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Streaming Election Night Broadcast TV?
kakapo writes "A couple of years ago, we dumped our cable TV, and don't have much luck getting old-fashioned broadcast where we live. That's fine — we can download or netflix almost anything we want to see, and it is great not to pay the Comcast tax every month. Problem is, now I want to watch the election live, complete with talking heads, pundits, glitzy graphics and all the rest, rather than reading about it on a website. So, is there any way to download network TV / CNN / MSNBC in real time — I don't mind paying. And yes, we could visit friends, but ideally our kids would watch the first part and then go to bed — and a sitter would be expensive if we have to wait until late for the result."
I know this is offtopic, but I'll post non-anon to take my punishment.
I am wondering the same thing about tonight's World Series game on Fox. Anyone answer that question?
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Go here and click on "live video."
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Hulu had streaming live feeds of the debates. I'd think they'd have some sort of streaming feed come election day. Also, I know CNN has streaming feeds of some of their programs.
We don't live in Shouldland.
Have you tried plugging a TV into the cable feed? A lot of times, the cable company won't bother implementing a cancellation, figuring that reclaiming the box is good enough and saving the cost of a truck roll. It's possible that you'll still have analog basic cable on that "disconnected" cable line. Alternately, you could sign up for one month of limited Analog Cable for $15.
Google found this first thing: http://www.dvguru.com/2006/11/06/election-day-coverage-streaming-overload/ and that was just a quick search. Does this really need to be a front-page discussion?
This election is pretty much sealing the fate of the western world as we know it; we are quite a lot of people very very interested in the results.
Sign up for cable today, and cancel after the election. Most cable companies in the US don't have contracts, and you can cancel service at any time. You might end up paying for a month of service and an installation fee, but it could be cheaper than a baby sitter.
Any decent AM radio station will have full-time election coverage, and radio news is generally 1000% better than the swill that you see on TV.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Does hulu.com provide live streaming or am I mistaken?
If you have a friend with a slingbox you could use that.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
While CNN, MSNBC, and Faux News, are all likely to have live streaming feeds of election results, it might be more worthwhile to head to your local sports bar. They'll very likely have the election results on, and they have a reasonable supply of alcohol as well, which will come in handy no matter who wins (if your candidate of choice wins, you celebrate; if the other guy wins, you drown away your sorrows),... ;-)
For the things you want to watch which are covered on C-SPAN, you can see C-SPAN 1, 2, and 3, and C-SPAN Radio here.
I think I'm going to take a sleeping pill right after work and try to sleep through the whole thing. There's no point in watching it "unfold" - the next day my guy will either be President Elect or not, and my watching breathless talking heads constantly reanalyzing the same data isn't going to change it one way or another.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I don't know the legal issues of P2PTV, but I think TVants does exactly what you're looking for. It does work under Wine, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVants
Depending on where you live, you might be able to make do with an antenna.
Admittedly, very retro in this day of ubiquitous cable but the photons are still out there in the ether.
Speaking of antennas, the last half of this segment from last night's NOVA broadcast has a sidebar on the application of fractals in shrinking antenna designs.
If you're will to pay, how about picking up a Slingbox? Since you admit to having friends, ask one to put it in his/her house, and stream live coverage to your 'puter.
While I didn't "smoke up" the cable guy, I've lived in two places now and had cable modem installed and whoops, they never installed a filter for TV.
I say head on over to one of those kinds of sports bars will all the TV's an see if they're broadcasting it. Stream the beer instead.
Watch it on Dutch national television's streams! The Dutch national news broadcaster NOS is streaming CBS and Fox (the horror!) live, you can find it in due time on their website: http://www.nos.nl/nosjournaal/amerikakiest2008/ (babelfish it!)
I mean seriously. If you were to go to McDonalds and buy a Big Mac would you be paying an Big Mac tax?
