Smart “Football”
When I first read this article, I thought they meant football, not soccer!
Just my America-centrisim showing again, I guess. I should have suspected something when the article on Australian IT talked about the debut happening in Lima, Peru. Well, anyway, it’s interesting to me that they’re even looking at taking the judging responsibility away from a person and giving it to a system. Here’s how it works: The chip in the ball will be read by sensors at the goal, registering a valid goal. So, it’s simple, if the ball passes the goal, the score gets updated. Hardly a need for a referee at all, is there? Well, okay, those soccer hooligans get a bit unruly, but that’s a job for the police, not the ref.
Technology is everywhere.
You know, I’ve been watching the Astros-Cardinals games the last 2 nights…good games by the way…anyway, I’ve been noticing how inconsistent the homebase umpires are when calling strikes/balls. I was thinking there must be some way of setting up a grid system that would determine a ball or a strike. You could also tell whether a guy “went around” when doing a check swing. There’d be no more guess work and you still have the home plate umpire to deal with plays at the plate, etc. Hell, with the number of dirt cams, etc that are on a baseball diamond these days, you could just have a ref up in the booth watching multiple video feeds. He would have install replay at his whim. Hell, you could even outsource him/her to Bangalore and pay $10 an hour. Now that’s as American as…
Comment by Paul — 10/14/2005 @ 7:53 am
Piers Anthony had a bit about that in one of his books. The Blue Adept, I think. Anyway, there was a scene where a guy was competing for “Citizenship”, which would leave him set up for life, and he was playing against robots in a game of football. American football, that is. The robo referees were programed to make a bad call each half, randomly, to simulate the “mistakes” that a human referee team would make.
Comment by the Network Geek — 10/14/2005 @ 8:54 am
Ah, I remember that. Stile, I think his name was. Yet another Piers hero that was short, hyper-intellegent and gifted beyond human standards. I guess that’s why I’ve leaned toward more “human” characters in classic literature, lately. Interesting that I would want to replace umpires with technology, yet fault an author for creating perfect characters. “This is not my beautiful mind!”
Comment by Paul — 10/14/2005 @ 9:02 am