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The Era Of Satellite News Gathering
swimgeek writes "The TV Technology for covering news as it happens is changing. This article specifically talks about the transition from ENG (Electronic News Gathering) to SNG (Satellite News Gathering). The American TV networks are close to spending $100 million for this transition, anticipating a possible war in Iraq."
PRESIDENT BUSH AGREES TO MORE INSPECTORS (AP) Washington DC 4:00 PM (EST),
President George Bush has made an announcement that we will not attack Iraq.
The President has announced that as of today, he is agreeing to additional inspectors to be deployed throughout the country of Iraq. We will be sending 250,000 additional inspectors into Iraq. The additional inspectors will include:
- 24,000 members of the 1st Infantry Division
- 15,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)
- 15,000 members of the 82d Airborne Division
- More than 5,000 members of the 4th armored division with their "M1-A1 all-terrain vehicles"
- Additional U.S. Army personnel, as needed for inspections
- A variety of U.S. Air Force personnel for aerial recon missions and other "surveillance" activities.
- A significant number of United States Marines to aid with inspections
- United States Coast Guard personnel to inspect coastlines
- An undisclosed number of Rangers, Green Berets, Navy Seals, Recon Marines, Delta Force, and other:
- Special Operations personnel to inspect Iraqi "hide-aways"
- MOAB and Daisy-Cutter bunker access devices
- Special air deliveries to aid the inspections will be made by aircraft from the USS Constellation, USS George Washington, USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Enterprise.
_The President stated: "With these additional resources, the inspections should be completed in a few weeks (not months -- not years)."
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I'm all for it as long as we still get the same censored none-news we've always been getting. I wouldn't want to start getting actual news, that might be stressful.
Sense a conflict of interest? Wars are interesting stories, and to place reporters in with/as soldiers smacks of conflict of interest. Who's to say that the repoters won't intentionally slip up and start skirmishes and battles for better ratings?
...the crappy videophone reporting feeds
This is the modern equivalent of the old 1940s movies where twenty reporters would see a man shot, then all rush out to the same three telephone booths and all try to pile into the same one, closing the door on each other in the process while they were screaming "Operator, get me the Times!"
They'll be all ready to get for North Korea. Yeah!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
OK $100 million. Now how does that translate into jobs for us poor SOBs out of work?
I'm fairly suprised that this isn't more commonplace already. Considering the likelyhood of being able to find a working net connection (or whatever) in the average war zone, and the fact that satellite time is cheap compared to the average network's budget, this should have been done years ago.
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
ENG has definitely changed in the past decade - Gulf War I was the first to really have on-site video showing missiles launching and landing, and in Gulf War II: Die Harder, it'll be a necessity for any station that wants viewers - and we'll have several reporters in the gulf with satellite ISDN and satellite phones for on-location sound bites.
In terms of cost, we're not that big - not a national network, just 6 stations (with a few nationally syndicated programs) - but we anticipate spending upwards of $15k on equipment and at least $5k for phone/satellite bills.
Thing is, if you see CNN showing missiles launching and landing and your local news station with just a still photograph of Baghdad, which one will you watch?
-T
I don't think tha American people have the stomach for a 2-month war, let alone a 20-month war!
Hmm... it's too liquidy and orange to be shit. Plus I think I smelled some citrus in it.
N0ne-news is a perfect word to describe news on channels such as CNN or FOX. They are passive, neutral. The avoid anything that might get the public's attention to the actual freakin' news in the world. They are ROT. Here are some of the stories you are likely to see ON NATIONAL NEWS 1) Laci Peterson lost for 2 months now. Had her husband Scott axed her? 2) Girl missing for 9 months found with a hobo and a prostitute. Whoo Whoo. 3) The latest from the newest rap band 4) The latest lamest movie 5) Weird psycho who set woods on fire sentenced for half of her life. 6) Latest psycho 50 year old soldier who feels like going to Iraq for the 3rd time " 'cause he's bored " 7) Crazy Wacko-Jacko sleeps with another 3-year-old. What you are NOT EVER GOING to see on these news 1) Actual news, as opposed to weird shit that sounds like it got pulled out of the "Enquirer" 2) News that explain current American and World events, as opposed to those that go something along the lines of " Disarm Iraq before carpet bombing me" 3) News that don't involve seedy "patriots" who are trying to get USA into a full-fledged 3rd world war. 4) News that have ANY FREAKIN' RELEVANCE to the lives of Americans. 5) Newscasters that are patriotic, as opposed to dancing to the flute of the gov't.
