Slashdot Mirror
A Mobile Home for the Wired Professional
mikael writes "The BBC is reporting that an Internet entrepeneur has given up on the high cost of housing in the city but has decided to merge his office/home lifestyles in the form of a luxury custom-built mobile home. Utilizing satellite technology, VoIP and a home cinema for video conferencing, the owner and his girlfriend are able to communicate with clients from anywhere. At the same time, the machine allows the occupants to remain self-sufficient in water, food, electricity and amenities for a whole week, allowing them to commute to the nearest national during the weekends." The price seems high even for all the amenities; a well-equipped Airstream can be had for enough less to pay for quite a few electronic upgrades.
I think this will have many applications.
Get some priorities.
Slashdot did, after all, post several articles on 9/11 and this is much bigger news considering that that the death of the Pope will impact on 1 BILLION PEOPLE worldwide.
go ask a F1 team, Mclaren have units that would make this chaps RV look rather silly
i wonder what the depreciation value is, if he bought bricks and mortar he would at least have an asset
I used to work at an RV Dealership pumping LP. These machines are insane. Some times, old folks would come in and plunk down giant multi-million dollar checks, or even cash, to walk out the door with one of them a few hours later (we hated that).
My father, whom I worked with at the time, did all these sorts of upgrades - one time, I worked helping install a computer into one as the centre of a digital home hub. I did a lot of the work with that, and it was insane. And yes, they paid cash.
I forgot to turn on my firewall and some hacker took control of my RV and drove off...
To me, it would seem that the latency involved with satellite communications would really inhibit the use of VoIP. Either that or make it really, really difficult to use. Are there any /.'ers who can vouch on either side of this issue?
Sounds great untill some little bastard steals it and goes for a joyride while he tests for wifi spots.
I like muppets.
Buckminster Fuller is most famous for the geodesic dome but he was an early crusader for conservation. He postulated that the houses of the future would be built with less, but much more sophisticated, material. A high tech mobile home probably comes closer to fulfilling his dream than anything else I can think of. He saw that technology would let people live anywhere they wanted and not be tied into urban centers. /www.buckminster.info/
You know, you still have to buy and maintain a vehicle to pull around your TRAILER.
A trailer/camper/popup is no substitute for a jacked out RV. One is a home with wheels, the other is a tent with pressboard and vinyl walls.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think the next pope will remain as AC...
"An internet entrepreneur with a taste for the open road is having a brain tumour removed"
That house must just be like a giant microwave
Business Voyeur
A mobile home is typically carried around on a flatbed truck then mounted to the ground... This is a motor home, more usually called an RV.
This was done by bicycle, http://www.microship.com/, 20 years ago (complete with a binary "keyboard" on the handlebars so that the rider could type while riding and satellite uplink) and my aunt gave up her house 10 years ago to go RVing and says she doesn't understand anymore why anyone would want to own a house in the first place.
Slashdot breaking news story: Sam's Club!
KFG
Why is Slashdot not accepting my article (or that of several of my friends) on the death of the Pope?
I was surprised that I didn't see any articles on Terri Schiavo dying. The pope is a religious figure who doesn't really have any connection to geeky things. However, a Schiavo article would at least have a YRO (Your Rights Offline) aspect to it. What are you rights when you're no longer able to make your own decisions, etc.?
And when you look at the Hall of Fame entries, there's only a couple which are tech related. Most of them revolve around politics. In the end, as has been said time and time again, this site isn't run by the community, it's run by Taco and if he doesn't like it you won't see it. Try Kuro5hin for that kind of thing.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
2 yuppies, cruising around in a motor home with no fixed address is fine, if a bit expensive (gas prices in UK?).
I don't see this as a real money saver. Yes, 1/4 million pounds is less than many (by far not all) homes in SE england. But depreciation and operating expenses will eat up any potential savings, and when they decide to give up this hobby, they'll be behind the real estate/money curve.