It's a price.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
C-SPAN has a live feed, URL is rtsp://rx-wes-sea74.rbn.com/farm/pull/tx-rbn-sea001:2459/farm/cspan/g2cspan/live/cspan1-g2.rm for real media. I'm sure Hulu and justin.tv will have streams running as well.
Whether you want it or not, almost everywhere in the USA you're being irradiated with several TV signals. Put up a wire and you will get your election day coverage. It's not all digital broadcasts until February.
the "i don't own a tv and i have to tell everyone about it" guy
in answer to your question: who cares? why do you feel the need to tell everyone you don't own a tv? that's the real subtext of your question
and if you think that's a smarmy answer, well then i have a real answer for you: GO BUY A TV. GET CABLE OR SATELLITE. END OF STORY. your brain will not melt, you will not be contributing to the downfall of western civilization. really. or, go ahead and listen to the various unnecessary technical gymanstics you must perform offered in this thead. instead of simply going and getting yourself a simple, harmless television
the onion was prescient: Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television
this is some sort of genuine subculture. and if not owning a television turns one into a vainglorious buffoon, then please, everyone should own a television, for the sake of a healthy sense of humility. sheesh
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The C-SPAN site uses a flakey AJAX framework to try to sniff your stream reader. Unfortunately it's broken for some browsers. That seems to include firefox - including the version on my Ubuntu Feisty install which I keep up-to-the-minute with the upgrade tool.
So I've reverse-engineered it enough to find URLs for the underlying streams.
Here are direct links to the realplayer streams for C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, and C-SPAN3.
= = =
PS: I haven't been able to figure out how to construct similar links for archived shows. If anybody else can mange that, please follow up with it. Thanks.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
i believe Fox has the best coverage - i hear it's pretty balanced, and covers all the policy issues; I'm sure they'll have a stream with not too many adverts
Some channel that, perhaps with public funding, broadcast news programs over the airwaves, that would cover that kind of thing?
For myself - I had to drop Dish network, but went ahead and got two TR-40/DTVpal Digital-->Analog tuners before I did, and it turns out my PBS affiliate has three HDTV channels, with another two from another affiliate I get decent reception on, none of them have the same programming, so I actually have five pretty decent channels for free.
Free unsolicited endorsement - if you have a government coupon you need to use, I highly recommend the DTVPal. I miss comedy central, some of the science channels, and C-Span, (And PPV/Movie Channels, but they went two months before I quit Satellite entirely) but other than those, HDTV is actually doing very well.
I was pleasantly surprised.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
That seems to include firefox - including the version on my Ubuntu Feisty install which I keep up-to-the-minute with the upgrade tool.
Correction: Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Direct tv will have 8 feeds on one channel in HD
You could watch the live stream from http://www.cspan.org/
The election results are already known
You have saved plenty of $ skipping the cable bill, just go to a hotel for the evening. The kids will remember the adventure/pool/whatever and you will have a decent TV to look at with your selection of channels. Don't be such a cheapskate if it means that much to you. I would get a hotel for a moon landing, but not this election, your mileage may vary.
First off, I am betting that the whole thing will be embroiled in troubles with all electronic voting machines and close recounts. I doubt that we will hear an official winner in several states until days or maybe weeks later. Second, suggest getting one of the digital converter boxes and an amplified antenna. Will serve you well for a long time into the future and provide a very good signal even when you normally get static on the old analog over the air. I work for a broadcast group and we have tested digital converter boxes in hard to recieve locations like condos and office buildings with some pretty good success.
Overall I say save the money and wait for the hubub to end after two weeks of the electronic version of hanging chads.
Hulu.com -- they live streamed the debates. I'm sure they'll have some form of live streaming coverage there as well.
