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A Wi-Fi/VoIP Phone Booth In the Burning Man Desert
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!)"
It's my opinion that the equipment in places like hospitals should design themselves to be hit by a nuke and still function. If something like a little WiFi+VoIP causes an piece of equipment to stop working then the equipment needs to be replaces/reengineered, because WiFi is here to stay and VoIP is gaining momentum, so it will have to be done sooner or later.
Space for rent, inquire within
I agree, but this technology could be useful in remonte areas ( ie deserts in the article) or alpine areas where communication is essencial but putting a wire in would be too costly
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
pictures of nudity at burning man? STAY AWAY!
One day I'd love to get a chance to go to Burning Man, especially seeing blurbs on Reason Online about how one of the editors went and loved it. Anyway, what I don't get is why people would see something like VoIP as an issue. VoIP/Wifi are of course made by corporations, but they aren't **run** by corporations necessarily.
There seems to be too much of a false dichotomy that is present. Either you're an artsy, expressive person or you're one of those technology nerds that is cold to creativity. Maybe the worst nightmare to the artsy extremists is the idea that they don't have a monopoly on aesthetics anymore than the nerds on functionality. Would not the greatest triumph be a blending of beauty and functionality? Of course, harmonization of the two would naturally result in the nerds and artsy types having to meet half-way and *gasp* learn to communicate and appreciate each other.
But then what do I know? I'm one of the only geeks in my CS department that can actually excel at human languages while suffering in my math skills. I picked up basic scheme programming in one or two classes and finished the projects quickly, and beat most of the math people because my brain is more used to switching between fairly starkly different logic paradigms. Going between English and Spanish requires more mental flexibility than from C->Java.
At this point I just don't understand why people who pride themselves on how well-developed their intellects are would limit themselves instead of building on that so they could stay on top. I am just reminded of some of the math nerds, whose coding skills aren't as good as mine, said that a math minor should be a prereq. When I retorted, "fine then let's add a foreign language minor since that would be just as useful for helping programmers think flexibly" they just... shut up.
Nerds, go to a coffee shop when local bands are jamming and maybe take an artsy chick out to a musical or something. Artsy types, try math, programming, anything to gain an appreciation for the value of logic. It'd do so many of you good.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Preamble: I'd rtfa but the site is /.'d right now. I'm suprised to not see any mention of this thing being solar powered with a decent rechargable battery system attached.
Call me crazy, but a wireless based phone booth in the middle of a desert just begs for solar power, then it's truely a portable, viable option for these types of gatherings, plus public beaches during vacation season, etc. Heck the department of natural resources could put them out on hiking trails and bring them back in during the winter
But all that would require the thing to not require an electricty plug where ever you needed it. If you're going to go through the trouble of providing 120volts whats the point?
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Jesus you are a fucking prick who's stuck on themself. Plenty of CS majors are well-read, speak foreign languages, etc., but most of them don't put up page-long posts to Slashdot about how cool and well-rounded they are, and about how more people should be like them, and do the things they like to do.
Could this have anything less to do with the article? Did you just see 'voip' in the title and decide to karma whore? These guys are way the fuck out in the desert. They don't have a landline phone that the phone company powers. This is more than they previously had.
Mad-Libs for trolls. Nothing to see here, move along.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
Oh, come on. All Brad did was provide, in a humorous way, a warning that the link might not be entirely work-safe. He even pointed out that the nudity was *non-gratuitous*.
Did you even bother to check out the linked pages? He's not promoting an inaccurate view of the festival at all -- quite the opposite, in fact.