Slashdot Mirror
Really Remote Internet Access
RexDart writes "The BBC Online has profiled Duane DeFreitas, an adventurer and guide living in Guyana. He's three hours away from the nearest town (in the dry season; three days away when it's raining), yet has full internet access via satellite. His latest project: setting up Skype for phone service, as soon as he can import a microphone and speakers. Yet more proof that the internet is truly everywhere. Mind the jaguar."
Do you think he is worried about identity theft?
setting up Skype for phone service, as soon as he can import a microphone and speakers
Is there a software which turns text into audio for Skype, and turns audio from Skype into text? Can the normal text-to-speech software do that for Skype?
To him it'll be like an IM client, but the other party might enjoy talking/listening instead of typing.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
were he really fast, he could use one half of a set of headphones for listening, and the other half as a microphone, if they were small enough. Earbuds work really well for this purpose, he just needs to split a jack and add another stereo jack. A little wire-rigging and he'd be set for less than 5 bucks.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Surely he's using Tiger by now.
Mind the old 64bit system?
Where is the adventure part if you bring all your modern high tech gadgets with you?
How is that any different from driving your SUV through a safari park?
Three hours away from the nearest woman.
I wonder what sites he vists most often?
Was a web page being slashdotted by ip over bongo!
liqbase
How well does this work?
I have two sites in the Pilbera (North Western Australia) that could make good use of this.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I thought satellite internet was downlink only, with the uplink being provided by a phone modem. What is this guy using that is bi-directional?
You can get internet from the middle of the Pacific. Or anywhere else on the face of the planet for that matter, with a satellite.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Growing up in rural South Carolina back in the early 60's I was 3 hours from the nearest town on a good day and three weeks away after the ice storm.
Imagine a third grader getting on the school bus at 5AM and not getting home until 6PM. This when Shirley the 10th grader bus driver didn't run the bus into a ditch...
Before that I lived in rural N. Georgia and it was 4 hours to town, much of it on dirt roads.
I kid you not.
As for remote internet access, it's been done for years from sailboats via HF radio. A bit slow, but easily weeks from anywhere in good weather.
I wonder if he has all this set up just to read Slashdot. I know I would go through the trouble to keep up on nerdy news.
Sir, could you reply to this from your satellite internet in the bush.
Jungle pr0n!i rl!
All natur4l!
Hot Guyana locals!
Guyanagirl!
Girlanaguy!
Girlanaguyanag
Check out my live feeds at...
--D. DeFreitas
Why doesn't he open a bank account (replete with credit/debit card) the next time he's in the city?
By doing this, he could buy things online with ease.
However, I'm assuming he wants to purchase ahem, 'intangible' products from the web that can only be enjoyed on the computer, like the rest of world. On the other hand, I'm not sure how he'd keep the wife and kids out of the hut long enough to enjoy his new purchase.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
So that we can legitimately claim that there is literally no place on earth safe from being slashdotted.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
...what one thing would you bring with you? apparently this man chose the wrong answer as a child
I'd bring that video of Jenna Jameson posing with that big burger in her mouth...
And imagine that was something other than a burger... like she eats that crap, anyways.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
When the rainy season happens and his solar panels become useless it's bye-bye World of Warcraft, hello Pin-the-Leech-on-the-Jaguar!
Anybody else curious aobut how much this costs?
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
Junis!
(I still contend that's the funniest Slashdot story ever)
A friend of mine has the sat internet, the delay is terrible, using voip on sat would be terrible, 3-4 delay at least.
God I'm tired of hearing crap about the RIAA.
If he doesn't have a credit card.. how is he paying for this mysterious satellite?
Or is he pirating it?
------------
Sase
"It's the opposite of that."
Real adventurers of the past never had broadband internet. Imagine if Edmund Hilary had this technology... it's summit day, and tension is high at base camp, when an email arrives: "D00ds, Everest is 0wn3d!"
Self-proclaimed adventurers are generally publicity-seeking wankers in my opinion. As others have pointed out, you could use this technology virtually anywhere on the planet. So the guy has a "pet" jaguar - big deal!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
of lazers in the jungle somewhere
as soon as he can import a microphone and speakers
Just like to note Guyana has hotdogs, cheetos, televisions, and mobile phones.
Because the carnivorous jaguars are much worse than the vegetarian jaguars, believe me!
Insert witty sig here.
Atari stopped making that game system a long time ago....
Oh, wait... Now I get it
> Mind the jaguar
I guess that means Macs are everywhere too. Albeit old ones. I guess it takes a while for them to get the latest release in the jungle...
The days of being amazed by remote connectivity are over. For several years it has been feasible to setup VSAT powered by generator or solar. You can get up and running for less than $5,000 and a couple of hundred dollars / month.
