DailyDirt: More Olympic Trivia

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Aug 7th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The technology used behind the scenes at the Olympics is getting better all the time. It's not an easy task to measure people moving with extreme accuracy, but it can be done. There are some other tasks that aren't so easy to do as well, and the judges are relying on robots and lasers to get these jobs done. Here are just a few examples of more technology creeping into the games.

The speed of sound is apparently too slow for the Olympics now, so the starting pistols have been replaced by electronic beeps. Perhaps there shouldn't be a starting pistol at all, and the judges should simply measure when the athletes start and finish? [url]
Robotic cameras are catching more action at the Olympics. Not too surprising that cameramen can't run alongside Olympic athletes and keep up.... [url]
The modern pentathlon is using laser pistols instead of real guns this year. No sound effects like "pew pew pew!" will be tolerated from the audience. [url]
While the testing for performance enhancing drugs has generated some controversy, the testing of athlete gender seems a bit trickier to handle. Does a person with XXY compete in the male or female events? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: accuracy, gender, olympics, robots, testing

11 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2012 @ 6:47pm

laser pistols!?
Sure, laser pistols sound safe now, but just wait until some idiot uses one of the lasers in a gun:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/07/jetblue-pilot-suffers-eye-injury-from-green-la ser/

or builds a small one of these:

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2011/04/08/navy-showboats-destructive-new-laser-gun/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Killercool (profile), 7 Aug 2012 @ 7:51pm
  
  Re: laser pistols!?
  I still find it odd that a plane in the air, which has it's windshield ABOVE the nose of the plane, as well as effectively recessed behind the curvature of the fuselage, was vulnerable to a laser from the ground.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2012 @ 10:43pm
  
  Re: laser pistols!?
  and to think you probably have half a dozen of them, right there in your room !!!!..
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2012 @ 9:50pm

do electronic beeps make beeps that travel at faster than the speed of sound ?? (cough,,,idiot)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2012 @ 10:01pm
  
  Re:
  you'll probably also find they have been NOT using starting guns for many many years, it's because without them they do not have to measure one parameter, the starting time of the race.
  
  they only need to measure the time when they cross the line, with a gun you have to measure the exact time the gun is fired as well as the finish time..
  
  it's not because the laws of physics have somehow changed, or an electronic beep's sound travels faster than a starting gun !!!! ..
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pixelation, 7 Aug 2012 @ 9:53pm

Go from 2 to 3
"Does a person with XXY compete in the male or female events? "

Just make it male, female, other.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2012 @ 9:57pm
  
  Re: Go from 2 to 3
  but they are not 'other', they are either..
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
ethorad (profile), 8 Aug 2012 @ 3:10am

measuring the start of a race
I've considered different ways of measuring the time as a way of removing false starts.

Currently if you start too early then you are disqualified. Twitch too early and you're out. Harsh, and it's not really what people want to see - they want to see a race with all contestants.

I would propose retaining the starting gun so that all contestants run at the same time (as oppposed to time trials like on cycling where everyone starts one after the other). Your base time is measured as time from the gun to the time you cross the line. However, if you go before the gun instead of being disqualified, you are penalised by adding twice the time you went early to your total time (has to be at least once times the time early, to offset the advantage you got from starting early, and I added a penalty of an additional one times).

Since all contestants are starting at about the same time, the adjustments made should be small - small enough that they won't interfere with the public watching to see who wins, in that if it's decided by the adjustment then it's probably close enough that normal viewers can't tell who won without replays etc.

Should mean that there's no disqualifications from false starts, all races will be run with all entrants, and the skill of going as soon as possible after the gun is retained.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2012 @ 4:35am

So I'm a woman and a test says I'm a man... interesting.
Should I get naked and you still will deny I'm a woman?

humm...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 8 Aug 2012 @ 6:02pm
  
  Re:
  obviously you do not know you are a woman, you THINK you are a woman... if the test says you are a man,, you are a man, (plus you are stupid).... for not knowing !!!!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- ethorad (profile), 10 Aug 2012 @ 6:26am
  
  Re:
  For athletics, the point isn't so much that the race is for men or women, but that people with certain hormones (eg testosterone) have a greater power output than those without. Therefore having the two compete against each other is unfair. Competitions are therefore split into those with those hormones ("male events") and those without ("female events")
  
  As such, whether you are XXY or some other unusual genetic combination, the question is are you racing against other people with the same basic advantages as yourself. The male/female split is just an easy way to determine it for 99% of the population.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]