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China Announces Launch-Success Details — Before Launch
Ironsides writes "After faking the fireworks at the Olympics this year, one would have thought China had learned their lesson. Now, it appears they announced the success of their manned space mission before liftoff even occured, complete with dialogue."
Nothing like a guaranteed success
It looks like we'll be seeing $2 time machines imported from China any day now....
Also leaked was a transcipt for their prospective moon landing...
Shenzhou 11: Base this is Shenzhou 11. Shenzhou has landed. Jesus H. Christ Base, We're on the fucking moon. Over.
Base: Roger, Shenzhou, we copy you. We cannot believe you are on the fucking moon. Repeat: Cannot fucking believe it. Over.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Yeah, but because of timezones, it's already tomorrow over there, right?
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
They said it would be open, honest, and transparent so as to let everyone get a glimpse into this historic achievement as a gesture of kindness toward the world. I actually thought about watching it for a few seconds, because there is only so much I thought they could think they could get away with. I guess I needed another reminder.
Don't news agencies prepare stories before it happens so they can be published quickly? There was that article about Steve Jobs' demise which obviously did not happen.
You didn't get the memo?
That announcement was yesterday.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Don't they celebrate the new year before that happens too?
I figure that's what's happening here.
My memory must be slipping. I could have sworn they announced it next weekend.
It isn't that uncommon for Press Releases announcing the success of an event to be drafted before the event takes place.
Sure, fabricating the actual dialogue ahead of time is shadier than most.. but really what they're doing isn't THAT different from what we do in America every day. It's only garnering attention because it was leaked, but I can't imagine that anyone who says they're shocked by this isn't feigning that shock.
You could just as easily be just as shocked at a Presidential candidate accidentally releasing both a victory speech and a concession speech before knowing the outcome of an election. It's not really news, it's just humorous that it was posted (way) too prematurely.
How many people are honestly surprised at this?
I'm not sure I believe the video either.
If they're lying about their success (and yes, even if the mission turns out to be a success, they're still lying by announcing it early) then what else are they lying about?
For all we know dozens of taikonauts have died or been wounded in the making of China's space program.
They wouldn't tell us if it was the case.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Personally, I'm not all that impressed by this incident. The Chinese lied about putting people in orbit? Please. Our government faked an entire moon landing. They have a long way to go before they'll catch up with us.
Yeah, but as others have pointed out, such scripted articles and speeches don't include supposed dialog from the future.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
..and they have the ability to launch them within 45 minutes.
Ron Paul!
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
But we've always been at war with East Asia!
Pilot: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Ground Control: We get signal.
Pilot: What !
Ground Control: Main screen turn on.
Pilot: It's you !!
Technician: How are you gentlemen !!
Technician: All your base are belong to us.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Actually, newspapers print extracts from speeches politicians haven't yet given all the time - because they're scripted days in advance and, these days, intentionally provided to the press.
If you look at the 'dialog' in the story it's really nothing of the sort. It's canned phrases. Just like, as someone already noted, "One small step..." So there's obviously some phrases that it is known will be used during a successful launch, so the journalist can take a short cut in writing a story about it...
All major news outlets have pre-written obituaries for just about every major celebrity who's vaguely within range of snuffing it. Every few months there's a 'controversy' when one of 'em gets mistakenly published. I don't really see any difference to that...
Yes, and the obituary of every major public figure has already been written as well. Such prep pieces are responsible practice for newspapers that have to be ready on-the-spot.
This wasn't one of those pieces. This was an entire narrative complete with faked dialogue and details, such as being complete ahead of schedule. This wasn't preparation -- this was deception.
Unfortunately, lately we seem to have absolutely no room to talk, given the practices of our own "You-have-to-give-me-700-billion-dollars-right-now-no-questions-asked-or-there-will-be-disaster" government.
No, no, you should have said "Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter"
"You could just as easily be just as shocked at a Presidential candidate accidentally releasing both a victory speech and a concession speech before knowing the outcome of an election. It's not really news, it's just humorous that it was posted (way) too prematurely."
Only if it included the exact vote totals.
Yes, the dialogue inclusion is the particularly bad part about this. And it coming from a place that is known to censor things it does not like, lie about what it does, and generally be evil. IN isolation it would be seen as funny. In this case it is part of a pattern. That is what sets it apart from the occasional news gaffe of releasing the wrong story ("DEWEY WINS!").
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
"After faking their fireworks?"
Please.
All the fireworks were real. The thing you're referring to is a sequence of fireworks that wasn't filmed for television and was replaced by CGI.