The Regional-BGAN has been operational for a couple of years, but has been very expensive and a max speed of 144kbps and a foot print that only covers middle east, europe and northern africa. $700 up front and $10 / mb.
In the next couple of months, Inmarsat will be bringing their new I-4 satellite online to be used with BGANs. This will provide speeds of almost 500kbps (depending on how you like to calculate your overhead) in a unit the size of a laptop. Coverage initially extends from Europe to southern africa and central australia.
By the end of '06 the network will be almost global - including the amazon.
Just for the record, I've done Skype and other VoIP over the RBGAN. It works ok with a similar delay to any other satellite phone. But the cost is still quite high due to the cost / mb.
His latest project: setting up Skype for phone service, as soon as he can import a microphone and speakers.
Tag lost or not installed.
What's MS?
And I thought I had it bad when I couldn't get broadband living ten minutes away...
R.Mo
(Dunno what key I hit before, but it was obviously the wrong one) As I was quoting:
His latest project: setting up Skype for phone service, as soon as he can import a microphone and speakers.
Maybe someday package delivery services will accept longitude and latitude (now often called "GPS coordinates") as a delivery address, and if it's not practical to drive a truck there, have an airplane do a "drop shipment" with a parachute. Would a hard drive survive such a shipment?
Tag lost or not installed.
Latency from the Red Planet is gonna be hell.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Here in Ecuador, I live 15 minutes from the nearest city, but there are only two options available: modem access which is 3 dollars a minute when the phone expenses are included or satellite which is more than 300 dollars a month. I have guessed that I could probably get a satellite internet connection in the US and bring the dish here, but that would be a lot of work.
So, in Guyana is satellite internet in the middle of nowhere somehow miraculously economically feasible?
...in IEEE's magazine Spectrum..
Bill Woodcock of Packet House travelling the world and setting up Internet connections in remote locations.
I dunno, if it's a choice between being eaten and listening to the vegan jaguar proselytize about the evils of eating meat, I might go for being eaten.
and I thought *I* went to extreme lengths to prevent neighbors from stealing my wifi...
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
) ( \ X 8====D gfdgf dfgsg df gsgd fdg sfdg sdfg sdfg sdfg sdf gsdfg sfdg sfdg sg sdfg sgsdf gds
Mind the jaguar.
Oh and, beware of the leopard.
Say no more. Also, ignore the idiot postings re: this has been around for 3 years, etc.
I've heard you can do IP over shortwave radio (i.e. Ham Radio), would this be a reliable/ reasonable option in this case?
In what cases does that sort of system work? Is it high bandwidth ?
I'm hoping for some knowledgable Ham slashdotter here.
My brother has been using sat for internet 3 hours from nearest paved road for last year or so. It works great! I took a grandstream budget-tone(preconfigured to connect to my asterisk server) with me last summer when I went down there to visit. It blew them away when I called time and temperature at a local bank and the audio was crystal clear. They laughed at me when I tried to call my wife and all she heard was strange noises-lol Oddly enough we could hear her fine. Very weird to hear a perfectly clear voice that far out in the middle of no where. The radio phone going to a little town 80km away sounds ok, but you can tell its over a radio.
My brother has started using skype and its bearable. You almost have to say over at the end of each sentence.
I set up a wrt54g running http://www.openwrt.org/ and it acts as a little ap there for them. The really cool thing is, I left it running openvpn, so when ever they fire up the generator it will connect up to my server. I thought using putty over a dial up was bad, this is around 800ms-1000ms, still very cool to be able to ssh into a router in the middle of the amazon. Ya, I know I'm a nerd....
the only bummer about the sat service is you have to use a windows pc for the connector. It has some client software that runs to connect it..
here's their website if anyone know someone that needs internet in south america for $65 a month
http://www.gilat.com/
get out of the jungle if you want to play on the internet. next thing your going to be charging goofy americans to pay you to take trips with you because they can now access the internet. shameless. head back to the states girly man or britain or whatever place you come from. btw, i do work abroad in trying situations and like the reprieve.
Since when did Pee Wee become a reporter for the BBC?
When all 4 of the 5-rated comments (That's with a +1 modifier for insightful and interesting) are "Funny" and are just making fun of the content of the article, you can tell no one really cares. Wow, he uses satellite internet, and what do you know, satellite internet actually does what its supposed to by working outside of places where you can get other types of access. He uses Skype, that's also amazing.
