Computers Can’t Be Trusted

“Computer problem.” I’ve heard those two words a million times. Mostly, it’s a crock. Computer problems aren’t usually computer problems but problems which appear when humans operate computers. In other words, it’s mostly human error.

Computers only do what they’re told. Hardware failures that allow them to run amok are relatively rare. It’s that fingertip/keyboard interface where all the trouble arises.

With that perspective, it’s off to Chicago where, earlier this week, WGN radio found itself broadcast all over the radio and TV dial. I was tipped off to this story by Adam Chernow in Wisconsin, but I’ll quote the Chicago Tribune:

In the parlance of the Cold War era that spawned the federally mandated Emergency Alert System, launch codes were issued throughout Illinois on Tuesday morning, automatically pre-empting dozens of radio and television stations as if the region faced nuclear annihilation.

Rather than President Bush reassuring citizens after an atomic blast or some other calamity, the audience of many Chicago outlets was treated to the sound of dead air followed by the voice of WGN-AM 720 morning man Spike O’Dell struggling to figure out what had happened.

It turns out O’Dell’s pair of brief surprise appearances between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. on everything from local public broadcasting to music stations — an “unintentional disruption,” a Federal Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman called it — stemmed from a FEMA contractor’s installation of the state’s Emergency Alert System satellite receiver in Springfield as part of a nationwide upgrade.

If the contractor had asked me to call all those stations, I would have pointed out the error of his ways. Computers are more obedient and, unfortunately, don’t question authority!

Why do we do this? Why do we allow an automated system take control so an errant human can cause chaos?

I know why. I was there the morning the old system failed!

It was February 20, 1971. As I remember, it was a sunny and mild winter’s day. I was working as a disk jockey at WQXT, located right on the ocean in Palm Beach, Florida. Life was good.

At 9:33 AM a series of ten bells rang out from the Associated Press teletype. Ten bells was the signature for a national emergency, an EBS alert… but this was Saturday at 9:33 AM. They tested the system every Saturday at 9:33 AM.

Somewhere deep within Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, a technician put the wrong put tape in his teletype. Instead of sending the test, he sent the real thing!

From Wikipedia: An EBS activation message authenticated with the codeword “HATEFULNESS” was sent through the entire system, ordering stations to shut down and broadcast the alert of a national emergency. A cancellation message with the wrong codeword was sent at 9:59 AM EST, and a cancellation message with the correct codeword was not sent until 10:13AM EST.

Most radio and TV stations did nothing! They had no way of knowing the message was wrong. In fact, every indication was it was real.

In my case, I heard the bells and disregarded them. It was test time. I heard those bells every Saturday morning.

By the time I looked at the teletype, the alert had been corrected. The few people listening to my little radio station were well served because I totally screwed up!

After that debacle the government worked to change to a better, faster, more streamlined, heavily automated system. And yet, with this week’s problem, the cause was exactly the same – human error.

It’s this automated system that has sometimes allowed cable companies to cut my television station’s audio as they run emergency crawls… even though we’re giving emergency info when they kill our audio!

Society has become so complex, we can’t operate without computer assistance. Unfortunately, that has forced us to put much too much power in someone’s fingertip. The folks in Chicago understand.

Have I Just Seen the Future of TV?

Helaine and I watched the Philadelphia Eagles game this afternoon. It’s a game that wasn’t on local TV. We don’t have a satellite receiver, nor does my cable company have an out-of-town game package. We watched because a friend, near Philadelphia, fed it to me.

The concept is the important thing here, but first, I have to explain the technical specs. His PC has an ATI All In Wonder 8500DV video card, with a tuner. He downloaded Microsoft’s free Windows Media Encoder, which will serve streaming video. We also temporarily ‘punched a hole’ in his firewall/router, so an arbitrary port we chose would be available to me in Connecticut. I connected with Windows Media Player, directly, without first using my browser.

The video he sent was encoded at a fixed bitrate of 148 Kbps, 15 fps, with 320×240 resolution. We tried a higher bitrate first, but his connection wouldn’t keep up and the video was unacceptably choppy. Next time we’ll play around with the compression parameters to find something custom which works better.

What I saw was sharp when the camera wasn’t moving, pixelated with minimal change or motion, and choppy with heavy motion. I was easily able to read the on screen graphics for time, down, etc. The audio was perfect. Other than the initial point of connection, we never hit a point where I had to wait while the stream was buffered.

This is video on demand in the simplest and most pure sense. It was what I wanted when I wanted it.

Because my friend has limited upstream capacity on his cable modem, what I watched was compromised. But, it was so close to being very good, that I can assume it wouldn’t take much more bandwidth – maybe 250 Kbps – to hit a sweet spot. You’ve got to figure variably compressed video, streamed using Windows Media server or another server allowing a variable bit rate, would give even better video for the same bandwidth.

The fact that the video wasn’t too large on my 1400×1050 laptop screen was fine. Unlike ‘television’, I was watching this up close. In fact, while the game was on, my wife and I were doing other things on the computer, though the game was our primary focus.

It isn’t necessary to have full screen video to have a meaningful streaming experience!

Whenever I read about the promises of VOD or using the Internet for television type programming, I hear about the huge bandwidth necessary for full screen, VHS quality. It’s just not necessary. In fact, full screen might be a detriment.

Computers are viewed differently that TV’s. It’s an immense difference. We’re closer and we’re not adverse to doing multiple tasks on the screen at once. Someone is going to have to step up to the plate with that realization and then VOD over an IP network will be reality.

After the game, I asked my wife if she’d be willing to pay for a live concert, by an artist she really likes (Rick Springfield), at this smallish screen size, but with sharp video and good stereo audio? She said, “yes.”

To me, this makes some events economically feasible that wouldn’t make sense as free TV, basic cable or even pay-per-view. There are undoubtedly other applications, with similar niche audiences.

The current streaming technologies from Microsoft and Real make it easy to integrate advertisements in many different ways, often without stopping or disturbing the actual desired content.

This is the 500 channel universe we’ve heard about. Except, it’s really an infinite channel universe.

Of course, there’s a question of whether there’s enough bandwidth right now to handle it. The answer’s probably no – but – there is a plethora of ‘dark’ fiber, waiting to be powered up. If video is the next killer app for computers, there will be plenty of incentive to unleash enough bandwidth to enable it.

I work for a local TV station, but I don’t consider this our ruin. If we’re smart and aggressive, we’ll be able to sell the content we already produce, and specialized content that demands our localized expertise, in this new venue.