Voip (Score:2, Interesting)
cool idea (Score:5, Interesting)
CB^%&*(__.
A Phone booth in the Middle of nowhere? (Score:2, Interesting)
A satellite/wi-fi booth seems cool, but somehow lacks something the old wired booth had.
My cheesy personal experience with the booth (Score:3, Interesting)
how did they get the bandwidth to work??? (Score:3, Interesting)
I am only familiar with the Hughes Directway system and that has such a slow round trip that I doubt it would work for VoIP. Often times the uplinks are slower that a 14.4 modem on a bad wire... Are there better products on the market? I didn't see any mention of what they used. There was a cursory explaination that he tweaked the equipment to work with slower speeds, but how!?
Does anyone know of a more reliable sat connection than the directway? Maybe something that uses Low Earth satellites rather than geosyncronous... or pose the threat of burning flesh of anyone walking in front of the transmitter?
Cheap? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sure the VoIP solution could be cheap to implement, but what about "...and a satellite IP uplink.".
I think this last bit would make the cost of this solution go up a little, wouldn't it?
Re:VoIP's problems (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you have too much invested in telco stock, I would suggest diversifying your portfolio.
Re:Emotional reactions to technology? (Score:3, Interesting)
A fair sample of the CS people I know have a minor in humanities.
Myself, I play music and have a german minor.
German English requires shades of meaning that are inexpressible in code, thats for sure!
Which is an interesting thought WRT AI, but I digreess.
Your point seems to be more correct than not.
Re:Oh boy. I wish I had that excuse (Score:2, Interesting)
We'd love to contribute to the EFF. The bad news is
that until a while back I was homeless and out on
the street. Sorry. Still broke.
I'm still struggling to come to terms with being able
to laugh about it.
Wish you well.
Obvious nut job - it's a comedy gold mine! (Score:1, Interesting)
It's a little odd to talk extensively about your own experiences on a technical message board, but it's downright strange to view Slashdot as your outlet for caustic rants about how much you hate the people around you.