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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!)"
Mmmm, you had me at naked.
Never underestimate the power of horny nerds.
But I gotta ask... would this lower my 1-900 bills?
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
"including totally non-gratuitous photos of naked people using technology"
As if photos of naked people could ever be gratuitous to Slashdot readers!
If you want to read a great story about Burning Man then read this, from Kuro5hin. One of the best stories from that site in a while.
the naked people picture page got slashdotted.
and it did. you're truly lucky. please, next time, don't have the connection for your server reside in a phone booth in the desert.
Failure at three comments.
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
The problem with VoIP is that whenever the power goes out, your phone cannot work. If you have a regular phone (as in anything not cordless or doesn't need charging) then the phone company powers the phone through the line. If you get solar power... then it might be a very interesting idea indeed.
If I'm out of change, it's probably easier to go home and get some than walk deep into a Nevada desert for a free call. A good idea but some more thought could have gone into it, in my opinion.
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.
I don't think it's quite ready. Especially for something with nudity in the title.
I think those pictures of naked people are going to be Slashdotted very quickly...um...not that I want to go back and look...but any chance of people mirroring them?
I swear! I don't want to just look at the pictures!
naked pictures + slashdot = horked server
Linking to public nudity pics on Slashdot is not advised. Guess I'll have to settle for "Burning Server".
pictures of nudity at burning man? STAY AWAY!
A post to /. with reference to nudity. Just to stress test a server. What, are you sick? I don't care what you are running - it just can't be done. If this link lasts for more than 20 minutes, this guy should be given a medal and hired by the US government on the spot.
Stay tuned for new sig...
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:pj83shgh248J:ww w.templetons.com/pq/playa.html+&hl=en&client=firef ox-a/
If we ever really needed a telephone sanitizer... this would be it.
davejenkins.com |
"(There, that ought to stress-test my new serv-"
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
I wasn't even going to check out the link till he mentioned something about stress testing the server.. that was a bad move on his part.
-BMojo
Most ppl that I know that have gone to burning man focus on the lack of technology, or at least a misuse of current technology, as a gateway to experimentation. This turns that ideal on it's head...I wonder, did he stick around the phone, or just set it up and watch from a distance? I'd like to see the reactions of folks when they realize that the phone worked, and wasn't just a prop.
CB^%&*(__.
free ipod and free gmail!
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!
1. Burning Man
2. Phone booth
3. ???
4. Prophet!
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?
This article has recently been linked from Slashdot. Please keep an eye on the page history for errors or vandalism.
A cell phone may effect electrical equipment in places like hospitals and such. Now, while it may be useful in a place like that, as anything but a gimmick they seem like a bad idea to try in any serious numbers. According to equipment manfactureers, everything from portable cd players on up interfere with hospital equipment. Every hospital i've been in says 'turn off cellhpones - they interfere with equipemt', but every doctor has one, and the phones are on. Lots of telephone booths, those that still exist, use wireless connections, as opposed to land lines (which used to be the only option). Hospitals, last i looked, were still doing ok (except when they leave oxygen canisters in the room while they're running an mri. oops)
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
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.
Here is a link for those of you who want to see the phone and don't mind that these particular photos show people wearing clothes. (I'm curious how this website stands up to being slashdotted. :-)
jc
"I'd much rather be mistaken as a lesbian by a bigot than be mistaken as a bigot by a lesbian."
A satellite/wi-fi booth seems cool, but somehow lacks something the old wired booth had.
It's my opinion that the equipment in places like hospitals should design themselves
Working on AI nanotech, are we?
You can't take the sky from me...
Well, I'm sure that really stops people from taking pictures.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Brad, Thanks for installing the booth. I didn't see it during the week, but I did come by your camp for the save-the-man protest, and you showed it to me and had me make a test call (nobody was home). I came back later and was able to get through to my parents who informed me that I had become a first-time uncle (of twins!). It was a great way to get the news. Thank you!
What I want to know is what sort of satellite link did they use???
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?
Most stuff in hospitals is pretty well shielded. Most of the doctors have phones that they leave on, and although lower power, everywhere has a pager system. They tell people to turn off their phones so they dont bother patients and doctors working. If the sign says "danger cell phones interfere with equp." people will be worried enough about killing some guy w/ a pacemaker to turn it off than they are remembering to silence their phone in a movie theater.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
When was the last time anyone printed a story about people going ape over a phonebooth..?