The reason that the sequence - a series of giant "footsteps" across parts of Beijing - was not filmed was that it was deemed too dangerous to follow the fireworks with a helicopter and camera.
The fireworks, of course, actually happened, and the stadium coverage of the fireworks were all real. Get your facts straight.
With made in china on the bottom...
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
World: You lied to me
China: It wasn't lies, it was just... bullshit
The same happened here. The "faked" dialogue was nothing more than dummy text.
The Chinese never heard of lorem ipsum??
Either way, these samples have all been independently tested to prove that they were not from the planet Earth. If they can fly rocks back, they sure as hell can fly back astronauts. Furthermore, every one of the conspiracy theorists theories have been thoroughly debunked. There is no smoking gun. The van allen radiation belts would not have had much impact since their trajectory mostly avoided them and they passed through them in a very short period of time. The shuttle has passed through them at least once with no ill effects. Not everything you read is true I'm afraid.
zosxavius photography
The story about the fireworks can be found here for those interested BTW.
It fell. Pretty obvious really, moon is up there, we are down here. That's how gravity works. The moon's pretty unstable - look at how it keeps changing shape. Amazing anything really stays up there. I believe they tried to throw it back but it just fell again.
Google News will never make such silly mistakes like Xinhua does. They only reincarnate the old ones. Subscribe to Google News today!
Some consider China a threat. When ruled by ideology, group think, and the lowest common denominator, this is what you get.
May I please have my frontal lobotomy if I bring back the ashtrays?
NBC commentators said during the scene: "Your looking at a cinematic device, employed by Zhang Yimou here. This is actually almost animation. "
What's part of that didn't you understand? Additionally, if that wasn't clear, it's hardly the fault of the Chinese that the commentators didn't make it clear for you.
I didn't actually watch the opening ceremonies. I'm not a big pageantry fan. If they made a comment that that's what was being done, then I don't see what the fuss was about, but all the articles I read in the news gave the impression that that wasn't mentioned.
However, if those were the words spoken, then that's not very clear at all. A "cinematic device" could mean practically anything -- from an admission of computer-edited broadcast to a description of "real, live" special effects on the ground like one would use in making a non-CGFX movie to a commentary on the way he was telling the story in the pageant, and "actually almost animation" makes it seems like it's not actually animation. Do you see how ambiguous those words are and why people might've been confused?
Numerous people have pointed out this is probably either filler dialog or scripted dialog that is expected to be said, a practice employed by media outlets around the world. Why do you feel the need to ignore this and jump to the conclusion of deception?
A) Because being "filler" or "scripted" dialog in no way makes this not deception -- in fact that makes it explicitly deception.
B) "All the cool kids do it too!" is no defense for any kind of wrongdoing.
C) Maybe it hasn't dawned on you that we don't *like* the practice of faking dialog and presenting it to the public as real, no matter the motivations behind it.
Why are you so quick to jump to defend the practice of pulling the wool over the public's eyes with scripted, PR spin of a historical event? Is this something you support the media doing (state-run or not)? Would Apollo 11 have been better if NASA had actually recorded the conversations with Neil Armstrong on a sound-stage?
Doing a little prep-work for a final article is one thing. Putting the words into the mouths of real people connected with real historical events and passing them off as the truth is another.
Do we really live in such a cynical, post-truth world that this doesn't matter at all to you?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The difference between dummy text and "deception" is that the dummy text is not supposed to end up published. It seems likely that this article was published by accident, which makes it likely that this is in fact dummy text. I did not read any part of the parent's post that defended the publishing of propaganda.
Perhaps you wrote your reply in advance, not reading what you replied to, and accidentally posted it.
No, THEY didn't, your media outlet did.
How did you watch the games, by Chinese broadcast, or by your own country's broadcaster? I watched the intro on Australian, Canadian and American networks and got different views of the opening ceremonies.
One of those even bothered to point out that the footsteps were taped beforehand and given to the outlets as pre-made footage to be played.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The difference between dummy text and "deception" is that the dummy text is not supposed to end up published. It seems likely that this article was published by accident, which makes it likely that this is in fact dummy text. I did not read any part of the parent's post that defended the publishing of propaganda.
Your argument is known as "begging the question."
1) Dummy text and deception differ in that dummy text isn't intended to be published.
2) The article was accidentally published.
3) Therefore the text in the article was dummy text and can't be an attempt at deception.
That's nonsense. You presuppose that scripted events can't be accidentally released and that the accidental release of the article proves that it's not deliberate falsehood. Your logic is built on a foundation of sand.
