Watching Tonight's Presidential Debate Online 349
farkinga writes "For those of us that no longer have a television, live TV events can be a challenge to watch. Fortunately, tonight's Presidential Debate has attracted the attention of most US broadcasters, many of whom will provide online viewing options. Leading the way is Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp, who will stream the Fox-branded feed tonight — assuming they worked out the bandwidth issues that came up during the second debate!"
Live? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm more interested in a recorded version, since I'll be busy during the actual debate... :/
Re:Live? (Score:5, Informative)
Take a look at eztv.it: http://eztv.it/index.php?main=search [eztv.it] - you can usually find debates available for download after the fact; either same day or at the most, the next day.
Re:Live? (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually I kinda figured somebody'd tag me offtopic, but I also counted on getting a few responses... my current sources don't seem to have much along the lines of recorded debates. Thanks to everyone who's replied, I'll have to check those out.
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I avoid YouTube when possible... my sorry excuse for a computer actually doesn't play embedded Flash videos very well. When I need to watch something on YouTube, I generally use Video DownloadHelper to save it and play the FLV with Media Player Classic or VLC.
Re:Live? (Score:5, Informative)
C-SPAN posts the complete debate videos on their YouTube account [youtube.com]. If you ever miss a debate, check there first.
I prefer C-SPAN for live, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have "analysts" telling me what my reaction is.
C-SPAN [cspan.org]
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I agree. The only issue with C-SPAN is you have to make sure you don't doze off and forget to change the channel before the call-in portion starts. If you listen to that garbage for too long, your brain will start leaking out of your ears in an attempt to escape the inanity.
But yes, it still beats the hell out of every other station's punditry.
Re:I prefer C-SPAN for live, too. (Score:5, Funny)
Then how are you going to know who to vote for? I mean I've seen plenty of sitcoms that I didn't know were funny until I heard the laughtrack. Which kinda leads me to think WTF.
smile
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Re:I prefer C-SPAN for live, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sure there are people weak minded enough to have their views changed by what these people say, so I would kind of like to know what they are saying.
I once heard someone in advertising say that some of the easiest people to manipulate are the ones who are convinced that they're too smart (or whatever) to be manipulated.
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You betcha! You're way too smart to fall for that left-wing liberal claptrap! Buy my book and learn more about those damned dirty liberals and their scheming!
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usenet
that's where I got the previous debates from
they are also posted to youtube by cspan
Re:Live? (Score:5, Funny)
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Linux? No CNN. (Score:5, Informative)
I tried during the last debate to watch it on CNN.com/live but it appeared their video player didn't allow Ubuntu/Firefox to connect. After further research, they use some vbscript in their code. I'll definitely watch it, just not with CNN.
Re:Linux? No CNN. (Score:4, Interesting)
Barack Obama supports Linux. I did some freelance work for his North Carolina campaign headquarters, settting up a gentoo box for use as their intranet server. I met BO and talked about linux and modernizing the Federal Government, access to information, etc. He'll probably be a very linux-friendly administration. It may not be year of the linux desktop yet, but it will be year of the linux whitehouse.
Re:Linux? No CNN. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Linux? No CNN. (Score:5, Insightful)
You do understand that the chance of the president getting involved in the choice of what operating system to use in the white house is about as likely as the CEO of IBM getting involved in the choice of what brand of toilet paper to use in their office in Bangalore, don't you?
how to get CNN live on linux (Score:5, Informative)
You can get it to work: just use VLC media player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ [videolan.org]
and open the video stream:
File->Open Network Stream
check HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MSS and put in the url http://www.cnn.com/video/live/cnnlive_1.asx [cnn.com]
then watch and try not to vomit!
This presumes.... (Score:2)
Much easier at 1.5X speed (Score:5, Interesting)
I have TV. I still set my MythTV to record it, and started watching about an hour in.
Why ? So I could use time-stretch to watch it at 1.5X speed. They take forever to say the simplest thing.
Time stretch is amazing. Get done in less time, without everyone sounding like chipmunks.
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How does time stretch work? (Yes I googled it, all I get is a bunch of how-to about installing myth-tv.)
