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The Ballpark Stadium of the Future

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-cellphone-isn't-that-cool dept.

thejrwr writes to mention a CNN article about the ballpark stadium of the future. The new Cisco stadium for the Oakland A's will be a paragon of the company's technologies, with cellphones carrying personal data used for advertising and identification purposes. "Cisco, which makes the routers, switches and other devices used to link networks and direct traffic on the Internet, is trying to shed its image as solely a maker of networking infrastructure gear. The company also hopes to capitalize on products and services that utilize the network. One example is TelePresence, a technology similar to video conferencing that Cisco introduced last month that aims to deliver a three-dimensional feeling that the participants are all in the same room."

9 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Technology advances... by Duncan3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ad technology that is.

    The best part is you cannot leave the stadium until you buy at least $100 worth of advertised product, but you get to do it with your cellphone! Yay, how cool! Go Cisco!

    People really still drag themselves to a stadium through all that traffic when HDTV exists?

    .

    --
    - Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
    1. Re:Technology advances... by Kangburra · · Score: 4, Insightful
      People really still drag themselves to a stadium through all that traffic when HDTV exists?


      Yes, social interaction, atmosphere, making friends etc.

      It's not just about the game, there's more to it than that.
      --
      Common sense is not so common
    2. Re:Technology advances... by drsquare · · Score: 4, Informative
      Yes, social interaction, atmosphere, making friends etc.


      Not to mention, being able to look at any part of the field you want, not the very small section the director wants you to look at, or a closeup of some celebrity in the crowd, or some commercials, or an irrelevent replay from ten minutes ago, or some talking heads, or any other crap that gets in the way which is avoided by actually going to the game.

      You can have the biggest resolution TVs in the world, it still won't count for anything until they invent a technology which allows you to see the entire field, all the time, completely uninterrupted. And no announcers.
  2. Waste of taxpayer money by portforward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Look, I have nothing against sports, or sports fans. If they want to go cheer whomever they want, that is fine. Just pay for the building yourself, don't use my tax dollars. Case in point - my hometown Seattle. Apparently nobody liked it because it wasn't new enough or old enough. (the problem with the ceiling tiles was fixable for less than a half billion dollars) So, they tore down the Kingdome to make room for two half-billion dollar buildings. (I heard that there was still three years left on the bonds for the Kingdome - the county hadn't finished paying the mortgage!)

    One of those buildings is perhaps used 14 days out of the year. In it, the second richest man in the world pays 50 odd men multiple million dollars a year a piece to play a child's game. As a tax payer and potential fan, I have to pay a lot of money to see the inside of a resource that I pay for.

    I don't buy the "increased tax revenue" bit- people would spend their money in other ways. It isn't like I can tell my friends, "hey let's go down to the stadium and play football on the grass". This is a pure taxpayer takeaway, and it sickens me how city after city falls for it. If they want to conduct a business, they should have to pay for the facility just like any other business.

  3. terminology change by cucucu · · Score: 3, Funny

    pitch: ping
    home run: tracert
    out: ttl expired

    you say...

  4. Or they could just make the game more exciting.... by antifoidulus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I haven't watched baseball in a while(I'm from Pittsburgh, so maybe that explains why :P) but on a recent trip to Japan I was in Hiroshima and heard that you just HAVE to see a Hiroshima Carp game. So I plunked down the 2000 yen to get a pretty good seat on a bench(there are security guards there whose job it is to find people seats) and was amazed at just how much fun baseball really could be. From the cheers to the fast pace of the game(9 innings only took 2 hours and some change IIRC) it was an environment I had never seen in the US. It was organized chaos.

    Granted, the players in the US are probably better than the Japanese players, but damn the Japanese games are much more fun to watch.

    --
    Monstar L
  5. Tickets by cnorrisjr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    if your ticket was on your cellphone, you would never lose your ticket. BUT. if your cellphone is stolen, there goes your game, if not the whole series. And what if you wanted to sell your tickets or give them to a friend. would my friend have to take my cell phone?

  6. Corporate Dollars by wanax · · Score: 4, Informative

    First of all, I'd like to point people to: http://www.fieldofschemes.com/ which details how sports teams use public money. Although the editorial is certainly against stadiums, the numbers are about the best you can find.

    Since I've been following the A's stadium on the site mentioned above for over a year, I can tell you that it is by no means a done deal. Among other things, there aren't enough police to regulate games, and who's to pay for the increase necessary for that is absent in the current deal.

  7. You what ??? by sane? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, lets get this straight. The local government pays for team stadia in the US? That's insane. In the UK not only is it private money, often the teams will have to bribe the local council with roads, housing etc. to be allowed to build in the first place.

    Sounds like someone is missing a trick