But, if money isn't a consideration (and it appears not to be in this case), why not do it for a couple of years? I'd get tired of it pretty quick, but he might not.
Internet entrepeneur? Video cameras? His girlfriend?
Sounds suspiciously like a mobile porn studio.
I am most worried about the last bit of your post.
There ARE quite a few very conservative candidates for the papacy - people even more conservative than JP2 was.
I fear for the future of the Catholic Church.
+++ATH0
If you need any interactivity, satilite connections won't cut it. Voice and video would need other communications methods.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
What are you rights when you're no longer able to make your own decisions, etc.?
Your legal next of kin makes the decisions for you. That's the law, has always been the law, and despite "emergency sessions of congress" to change it, every court that there is upheld that that is, indeed, the law.
It was the husbands decision to make, a decision that's made thousands of times every single day. The only difference is that most families have a little more tact and respect for their loved ones to turn their death into a media event.
Terri Schaivo was a political pawn. Just another source of soundbites. A chance for every ambulance chasing quack to get on TV to give his professional medical opinion about a patient they'd never examined (any doctor who does that should have their license pulled on principle alone). No one will remember her in a year or two.
Remember Elian Gonzalez? I didn't think so. The whole nation "cared" about him once.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"It's a beautiful part of the country. We're keen rock climbers, so we can't complain about having well-known UK crags around the place."
Well, that's understandable.
As a fellow climber, I can completely understand where they're coming from - it really sucks having to carry 35 pounds on your back and set camp at a base from where you can climb.
While it is a little extreme, it does make sense.
Steve Roberts has been doing this kind of thing (admittedly with bikes and boats rather than RVs) for about fifteen years now...
http://www.microship.org/
Your legal next of kin makes the decisions for you. That's the law, has always been the law, and despite "emergency sessions of congress" to change it, every court that there is upheld that that is, indeed, the law.
Of course it's the law. My question centered more around how you can get your wishes upheld when someone else is in the driver's seat, so to speak. If you want to die, but your legal guardian insists on keeping up the life support and you're unable to communicate, etc. I know there's legal ways of doing this, but it would have made for interesting discussion nonetheless. That's all.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Have you guys ever checked the insurance rates on a Class-A RV? My god, they approach the levels of owning a 2 bedroom house! That and maintaining the beast, where are you going to sleep when it's in the garage with a blown motor? Or worse, the bloody thing starts leaking around the seams? The service center most likely will not allow you to stay in the vehicle while it's in their garage overnight.
The air conditioning in the vehicles are not conducive to electronics while in a high humidity area, for they are glorified window AC units. All they do is cool the air and TRY to pull the moisture out of it, but not really succeeding.
Sure, they may look great but to be really a place to house your systems in, you actually have to increase your housing budget by a small factor to cover the extra things. Beefier wiring, more outlets, dehumidification, a better refrigerator than the slow and ice up like a ship in the north sea ammonia units.
By the time you get done, you'll have something like the emergency response vehicles that the larger metro poilce forces are using for mobile command posts. All electronics and few luxuries.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Popes come and go all the time. The fact that this one decided to spend his last years senile and ill instead of resigning doesn't make him special.
I was doing full-time computer consulting and living full-time in an RV back in 1997-2000 (in the US), and I was hardly the only one. Even then, it wasn't that hard to stay in touch; plenty of RV parks would let you plug in a wired modem somewhere, more and more had internet hookups right at every site, and you could have a satellite modem if you were willing to pay enough for it (around $2/minute for 9600 baud access, which was plenty good enough for email and shipping code back and forth in those less bloated days). It's fun when you get to camp in the boondocks next to a hot spring for a couple of weeks and still bill a good hourly rate for the hours you care to work on your laptop while recharging from the solar panels. It's not so fun when you're stuck in the client's parking lot in Schaumburg Illinois for a week in winter because they really need to see you on site and the propane heater barely keeps up with the chill.