Also, a good way to still watch your
Why bother watching live, or watching at all? Is it really going to make a difference to your life that you know who the president elect is when your head hits the pillow vs when you wake up in the morning? Geesh! The only thing more boring than watching election coverage is watching the endless speeches, debates, talk shows, etc. leading up to the election. Your election coverage has been going on for months on end already. Obama this, and Palin that, and blah, blah, blah, voting machines, blah, blah. Just pick someone already. We have. 36 days from election called to election held.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
is what I read the first time, and it made much more sense.
I know people who will actually be holding election results watching parties. I can't think of much more painful that you could pay someone to do without violating OSHA..
Why on earth would you want to watch it live? It's like watching the outcome of a cockroach race. Someone's gonna win and it doesn't really matter who.
-- main(s){printf(s="main(s){printf(s=%c%s%c,34,s,34
Its pretty popular nowadays for people to host little parties for election/debate nights. If you have kids and cant get a sitter (or similar issue with pet), then this might not work - but I am in the same boat as you and this is my only solution.
You could listen to NPR and they'll update their website as data comes in.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They will be all over it.
If McCain gets over 120 Electoral College Votes, he
will have had a good day.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Google the word TVU... or SOPCAST.. or TVANTS.
Done.
Do not ask me about the legality of each feed. I have no idea.
Is you can't/won't install silverlight and can't get windos media plaer or fake media plaer to work, the BBC has a flash stream that they used to showed the debate.
He does have an option, and he exercised it: pull the plug. Not a tax if you can choose to not pay it.
Worked for me, saved $80+ a month and lots of time & brain cells.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
He said reception was bad in his area. If you have poor but watchable analog reception, you'll have unwatchably choppy digital reception. Before digital, I got PBS from 2 states. Now, I'm lucky if I can get one station to come in without breaking up long enough to watch the News Hour.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Enough with the Obama rumor nonsense. It isn't so much that nobody believes the stories that he's an adulterous socialist cryptomuslim alqaida mole whose really a citizen of Queen Maud Land. (Though you have to admit that the evidence is, to put it mildly, laughable.) It's just that nobody cares.
Why should they? He's different from the idiot who's now in power and the senile fool who's the alternative. That's all anybody cares about.
When you are blessed to be free of TV drivel, why would you want to watch "talking heads, pundits, glitzy graphics and all the rest" when it all boils down to one final number (electoral votes) and you'll have the news by Wednesday Morning (long before our new president is sworn in)?
slingbox
he can't get a tv if he is a member of a certain demographic in this country
according to a demographic every bit as ridiculous as the morons who think innoculations cause autism, the television emits stupidity rays that make kids stupid, suffer ADHD, etc.
television is television is television. it entertains and informs. end of story. its not a magical totem of evil, hellbent on turning your children into zombies
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Livestation has many news channels that will be covering the election night live (some of which may or may not be available in the U.S.). It's all free and works on Mac, Windows and Linux. (Disclosure: I work for Livestation.)
Some channels of note are Al Jazeera and France 24 which will offer international perspectives. There's over a thousand other live streams available to add if you can't find exactly what you want. There will probably also be live chat with Al Jazeera producers during the coverage.
it might be worth checking out.
They're using their grammar skills there.
"Does this really need to be a front-page discussion?"
Well no one could see it if you put it in the classifieds. :)
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Your last line reminds me of my students... you forgot to make it a contraction though--> Chill'ax
Some(all?) county recorders have CCTV cameras set-up for public viewing election night. Open your mind and you will find it @ "yourcounty".gov.
If you can't find it, the DOT traffic cameras can be fun to watch when crackhead carjack hijinx erupts. They're there 24/7/365 (*except during hurricanes in Galveston and N'orleans).
Maricopa County Count Room, AZ
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Take your kids and their sleeping bags with you to your friends. Do your friends have kids? (election night sleepover) Or a spare bedroom?
FGD 135
Try picking up an ATSC Digital tuner. I have seen first hand when analog channels are barely watchable, the same digital broadcast is crystal clear.
http://www.channelsurfing.net/ http://www.chooseandwatch.com/ http://www.channelchooser.com/ http://www.imvite.com/watch-free-live-tv.php http://onlinetv.yamour.com/portal.htm big lists of free streaming channels. some sports some news and discovery channel.