Ask the Iraqi defectors who claim murder, rape, and terrorist support.
Damn, that would burn like a mutherfukker!
I hope that at least put in a fifth of vodka while they were at it.
Until humankind realizes that all religion sucks, we'll continue to have problems. Christianity is just as shitty as Islam.
WE ARE DRUNK AND PICKING FIGHTS
just like real irishmen.
except we have self government
Think of all of those fancy moon rockets, which were produced on top of all the reasearch German Military engineers did. Even the safety glass in your car was invented for gas masks long before it was in a car.
When the next great leap in technology takes forward, it will be related either to (a)people killing each other or (b) people looking at each other naked.
In my opinion - If I were a Country trying to defend myself against any military force today that depends on technology, I would attack the orbiting satellites immediately upon the onset of war.
Just my 10 cents though.
I will when *you* will spoon fed eater of propaganda.
Check out this Irish car. What a beauty!
During the last Gulf War (1991?) Saddam Hussein kept up with what was happening by watching CNN. Understanding the power of satellite transmissions, countries like Iran, which keep a tight lid on what's in the news, have yanked satellite dishes from people, (also, as they claim, western TV corrupts the morals. Ha! Leaders ought to know...)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If it goes against the way you want the world to be, it's propaganda, but when it presents a world view you find agreeable...thank god those few noble souls were able to leak out the truth.
"Our love will shine so bright
when we're lovin' via satellite
lo-ove.
Satellite to satellite
lo-ove
satellite to satellite
lo-ove"
Well, there ya go.
http://www.digifuzz.net
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ok, so they are using all of this sweet technology.
Are there not systems (military) designed to trace and home in on communications and control centers?
If I were one of these reporters, I would want to make sure that I was well behind friendly lines. One surface to surface missle can ruin your whole day.
'ta
"They'll bounce over the Iraqi dessert"
Remember the first Gulf war's "noble souls" like Nayirah?
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohen1228.html
Buddy, wake the fuck up. The track record says otherwise.
Although all these new advances in technology are pretty cool, and the leap from what reporters were using last year is exponential, I still get the feeling that between all the media coverage, and the lack of sensitivity of most Americans, this "war" is going to turn into a Fox-style reality TV series. I do think that there should be media coverage, but the coverage needs to remain serious and unbiased (no, not Fox News unbiased, the real unbiased). I don't think this will happen in the near future, but if this trend continues, TV stations could start hyping induvidual battles just to boost ratings. This is similar to what the Romans did when they would recreate battles for the public to see.
If You're Happy and You Know It, Bomb Iraq
by John Robbins
(to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands")
If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are frisky,
Pakistan is looking shifty,
North Korea is too risky,
Bomb Iraq.
If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq.
If we think somebody dissed us, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections,
Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.
It's "pre-emptive non-aggression," bomb Iraq.
Let's prevent this mass destruction, bomb Iraq.
They've got weapons we can't see,
And that's proof enough for me,
If they're not there, they must be,
Bomb Iraq.
If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.
If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq.
If you think Saddam's gone mad
With the weapons that he had,
And he tried to kill your dad,
Bomb Iraq.
Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
For our might knows not our borders, bomb Iraq.
Disagree? We'll call it treason,
Let's make war not love this season,
Even if we have no reason,
Bomb Iraq.
Not -one- American news media outlet covered what Robin Cook had to say in his personal statement to the House of Commons.
I'd say that's objective. Who 0wnz the US media?
I've consulted on a few systems like this before. This article conflates a few different flavors of real-time broadcasting via bird.