Sigs? Sigs? We don't need no steenkin' sigs.
April first is over and it seems Taco went back to his mom's basement. He needs to be fired. He is what's holding slashdot back.
Compairing prices really does not make sense. I am sure they are putting so much extra into this vehicle, that if they did buy a stock Airstream, they would have to tear it completely appart and rebuild it. Plus, a standard camper does not make you self suffient for a week. It caries a can of propane, enough for a couple of meals, a small tank of water for 2-3 days, if you don't shower or use the onboard restroom. Electricity is supplied by the engine's generator, hence you only have electricity as long as you are plugged in or have the engine running. Plus, being a rich .com geek, I'm sure everything in the camper that could possibly be computerized is, and networked to boot: Automatic window shades, lighting, coffee maker, ect... ~$500,000 US does not sound to bad to me for a vehicle like that!
Has 6round to a
This is what I'm always totally clueless about...
First, these so called internet-entrepeneurs(which, imho, means you can settle about anywhere you want) choose to sit in the most expensive places and now, this one chooses to sit in an RV? I mean, to me that is just plain stupid... I mean, why do these guys have to go places if they're *internet* entrepeneurs?
Airstream has made some self-contained units ("Land Yachts" -- example: http://www.racer-net.com/rairs002.htm), though I'm not sure if they are currently producing any.
... just stuck on a truck body. Sometimes not well stuck on, too :)
;)
And while I agree with you on "pressboard and vinyl" when it comes to most RVs, Airstreams are generally quite nicely constructed; I lived for a time* in a 1966 22' model, and despite being older than I am, the construction held up well. (Some of the internal systems, not so much, but as I as parked rather than traveling, with facilities avaiable, that was OK.) Many RVs are in the cheap-n-chintzy category, too, though -- they may be a home on wheels, but in many cases, that home is the same pressboard and vinyl you rightly decry
(See Phillip Greenspun's account of buying, driving, repairing and selling a Winnebago -- but be warned: it's very easy to get sucked into his site, as I just did. He's a great writer, in addition to all the other bazillion things he does.
timothy
* In Austin's coolest trailer park, Pecan Grove -- long may it wave
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I wonder what his strategy for physical security is. Now that he's announced the location where the vehicle is going to be parked every weekend while he himself is strapped to the side of a mountain at some altitude, I hope he's got all this stuff well secured against theft, fire, and vandalism, or better yet, attended by a gearsitter.
There's always insurance, but after the second hit or so the insurance companies get somewhat less enthusiastic about renewing the policy.
A mobile home or trailer as we called 'em when I was a kid, is a sure fire tornado magnet!
Instead of a motor-home, I think I would prefer to get a Yacht and deck (no pun intended) it out with all the amenities. There's just so may more places you can go on the high-seas. /You insensitive landlubber.
They've generated international publicity, but their website is barely more than a poorly designed placeholder and their businesses do not appear to have any products to sell.
Company regulations and council tax issues further the implausibility of this scheme
It's very easy to put out exciting press releases, but if this thing ever hits the road I'll be amazed.
You call them Caravans. This is really OLD news. Ours has been mobile for 8 years, and ours looks better! Has more amenities etc. Sheesh!!!!! NOT NEWS!!!! Does NOT Matter.
Elian Gonzalez
Of course I remember him. Returning him to his father was the one thing Clinton and Reno did that I agreed with. Elian was returned to his remaining parent, even though that parent lives in a country we officially don't like. It's not like it was a war zone, or had death squads roaming around, or some other direct threat to the boy's life. If I was the boy's father, I would have insisted on getting him back too.
And I don't believe that crap that his mother's dying words were "Get my child to America, the land of the free," or whatever crap those crazy relatives tried to put out. What drowning person is going to waste that much effort, when breathing is the hard part?