Just because the article was published by accident doesn't mean that what's in the article isn't propaganda that was going to go out later if the accident hadn't occurred. The level of specific detail -- including conversations and comments on the timing of events -- suggest a finished story, reporting on facts that could not be determined until after the events actually happened. Frankly, the effort at scripting the story before it happened smacks of a disregard for what would come later.
If they'd published it after the launch, most people would not have known -- after all, the conversations between the craft and ground control are unlikely to be independently recorded by observers and double-checked. Fact is, there's little chance they would've gotten caught, so why not fake things? Only their slip in publishing let people know that it was going on.
Frankly, we have every reason to be suspicious of a state-run newspaper in an autocratic country reporting on events deeply tied up in national pride.
Perhaps you wrote your reply in advance, not reading what you replied to, and accidentally posted it.
Cute. Do they still give gold stars for cleverness at your grade level?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Why do you still use reason to argue with irrational people. This has never worked.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Why are you so quick to jump to defend the practice of pulling the wool over the public's eyes with scripted, PR spin of a historical event? Is this something you support the media doing (state-run or not)? Would Apollo 11 have been better if NASA had actually recorded the conversations with Neil Armstrong on a sound-stage?
Media has moved on in the last 40-ish years. Prepping a press release is nothing new (as many have commented). I suppose you think Armstrong just stepped down off that ladder and suddenly was inspired to speak those words without any preparation or oversight from a "media communications manager"?
If USA's [alleged! lol] moon landing was happening now you could be sure that NASA would have press releases with picture from inside the orbiter (taken pre-flight) and the quote of the first words from the moon pre-layed up and ready for near-simultaneous release with the LM landing.
From the article (which is quite poetic), the "dummy quotes" are all things that they will say (assuming they're not all killed before they get chance).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_re_as/as_china_space_article_1:
'One minute to go!'
'Changjiang No.1 found the target!'...
'The air pressure in the cabin is normal!'
That guy that says "One minute", well every trial run that's what he said, it's part of the mission. The guy that says "Changjiang 1 on target", you guessed it, he says that so everyone knows it's on target. Air pressure, ..., someone checks it every few minutes and announces the results occasionally.
The only bit in the article that's a little weird is the "target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time". But they perhaps predicted a time 12 seconds late on purpose, or are just using that as a device to show how 1337 they are.
Imagine you're writing an article about Bush addressing the nation you might prep with:
"Bush had his usual statesman like swagger as he approached the dais, 'fellow Americans' he drawled, before telling us we should give up our hard won cash to support those billionaires who'd gone one gamble to far. Why? 'stability' says President Bush whilst Obama and McCain look on silently praying Mammon that such stability can be bought before their term starts ..."
That's got to be pretty close?
As has already been pointed out, the linked to fireworks slashdot story was already piss poor sensationalism. The fireworks were announced around the world as being CGI. So the entire story basically said "some obviously fake fireworks that were said to be fake when shown were fake". No shit sherlock.
And now we got a story that a news agency accidently released a pre-written story. Not like we never heard of obituraries being printed ahead of time. Anyone who has ever worked in the news industry knows that you prepare AHEAD of time.
Hell, even advertising does this. Or do you think that during events like soccer championships the advertise executives sit glued to the tv screen then the moment the result is in start putting together the add in a matter of hours to be included in tomorrows newspaper celebrating/mourning the match? Hell no, you prepare the ad campaign in advance for all outcomes.
For the uneducated editors of slashdot: Most christmas scenes/photo's etc etc are NOT shot during christmas. They are created in mid summer with FAKE snow.
Most christmas/newyears specials are recorded MONTHS in advance.
A lot of short tv programs with live audiences are recorded back to back on a single day to be aired on different days.
Star Wars was NOT a war documentary on a battle that happened in a galaxy far far away.
More and more reading the summary on slashdot is a joke, the actual story is not in the linked articles but in the comments. Slashdot would improve an awful lot of we could get rid of the editors and make it purely user contributed. Mmm, wait a moment, that is digg. Nevermind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Thing is, if you watched the opening via other channels, you'd know that the firework footprints you were seeing weren't real, BUT not faked - because the announcers/commentators would have told you that they weren't real.
Just because the channel you're watching doesn't tell you the details doesn't mean it's faked.
The Olympics ceremony was all a show. In movies they often have someone else singing instead of the star, in fact they also have body doubles. Given the amount of cheating in the Olympics, I'd cynically say that it's very in line with the real spirit of the games. Put on a good show and hope you don't get caught.
Lastly, while the Chinese are most certainly corrupt, there has been some accountability - the food safety head actually resigned. I believe the one before him was executed - he was found guilty of taking bribes etc.
They most certainly didn't get a USD20 million "golden parachute" package as a reward.