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IT Meets the World Cup
daria42 writes "Looks as if there are some mad soccer fans at ZDNet ... they have compiled a guide to some of the IT systems behind the soccer World Cup. 'What does it take to design, build and operate an advanced, fault-tolerant IP network while the whole world watches?' one of the articles asks. Another looks at how broadcasters have beefed up their infrastructure as they prepare for an influx of fans desperate for information, while another looks at one of the upcoming matches: FIFA vs. Hackers."
I'm more interested in what FIFA is going to do about the rampant racism that often surrounds European football more than what they'll do against hackers. It's very real and very scary for people of color (as Henry has talked about).
I think this was brought up recently - how can I watch the games streaming in the U$A?
I live in the US and I love soccer(football), people ask why haven't we really adopted soccer as widely as the rest of the world did, it's still relatively young but things like this (charging to see the games) are impeding the wide adoptation of it. Companies are so short-sighed and just want to profit as much as they can, instead of stepping back and letting us American see the games for free and help build a soccer fan-base that could be comparable to any other.
The real question should be:
What does it take to make Americans watch Football
And not for nothing but I have only once in my life watched an entire game of Football/Soccer. Ireland v Italy from the Meadowlands, in 1994.
Kind of like the Super Bowl except more people watch a single World Cup than like every Super Bowl combined. Kind of like comparing the Super Bowl to a local youth championship in some sport.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Soccer is *not* relatively young in the U.S. It has been a member of FIFA since 1914, and was one of 13 nations in the first World Cup in 1930.
There are over 200 NCAA Division I men's soccer teams, and yet professional soccer in the U.S. is a curiosity at best. Why is this? I think the reasons may be more deeply rooted in the American need to be unique and dominant (see "American-invented sports" such as baseball, football, basketball, NASCAR, etc.) rather than in soccer's popularity or approachability. I will posit that *at least* 1 in 4 kids in the U.S. have played soccer at some point in their youths.
But to say that soccer is not popular in this country because it is 'young' is patently false.
Being a huge football fan (21 minutes to go!) I have to say "Bollocks".
"The first stage was gathering a lot of information. We went back 20 years and collected all sorts of information about the teams; things like team performance, score and scorers."
Shame that the none of the teams and player are the same as 20 years ago. Injuries are going to play a major part in this year's cup and there is no way you can account for them.
Want to predict the outcome? Go with the bookmakers. They are rarely wrong.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
It's more "World" than the "World Series".
Which is, as everyone knows, called "The World Series" because it was originally sponsored by a (now defunct) newspaper called "The World".
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
World Cup 2006 'abused for mega-surveillance project'
NATO surveillance planes to patrol World Cup
Erich Mielke would be happy.
Actually, in English, it is called 'football'.
... where have I seen that before? Oh, right, all of human history.
Aah, selective history. Gotta love it.
It was originally called "association football". Americans shortened it to "soccer" (aSSOC...). Brits shortened it to "football". Both sides claim to be right. Both sides are.
Two countries each thinking the other is wrong
Word American football comes from the lenght of the ball - it's 1 foot.
The only way companies in the US would let soccer take off in the US if the rules were changed to allow timeouts every minute to fit a million commericals in.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
Watching people get excited at a basketball score every 2 seconds makes me laugh everytime. That really is the sport of people with ADD.
Are you telling me gridiron fans don't get excited when one of their players is tackled just before reaching the tryline? Or that a baseball fan isn't excited when a player hits the ball that just falls short of going into the crowd?
Why not? It's the greatest and most nerve-wracking spectacle in sport. Nothing comes close.
It's beautiful in its simplicity. A simple, twelve-yard kick. Not like in ice-hockey where you get to run up and get comfortable on the puck, you have to hit it cold. A penalty kick is the easiest thing to do in football, but in a situation where if you miss, your country is eliminated from the world cup, breaking the hearts of tens of millions of your countrymen watching on TV, it becomes the hardest thing to do in the world. It's so straightforward to score a penalty, that humiliation of missing is crushing, the pressure is unmatched anywhere in sport.
The sixty-yard walk from the centre-circle to the penalty spot becomes sixty miles. The eight-foot by eight-yard goal becomes eight by eight inches. The six-foot seven goalkeeper becomes sixty feet tall, the ball is a lump of iron. Your legs become heavy, a billion people are watching you, waiting for you to fail and humiliate yourself.
A joke? I don't think so.