Futuristic Computer Lingo - help me BS it?

A lot of computer stuff is acronyms. You could make some up. The letter V would likely be present for "video". Something like VRMIN, pronounced vermin. "Video Realtime Monitoring blah blah blah"

The database could be DAVIS - Digital and Analog Video Inspection System

Start with a pronounceable acronym and work backwards from there.

archerjoe said:

A lot of computer stuff is acronyms. You could make some up. The letter V would likely be present for "video". Something like VRMIN, pronounced vermin. "Video Realtime Monitoring blah blah blah"

The database could be DAVIS - Digital and Analog Video Inspection System

Start with a pronounceable acronym and work backwards from there.

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Those working with security databases are more likely to soften the image a bit.

DAVIS - Digital & Analog Video Integration System

If you go hunting for modern CCTV companies (real world touchstones for SF are important) then you'll be amused at how cutesy some of them are named. There are a couple of hold-out's from the original wave (waaay back) which have rather tougher, laced-with-authoritativeness names, but most of the companies have merged and the names have been neutered somewhat.

BigWords said:

If you go hunting for modern CCTV companies (real world touchstones for SF are important) then you'll be amused at how cutesy some of them are named. There are a couple of hold-out's from the original wave (waaay back) which have rather tougher, laced-with-authoritativeness names, but most of the companies have merged and the names have been neutered somewhat.

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Panasonic just released their Mega Super Dynamic System, which we were testing at our work. Yes, that is what it is called. Us in accounting were giggling at that.

I second the acronym idea. I had a little bio-engineered critter I wanted to name BIBU. The name became short for "Biomechatronical Intelligent Buddy Unit." ^_^

Honestly, if you try to just throw terms in there, odds are you're going to end up sounding ridiculous to anyone who knows what they're talking about. Better to make up non-existant terms and use them however you want.

Which would be filed under "you couldn't make this shit up if you tried". At least two of the words in the name are utterly redundant, which doesn't surprise me in the least. (I'm a cynic, so I'm shooting a guess that the name is a deliberate evocation of badly-translated Japanese software)

BigWords said:

Which would be filed under "you couldn't make this shit up if you tried". At least two of the words in the name are utterly redundant, which doesn't surprise me in the least. (I'm a cynic, so I'm shooting a guess that the name is a deliberate evocation of badly-translated Japanese software)

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The Mega is in reference to Megapixel while the Super Dynamic is in reference to its ability to achieve face recognition. That is, it is very dynamic in its ability to track and recognise faces with high resolutions.

This blurb is taken from a manufacturer of a recent video interface (way to get video data into and out of a computer). There's plenty of tech-speak there you could borrow, replacing the names of software products with some of the suggestions above:

In both Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro, the V4HD provides hardware-accelerated capture and playback of DVCProHD, DVCPro50 and DVCPro25 video streams, plus 8- and 10-bit uncompressed SD — all with convenient plug-and-play FireWire connectivity and CPU-efficient intra-frame editing.
The V4HD is ideal for a DVCProHD/P2 workflow because you can immediately play back P2 clips (either imported or ingested) with no transcoding necessary. Conversely, you can connect any SD or HD video source such as an HDV camera, legacy video deck or DVD player and then capture it directly as a DVCProHD clip in Final Cut or Premiere. Many cameras now feed their uncompressed SDI or component output directly from the camera's optics and imager, before compression, for the best-possible picture quality during capture with the V4HD.

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All very good suggestions - and great blurb BTW.

Capcha, way I be annoyingly hypocritical? If not, ignore the rest here.

Pumping every camera image into one central database sounds highly inefficient on so many levels. More likely there would be reginal databases to reduce the load with a central system managing them (and able to retrieve select data from sub-databases as needed). I'm more than willing to suspend disbelief on filesize (videos are quite large) but having everything in one single database makes the IT part of my mind go 'this writer has no clue how systems process huge ammounts of data'.

Captcha said:

I ABSOLUTELY have no clue how systems process huge amounts of data!

So if I talk about it in terms of a centralized network, would that sound okay? So the data isn't actually all in the same place, but it's all networked together with central control?

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Yes - that sounds a lot more plausible.

Main consideration is data transfer. Assume somewhere around a million cameras per city (which is a low estimate). Assume those cameras upload feed every hour or so. That's 24 million uploads a day in one city. Over a whole country, the number goes up accordinly - until eventually you reach a number of transfers the your one main server can't handle and the whole thing bottlenecks. Split those systems up on a (let's say) city-by-city basis, the data can stay close to the cameras, which (in your case) brings relatively few drawbacks. You only have to transfer the data once. And you can run all the processes you need (categorization, facial idenfificaton and what have you) on the local servers. Splitting it up also saves the worst-case-scenario of loosing all your data at once.

As for communication between the servers, I'll illustrate with this example:

You have a picture of the guy you have to find and know 10 people might have seen that person. Rather than have everyone draw everyone they remember seeing and giving you all those drawings, you send each person that might have seen him a copy of that picture. They can each say yes, I've seen him or and no, haven't. You don't have to actually know how they got to that decision assuming you can trust those people. Then, when you know who's seen him, all you have to do is go ask them the right questions.

A networked data system will work something along those lines - just with servers and databases instead of humans and memories (where "you" would be the central system).

Hope this helps.