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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."

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  1. 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.