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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!)"

9 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Why am I such a loser?

    Oh, I'm on /.

    1. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      How is your comment related to the demise of Google?

      Just let's face the facts:

      - Google has long ago sold out to AOL Time Warner; the next round of IPO will increase their shares and they are likely to achieve a total majority of shares by the end of 2005.

      - Gmail fails to meet the standard of users above Novice-level; those who are used to the comfort of a sophisticated email-client, like Microsoft Outlook, connected to a powerful and secure server-side solution, like Microsoft Exchange. When I called the Google-helpdesk ("Hoogle") and asked for POP3 and IMAP support, I heard the insulting sound of muffled laughter, then a "Sorry, we really don't ...", again laughing; then the line was dead. Mind you, we are paying > 80,000 USD per month in AdSense-fees.

      - Gmail still does not work fully with less sopisticated browsers, such as Mozilla and Firefox. This may be caused by lacking standards-support in these browsers. Fortunately, barely nobody uses these nowadays, so the problem can safely be ignored for the time being. After all, the standard user-agent for web access is the mature and secure Internet Explorer

      - Google's investment in Doubleclick.com and other "online marketing" agencies is a dubious move; personally, I can live with text-only advertising as practised by Google so far, but our company ads are exclusively deployed using latest Macromedia Flash technology, because this simply is what our professional customers expect of us

      - The ethical credibility of Google has been on the deline since a new employee of Google (a "noogler", according to the company-internal nomenclatura) has leaked some disturbing information regarding cruel rituals of initiation, including gross acts of homoerotic sexuality, horses and mutants. However, law authorities are now more alert towards Google, since the so called FAGACT has passed the Californian legislative.

  2. The phone rang and it was... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! :P

  3. Big deal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    With a power supply, any electronic feat is possible. All one has to do it throw available equipment at it. Now try doing that without the magic and convenience of outsourced man-made electricity. Then I'll be impressed.

  4. Wolf+585, Sr. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    xylene Virtue is its own punishment. -- Denniston Righteous people terrify me ... virtue is its own punishment. -- Aneurin Bevan xylene

  5. VoIP's problems by DriedClexler · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    There are some major problems with VoIP. For example, if you make an emergency call, rescuers can't automatically locate you (with cell phones they can triangulate). Also, it's a lot easier for people to manipulate this technology to make anonymous calls and thereby threaten and harass others. These are things people need to think about before concluding VoIP is good for mankind.

    --
    Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
  6. Re:Voip by sllim · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    That is all fine and dandy, but your point is moot.

    Most people I know would rather carve out there eyes with butter knives then talk on corded phones at home. Off the top of my head myself, my parents and my best friend all have nothing but cordless phones.
    We are SOL during power outages anyways.

    But then again we all have cell phones and those are backups for power outages.

  7. ahah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    nahs

  8. Burning man Censors by themusicgod1 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    exhibit A href="http://www.sktfm.tv">sean kennedy.

    --
    GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.