BTW, /., logging in the new way sucks, change it back to the old way that has been changed for a while now without reason? Used to be able to log-in WHILE making a comment. Now, follow the log-in link, log-in, take you to the front page rather than the comment you were going to reply to. Why make it more of a hassle and less convenient than it used to be?
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I'm guessing it also does a frequency shift on the audio so it's the same pitch at a different speed.
How time stretch works (Score:2)
How does time stretch work?
Wikipedia knows [wikipedia.org].
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I have MythTV, but it only records what Obama says. ;)
IT'S A JOKE PEOPLE!
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I have TV. I still set my MythTV to record it, and started watching about an hour in.
Why ? So I could use time-stretch to watch it at 1.5X speed. They take forever to say the simplest thing.
Time stretch is amazing. Get done in less time, without everyone sounding like chipmunks.
My MythTV box died a while ago and that time-stretch feature is by far the number one thing that I miss. I am going to replace my MythTV box just for that. I'm not aware of any other DVR that does that. It's an awesome little feature. The debates would have been so much more interesting in time-stretch.
podcasts? audio? mp3's ? (Score:2)
Anyone happen to know where one could pickup MP3's of the event? archive.org has a few debates from last time around, but nothing current, and I have not been able to pick them up.
iTunes used to have them the last time I used iTunes. Sadly, my Mac died a long time ago, and I haven't been able to sign on to the iTunes store in a *long* time.
Re:podcasts? audio? mp3's ? (Score:4, Informative)
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Awesome, I spotted the links I wanted @ the bottom, I didn't see that the first few times I searched.
thanks again!
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iTunes is not just on the Mac -- it's available for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista [apple.com]. But thanks for the tip about having the audio files there; I'll check it out.
Multicast (Score:5, Insightful)
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The thing I never understood is how do you get everyone watching at the same time? If Antonia starts at 8:00, and Bob starts at 8:04, how is a multicast going to help?
It would work exactly the same way that a television does.
That is, a television with several [hundred] gigabytes of storage space, and [usually] over a gig of memory. You'd be able to cache it.
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So Bob misses out on the first 4 minutes of the stream?
Not if Bob's client has the ability to cache the stream as it is coming in.
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Yeah, but he'd have to start the client at 8:00 anyway. Assuming the feed doesn't exist until then, he wouldn't be able to set it up beforehand either.
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Bob missed the first 4 minutes.
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Check Ustream.TV (Score:2)
There will be plenty of live streams with it on Ustream.TV
On last debate there were over 4000 simultaneous viewers on a stream and it worked fine.
What could possibly change your mind? (Score:2)
At this point? I'm watching the NLCS.
I don't know anyone who doesn't own a TV!! (Score:3, Interesting)
I for one have a High Definition TV receiver plugin for my laptop and it coincidentally can also record and time shift. So I can comfortably place it aside and let it record the thing for me to watch later when I have the time and its in high definition to boot. Online viewing right now just plain sucks.
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What good is HD for a debate?
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My challenge (Score:3, Interesting)
My challenge with anything video online is my ISP's bandwidth caps. I am capped at 60GB per month combined download and upload. Streaming video can add up fast! My issues with Firefox only showing a black box for CNN's streaming video was solved. I do not know who solved it...CNN or Firefox folks. But it's good news nonetheless.
I will probably be on the road while the debate is going on...but have Mythbuntu programmed to record the show, including all the pundits' takes after the debate.
The trouble is, MythBuntu creates huge files (2.2 GB for just 1 hr), making disk space run fast. I just wish my man success. Can you guess who it is?
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A 500 GB drive costs about $70 these days ($50 if you're willing to trust small dealers). Is 30 cents per hour (reusable) really a problem?
No Hulu for me (Score:4, Informative)
I'm an American living abroad and Hulu has region restrictions, so it doesn't work for me. Bastards.
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Get a VPN account with a U.S. provider. Not only gives you access to U.S. content, it protects your system when you're using hotspots.
OGG or other? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone ballsy enough to stream using a more widely available, non-Flash codec?
Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, I am. Just hook me up with a few dozen OC-192 connections at each of the largest 100 cities in the country, and set me up with 1000 computers at each site, and I'll stream it in OGG Theora format. Oh, and I'll also need a satellite dish and receiver tuned to the C-SPAN channel.
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Are you speaking of MMS? I know we're supposed to hate anything Windows, but that one works well and is implemented in most Linux distros. (It's also relatively easy to capture...)
Re:OGG or other? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone ballsy enough to stream using a more widely available, non-Flash codec?
Are you actually arguing that OGG is more widely available to the viewing public than Flash, Real, or WMV?
It's not about "balls." It's about installed base and the marginal utility of supporting OGG compared to formats installed already on most people's machines. I'd love to see an OGG stream of the debates, but I wouldn't claim that it's "more widely available" in an attempt to suggest that people aren't supporting it for illogical reasons.
A OTA tunner for your pc is that hard to get? (Score:2)
The only hard thing that I see it trying to get CH 2 HD in chicago.
Fox has baseball but it will be on NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS free over the air.
BBC (Score:4, Informative)
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MySpace (Score:2)
Personally, I watched the first two presidential debates and the vp debate streaming live from MySpace [myspace.com]. I don't use MySpace for anything else. Quality was OK. I like that I get the feed from before & after commercial TV picks it up. More like being in the audience.
Try Streaming Bittorrent (Score:3, Interesting)
LowTech (Score:2)
There's also that whole "radio" thing.
Broadcast TV: Forgotten Already (Score:2)
For those of us that no longer have a television,
Who, the Amish? They don't vote.
Almost everybody else has free TV, for now at least. Even if you live in a really bad reception area (as I do) you can probably get one or two network stations. You might need one of those silver wirey things, it's called an antenna.
I have one of those somewhere, but if I decided to watch the debate, I guess it would probably be easier to call up a stream. Still, I hate looking at politicians, so I'll probably resort to another obsolete technology, radio.
Or you could... (Score:3, Informative)
Why Live? (Score:2)
Are you casting your vote tomorrow?
Sports bars! (Score:2)
C-SPAN (Score:2)
I think there will also be a stream available from C-SPAN [c-span.org], which will probably be preferable to the abysmal journalism of Fox News one may be subjected to at the beginning or end. It looks like a local DC PBS affiliate is also offering a live webcast [weta.org], but a) I'm not sure how much bandwidth they'll have and b) it looks like it's offered either as windows media video or through silverlight, so this may be tough if you're on Linux.
I think that, aside from questions of capacity, C-SPAN is probably the best
Hack the Debate = debate + twitter (Score:2, Informative)
Current does a 'Hack the Debate' live mashup of the debates with users' tweets. Anyone can tweet with #current in the message & current puts as many as possible on-screen during the live debate broadcast. I haven't watched it live, yet, but saw some vid of it and it looks really cool.
http://current.com/topics/88834922_hack_the_debate [current.com]
The Onion needs to change their headline (Score:2)
A great news story about the poster... (Score:2)
"For those of us that no longer have a television"
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694 [theonion.com]
CSPAN you insenstive clod... (Score:2)
Seriously, CSPAN has been doing live feeds of debates and other political events for years now. As far as I know CSPAN is the best example of the cable industry providing a public service to the internet. And YES I watched the last two debates over CSPAN's live streams.
Hulu = nogo (Score:3)
I can't think of a better use for streaming the presidential debates online than enabling all us expats who can't see it live on our local stations. Which is why I found it really annoying when I logged on to Hulu for debate #2 that I got a big fat denial message stating they can only serve content to people in the US. Thankfully, the BBC had it live and uninterrupted.
Re:Overdrive (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a non USian, living outside the US, I have to say that the American presidential election is all over the news feeds here as well.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, newsfeeds and syndication. Whatever the American media decides to talk about, the entire anglosphere usually ends up talking about as well. If there's a bus crash or school shooting in the middle of nowhere in, say, Nebraska, its gets on the Irish, and usually English, national 9 o'clock news. This is a symptom of an increasingly monopolised and centralised media in the western world.