The traditional mode uses bidirectional communciation, where the anchor can ask questions of the on-location talent. This has the advantage of being immediate (mostly). However, due to the latency of the encode and transmission, there is always a noticeable delay. These systems tend to use standards-based videoconferencing codecs like H.263. Bang for the bit isn't very good, so the quality is poor over most connections.
The next is real-time unidirectional, like a standard internet live broadcast. The video is transmitted in real-time, but the encoder uses a buffer in order to control data rate better. There can be a 15-20 second delay between something happening at it being seen on television. More modern or even proprietary formats/codecs like MPEG-4, QuickTime, and Windows Media 9 can be used. Thus, quality will be better than the bidirectional mode.
The next is "fast" where a file is compressed locally, and uploaded as a file. Most of the examples from the article of this type, encoding with tools like Movie Maker or Cleaner. The plus of this is that you can use as many bits as you want, so quality can be great, if you can afford the increased upload time. Also, since it uses TCP/IP, there isn't a risk of data corruption from dropped packets. This is fine for anything that isn't breaking news - expect at least an hour or so delay.
For video broadcast, ideally interlaced encoding would be used, but it doesn't sound like it is in these examples. Squeeze certainly can't handle interlaced output for QuickTime, although it can for MPEG-4. Getting the optimum settings for encoding is my area of specialty.
Still, only a few decades ago, the nightly news was produced by guys with film cameras shooting on actual film, and then rushing to get the film developed in time for broadcast. It's amazing how quickly things change.
Ten years from now, upload will probably be built into the cameras - no laptop needed, unless editing locally.
My video compression blog
Does this mean one can broadcast live porn from Iraq? Where do I sign up?
Hey, everyone knows what Einstein had on his mind while with Marilyn (E=MC2 = Erection = Marilyns Carpet and 2 boobs)
"The American TV networks are close to spending $100 million for this transition, anticipating a possible war in Iraq."
Man, they better hurry.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Ok, so:
- NBC is using Apple G4 w/Final Cut Pro and Discreet Cleaner.
- CBS is using Windows PCs w/Avid (editing centers), Adobe Premiere (producers & photojournalists close to action), or MovieMaker 2 (for dumbkopfs?).
- CNN and Fox aren't talking, and ABC's tech wasn't mentioned.
So lets see who flakes out and compare quality and timeliness. B-)
(Note that we'll probably be able to find out what CNN, Fox, and ABC used after the fact, once the info won't give their competitors an advantage.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The new york times had it on the front of the site the minute it reuters. Doesn't mean new york times is good, but it's less sucky than the the McNews on TV. New York Times is basically the best mainstream news source in America. It's still not great but it's better than the rest of the shit.
Read, comprehend and truly understand this (from someone who covered the original Gulf War on NBC):
u d_ stud/index_np.html
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/17/sc
The US, who prides itself on democracy, has shown its true colours.
Democracy works so long as everyone agrees with the short-sighted American foreign policy.
If another WTC happens, your hands are covered in blood.
YAY FOR THE WORLD!!!
Well, here's a spin. NBC vs. CBS.
According to the article, the NBC guy uses a Mac, CBS guy uses Win XP.
Now that's something slashdotters can argue about!
Why is this flaimbait? This post is absolutely right. Remember the Wired article post on Slashdot about the transition to the whole hydrogen economy. If the US were to spend the money needed to conduct a war on Iraq on reducing dependency on foreign oil and alternative energy sources, the US wouldn't need to go to war for oil's sake... The US and the rest of the civilised world could tell the towelheads to suck sand and watch them fall back into the stone age without Western money and technology.
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Oil companies are already backing Bush on this war, and why wouldn't they? Like any corporation, they're just seeking maximum profit. Now the news networks all have multi-million dollar incentives to ensure a war. It seems like we're caught in a catch 22 here. Every company that suspects a war is going to happen and thus "invests" in it, adds to the economic inertia which will ensure that it does in fact proceed.
You where right! It just said he resigned but it didn't carry the unedited statement.
Can you believe news of the impending war is sending stocks surging!!
That's disgusting!
What kind of fucking system is this where mass slaughter and violence raises stock prices!
So this is bushes plan to revive wall street? Murder his way to a revived market?
