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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.
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!
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!
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.
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...
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?
"...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..."
Technically it's called a kiosk today, but most people still call it a phone booth. I wanted a real booth, but couldn't find one cheap and locally when I was hunting, so Brent bought the pedestal and kiosk.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
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.
Mad-Libs for trolls. Nothing to see here, move along.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
While I do applaud the engineering, there were other art projects which would appeal even more to the ./ crowd. I could go on forever. One thing I did see that was interesting was a giant (maybe 6x6 feet?) colorful LED matrix. Each 25x25 LED section of the matrix had it's own ethernet connection, which fed into a large switch. A computer program (a java program written on a powerbook in emacs) sent packets over ethernet to the nodes describing what they should display. It felt really awseome to stand in front of the "screen" with all the music going and look at the colors.
Also, I was high.
"Please sir, can I have some more?"
~
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-- 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.
Eh. You mean Music over IP or Voice over telepathy.
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.
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..
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.