I've been doing something similar for the past six months. I purchased a fifteen passenger van in Colorado -- refurnished the interior with bed, closet, kitchen, pullout laptop desk, girlfriend, and surfboard storage racks -- and shipped it to Maui. It's been great. Net access is pretty good over cell modem, or we can wardrive when we want to download a movie torrent. :) I've been working three hours a week teaching physics for food money, and windsurfing tons. Journal and pics here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/mauitian/
Ok, I'm sorry to bitch about semantics, but this is one of my pet peeves. This thing is not a mobile home, but a motor home or RV. A mobile home is what you see in "trailer parks" and a motor home is what you can drive around. There is a difference.
Jeremy Logan's Website.
For either of those approaches, you need to be really good at getting by without accumulating lots of stuff (so it wouldn't work well for me), and at least for the boats you need to be good at keeping your place neat as well (again, not me :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If anyone is considering getting something like this, don't make the mistake of getting something with a built in motor. Get a trailer with a separate tow vehicle. I prefer 5Th wheels (they tow nice), but make your own choice.
With the built in motor you have to drive the whole house to a store, and fitting an RV into a standard parking spot is an exercise in frustration. Worse if you want to park near downtown sometime. Much easier to leave the house behind and just take the tow vehicle.
And there is the problem of what if it breaks? With the separate tow vehicle you just drop it off at the dealer and drive a loaner car. You will be hard pressed to find a town that doesn't have a dealer who can fix your truck, while someone willing to touch a RV is harder to find. Or just trade the truck in on a new one (only rich people live in an RV, it is too expensive for normal folks, so this is reasonable). Of course you could trade the RV in when it breaks, but good luck finding one you like in a random town, while truck dealers are all over.
Oh, and if you are doing this, please don't get a gas engine! Diesel is much more efficient, meaning it won't burn what gas my generation wants to live with for the rest of our life.
I built a mobile classroom like this years ago an now have it for sale. Look at the 3rd picture at http://www.mcit.ca/coach and you will understand this is not new. We had even run DEMO's of one way satellite internet back in the early 90's.
I've been doing this for over a Year.
And for about $14k. And $5k for the pickup truck.
I'm posting this from the pod right now.
Most RV parks have WiFi, well the good ones anyway, so latency isn't a problem.
isnt sheep dung a more abundant fuel ?
Verizon has wireless broadband in and nearby many cities.
(before you mod this troll, i don't work for verizon nor do I have any financial relationship with them, other than they are my wireless provider. I'm not endorsing V/Z and hope that there will be more competition in the future, but I think this illustrates the near future in roaming internet access.)
from verizonwireless.com:
You'll need the data-only Verizon Wireless PC 5220 card*
installed in your laptop
$79.99 monthly access gets you unlimited Verizon Wireless NationalAccess and BroadbandAccess service**
[they state elsewhere 60-140 kbps speed range]
BroadbandAccess is expanding
Get ready for a better way of doing business with Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess, available today in the following markets:
Markets:
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Cincinnati, OH
Columbus, OH
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Dayton, OH
Hartford, CT
Houston, TX
Jacksonville, FL
Kansas City, MO
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Madison, WI
Miami/Fort Lauderdale, FL
Milwaukee, WI
New Haven, CT
New Orleans, LA
New York, NY/Newark, NJ
Orlando, FL
Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix, AZ
Pittsburgh, PA
Providence, RI
San Diego, CA
St. Petersburg/West Palm Beach, FL
Tampa, FL
Washington, DC
With wide area high speed wireless rolling out over the next few years, you won't need sattellite for anything except TV. In theory, you will have high speed 2 way access even while driving down the highway (like your cell phone does now).
You can get a nice 26 foot gas powered RV for under 100K with an onboard generator and enough water and lp for up to a week. Obviously they go up from there, up to the Provost line which regularily goes for around 1 million US and already has all sorts of whiz bang gadgets and stuff, including built in networking and internet access. The better ones have slide outs to increase space when parked.