Fuck that!
BY BRIBING THE OFFICIALS!
You, your patriotic propoganda machines are just as dirty as your executives.
USA - Home of the fee, land of the grave.
Will read it on the net from a foreign news source just like I would anyways, anything else is so slanted and pre-digested as to be worthless for news anyways.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
When you heard imperialism is the highest form of capitalism you thought it wasn't true?
It seems to me the US miltary isn't really going to want the eyes of the world watching its every move. What an easy way to silence any "uncensored" news. After all, the US has already warned journalists that they won't be able to post their stories from Iraq, and that they might as well go home now.
IMO, this is a point worth talking about. One side effect of technology has often been the erosion of jobs. In some cases, it's been as simple as machines reducing the need for laborers. This is a different case. The technology ("desktop video," for instance) seems to offer more options and flexibility to each reporter. The indirect effect, however, is that the overall product suffers. A reporter puts together his own piece of video. This is cheaper than paying a video producer, but the work is likely of lower quality. Untrained, the reporter cannot equally utilize the software; and more importantly, he lacks the seasoned wisdom of the experienced professional in making judgments -- which angle to use, which clips to cut, which order to sequence, etc. (Not being a professional myself, I don't know precisely how many variables there are. Anyone else want to weigh in?)
Ask any elder newspaperman, and he'll likely tell you his first complaint about today's journalists: "They can't fucking write." Last Wednesday, the New York Times website's front-page photo was captioned, "Ana Palacio, Spain's foreign minister, told reporters today that a draft resolution on Iraq that it supports along with the U.S. may not be put to a vote to avoid a French veto." No, it's not incomprehensible (contrasted with some examples), but how the hell did that dreck get onto the front page?
Spell-check software has replaced practicing editors, in many newsrooms. A month or so ago, MSNBC ran an article about Cardinal Law's decision to step down, and it mentioned some Boston politicians who had visited Rome to offer their support. One of the names in the article? FBI "Ten Most Wanted" fugitive Whitey Bulger. Obviously, the writer meant to name brother Billy Bulger, a former president of the Massachusetts Senate. That mistake never would have made it past an experienced, practicing editor. But a spell-checker is indifferent to glaring factual errors, and text entry into HTML is a simple task. So writers end up looking like buffoons.
"Specialization" was one of the first trends in industrial society. When technology becomes more accessible, "specialists" are no longer needed. And more often than not, this results in (1) more people able to produce the work, and (2) far fewer people able to produce the work at an expert level.
Pros vs. Cons: Is it better to have more voices in the mix, or for the expert voices not to be drowned out? Is it better to practice reporting and video-editing and HTML now, to be competent at all three later...or is it better to be the best damn reporter, later, who admittedly can't tell RealPlayer from Napster? I'd tell my reporters to leave the video to the engineers, and to concentrate on reporting. When you get untrained amateurs trying to compete with professionals, you end up with Ain't It Cool News.
crib
Please don't read my journal
Anonymous Coward modding in action!!!
Well, check this out...
8 82 459,00.html
http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,
But, "French Fries" aren't French. Reaching way back to my high school French, I think the term in French is, "Le pommme de terre frite." (sorry if I butchered that but I remember the phonetic pronunciation better than the spelling. Hey, its only been 30 some years!). If I recall correctly, the British came up with the term "French Fries" for deep fried potatoes since they associated deep frying with the French.
So, I kind of find the whole "French Fries" vs. "Freedom Fries" thing humorous since the French are probably asking, "What's a 'french fry?'"
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
The aluminum tube documents where forgeries anyways. Of course all the "evidence" against saddam has been proven fake...but the news never mentions that...accept in the 4th page in some small paragraph underneath a giant advertisement or something...
A quick question for someone who might know. This talk of taking out satellites got me wondering if an EMP could be used to accomplish this. Can EMP's travel into space? Do the satellites have shielding against this? It is just an interesting thought especially when one considers how much intelligence and surveillance means to a successful war. Building a device that could generate a blanket EMP would probably be easier to accomplish (or aquire) than targeting with missles.