Secondly, the US presidential elections are actually very important. I see Slashdotters posting comments to the effect that both parties are equally bad and it doesn't matter which way you vote and excuses, excuses, excuses. I can tell you from the point of view of someone who is very much affected by the results of your national elections, this is a pretty depressing thing to hear. It's clear to anyone who has half a clue that there are very wide and deep differences between the two main candidates, and it's quite irritating to find out just how flippantly many Americans go about voting, or not voting, for their president.
Your election affects me. It affects people around me. My nation's economy, policies, laws, and culture, yes culture, are significantly affected by your selection of a president, through his administration's policies. When the choices made by religious southern fundamentalists end up slowly eroding my way of life because people who should have known better were too apathetic to vote, I get a little irritated. So in my view the more coverage this election gets, the better.
So in short, I would rather these stories on the Slashdot front page rather than have this site ignore or only pay lip service to the issue. This is "Stuff That Matters" to me.
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Second, This being Slashdot you are going to get a lot of libertarian views, mostly siding with democratic policies.
Third, The presidential seat is merely a face that the world gets to see and blame. The real direction of the country come from the cabinet, the house, and unfortunately, the bench as of late.
for instance, the current economic crisis effecting you wasnt due to a president, (that didnt help the situation), it was a whole slew of issues from Dem
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Man I just posted this in another thread, but it fits here too.
Lets look at some policies. Iraq war, pretty much the same. We'll take the troops out of Iraq when the conditions on the ground allow it, and put them in Afghanistan. Domestic wiretapping? Obama voted for the Bush plan. Economic bailout? Both of them voted for it.
I don't see either of them talking about fundamental change in the way our system works. I don't see either of them talking about cracking down on corporate crime. I don't see either of
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This is exactly the kind of attitude the OP was talking about. I find it ironic that there are engaged and interested people all over the world who would love to have your vote, yet you refuse to apply your brain and engage in the political process because the candidates don't differ on your pet issues.
From the perspective of the rest of the world, Barak "Let's Talk to Both Our Friends and Our Enemies" Obama is a lot less of a worry than John "Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb-Iran" McCain. Obama has had to talk
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"American" means "of the Americas". Anybody living on the continents of North or South America could rightly call themselves "American".
"USian" is probably not the best term to use, but it's a damn sight more accurate than "American".
In my country (Uruguay), we regularly do refer to ourselves as "Americanos" (American in Spanish).
:)
When somebody calls himself an "American" in English we understand what they mean, but in Spanish we call them "Estadounidenses" - which should be translated to USian
and even then it could be a bit of a misnomer (Brazil for example is United States of Brazil, etc...)
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They're 90% the same, as said before.
Foreign policy: both parties support the War in Iraq, and foreign interventionism in general. Both parties support an oversized military, based in hundreds of bases around the world, rather than concentrating on protecting our borders. Neither party believes in not being the global policeman.
Business regulation: both parties support deregulation of the financial markets, leading to our current mess. The Graham act which overturned Glass-Steagal was passed in 1999, and
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Correction: Elements of both parties support the War in Iraq but you'll find far more people who oppose it on the Democratic side of the aisle (including the nominee for President) than you will on the Republican side (Ron Paul and who else?)
While it's true that there's always people in both parties who are exceptions to the rule (on any issue), generalizing is worthwhile. So, generally, the Democrats support the war, as when they grabbed power in '06, they did absolutely nothing to pull out. There might
Re:Overdrive (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a 46 year-old American citizen. My ancestors came over from Europe 400 years ago. I have been actively interested/involved in politics since I watched Bobby Kennedy get shot on TV when I was 6. I can honestly tell you that there is very little difference between the two candidates other than the color of their skin and their age. The Democratic and Republican parties have become one and the same. If our media, which dominates your airwaves would cover the "other" parties' candidates you would see the lack of difference between the two leading candidates.
Do you honestly believe that the world would be exactly the same as it is now, if Al Gore had won in 2000?
Re:Overdrive (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Overdrive (Score:5, Interesting)
Mickey increases the number of registered voters without increasing the number of actual voters. This provides an opportunity for disguising vote fraud by adding votes at the end of the night, but staying under the registered total.
It's not separate from the black box machine, it's complementary to it.