Seriously though, it is kind of a neat achievement, I just think that the potential for a very ironic phone call to the fire department could erupt at any moment..
crazy dynamite monkey
"...with cheap VoIP people were able to call all over the world."
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?
"GERLACH, NV -- The Burning Man festival, a prominent artistic and countercultural event that draws tens of thousands of people to the Nevada desert annually, is in danger of cancellation this week because "no one had their shit together enough to even make it," organizers said Tuesday. "Jesus Christ, this is pathetic," said event coordinator Ethan Moon as he angrily gestured toward the empty Black Rock Desert basin expanse, known as the playa. "We've been promoting this thing all year. You can't start panhandling quarters for gas the week before the festival and expect to make it here in time, man."
Moon listed some of the most common no-show excuses, among them oversleeping, forgetting to request time off work, faulty van-borrowing arrangements, a shortage of ochre body-paint, and the last-minute realization that transportation to the Burning Man festival requires money.
...Hippies were not the only counterculture group to miss the Burning Man festival. Portland-area Linux user and self-described cyber-conceptualist "Free" Lance Kaegle explained his absence in an instant message from his studio.
"I was organizing this boss techno-art project called 'Off The Grid,'" Kaegle wrote. "We were going to set up computer terminals in various parts of the playa and have people use them. Then we'd feed the binary data from those terminals into this fractals program that [Silver Lake, CA software designer] Ricky [Thomas-Slater] wrote. Those fractals would be sent, on the fly, to a group of exiled Buddhist monks I befriended online. The monks would transform the fractals into a temporal sand painting, the making of which we would webcast live to everyone on the playa."
Added Kaegle: "But I had to stop working on the monk thing to finish up this Pam's Country Crafts web site I'm working on. I really need the money..."
And if it's not good for mankind, what do we do, ban it?
I wouldn't call that a phone "booth."
But I guess you can't call it a "payphone" if it's free.
Hope you (or they) never have to call 911 (or whatever your emergency number is) during a power outage.
There are way too many points of failure for VoIP to be my sole link to the outside. A good ol' local-only landline has its uses.
Think of it as population control in a post-modern society. Its not like someone could not add a GPS + VOIP module to there service in the future, for those that seem to be scared shitless of not being able to contact 911.
I think you have too much invested in telco stock, I would suggest diversifying your portfolio.
We hope you enjoy the booth, which will start its life at 4:44 and Mercury but will move a couple of times. However, it also has a phone number 213 634 1441 (during the event only, please,) which outsiders can call and it will ring.
Has anyone called it yet?
"There, that ought to stress-test my new server!"
/. cult jumps up and hammers you. Good luck...
While you're not dead yet, with only 47 comments, you're not showing good signs. Took about 15s to start loading. Wait until the rest of the
...are mostly old fat, hairy men... burned out acid-head hippies from California who should have quit exposing themselves in public at least four or five decades ago.
Always wanted to see the burning man. Not to mention
the pretty girls.
Nice engineering. We applaud you. Honest. I have to
put up with the misery of walking around in the evening in this horrid climate of Athens Greece so
(hey: let's wind up all the poor bastards in Chicago,
London, Bristol and Calcutta).
But I have a deeply technical question. What do you do in your *day* job?
Mad-Libs for trolls. Nothing to see here, move along.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
From the article: "I had a cell-phone like 802.11 phone"
... may I ask what were you referring to?
Anyone know what he is talking about? I looked around but cannot find anything like what Brad describes.
Brad, I know you are lurking on these pages
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
No really. Emacs and Java. Oh it's so pretty isn't it. (Except it should have been in Lisp).
"Please sir, can I have some more?"
~
~
~
-- INSERT --
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.
Don't be trash talking our ISP, Meer.net rocks the net. A quick shout out to JG and DG.
-Bryn
Mod parent (and child) as ot!
But your post doesn't have a child...
Free of rules and laws, yes, much more so than ordinary society, though less than the smaller Burning mans of the past.
But free of Technology? What Burning Mans have you been to? Burning Man is crawling with technology, it's in love with technology, and has been the 7 times I have been.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Telstra have been putting solar powered public telephones in the Australian desert since the 70's. They are backed up by solar powered microwave stations every so often so it's completely wireless. It's also cheaper than running cables out into the desert for just a couple of phones..
try again: Exhibit A sean kennedy
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I thought that one of the rules of Burning Man was that you aren't supposed to run around photographing people.