This guy is doing what I've wanted to for a long time. cool
Back when I was attending Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, in the late '70's, most of my friends lived in Airstreams. In fact, large numbers of Oregonians lived out of trucks, trailers, etc. You could see some amazing "hippy-mobiles" with large back porches and the like driving around.
My friends' consensus was that the Airstreams built in the '60's were nice because they were all yachty wood paneling and the like. The ones that came later were too much plastic.
Today it's probably worse.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Oh, yeah, I remember the "Winnebiko"! A huge recumbent which could even call the cops itself if it was likely being stolen.
And then he went and did the same thing with a trimaran IIRC.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Is it me or does that guy look like...
Max Headroom?
I saw a picture of the Corrs vehicle they used on their North American tour last year.
Sucker looked like a double decker or something, it was so huge.
It was so wide it couldn't get through the gate at one of the Northwest venues and they had to park it in the street.
Some of the fans thought it had to be worth at least a million bucks.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You may be right, in general.
... )
:) I say that having only sampled the new ones, but slept in my trailer's for quite a few months.
The only modern Airstreams I've been inside, though, have been very nice -- and also very out of my price range. I paid in the mid-single-digit thousands for my fair-condiion (being nice) '66; before I even bought it, though, I window shopped other RVs, including some then-current-issue Airstreams, of the 30-40 foot length. (This was late 90s, so not that long ago. Sorry so vague, it's been a while for my non-photographic memory.)
The Airstream interiors I saw were uniformly nice, everything seemed solid, comfortable, and Yes, "yachty." By comparison, the interiors of most of the RVs and travel trailers I looked at were cheap and chintzy -- the workmanship and materials seemed mediocre, and that's to my interested but completely unpracticed eye. Airstream's ergonomics, general fit-and-feel were far in front, considering my very small sampling; none of the others was quite as expensive as the Airstreams I was aboard, but they came close enough that the difference was downright shameful. (From magazines, I know that there *are* quite luxurious travel trailers, but I've only been on a few that fall in that category, and they all cost more than the Airstreams I looked at
If I was in the market for one now (I'm not!), I'd probably go for a mid-sized pickup hauling a small Airstream; the big models are really cool to visit, but I wouldn't want to have to park one, or control it in a cross-wind on a mountain road, etc.
One thing that's improved since the '60s: the beds
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Or I will cum your fuckin' eyes shut!
How does this compare to the popemobile? Do you think he had VoIP? :)
(sorry)
Best regards, A.C.
Seriously... No pics, no details, no blueprints or guides or anything... It's like saying "Well ya, I've got this car, and I've been thinking.... touch screens. Yeah. Gonna control everything."
Gah. Get over it. This is not news. It's being done all over. RV's and trailers with extensive electronics is omething you can just go to the nearest dealer to experience. If you think I meant RV-dealer, that will work, and if you think i meant drugdealer, then that woudl work too, because the DEA outside would have one of them trailers.
No, give me an article that shows pics of all these cool gadgets, writes about what OS they use, how they program it, how the computers are clustered, how many Megaflops they can do and how many MP3's they fit on their in-house entertainment system. Because this... this is nothing.
I've personally never seen a satallite phone in person, but they seem to exist. I've heard they were useful when you're in the middle of nowhere, where cell phone signals won't reach. i doubt the delay is too bad if satellite phones are usable. plus I'm pretty sure satellite phone minutes aren't cheap. Any long delays will be costing a lot of money.
HD Trailers
.. this guy ..
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It's also not news because "their business as retail agents" (from the article) is selling motorhomes - they're an agent for the company building it. So it's actually a "press release that the BBC local news ran because there was nothing else happening, which escaped onto the web site".
Must be a really slow news day in North Wales.
I could mod you up as being "offtopic, but makes an incredibly salient collection of points."
I suppose that's what Underrated is for.
Thanks for this. The Catholic Church could be such a wonderful thing if it focused on service and the core messages of Christ.
+++ATH0