Just because you have good reception straight out from the tower at 30km doesn't mean you'll have good service 11km in the air. The cell phone towers are tuned to have good horizontal coverage, not vertically. It's not a perfect sphere of coverage; these are directional arrays that are designed to provide coverage where most of their customers are...on the ground. The first link that came up in my Google search seems to have some more information about coverage patterns.

A TSA agent a few weeks ago told me they're sound waves. I have to question the science portion of their training program...

And yeah, I've had a few agents try to argue with me or try to convince me it's safe as well. I'm not really interested in explaining myself or arguing with them.

I've got to correct myself here -- I got an email from the gentleman who provides the x-mo systems and he informs me that they're indeed running extremely high framerates (4000 and 3000) for this particular show. I've worked with and met him before, and I'm pretty pleased that he spent some time in the comments of this article that's about his systems. I'm not sure how they're doing it, but without trying to sound crazy if anyone could figure it out, he's the guy. Anyway, I can admit that I was wrong about the framerates, and he tells me I am, so there you go. He's actually replied as an AC in sibling thread, so check that out for more information!

You're right on. I'm a tape guy and I've used all of the X-Mo systems; you're absolutely right that the lighting and camera noise affect the framerate. If you're able to pull the 600-1000fps you mention for night games, your ballpark is much better lit than ours. Adjusting for minimal flicker (grrrr), we usually run 350fps for night games, actually very similar for basketball and hockey (360 helps the flicker there a bit more). Besides, more than that and it becomes very difficult to tell a story around that one replay and the tape guy has to be cued really tight to the moment of action. Great for a freeze on a safe/out play, not so great for an outfield bobble. But you know all that already.

Look at the clips -- it looks to me like they're running a framerate around 500 and the clips are slowed down more (either by the EVS on playback or by the professor for posting). They all stutter quite a bit and I'd be shocked if it was near 1000fps, much less the 5000 he claims (note that the link he sources for the 5k fps comment says "up to" while he states that it is 5k).

I don't have much to add, but you've packed a lot of information in to your post and I support what you said.

I'm surprised this is even news, actually; with many or most RSNs having an X-Mo system now, seems most baseball fans would have seen something like this already. I know we talked about the way the bat wobbles, the bat breaks, the sweet spot, etc years ago.

You're close, except:

is mostly incorrect, it wasn't the phpMyAdmin project, it wasn't that the source code was compromised; the problem is that one specific mirror was compromised and a modified copy of the phpMyAdmin source was distributed instead of the official files. It's a stretch to blame that on the phpMyAdmin project.

I'm thinking of some sort of mathematical function where you plug in an arbitrary number of bits, say an entire file, and get out a small representation that is very, very difficult to duplicate. We could call it a hash, I suppose. Then you post the hash to the main web page for each file you distribute, and when someone downloads a file, then compare the hash of the downloaded file to the hash on the web site. Since the mirrors only host the downloads, and not the website, a compromised mirror wouldn't be able to change the website's hash. I need to find a patent attorney, I could make millions on this idea!

(please note that paragraph probably sounds more snarky than it was intended)

Yes, that's the general idea, based on my rather intense reading of the Star Trek The Next Generation: Technical Manual in my younger years. That being said, the reality of how it was presented in the show was different from the theory presented in the Manual, even though it was supposed to be the guide for writers to reference. It's just one of those things where we have to accept slightly different rules in each episode. By the way, I believe the technical manual specifically mentioned that at the end of a holodeck session, the replicated material would be turned back in to energy, essentially reversing the materialization process.

So do the switcher and routers take in the MPEG stream, or you convert back from the GigE to HDSDI or ASI video?

Sounds like what we do (private IP-based network to distribute to our partners), but the GigE stuff in house sounds fascinating.

Wow, way to take my quote completely out of context. I meant the exact opposite of what you imply here -- if you look at the quote in context I clearly said nothing negative about your comments with regards to the "get off my lawn" comment. Rather the opposite, that your post started a discussion that I find interesting for once.

Also, I think it's poor form to submit something to slashdot then get offended at the discussion. You don't need to continue on with me specifically, but I haven't seen a thread here where you responded to legitimate discussion appropriately. You can't have it both ways -- if you're going to submit an article for discussion, you should be ready to deal with the discussion. Without discussion, it's just you ranting to the ether. But that's just my opinion, obviously, and since you've indicated that you don't wish to continue then I simply bid you a good day.

No, sorry, you instead just sound ignorant. Movies and TV are very different and some of the terms, while sounding similar, mean very different things. Before writing a blog post about your analysis and submitting it to slashdot, it would do you well to learn a bit about what you're discussing.

Along those lines, in the blog post you wrote:

Your position might be strengthened by learning about how Olympic coverage actually works. I'd start by learning about the OBS, the host broadcaster for all Olympic games. In fact, for many large sports events there exists a host broadcaster and other feeds coordinate with or purchase outright from the host broadcaster.

Indeed, learning about how broadcasting works in this setting may enhance your understanding of your third point. I'm not saying the point is invalid, actually the opposite, but understanding the revenue stream and where the feed comes from might have changed your analysis a bit.