If all the above fail and you're using windows, you can install sopcast. You can get everything live there. Starting with soap ending with sports and news.
Radio works very well. If you want to be really high-tech, then stream it over the web.
Rabbit Ears (that catch hi-def signals) work well. Local TV will have it on.
Lots of options if you think about it.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Im pretty sure the only people who dont care who wins the american election are americans. If you are from any other country in the world, your eyes (or ears) will be glued to a live feed that night.
This isn't a sports match where the teams are no different and are fighting over something arbitrary and inconsequential. This election decides the future of the world.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
The TV you still have that's not hooked up to cable will, with the addition of a coat hanger (for the cheap people, or rabbit ears for the not-so-cheap people) pick up TV for free. Has everyone forgotten this? The election will surely be covered on your local VHF station, maybe even your local UHF station. And, of course, any ATSC stations, if you actually have a new TV.
After 2009, well, you'll need your free decoder box to pick up the TV for free.
I can't believe no one has mentioned Democracy Now! They will be doing a live streaming special broadcast for 4 or 5 hours on election night.
You are guaranteed to get analysis and perspectives that you will almost never see on your CNN/Fox etc.
democracynow.org
- Sam
And yes, we could visit friends, but ideally our kids would watch the first part and then go to bed -- and a sitter would be expensive if we have to wait until late for the result.
The question is not whether you can wait up that late...it's also possible we have another "hanging chad" type screw up and have to wait for weeks....
Between Acorn and electronic voting machines, there's all kinds of places where, if the race is close, it will be contested.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Get a satellite dish, it is small and easy to setup. You however might have to buy a subscription if there are no fta channels in the U.S. There are many fta channels in Europe, but I am not sure how many fta channels are broadcasting over satellite in the U.S.
Fools, wake up! All the elections are staged! The Illuminati control who gets elected, in fact they control who even makes the candidacy. http://www.rense.com/general58/suspre.htm
Correction: Ubuntu No One Cares What Dumbass Named Version You're Running and Everyone Automatically Assumes You're Running the Newest Stable Anyway
Hi, I find your link to CNN to be humorously incorrect but fun nonetheless. The true links to live election coverage are MS-NBC, Fox News and CNN. Be sure to wait until election day to tune in!
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Well, never mind that, I see at the end you DID in fact address WHY the system is broken. But you forgot the part about the bankers and financiers paying off the government officials via semi-"legal" means...
It is as simple as this: today there is far too much of a connection in this country between monetary wealth and government. While this has always been true to some extent, it was NOT designed that way, at least here. It built up over time. (It was predicted, certainly. But that is another matter.)
And unfortunately for our citizens, breaking the ties between wealth and government will be a struggle. Not impossible, but not easy.
I am not prejudiced against the wealthy, but I certainly do not appreciate the rampant abuse of others by many of the wealthy. (That is not prejudice, it is a sense of justice.) Unfortunately for everybody, often the poor person's only recourse against the power of wealth is force. History is full of stories about that one.
If I were certain of the wealthy in this country, especially the abusive wealthy (I am thinking names like Bush and Cheney, though no doubt there are many others less familiar), I would be very afraid, because of the situation that I had helped to create.
This has nothing to do with me, personally. I am simply saying that if I were them, I would be shaking in my boots. I am glad I am not.
So you whine about not being able to get _Premium_ content when you have cancled your Premium content subscriptions because its too expensive.
Then you complain that getting a sitter is too expensive - and post this question to Slashdot.
My answer? Stop being bloody cheap. Hire the sitter and don't expect to get anything for free that you were already paying for.
PALIN 2012!!!!