Admittedly, I am out of my area of expertise here, so if someone more knowlegable than I could comment, I would greatly appreciate it. I certainly hope that this is not a possibility.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
too bad these networks couldn't also invest in some decent reporters willing to ask the difficult questions of who/how/why/is forsaking the world to depose of an isolated dictator worth it?
oh well. they'll have plenty of opportunities to do so wherever the U.S. invades next. (Iran? N. Korea? Egypt? Pakistan?)
sig my booty, check my website
On a related note, you might like to read this article in Wired, documenting very much your position, and that of many other US Citizens, it would seem.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Another great journalistic fuck-up was attributing the phrase, "there's a sucker born every minute", to P.T. Barnum. People willingly question the integrity of politicians, but as Bullwinkle said, "if it's in the newspaper, it must be true."
And now we have Satellite to bring the errors to you real-time! Yow!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The French dont give a fuck. All the wine and french products in the US have already been paid for. So all the idiots are doing are pouring US money down the drain.
And as for boycotting french restaurants and such like, non-french US citizens work there. By not going they are making the US economy even worse than it presently is as workers are laid off.
So the burning question of the day is, can we re-train all the liberal-arts majors out there working at McD's to say, "Do you want freedom fries with that?"
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
But the reason nobody wants to do that is that expending a nuclear device of the size and power that would fry a single satellite (about 50,000 volts) would not be very cost effective. You can't expect enemy satellites to line up and wait for an EMP blast. Space - even around commercial and military orbits - is largely empty most of the time.
EMP weapons are meant to be used against population/industrial centers and they are detonated in the atmosphere. Killing a satellite with a single missile hit (kinetic or otherwise) is a much cheaper proposition.
That's already happened. One of the current Sony DV (or MiniDV) cameras has built-in Bluetooth, with a touch-screen LCD that can be used to browse the Web and e-mail movies or pics. So if you had a Bluetooth phone, I guess you could e-mail your footage directly (although slowly, I guess).
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
You use non-nuclear EMP generators, such as the ones used to shoot down Flight 93. Mounted in a C-130, these things will easily be transportable in space by the Shuttle or Buran, or even built in space with components flown in by Soyuz cargo spacecraft.
Absolutely... Murdoch and Redstone can fake their enmity in public all they want. But its clearly obvious that the main idea here is to CONFUSE and thus effectively remove the viewer as a person who understands anything and can have a firm grip on reality. THe Mediea lies, conives. It sucks. It literally rots your brain.
/.?
Time for alternative news. Maybe one sponsored by
"All right, let me see if I understand the logic of .
this correctly. We are going to ignore the United
Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that
the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to
wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war
The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be
taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to
guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is
too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I
getting this right?
Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is
to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then
we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy,
as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a
little thing like democracy as they define it. Also,
in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at
home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves.
We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's
failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are
sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make
the point that might does not make right, as Saddam
Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting
the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us
oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition.
We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his
own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in
the world, fail to understand that, then we have no
choice but to ignore them."-
by PETER FREUNDLICH
that I am not as alone as a .01 %er that the media mogul above seems to think.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Just so long as we get to see more of Theora, er, Control
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I dunno. Probably depends on how strongly he felt about Minix...
And I suppose there is one other benefit Fox sees from lying. I can almost hear the laywers saying "We can't copyright facts, but hey, if we make it up, that's fair game for copyright law. Then we can whip out the DCMA and sue someone if they try to report on our lies." Clever. Very clever.
Well, considering how much the big channels repeat stuff over and over, why not send multiple versions?
The equipment on the remote end can build a high-quality version, but during the first run, use the "traditional mode" to get on the air right away.
Once that's done, it can be fixed up a bit and retransmitted using "real-time unidirectional" or "fast".
In the case of an interview type broadcast, the next step would be to put timing marks in the interview style stuff, so that once the high-quality stuff comes back from the field, it can be spliced in where the original "traditional" signal was.
This way, you get your stuff up fast, and on the 2nd or 3rd rotation, you have a higher quality broadcast.