Again with not understanding the purpose of the host broadcaster and thinking that something as huge as Olympic coverage is thrown together at the last minute.

First, that's not what you said in the posting. You wrote "NBC -- how many early TV video tapes and kinescope recordings have you lost? Don't keep repeat (sic) your past mistakes." -- sounds to me like you believe they're gone forever.

You should say what you mean. You're discussing a technical field which has a lot of precise terminology (TV production) with an audience that feels the same and probably has even more need for precise terminology (I believe it was either Care and Feeding of Your Hacker or The Jargon File that devoted a relatively large amount of space to discussing the need for precise language within the hacker/nerd/geek culture). Aside from that, I'm not sure why you feel NBC has an obligation to make the content available for posterity. They have an archive department which is responsible for, well, archiving shows and footage. Two years from now, if NBC News wants footage of judo or the rugby finals, they'll be able to get it. Likewise, in four years when they're revisiting who won the whatever in 2012, I anticipate them being able to find that video as well.

You also wrote: "NBC did a much better job on the Tour de France than the Olympics, but it was an easier event to cover, they had experience covering it in past years and they did not have to deal with the presentation of ads. " ...you are aware that NBC has carried the Olympics before, right? And the logistics are pretty overwhelming for both events.

And again you confuse the NBC with the IOC: "NBC did their best to control leaks of Olympic material. For example, WiFi hotspots were not allowed in the stands and they did their best to stop social media leaks. "

The majority of your analysis is about the current state of internet streaming rather than looking ahead, so it's fair to also look at how small the internet streaming is in comparison to the worldwide broadcast market. Sure, that percentage is shifting more towards the internet, but if you write an article about the current state of internet streaming, a comment like the GP made is a fair response and "Let's revisit that statement in 2020" just sounds like a knee-jerk, defensive response. The GP is correct and, I'll connect the dots for you, the small percentage of viewers and revenue from the internet side of things means there are less resources committed to it compared to the broadcast side. This in turn explains (although perhaps doesn't justify) some of your criticisms.

In your blog post CIS 471 The Olympics -- NBC's production and direction, you wrote

which again shows your lack of knowledge about the situation. Not only that NBC did not have crews on hand to cover every Olympic event, but also the air of haughtiness that surrounds your statement. NBC (as well as each of the other American broadcasters) has been producing large scale events for a long time, now admittedly the Super Bowl or Stanley Cup Final aren't as big as the Olympics, but producing live events isn't anything new here.

Thanks, I've actually had a fair bit of fun reading some of the discussion here, which is kind of rare these days (I feel like the slashdot community's changed a lot since I first joined and HEY, GIVE OFF MY LAWN!)

In concept you're right, but trying to get those changes approved is a joke. I've tried to get my parent's farming lane removed (2 miles, dirt, signed as private at both ends). The first response back was that they've verified that it's actually a road and wouldn't fix it, so I reported it again. It took longer than it should have (over a year, I believe)...the whole while routing people through it as if it were a road they'd actually want to use. In my town, they show the town hall as being in the middle of a road where the nearest building is nearly a block away. That took several tries to fix, it kept getting emailed back to me as "fixed" but it wasn't. The local Target department store has a phone number from a different area code and the address that shows is from another Target 15 miles away (no, the phone number doesn't match), I reported that probably 18 months ago and haven't heard back about it yet. In my experience, reporting errors to Google Maps is easy, but getting those reports approved is a joke -- it takes way too long and legitimate reports are discarded. Sorry to crash down on your hobby, but my experience has been dreadful; it's not even worth my effort to report errors anymore. Besides, as another AC child poster points out, OSM is CC and probably more worthy of my efforts anyway.

I ran a couple of groups on Yahoogroups a few years ago and it was nothing but a hassle. Sure, the feature list sounds great, but in implementation things needed constant attention. End users would report not receiving any mail for days or weeks at a time (no, it wasn't even in their spam folders; they just disappeared) and logging in/creating accounts was sometimes problematic. At least at the time, there were three ways to add a user: I could add their email address, they could send an email to group+subscribe@yahoogroups.com, or they could create a yahoo account and join through the web interface. Choosing either of the first two options left their account in some sort of half-created limbo where they got the group email but weren't able to sign in to the web interface (to change settings, view photos, etc). There were other minor issues, but those were the two I constantly fought against.

All that being said, it wasn't the worst service I've ever used and it was free, but I was always waiting for the next breakage or issue that would require my manual intervention. They could have greatly improved the service since then; it's been about two years since I migrated away, but I wouldn't personally recommend it. We miss some of the features (the two you mention, file storage and photo sharing), but I'm glad to be rid of the administrative workload.

The problem with par2, at least as far as I've seen it implemented, is that it's really an archive container -- a real pain to use in day-to-day file storage. Am I missing something that lets me take advantage of the error detection and recovery of par2 while allowing me to seemlessly access the files? While I agree with you on the merits of a resilient format like par2 for archiving files, it doesn't seem very friendly for quick access to files on the disk.