May we never see th
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.
You are wrong. I work in a hospital, and the "cell" phones you see doctors talking on are a low frequency, short range, in house system that won't work 15 yards away from the building. I work in the Trauma Neuro ICU in a large urban hospital, and I have SEEN cell phones interfere with monitoring equipment.
Which monitoring equipment? I ask because I develop medical diagnostic devices and we are required to shield the devices from far more than potential cell or WiFi interferences.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
We use HP monitoring equipment for vital signs.
Still I think leads typically are shielded, I wander down the hall and look.
Eventually they'll have to be more robust!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
not threatening harassing phone calls!!
i'm so glad my LANDLINE had those problems fixed eyars ago
*cough*
I would be interested to see the MOS scores over the link.
Check out http://testyourvoip.com/ to get detailed analysis of a VoIP call.
-ben
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.
What you might not realize is that hospitals routinely use equipment for a very long time; a 20-30 year lifespan is not unusual for certain types of equipment. The mission of the hospital is to use what works, and they tend to rely on time-tested tools and technology. They will not toss everything because of some new (in their eyes) widget.
If you think wi-fi is necessary, I challenge you thusly: describe in ~25 words exactly which showstopping hospital problem will be solved by replacing/modifying any and all equipment that might be affected by 2.4GHz range RF. IOW, what benefits will they gain from wireless that will outweigh the expense of making the hospital wi-fi-friendly, particularly when their current equipment is still serviceable?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Q. What is the policy on taking pictures?
A. Film and video cameras are forbidden without permission. All video cameras must be registered and tagged. This is to protect the privacy of participants and artists alike. Use Agreement forms for personal video cameras will be available upon arrival at the Gate, the Greeter's Station or Playa Info. If you are considering filming or videotaping for professional purposes, you must have a commercial agreement on file with the Media Team prior to your arrival onsite. Commercial use of images taken at Burning Man without permission is subject to cunning legal action and punishable by death. This includes amateurs and professionals who capture images. Click here for further information.
He's done this before, so he probably got permission for the camera. (He regularly does a panorama, it seems.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I've been trying to convince work that there is no internet or phones at burning man. Not reachable. Please stop with your "innovation." art + tech + burningman
"Free of rules and laws, yes, much more so than ordinary society, though less than the smaller Burning mans of the past."
MUCH less than the past.
"But free of Technology? What Burning Mans have you been to? Burning Man is crawling with technology, it's in love with technology, and has been the 7 times I have been."
It's been before that... before the thing turned into a frat boy $350/ticket money pit. Oh well.
Yeah, I might have overreacted. I read that as, "there's picturs of naked people, that ought to test my server", it sounded like they were just trying to get more hits on their site. Unfortunately the link wasn't working when I checked it.
With the seeming increase of jerks at the event lately, I guess I got a little knee-jerk.
Well, my understanding from those who went in the early days that for several years Burning Man wasn't about anything, not about art or tech but just catharsis, so it had no particular embrace of technology. But very shortly after arriving on the Playa, the theme camps arose, and the art cars, and of course the fire-oriented art which begins the love affair with tech.
Burning Man changes every year, and while the old one is gone the new one isn't so much worse or better but different. I like the marriage of tech and art that it has become devoted to, myself.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Sure naked might get your attention, but that is far from what Burning Man is about. There are even some crossover between the open source software movement and the main form of Burning Man.
While on the surface it would appear that Burning Man is a week long party where people walk around naked, that is only the surface and anyone who one experiences this level is missing out.
No vending is allowed at the event, except for ice and coffee in center camp. There is something called the gift economy where everyone is supposed to give gifts to the community. So someone might cook pancakes for passers by, create some interactive experience or artwork. So instead of software for community enrichment, it's often artistic or even tangibles.
Community is also fostered by the difficulty of survival in the desert where the weather can change dramatically to hot or cold, rain, duststorms. The weather is an important part of the event. This forces people to either be self reliant or group into larger groups and plan how they're actually going to pull off some huge endeavor in what are called theme camps. Some of these camps are as big as hundreds of people and they construct buildings and some pretty impressive stuff. Working towards a common goal and overcoming obstacles does wonders for creating bonds among people.