I'm french canadian(yep, kicked some nazi ass and didn't surrender) and we call them "frittes" not La pomme de terre frite that would be like calling french fries fried Potatoes. Btw, if french fries==freedom fries does french=freedom. You guys should consider sending back the statue of liberty too.
I work for CNN and as the article says, "Fox and CNN flat out refuse to discuss the technology they have in place", so I can't say much. But I will say that we have been gearing up for this for almost as long as Bush has been rattling his oily sabres. Those HumVee's look pretty amazing (I'd love to post pictures, but can't -- maybe someone else will). There damn well better be a war, we need to pull in some serious ad revenue to pay for it all ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
Hear hear! What the hell is a well-written comment like this doing in Slashdot? CJR --> Brill --> Slashdot? :)
One simple rule for its versus it's
For those who haven't heard George Bush has just delivered an ultimatum to Saddam to get out of Iraq within 48 hours or there will be a war.
I know my feelings on this and I am not going to start a flame war about the rights or wrongs of the impending war. Just letting people know.
As a SNG engineer myself, I've worked on several of these flyaway systems, one of which is sitting in Qatar (sp?) right now. A lot of networks are using non-live "store and forward" IP-based video filing systems. Video is encoded in a quicktime format, and sent over low-earth orbit satellite telephone/data networks. Its cheaper than getting a 5.5mbps slot needed for live DVB video transmission. Its going to be interesting to see what happens when hell breaks loose and everyone wants to buy satellite bandwidth to go live. I wonder if there will be enough capacity... In the last war CNN had an underground hardline from their hotel in Baghdad so they could do live audio. But now, everyone will want to go live with realtime video, and with affiliate services and networks its going to be a logjam on Intelsat. Bob
I attended a lecture by R. W. Lucky last week, and one of the points he made was that the only thing left to charge for, after bandwidth and processing become practically free, is content. For example, apropos to this topic, well-edited high-quality reporting. Sure, you can have webcams showing every square inch of the planet, but it takes a NYT or CNN to filter that down to something that the average human can digest, given that we all live in real time.
The New York Times survives because of their extremely high journalistic standards (editorial blind spots notwithstanding). CNN has a massive news ingest operation (trust me :) focused on winnowing it down to Good Reporting and Captivating Video. People will pay for this filtered content, even in a world where the raw data is free and easily available. Or so we hope, otherwise we can all look forward to more adolescent shite like Fox News and Drudge ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
If any of you were dissapointed by bush and want to see a really interesting speech, try to watch robin cook's speech in the british parliament where he has resigned his job as a highly paid government cabinet minister in protest against blair's hawkish stance.
some channels may carry this (e.g. bbc parliament digital channel is carrying it tomorrow morning around 10.30 I think?)
48 hours.
Whatever you think about George W. you have to admit, he is not fucking around!
Blogging because I can...
Considering the likelyhood of being able to find a working net connection (or whatever) in the average war zone...
;)
War zones ain't nothing! Try and get one in the outer suburbs!
--R
I never knew how much dessert they have over there
Mulder? Is that you?
BSA Hotline: Hello, would you like to report piracy?
Mr X: Yes, I know some people that don't seem to have thier software licneses.
BSA Hotline: Can you tell us who's software is involved?
Mr X: Microsoft, Adobe and others...
BSA Hotline: They sound like our members. We will arrange for an audit at once. Where are they?
Mr X: They were last seen at large airbase in central Saudi Arabia
BSA Hotline: You mean Dhahran?
Mr X: No, near Riyadh
BSA Hotline: Sorry. [BSA hotline guy downs a shot]
[moments latter -- A troop of Marines are pinned down at a very forward position. Their "embedded" photo journalist is trying to get a good shot for the station back home...]
BSA Dude: We are here to audit your software, can you show me the licneses?
PhotoJ: What? Can't you see I'm kind of busy right now?
BSA Dude: We have a warrant.
PhotoJ: How did you get that here?
BSA Dude: Do you have the orignals with you? CD's, software boxes, receipts, licneses?
PhotoJ: They are all back at the office, can't you see theres a war here?
BSA Dude: I can see you don't want to cooperate
[BSA dude walks away for a bit of privacy and pulls out his cell/sat phone]
BSA Dude: Looks like we got one red handed...