Perhaps, but ACORN is following the law. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, we're still missing some of the ACORN story. For one thing, the problem is because they pay people per registration. So some people like to add a bunch of phony registrations to get paid more.
ACORN knows this, so they look for it and fire those people. They also separate the probably fraudulent registrations. But they are required by law to give ALL of the registrations to the elections officials, so they also include a note saying, "These are probably fraudulent, please check. And here are the details of the guy who came up with these probably fraudulent registrations so you can prosecute them."
They've done this for a long time now. Remember that scandal over the illegal firing of US Attorneys? That was because they refused to prosecute ACORN for this years ago because they did not believe that they were doing anything illegal. But Bush's people fired all the people who said it was legal and stacked the deck with hardcore Republicans. So now they're prosecuting.
Even though ACORN is being defrauded by bad workers. Even though ACORN is obeying the law. Even though ACORN verifies the registrations and separates the bad ones in spite of having no legal obligation to do so.
This is just politically motivated nonsense. Yes, there will probably be convictions, but they'll be of people ACORN turned in and recommended for prosecution.
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I think the Onion already reported [theonion.com] on vote manipulation.
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no, but he might send in a absentee ballot. It does seam very unlikely (at this point) that this election will be close enough to have any absentee ballot fraud on a scale to make a difference, that is not so obvious that it can be covered up. However their were some serious screw up's for them to not know that just pushing for "completed forms" would get any other result, other than some workers figuring out they could instead sit at home watching t
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But Diebold "stealing elections" isn't a little too convenient to be the perfect thing gift wrapped by and for Howard Dean?
The difference is that Acorn has to think of unique NFL player name for each individual vote it fakes. And it has to do this countless thousands of times, leaving a paper trail each time, just to even have the possibility of influencing the outcome. Diebold, OTOH, could potentially throw entire states just by altering a couple lines of code.
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If you honestly cannot see a difference between McCain and Obama, you might as well write in Palin for president because your IQ would be about the same.
Nader framed his campaigns as "the other guys are basically the same party". As we watch the GOP implode and Bush go down as the worst president in history, are you honestly going to say that there is no difference between both parties, their platforms and their candidates? Seriously?
Do you really foresee an Obama administration twisting words like Terror
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There are basic fundamental differences between Barack Obama and John McCain in how they will each end up screwing things up. It's really a choice of which way you want to have the country screwed up.
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Oh, you're replacing "Bush/McCain" with Obama! Haha!! I get it!!
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I only "have" TV because my roommate has TV (because of his addiction to "Deal Or No Deal"). It's generally not worth having because it's content controlled by big corporations, not real people.
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If you're going to avoid things that are controlled by huge corporations, then make sure not to use any electricity, fill your car up with gas, or fly on a commercial airplane. Maybe your best option would be to dig a hole, jump in it, and wait for the apocalypse.
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In Soviet Oceana, TV watches YOU!
Actually I wondered the same thing. I don't know a single person without a TV. Most people I know have several (I only have one, but there are three in my house, Robyn's is stored and Charlie has one). I don't have cable, but that's no problem as the debates are on half the channels I get.
My problem is I don't know which candidate to vote for, but none of the three who might get my vote are included in the festivities. As I've already decided I'm voting against both McCain a
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I'm going to watch the debate because one of those two will be the next US president. It doesn't really matter wh
Re:What is this Russia? (Score:4, Funny)
Moonlight (Score:2)
Will I be able to watch it without stupid Silverlight? It'd be nice to be able to watch from my Linux box :-(
What error message did Moonlight [mono-project.com] give, either when you built it from source to get the media codecs[1] or when you tried to run it?
[1] From the page: "These builds do not include media codecs (video or audio), for that, you must currently build Moonlight from source code."
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Why drive out and cast a meaningless vote when the swing voters have decided for me?
Guess what? When you're trying to influence an election where the person with the majority of votes is the winner, removing one vote from the vote pool has the effect of giving the other votes more sway. You are literally giving the ignorant voters more say over the course of this nation because you don't want to 'reward' the candidate with your vote. Instead you'd rather reward the candidate by making other votes count more. If you're really pissed off, vote third-party. Will they win? Hell no. But,
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