Presidential Inauguration Hardware and Other Challenges

holy_calamity writes "The FBI has released images of some of the kit that will be deployed to safeguard Obama's inauguration, including mine-proof armored trucks like those used in Iraq to protect against IEDs, and a large armored chamber that any bombs will be shoved inside to be transported away and perhaps detonated inside. Interesting, even though the really good stuff is presumably being kept under wraps." Relatedly, necro81 writes "The Inauguration of Barack Obama tomorrow is expected to put considerable stress on the cellphone network around Washington, DC. The expected crowd could top two million people, and many of them are expected to call, text, tweet, photo, and blog their way through the event. In response, the major wireless carriers in the area have spent millions of dollars upgrading their local networks and will bring in extra 'cells on wheels' (COWs) and 'cells on light trucks' (COLTs). They are also requesting that attendees limit their usage during the event, and avoid bandwidth-heavy activities — like uploading photos — until afterward."

Comments

Yeah

[Jonah Bomber]

Good luck with asking people not to upload photos during the event.

Re:Yeah

[Authoritative Douche]

Oops. CNN is advertising an address to upload all your photos taken throughout the day so they can stitch them together to make 360-deg VR photos available as close to real time as they can (several minute delay).

Re:Yeah

[the_weasel]

I send you a text, you respond when you have time. I call you, you have to choose between ignoring me and taking my call. Texting is asynchronous, where a conversation is synchronous. Granted, I can communicate more information in a short amount of time with a phone conversation, but if my issue is non-critical then texting is often more effective.

I am talking about texting from a business prospective here. I often text sales staff on the road, who may well be in a meeting, or contractors on a noisy job site. A director in a meeting with an artist. In all these cases texting not only gets them the information they need without them having o interrupt some other task, it also avoids the need for them to grab a pen or some other device - I just include the information. No lost or misunderstood numbers or names.

Now social texting does confuse me. "OMG! I am at the inaugaration". Why???

Twitter is screwed.

[Rayeth]

Twitter's service is likely to be as screwed as the cell network with millions of people around the country tweeting about how they just saw (on TV, Internet or in person) Obama swear in, etc. Expect the service to be down most of the day imo.

Re:Twitter is screwed.

[Reapman]

And nothing of value was lost... sorry had to say it, mod down as you will!

Re:Twitter is screwed.

[megamerican]

Expect the service to be down most of the day imo.

That's change I can believe in.

Sadly, that's about all I can look forward too but that's another discussion alltogether. :)

Re:Twitter is screwed.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Those who turned 18 and were eligible to vote for the first time in 2008 were in elementary school when Bush was (s)elected. He's been in office pretty much the entire time they've been aware of politics at all. Given what a horrorshow both his terms have been, they can, I think, be forgiven for seeing Obama as something special. It's kind of like what happens to an abused kid who grows up, gets out of his parents' house, and realizes that there are people in the world who won't beat the shit out of him every time he opens his mouth -- sooner or later, he'll realize that the world contains good people and bad ones in about equal measure, but at first, just about everyone is going to seem wonderful in comparison.

COWs and COLTs

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Surely there is no need for two new buzzwords. The light trucks have wheels so they are also COWs. Or do COLTs only work for OMG Pink Pony calls.

Re:COWs and COLTs

[snowraver1]

Killjoy. This is cool stuff. I would guess that the COW is a trailer and the COLT is a truck. I've always been facinated with satellite communications, and this looks really neat. I would love to be the guy that gets to drive that beast in, fire up the generator, press button one for the mast and radios, then button two for the auto aligning satellite. All this while onlookers stare in wonder.

On another note, this must have taken A LOT of planning. You usually can't just throw more cells in all willy-nilly. They would have to lower power on nearby cells and maybe even temporarily put cells on different frequencies to free up space for these microcells.

Re:COWs and COLTs

[halcyon1234]

Surely there is no need for two new buzzwords.

And I gotta tell you: fellas.. you have got what appears to be a dynamite inauguration! I'll be honest.. fellas, it was communicating great. But.. I could've used a little more Bell COWs!

I'm in DC and not going

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'm going to try to use up some bandwidth anyway, you know, just to make visitors' lives a little less fun.

Re:Huge waste of money

[amRadioHed]

So Bill Clinton was a traitor, but not the guys who outed a CIA agent? I hate to point it out but your bias is showing. How embarrassing.

Re:Huge waste of money

[peragrin]

Clinton got a blow job from someone who wasn't his wife, and he is a traitor, yet Bush lied to the american public about every reason for invading Iraq and he isn't?

Al queda hated saddam as much as we did, and didn't move into Iraq until after we did.

This "coronation" stuff is overdone

[Animats]

This coronation-like ceremony is getting out of hand. A quiet ceremony in the Capitol, broadcast on TV, would be sufficient. That's what was done during WWII, when there were concerns about an attack on FDR.

This is the first time an inauguration has shut down Washington, DC for two days. All the Potomac River bridges out to the Beltway are closed Monday and Tuesday. That's well beyond the impact of previous inaugurations.

Re:You can't stop a determined assassin, period.

[R3d M3rcury]

So we assume that the various assassins who were stopped just weren't determined?

Re:Blame the NRA

[AaronHorrocks]

In 1996, Obama said that he "supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns".

Re:Right wing garbage

[Daniel Dvorkin]

GPP's use of the word "they" was a little unclear. The point is that Drudge, Limbaugh, et al. are claiming that Obama's inauguration will be much more expensive than Bush's, while Media Matters (and numerous other sources) are setting the record straight. The right-wing noise machine is saying that Obama's inauguration is costing ~$160 million (true) while Bush's only cost ~$40 million (false.) They get the difference in the figures, IIRC, by leaving out the cost of security for Bush but including it for Obama. The fact is that Obama's inauguration is barely more expensive than Bush's in absolute dollars, and factoring in inflation over the last eight years, it's probably cheaper.

Re:Huge waste of money

[amRadioHed]

Setting aside the obvious fact that the investigation was a multi-million dollar partisan witch-hunt, Clinton was in the end found to be not guilty.

Re:Huge waste of money

[afaik_ianal]

You know that being impeached is not the same as being found guilty, right? You do realise Clinton was acquitted, right? It's like comparing two people who the public believe did something wrong: one has been ordered to stand trial, and acquitted; the other has not even been ordered to stand trial.

Re:Huge waste of money

[Uberbah]

You don't follow politics much do you? Clinton got impeached for perjury, not for diddling the unattractive intern.

Wrong. He was impeached because after the Republican Congress couldn't nail him for fraud (Whitewater) or murder (Vince Foster), or a parking ticket, they settled on a manufactured perjury charge.

And Clinton didn't even lie, much less commit perjury.