[Pan to a pair of F15's at 75,000 ft, 100 miles away]
F15 Jocky: TopDog 7, Roger that, bogie is an unauthorized radio source
AWACS op: Topdog 7 and 8 are authorized to neutralize...
[back where the action is]
BSA Dude: [still on the sat phone] I think we should make an example of this one
[boom]
All this tech looks really impressive, but don't count on real coverage affter all this is a war we are fighting to win not to pull out because of political pressure, count on some quality propaganda
I have seen more with low tech 128kbs video feed because it's from the perspective of those getting bombed rather then those dropping them.
--I am guessing syria next. Both israel and their allies in the US mideast conquering faction want the whole thing, so syria makes the most sense for the next target. Iran (let's assume it, safe bet) and north korea have nukes, they will be tougher. Once iraq and syria are controlled, re supply from the med is a piece of cake, no need to even involve turkey. Iran then is in a pincer, we can stage out of afghanistan and maybe pakistan as well as iraq. They will have to locate the nukes in iran first so they can be taken out first strike. North korea they will ignore as long as possible, because there's no easy to take them without irradiating parts of japan and china and russia. Even those EMP conventions they have won't do squat to 1950s era diesel tech. It would take over lapping neutron bombs, a lot of them, in a first strike,other EMP weapons, lots of conventionals, etc, because one single salvo from north koreas entrenched arty and missile batteries would cause significant damage to the south. Tough nut to crack all things considered.
Big wild card is, do any of these other target nations have secret treaties with each other? How long will they stand down and watch while one after another get picked off before they decide their only hope is a massive first strike back, using both conventional and as much assymetrical tactics as they can muster? and what's smuggled into the US already, that can be used anytime they get a go signal?
Some other nations of interest, yemen, libya, sudan. They might even stage a coup in saudi arabia if it looks like the princes are bugging out.
Another question is, in the medium term what will this do as regards russia and china? If they do nothing, they lose billions, plus much international face. China in particular can NOT afford to lose the cheap and easy access they are counting on to mideast oil for the next decade or two, my guess is they were planning on straight swaps eventually, bulk crude for manufactured goods, eliminate any dollar or euro middle man skim.
Here's a real wild one I read someplace. Suppose those stories of stolen russky nukes are real, and they managed to get at least a few of them upgraded and fixed so they are functional. Maybe they are buried on approaches to baghdad, to be used as whopper land mines.
It really just depends, saddam has had decades to think about things, if he decides a samson option is his only option, take as many with him as he can, there's no real way to predict anything. No nation has a complete lock on technology or cunning.
Even though I think the kindest thing we could do for the Iraqi people right now is remove Hussein from power...
Man, that was funny. Gonna be humming that for the rest of the day.
Instead of Iraq, bomb NIGERIA!
This country, well-known for its CAPS-ONLY keyboards, uses their weapons of mass destruction of the Internet e-mail system all the time.
This has to be stopped to prevent the eventual destruction of the e-mail system.
Intriguing idea.
And actually quite possible with current technology. You can start uploading the movie as soon as it is acquired, in parallel with the editing. Once the editing is done, you send up what is basically an Edit Decision List, telling how the final movie should be put together.
This is trivial with either Avid or Final Cut Pro, both of which can export what's called a "Reference Movie" which doesn't duplicate any local data. It basically is a metafile which says which and where from other files the data should come from. The only unique local data would be audio and any frames that have been changed from the source, like transitions. Alternatively, you could just upload the project file itself.
My video compression blog
Yeah, this happens with all kinds of enabling technologies, from the typewriter on down. When fewer people are required to make a given work of art, two things happen:
The percentage of good stuff goes down.
With fewer copyeditors, or more people graduating from art school, or whatever, more of the stuff that hits the market is stuff that wouldn't have survived the process before. Think of all the crappy movies that are being shot on DV now. How many of those would have been funded if they had cost as much as a 16mm production?
The absolute amount of good stuff goes up.
