https://www.discogs.com/master/19554-De-La-Soul-Me-Myself-An...

https://www.engadget.com/2008-03-03-audiophiles-cant-tell-th...

http://nkwiatek.com/experiments/ascii

http://freedman.net/bgbgp.ppt

http://freedman.net/bgp102.ppt

http://freedman.net/multi.ppt

http://avi.freedman.net/fromnetaxs/multi.html

http://avi.freedman.net/fromnetaxs/bgp/bgp.html

http://freedman.net/choose.ppt

Indeed. I wish that were the point of the article. However, in my opinion, this article is unfortunately much more of an emotional/political rant than a conveyor of useful information.

Description: "You work for a dystopian surveillance state and spy on your neighbors."

You may be confusing what we're talking about with an NRCS. (Newsroom Computer System.) The biggest players in this space are ENPS, iNews, Dalet Galaxy, and (to a lesser extent) Ross Inception. As it pertains to making it "easy to make that content available on newscasts," I don't know of any such method. You may be inferring that these systems employ a higher level of sophistication than they actually do. My advice: format your news as plain ASCII text. I really can't think of anything else you would need to do to it.

I do ask myself that sometimes. It sounds weird, but I think it's what I was put on this earth to do. Yes, it is a cruel industry at times and pain is indeed inflicted just as you assert. I guess I'm just built for it. And I've been doing it for so long that I've built up a really thick skin and I'm just not that fazed by its unpleasant aspects. I can honestly say that it's a fun job. It's the job I always wanted when I was a kid and I still absolutely love it. (I'm fortunate enough to be compensated at a reasonable level, so that helps.)

People think it's stressful and I suppose it is. But the nice thing about it is that when the newscast is over, I'm completely done. And I have the luxury of knowing, down to the exact second, when that moment will be. I don't take my work home with me. There's nothing to stress out about (until the next day.)

Another thing... unlike an airline pilot or a surgeon, no matter how poor a job I might do, no one dies. That's kind nice too. :-)

> It looks like great support (Blackmagicdesign) for building a small broadcast studio from scratch tho.

Agreed!

> I could see BMD embracing this. There are lots of studios that are not commercial broadcast that could really use a system like this.

Also agreed. Black Magic definitely makes a lot of reasonably-priced and very capable gear. They're not a major player in the TV automation space, but perhaps with the help of Sofie, they could make inroads.

> Isn't one of the problems with hardware support is that hardware vendors have agreements with the competitors you listed?

That's not a topic I'm knowledgeable about. It is my understanding that most shops who have a particular vendor's automation platform will also have that vendor's hardware running at its core. In all the shops I've seen, the switcher that's controlled by the automation system is made by the same company. Or if its another vendor's product, it's sold and provisioned along with the automation system when its purchased. Other stuff like audio mixers, robo-cam products, clip players, and CG/graphics platforms can be from other vendors.

> Computers are fast enough now that once you can get the signals into a machine, many of the special functions that previously required dedicated hardware can now be run in software? With proper timing signal distribution of course.

> Seems like 12G SDI to SFP+ would enable server class machines to subsume most of the special function hardware.

For audio, I think that would be a relatively easy lift with technologies like Dante. However, in most TV stations, you're going to need to literally plug upwards of 100 HDSDI video cables into a piece of hardware so that those sources can be switched to on TV, mixed and keyed on multiple mixed-effects banks, and viewed on multiviewer screens in the control room. I don't know that a regular-ol' PC has what it takes to take in and simultaneously process that amount of video. But just because don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. ;-) Just haven't seen it yet.

Due to the substantial complexity of these automation systems, they tend to have a lot of inertia. But if anything could drive a station group to make a change, the "free" part can be effective.

I did take a look at the supported hardware (1). I think that's the pain point for many shops. Free open source production software is great, but being forced to choose form hardware products you don't prefer is a pretty tough tradeoff.

Historically, I suppose that's been one of FOSS' big challenges.

(1) https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/docs/user-guide/supported...

Some have different names once you click on them.

- "Speed" is "Speed and Pace."

- "Data Size" is "Data Storage"

- "Fuel Economy" is "Fuel Consumption"

On the Data Size / Data Storage calculator, I would add kilobits, megabits, gigabits, and terabits. In addition to data storage, that might make it useful as a bandwidth calculator as well.

When attempting to formulate a persuasive argument, this isn't a great place to start in my opinion. It's perfectly acceptable to dislike Trump and his policies. If you do, then go ahead and state your reasons. He was elected by the people of his country and he'll be done in four years' time. That's not how kings generally function. Perhaps I'm throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but I don't find myself too interested in reading the article after the inflammatory introductory TLDR.

(I found it in the data source, but not on the website that was linked to.)

(1) https://www.youtube.com/@MendItMark/videos

This is one of the better documentaries out there about Kowloon. It's in German but you can turn on English subtitles. They got a camera inside and you get a decent taste of what life was like there.