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A Wi-Fi/VoIP Phone Booth In the Burning Man Desert

Posted by timothy on from the burning-pots dept.

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!)"

2 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Mod Parent -1 Insecure Prick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:Emotional reactions to technology? by metlin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You raised a valid point, but I have just one problem with the artsy folks - they wear their non-technical fronts as something of an identity.

    I play in a band, and I'm the only technical person in it. However, the rest of them take PRIDE in the fact that they cannot, or rather, will not - do math or science.

    On the other hand, almost all the technical people I've seen make a conscious effort at *something* artsy or the other (languages, music, painting, dramatics, martial arts, etc) - something or the other, at the very least. And they are seldom proud of the fact that they cannot do artsy stuff - I've always wished that I could paint or do dramatics.

    That is a kind of defeatist attitude, especially since communiation has to be two way - it does not help if only the geeks made an effort to get into arts, there has to be cooperation from the other side, too.