Still, most of the stuff that would have happened before still happens, plus some of the new lower budget stuff actually winds up being pretty good. So there's still more good stuff to watch/read/listen to than ever before, even if the filtering process is more challenging.
My video compression blog
Good points. One of the definite trends is the use of off the shelf PC/consumer equipment in these kinds of high end uses. Bluetooth? Ten years ago, the cable you used to connect a videocamera used for news to a deck was a bizzare things that no consumer would ever have seen. Looked like something that Fox Mulder would have been tortured with. Now, we're talking a cheap thing meant for cell phones.
Still, Bluetooth doesn't have the bandwidth for even DV video. It'd have to be a more compressed bitstream than that. But the consumer electronic industry has a lot of those in progress to!
My video compression blog
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2858957.stm
Cook systamatically rips apart the pro-war stance, and in particular wipes the floor with Blair's strategy.
And the US military loves the idea of satellite journalism: after all, it has stated that it will target and destroy journalists whose reporting it does not approve of.
How about just sitting back as Bush turns into Hitler?
George W Bush is an evil terrorist and must be killed before he kills others.
War is peace.
French fries are freedom fries.
We have always been at war with Iraq.
http://www.gulufuture.com/news/kate_adie030310.htm
Motto: "If it's not U.S government approved American News, you don't need to hear it".
Was "over there" for Desert Storm.... Staying "over HERE" for this one....
The number 1 problem of working in a cubicle - 23 power cords, 1 outlet...
No, if the security council was truly democratic, we would have had the resolution passed because France couldn't outright veto it. But I wouldn't want a democratic UN anyway. I like the "unfair" advantage the veto power gives us.
Last night George W Bush said the Nazis were right, and international law is wrong.
We'll give back the Statue of Liberty when they send back our boys at Normandy.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
Baaaaaaaaaaaaa
Try thinking on your own and seeking other sources for input. You might be suprised, that thing that is holding your ears apart actually has other uses. I seek news from several sources hopefully to allow me to process a more complete view. To depend on the US news sources is foolish and naive in the extreme. That is like depending on Israel to tell the WHOLE story about the middle east conflict...IMPOSSIBLE.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
needless to say, there's so much wrong with this that i don't even know where to start...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
I am considering the difficulty involved with getting, say, a single envelope from Iraq to the United States. Or let's pick something even more trivial-- a screwdriver. Any physical object will do. It's not easy. On a scale of 'easy' to 'hard', I'd say it's more difficult than getting an airplane from Boston to New York. So why are we attacking? By all logic, we ought to be bombing Boston. My question is: "Why attack another, very remote country because we think that it'll sell WMDs to terrorists, when terrorists have already adequately proven that they can use the WMDs in our own country just fine?" e.g. commercial aircraft
Bucketworks: a von Neumann School Factory
On one hand, we should've gotten rid of Saddam the first time around. I agree that he needs to go and something needs to be done about him (and should've been done long ago).
On the other hand, I don't think that it should be done at the cost of pissing off the entire fucking planet in the process, while ignoring the fact that our economy is in a hole, and the uncertainty about Iraq (Both in general paranoia and in oil prices) is killing what's left of our economy.
Screw Iraq. Bomb Florida, this is all their fault.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I think it's coffee. It's got about the right color and is probably carrying out a little turd with it. Besides you know how strange some Japanese sexual kinks are... no body hair for one thing. And the Japanese like hydrogen beer for another... Finally there is a special "gourmet" coffee that they have in Japan where they make monkeys eat coffee beans and then they dig them out of the monkey droppings to make coffee. I shit you not... my girlfriend in college worked at a coffee shop and the Japanese would always come in to special order this stuff.
Any network that has to advertise: "Real and Unbiased News" ....
It's like any discipline that was the word "Science" is not really a science, i.e. political science, social science...
waster of my time this week, but it is friday and watching the ITN footage of the 'shock & awe' attack ranks as slightly more interesting, but thanks for the diversion. TGIF and again I did not mean a personal attack just a difference of opinions...Cheers
/. beyond the space and time consuming threaded view.
BTW I've ensured that your comments don't get reparented so there will be no more confusion. There are numerous other ways to view
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?