Geeks in a vacation vacuum
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(InfoWorld) - Strange but true, some people -- certified techies among them -- prefer to turn it all off when theyâre on holiday. [See also: Great escapes for geeks | Top 10 vacations] Stanton W. Schmidt writes, âI really do want to leave it all behind when I go on vacation. With that in mind I would recommend the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. There, you cannot get a signal for your cell phone, no matter which provider you have. You don't drive in, you paddle in (no boat motors allowed either). And they don't even allow you to carry in cans or bottles. And no matter where you go, you are likely not to see another human being for most of your trip.â âI purposefully select vacation choices where it's extremely difficult to geek out every day,â replied Ed Kummel. âMy last vacation was in Durango, Colo. Sure, there are coffeehouses in town that have Internet access, but the bike ride down and back up the mountain is not worth it! I learned to make do with my BlackBerry for that week!â For those who would brave the mountain for some quality Internet time, hereâs your real cold turkey, from Gregg Cooke: âThe banks of West Virginia's Greenbrier River, most of which lies inside the National Radio Quiet Zone, so named because it is a 13,000-square-mile âholeâ in the eastern part of the state centered over the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). Even the slightest radio transmissions are hunted down by a team of radio detectives and silenced â¦ they even find malfunctioning microwaves and mistuned automobiles. (Your tax dollars go toward this, you know.) The result is blissful radio silence for the gi-normous radio dishes the NRAO operates to scan the skies and look deep into celestial radio sources. You'll get no cell or wireless signal here, guaranteed!â
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Imagining hundreds of outage-related micro-dramas unfolding simultaneously.
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In the current issue: &nbsp;October 2006  Slap a "Powered by Linux" sticker on your front door. The October issue of Linux Journal takes "Linux Everywhere" literally. See how Linux runs a total multimedia center like TiVo on steroids, serves as a central phone system with call screening, regulates your home heating system, controls robots and much more.  This isn't just a digital lifestyle, it's a Linux lifestyle of leisure, which proves that geeks, particularly Linux geeks, truly have the best toys.  Not a subscriber? Check out this post to read abstracts of the current issues' articles and to read for "free" this months Bonus Article: Do-It-Yourself Robots with Linux by Michael Surran.
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A less-than-futuristic surveillance system in San Francisco.
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People do crazy things on vacation with their money. Don't be one of them.
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Internet users are traveling across the world from their living rooms: A new study finds that 45 percent of adult American online users have taken advantage of features that permit virtual tours of another location.
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Travel: Gear up for a Christmas spending spree with a spot of online window shopping.
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Blog: Want to see how TV is changing? Hang out near the cell phone tent and the vacuum cleaners.
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There are two types of people who don't need to shift gears to return to work: workaholics and magnets of vacation misfortune. If you don't fit one of those bills, here's how you can get psyched up for re-entry into the real world.
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The next 12 months look like they are going to be a lot of fun if you are a geek or gadget fan.
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When visitors outstay (and you outspend) their welcome.
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Despite claiming to want to get away from everything familiar, affluent New Yorkers really want to be at one of the in-crowd vacation spots.
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By Alan Fram  Associated Press  WASHINGTON -- Sun block. Beach umbrella. Laptop.  One in five people toted laptop computers on their most recent vacations, an AP-Ipsos poll released Friday said.
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For many travelers, booking a vacation online is like going on a virtual scavenger hunt. They pick up a hotel at one site, search two others for a good airfare, and then turn to two more to compare rental car costs.
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I'm writing this from CES 2007 &#151; the latest and greatest Consumer Electronics Show, where 140,000 attendees crowd 2,700 exhibits packed into 1,660,000 square feet of space in more halls and hotels than I'll bother to count. There's a lot of noise here, and a certain amount of signal; though the ratio of the former to the latter is no less lopsided than it always is. Everybody's not only showing their good sides, but paying millions to crow about it through mass quantities of advertising and PR. \
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Alienware designs a laptop so slick you'll beg it to probe you; a docking station for the PSP misses the point and an all-in-one printer frees up more desk space for pictures of your cat. All in this week's Gadget Lab.
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A new survey finds that one in five people take their laptops with them on vacation, to keep in touch with the office and maybe even do a little work.