You could get a digital OTA tuner and watch the local broadcast channels in HD. They should all be covering the election thru the night. As a bonus, you'll be all set for the digital broadcast switchover in Feb '09
mplayer -playlist http://www.cnn.com/video/live/cnnlive_1.asx
I'm running it on linux, and watching CNN right now.
Hmmm ... I keep hearing about how great mplayer is, and I have a new ubuntu 8.04 system sitting on the desk, so I decided to try it out. It wasn't installed, of course, but a "sudo apt-get install mplayer" seemed to work fine. So I tried the above command. The result, when googled, turned out to be something that apparently has bitten thousands of people, but none of their questions seems to be answered as far as I can tell. The symptoms are the messages:
[VO_XV] Could not grab port 100.
[VO_XV] Could not find free Xvideo port - maybe another process is already
[VO_XV] using it. Close all video applications, and try again. If that does
[VO_XV] not help, see 'mplayer -vo help' for other (non-xv) video out drivers.
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.
The audio seems to be working fine, but there's no video. I also found the Mplayer entry in the Applications menu, and tried it. That was supremely unhelpful. I found the Open .. Play URL thing, selected it, a window popped up, I pasted in the above URL, hit the OK button ... and an "ERROR!" window popped up saying "Failed, exiting." No clue at all as to what might be wrong, and the only thing I could do was hit OK, which closed the "ERROR!" window, but MPlayer didn't actually exit like it sait it would. So I looked around some more. I didn't find anything else that would accept a URL.
So. Apparently mplayer can't or won't show me the video stream, though it does play the audio and it identifies itself as CNN. Anyone have clues where I look now? Googling has, as I said, turned up lots of reports of the above error condition, but apparently nobody has posted anything explaining what to do about it. If there's a way of finding another program that has the port open, it doesn't seem to be documented anywhere, not even in "man lsof", and "mplayer -vo help" doesn't seem to mention the topic at all.
So is there somewhere I can read about diagnosing this problem and fixing it?
(It may seem dumb asking such questions here, but I've actually gotten useful pointers a few times in the past when I post questions like this on /.) ;-)
(And I must say I've really grown to hate programmers whose idea of a helpful error message is "Failed, exiting." It's sad to see this user-hostile approach infecting the geeky linux universe.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I have paid very little attention to the campaigning. After all, they have had very little important to say.
Rather, I have been swayed by the CONVINCING EVIDENCE I have seen and read.
There is a rather large difference.
In any case, I must say that I believe I detected a note of sarcasm there, which I appreciate. But there are several ways to look at the "wasted vote" issue, which is similar on some ways to the mathematical problem known as the "prinoner's dilemma".
People have been known to second-guess elections by saying "I know MY candidate will not win, so I will vote for the candidate I most like who has a chance of winning." Then they tell their neighbor who also like Candidate X, that their vote was "wasted".
Like the famous incident of the Oracle at Delphi, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. As logic, it fails completely.
To address the "wasted vote" fallacy, I will say that voting has been likened to a "horse race", but it really isn't so. In a horse race, you vote for who you THINK will win. In an election, you vote for who you WANT to win. Unless we acknowledge cheating, then those strategies pay off. Other strategies do not.
Elections are not horse races. If you do not vote for the candidate you WANT, then the candidate you want will probably not win. And that is a lost bet. In reality today, it is probably a lot more lost than just a bet.
"similar in some ways" ... "prisoner's dilemma" ... "who also likes Candidate X" ...
Alternately, you could sign up for one month of limited Analog Cable for $15.
Watch out. Some cable companies will advertise $14.99 per month, but then charge a $164.89 early termination fee (equivalent to 11 months of service) if you cancel after the first month.
It should be streamed from here: http://www.cspan.org/Watch/C-SPAN_wm.aspx
I have to agree. The game is the same, only the names change. Whoever wins will pardon bush and will change nothing that disrupts the self perpetuating machine that is politics.
A guy all these jerks look up to once said:
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
By that measure, all politicians are measured by their fellows... And if congress is any indication, we're screwed no matter who wins.
