C-Span Posts Full Archives Online 115
An anonymous reader sends word that C-Span has completed its project of making all of its footage available online. "The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five presidential administrations and are sure to provide new fodder for pundits and politicians alike. The network will formally announce the completion of the C-Span Video Library on Wednesday. Having free online access to the more than 160,000 hours of C-Span footage is like being able to Google political history using the "I Feel Lucky" button every time,' said Rachel Maddow, the liberal MSNBC host."
If you can find anything (Score:5, Insightful)
The video is only as good as the meta data associated with it.
Too bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like most of the national parks. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad this exists but will probably never visit it.
Close captioned? (Score:5, Insightful)
Close captioning textfiles of every video might be more useful. Much easier to sift through data and refine your searches that way. The full record of CC files in .txt format can't run more than a gigabyte. Anybody got a link to that .torrent?
Re:Too bad... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, like most bad legislation, most of the dealing was behind closed doors.
Now if they'll just fix their web interface ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... so it works with Firefox and Noscript...
(I had finally unscrewed their previous AJAX-or-whatever abortion sufficiently to be able to watch their live feed channels - with manual poking EVERY TIME. But I'd given up on figuring out their interface to their earlier, partial, library offerings.)
Just tried this stupid thing: With only c-spanvideo.org enabled it showed me a static image with no controls. Adding netsuite.com made it hang my browser at 98% CPU. Had to kill it and restart.
Don't they have any competent web designers that actually TEST their product with non-IE browsers?
Amazing Achievement (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the amount of processing power it took to compress 160,000 hours of video fully indexed and ready for viewing.
Incredible for a non-profit.
Re:Goody! (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got to watch Ollie North's jaw muscles working. You know he's thinking about jumping over the table and snapping Inouwe's neck like a twig. He's trying to decide whether or not his patron Ronald Reagan would have pulled strings to get him pardoned for the attack or not. Considering the blanket pardons that went down later, I'm guessing that Reagan/Bush would have indeed pardoned North if he'd attacked.
The amazing thing about that moment in history is that Oliver North and Ronald Reagan actually believed they were doing God's will by selling arms to the guys in Iran who are now our "sworn enemies" and the "Axis of Evil".
That's ultimately why this C-Span archive project will not interest most Americans, who seem to believe that history started last week, and there were no terror attacks on the US during the Bush Administration(a quote that Dana Perino, Bush Press Secretary has made numerous times). You just watch, by 2012, people will believe that Barack Obama was president on 9/11.
Re:Not for Long (Score:5, Insightful)
C-SPAN is a private non-profit and receives no government funding.
True enough, but that's not really the whole story. I'll quote Wikepedia's summary:
Put crudely, everyone with a cable-TV feed is paying for it. But wait, there's more ..
I doubt anyone would quibble with the above. I sleep comfortably knowing that consumers of (mostly) mindless entertainment along with viewers of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all help pay for what's routinely offered on C-SPAN. That irony, of course, is layered with another irony, that while most of those groups repeatedly make claims of media bias, few would consider watching C-SPAN. Boring? You betcha. Most of life's issues are mind-numbingly dull in their complexity, especially when presented unedited and unfiltered.
Re:Goody! (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately that's just before the time period released, so that material isn't up yet, but apparently it will be soon -- yes, I read the FA:
C-Span was established in 1979, but there are few recordings of its earliest years. Those “sort of went down the drain,” Mr. Browning said. But he does have about 10,000 hours of tapes from before 1987, and he will begin reformatting them for the Web soon. Those tapes include Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign speeches and the Iran-Contra hearings.
In the meantime, check out the film Coverup [imdb.com], which covers the scandal and has some great scenes from those hearings, including that particular exchange (among others) with Oliver North.
Re:Goody! (Score:5, Insightful)
The amazing thing about that moment in history is that Oliver North and Ronald Reagan actually believed they were doing God's will by selling arms to the guys in Iran who are now our "sworn enemies" and the "Axis of Evil".
Now? The thing that was so scandalous was they were our sworn enemies even then! At least with the Afghan "freedom fighters" that Reagan also armed, we can say that he didn't know then that they would become our great enemy. But with Iran the Reaganites knew exactly who they were dealing with.
Re:Now if they'll just fix their web interface ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Javascript isn't the "abortion" it used to be, it's critical in many sites, especially with dynamic content. If you want to block a significant portion of web content, that's your choice, but don't complain when things don't work because you refuse to allow your browser to use the required Javascript libraries.
Just me? (Score:4, Insightful)
What does "liberal" have to do with this story? Couldn't simply a news anchor say the same thing? Or does referring to CPAN and Google in a sentence make you a liberal?
Re:Goody! (Score:3, Insightful)
Better yet, perhaps I should just listen to Anonymous cowards on slashdot.