At the event it made clear to everyone they are meant to be participants, NOT spectators. So everyone is supposed to add something to the event, not just gawk at the women.
There is also the environmentally conscious side of Burning Man. Even though these fanstic buildings are created, it must all be packed out. The trash has to be packed out, everything. Leave no trace is a mantra.
There is also a spiritual side to Burning Man. Each year, the night after the burning of the Man, there is a ornate hand made temple that is burned. People write messages on the temple to those loved ones that have died or add articles that metaphorically represent something you want to leave behind, like a picture of a girlfriend you want to forget.
Now there are growing year round communities in several major cities like San Fransisco and Los Angeles where these people that have come together have events. Yes, I know all this because I am one of them and I'm even on the Burning Man webteam.
You can find more information on the Burning Man web site. It's definitely an experience worth having!
Paul Sundling
Satellite downlinks have plenty of "bandwidth." The uplinks are usually more limited in "bandwidth," but you can still push reasonable voice quality thru most satellite uplinks.
The issue, however, is LATENCY. With minimum 500ms round trip times (250ms up to the geosynchronous bird, 250ms back down), it could be very annoying to talk over such a link. It'll work, but the feeling of interactivity between you and your conversational partner will simply be missing.
Have you ever heard NPR reporters in the mideast using traditional (non-VoIP) sat phones while being interviewed by radio hosts state-side? You'll know what I mean...
Now that Brad has shown us how relatively easy it is, or at least decidedly do-able, I predict a gradual spread of free phones at BurningMan in even more incongruous situations.
How about a mockup of a typical fifties American living room with a couch, a couple of easy chairs, a black and white TV playing Leave It To Beaver, and a coffee table with a fifties style black rotary dial phone that really works. All the electronics including power would be in the phone and the table, invisible. Now that would be cool.
Well, Burning Man (BM? yuck) would be a great place to test out solar powered VoiP. Other parts of the country (much of the SE comes to mind) that wouldn't work so well. Too many cloudy days.
But I really don't care how they power it - solar, pedal while you talk. gerbils, nukes... I just love the idea of functional phone booths where a phone booth should not be. If it can be completely wireless, so much the better!
And finally, I think Solar VoiP would make a great band name. Feel free toe use it so long as I get some credit!
Man ... that was art.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
what the hell? Sean Kennedy is not a commercial entity, and as far as I know did not sell the 'sktfm.tv' video episodes, nor intended to; they were free to download from the beginning, unless this changed in the past few years or so. unfortunately, halfway through being free for download for a year or so were suddenly pulled. Sean Kennedy claimed to be the first open source person; everything he makes can be downloaded, ripped, and transmitted into any medium and every medium possible. Do you mean rantmedia? like..uh..rantradio and it's parent group rantmedia? a non-commerical radio station? it just doesn't make sense.
And when an organization uses copyright ownership as an excuse to forbit someone to distribute their own works, I'd say that's censorship.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Why the hell are these people running around blue or naked unless they realize that they can be seen? We need to wake the fuck up these people who are friends and family of these blue people, because they are the problem in this situation, ultimately; I'm sick of seeing different people catch harsh reactions from family members for being as they are. Here in Canada some people appear to be multicultural, for example, and although that does not really apply to different forms of expression beyond culture/"race",(such as painting ones self blue and running around naked), at the very least the two ideas can reinforce each other. In order for acceptance of such things as naked blue people to be widespread, more people have to be in the public's eye being both naked, and blue. Naked blue people should be commonplace, or at least relatively commonplace, and until people conceive of naked blue people in this fashion there will be trouble, and a sort of easy-way-out towards censorship in this manner.
I am not disputing the fact that burning man has the right to censor; you've made it clear by their video recordings policy that they do have this right; I'm saying that they censor, and as a side note that censorship is wrong. whether censorship be right or wrong, however, they are engaging in it, on a big enough scale to matter.
There is never an excuse to forbid someone to publish video, especially in a major event with many people involved, with video footage where everyone involved is obviously consenting
And yes, you are perfectly free to take shower footage of me. [ oh and in case you think i'm kidding this summer at a rock concert where they were charging something like 4$ for a 15 minute shower, I showered in front of some 3-400 people.[hey i needed to go back to work showered] ] (more more porno for the people!) d:
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.