Also, I refuse to participate in an election funded by Coca Cola, Ford, GM, Miramax, and a multitude of other companies I don't agree with so much I won't buy their products. Why would I buy their political products with my vote?
Also, I refuse to participate in an election funded by Coca Cola, Ford, GM, Miramax, and a multitude of other companies I don't agree with so much I won't buy their products. Why would I buy their political products with my vote?
the title says it all.
CNN is broken: It does not work with Linux.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Here is what I would do:
(1) Pass law (and, I hope, amend the Constitution), to the effect that no campaign contributions, gifts, or other compensation shall be given to current or campaigning politicians, other than from individual citizens who are eligible to vote. No entity that does not actually vote (i.e., anybody but individual citizens) may contribute to political interests in any way. Foreign interests may not contribute in any way. Violation by any party (i.e, anyone offering OR accepting money or goods in violation of this provision) shall be guilty of a Federal felony punishable by NOT LESS than 2 years in solitary confinement in a Federal penitentiary.
(This means that CEOs cannot take corporate profits (created by the employees), and use them to support politicians to whom the company's employees would strongly object. Similarly, it would prevent worker unions from taking member dues and using those to support politicians who are not approved by the members. Only individuals could contribute. So: if an individual felt that a candidate would benefit the corporation they work for, they are free to donate. If the employee felt that the candidate might threaten their bargaining position by voting anti-union, then they are free to donate to THEIR favorite (up to the maximum). BUT... this prevents organizational "bigwigs" from taking money from their "underlings" and using it against them. ONLY INDIVIDUALS QUALIFIED TO VOTE COULD CONTRIBUTE TO CAMPAIGNS. Period. Emphasis on "individuals". Not companies, not unions. Companies do not vote, unions do not vote. People do. There is no reason that ANY entity other than a VOTER should be able to influence politics. If a company CEO or a union president want to talk to their legislators... they can. With exactly as much influence as anybody else.)
(2) Limit each contribution to a fixed percentage of the average (mean, not median or mode) income of a private adult citizen of the United States. That would limit the influence of the disgustingly wealthy, and bring things back to the idea of "one voice, one vote".
(3) While I am all for privacy, this is an area that has been screaming for openness: the names of each individual contributor to political causes must be made public. I choke over this one, but there appears to be no realistic alternative.
(4) Campaign contributions, even a nickel, must NEVER be tax-deductible.
Now for the fun stuff...
(5) AUTOMATIC EXPIRATION OF UNNECESSARY LAWS. While there must be exceptions for some projects that require long-term funding (I am open for ideas on that), ALL Federal legislation (laws) will be subject to review after a period of no more than 3 years from passage (not the "effective" date). In order for a Federal law to remain in effect, the legislature must publicly review and renew the law before the 3 years is up. If they fail to do so, the law automatically expires. There are several benefits to this idea:
Please give attribution. I know that insisting would be futile, so I shant do so.
As for #7: you got the point exactly.
Have fun.
Have you tried hooking your TV up to one of the digital TV converter boxes? I have friends that couldn't get any clear signals with regular TV that can now get at least a few channels because of the converter boxes.
The internet has all the capabilities of cable television; you can watch great, syndicated shows just for the price of watching a few commercials. But wait, there's more! You DON'T have to "pay per view," or buy something fancy like a TiVO, in order to watch something on your own time or pause it!
So maybe they are a little stuck up about not having a television. But my question is - why would I want a television?
Southparkstudios.com
Hulu.com
TheDailyShow.com
adultswim.com
The list goes on ... get on board, stop letting NBC and Fox set your schedule and overcharge you for basic services on an obsolete medium.
Watch the coverage live on WNEP.com, Newswatch 16 in Northeast, PA: http://www.wnep.com/global/Category.asp?c=122728
Go to a friend's house. One with kids. Take your kids with you, with sleeping bags and roll-mats or camp-beds.
