Arduino Ethernet Shield Direct Communication

I am very new to Arduino, and was wondering if there is any way to use the ethernet shield to send data from the Arduino straight to my macbook, without an internet connection. Basically, I have several sensors connected to my Arduino, and I want to be able to read data from them on my laptop from a long distance (~100-200 ft, I understand that Cat5/Cat5e can transmit signals that far). This data then needs to be sent to a program written in C++ in order to display on-screen in a UI. Is this possible? Thanks in advance,

-Jordi

P.S. Can I use the ethernet shield and video experimenter shield (Video Experimenter: Arduino shield that lets you do all kinds of experiments with video) with one Arduino at once, or do I need two?

P.P.S. This is completely unrelated to Arduino, but does anyone know if there is a way to view composite RCA audio-video on my mac live? Possibly through use of a RCA to USB converter?

Yes you should be able to use both of those shields together as they use different pins.

Yes you can plug an Ethernetshielded arduino directly into a computer via Cat5/6 and it will connect (assuming everything is setup correctly). You can then get information from the arduino using HTTP requests. You would need to write a basic HTTP API into the arduino sketch and then retrieve the info using HTTP commands in your C++.

Thank you very much
That really helped alot.
Cheers,

-Jordi