I'd like to have an internet connection everywhere, in a small unit (ie. no huge dishes), what is available?
has full internet access via satellite. His latest project: setting up Skype for phone service
Combining a high latency connection with an app that demands low latency? Good luck.
when she's in Cambodia with her Cambodian adopted son, Maddox. She said they don't have electricity (except flashlights and maybe an emergency generator). You can't get to her place there except by helicopter, especially in the rainy season when the roads wash out.
Also, she has to watch the kid in case of tigers, supposedly.
I don't think Brad's been up there...:-)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I live on Niuatoputapu, Tonga. 1-3 months to the next town (whenever the boat comes). I often have to clean the sparkplug in my generator before booting.
My net connection is 14.4 dialup that cuts out every five minutes... long enough to load Slashdot and POP email.
Jaguars, actually, are New World only. No jaguars in Africa - lions, perhaps.
I would pay up to $30. Two questions
1) Why it is so expensive? ($50). Star Wars 3 will be ten bucks, it cost a fortune to make it and a lot of time (over 3 years).
2) If purchased from Amazon it is even more expensive ($60) Why? I dont want to use crappy PayPal, I get all my DVDs from Amazon,they are usually cheaper than in other places, why in this case it is more expensive ?
From TFA:
"Jacksonville Zoo, in Florida, which is sending a cage for the jaguar"
"Good news everyone! I've made those government mandated updates you've all been suing me about."
"You made repairs to the dark matter reaqctor"
"And you got a cage for the lion"
now, what would be news is if it was fast, low latency and cheap
---- Put Sig here:
damn man thats almost suburbia. get out where its really remote and try claming this, where I grew up 4hrs got you to your neighbour, the next town was still a way from there.
I worked for several years on Johnston Atoll, which is located about 820 miles SW of Hawaii. The atoll consists of four tiny islands: North, East, Sand, and Johnston. Johnston Island (the largest) is 2 miles long x .5 miles wide and 7ft above sea level.
:-)
There is nothing but water for 500 miles in every direction and even then the closest land is an another uninhabited rock. The closest civilization is Hawaii (820 miles), a 2.5 hour journey by jet.
This guy has it easy.
I recently finished a trek to the Mount Everest Base Camp in Nepal. Prior to entering the more remote areas ( towards Tengboche, out of Nache for those that care ) there was a sattelite Internet provider operating. It worked out to be around $10 Australian dollars for ten minutes. What was funny is that I did this whilist the rest of the country was under a declared state of emergency due to the maoist problems, whereupon the king severed all telecommunications in the country. Obviously, the sattelite feeds couldn't be tampered with in this way ( they literally used side cutters to chop data lines in the towns and Kathmandu ) - so while everyone else was cut off from the world, myself and a mate were able to send e-mails to friends back home - dispite the fact that we were half way up a mountain.
If it's really that remote, how the hell does he get power? Does he have a solar powered PC? That would be pretty cool. Surfing the net off the grid has a certain cache, if you ask me.
Costs about the same as cable and i get 3Mb down/1Mb up and my own fixed IP.
Best of all i'm supporting a local company and their tech support people are actually TECHNICAL - something that's lost on comcast.
A shitty Southern California desert town teeming
with gangbangers, skinheads, and other such
characters.
No computer stores or even so much as a Radio
Shack nearby
TV signals blocked by mountains
Can't even get dialup anymore cause vandals keep
ripping down the lines.
What would you do?
I have 49 gmail offers available..let me know if you need one.. jshriver@gmail.com
I have DirectPc for my RV and I get DSL speeds anywhere I go and if I paid for the $6000.00 tracking dome I could have it driving down the road.
$59.99 a month for the service. so what again is so SPECTACULAR about this?
the guy could have spent less and gotten more by buying a OTS solution and service.
Why is everyone all oooh and ahhh over some backwards tribe getting internet access the hard way instead of the dolt buying a hardware/service combination that is far cheaper, faster and easier?
Parent post is funny...maybe, but informative? Is there anyone who doesn't know about the months long days and nights at the poles? By the way, 2+2=4. Please mod this +5, Informative.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
So, if you get 5 * +1 Funny and 5 -1 Troll, you lose 5 points, even though, logically, you should come out even. Get too many Funny mods and you can actually get banned ...
So what mods are doing to compensate for the defective slashmath is modding funny stuff as informative instead ...
Mind the jaguar.
Forget the jaguar, beware of the leopard/p
#include <signature.h>
firstly have you never heared of a TCP window? TCP is NOT a send and wait protocol it sends a number of packets before getting a response and that number is dynamically adjusted based on the senders previous experiance with the connection (though admittedly changes did have to be made to tcp to properly allow for long fat networks like satalite).
secondly there was an analysis paper on sypes behaviour recently and it appears to only use TCP when it can't get through using UDP.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register