Let the kids stay up a bit later than usual eating popcorn and drinking soda. Cheer, whoop, holler. Hang a banner for your favorite candidate.
Make election night into a party -- kids should be encouraged to see the democratic process as something of value and of interest, rather than boring old fogey stuff.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Thank you.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why? Go to bed early. You'll be waking up to President Obama anyway. But if you feel the need to increase the TV networks' ratings on their fabricated election night drama, that's your idiotic choice too.
If you are looking for independent media coverage, democracynow.org has also advertised a live stream of the election.
On the p2p side check out Sopcast or TVU.
justin.tv will certainly have people broadcasting all the networks. The site strikes me as highly illegal (for example, last night I used it to watch the World Series, including the "no rebroadcasting or retransmission" disclaimer), but it would be the rebroadcaster whose ass went in the sling if a case went to trial, not the viewer. For my election night Obama Pyjama Party, I plan to have CNN on the tellie and three computers running three different justin.tv feeds. Plus coffee, popcorn, and champagne on ice.
If you build it, they will come...
Find a friend with kids and TV. Offer to bring the pizza or other food/beverage for an election night party. The kids learn a bit about the electoral process before going off to their slumber party, the adults stay up to see the results. Bonus points if the parents let you leave the kids overnight & pick them up in the morning.
:-P
If you don't have any such friends whose kids tolerate yours, and vice versa, then you really need to buy that TV.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Now that's an easy question! I have satellite, cable and terrestrial tv, but I'll be watching a stream out of choice because the most critical and least sensational coverage, and without commercials, will be on DemocracyNow.org, hosted by Amy Goodman.
It's not network, but Democracy Now will be doing live coverage. They do excellent reporting, so it may be worth tunning in, and it's always free.
From their website:
It's somehow amusing to me that when I looked at this article, I noticed that the ad placed at the top of the discussion is for DishTV's services....
Don't fear the penguins
Actually, I have had the exact opposite result - I was concerned given the moderately bad reception where we are at that Digital reception would be an issue. Instead, it's been as good or better than our Dish network has been.
Not that I claim enough skill to say *why* - {G}.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
In order to vote to "minimize your losses", you must be convinced that your are going to lose. And by voting for someone else (assuming that others use exactly the same logic), you are in fact GUARANTEEING that you are going to lose. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy!
that Instant Runoff voting, or a few other similar systems, are provably superior to our current "black and white" system.
And in fact it is up to the individual states, so there is some likelihood that one or more of them will experiment soon.
perpetual seizure without cause, suppression of journalism ( both professional & citizen -- "hear, you have no right to photograph in public. I'm taking your camera. You are under surveillance! ), etc?
WHAT checks & balances? Retroactive immunity for unconstitutional activities?
Bush's regime INSISTS that no law, not International, not Constitution, not ANYthing limits the President's authority, and has gotten that to stick, more and more.
You haven't been reading about this that is making it less likely that you will have any rights in the future?
This tide of segregation-of-rights (FROM citizens, TO government corporate authority) increases if McCain wins, and slows if Obama wins.
( damn, I wish a coalition of Ron Paul & Obama could'a been )
Try reading http://yro.slashdot.org/ sometime, or subscribing to it on your feed reader.
Try also http://arstechnica.com/law.ars and http://minstrelboy.blogspot.com/
Or do you WANT to be a prisoner "citizen" with millions of others, in less than a single generation ( read about Hitler's up-to-war Germany, and see if you recognize the methods going down now, moving the "rules" endlessly ).
I hope you live a loooong time...
WNYC (NYC, obviously), WAMC (Albany NY), WFSU (Florida State University) all should have live audio election coverage, add ".org" to the call letters. Also bbc.co.uk should have a live channel, cnn.com (there are serious issues with Linux playing their live feed, though), or politics.msnbc.com.
So lots of places you can at least listen online, some you can probably watch.