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"Smart" Billboards Debut in Sacramento
k0osh.CEOofCLIT writes "Remember the billboards in "Minority Report" that scanned your eyes and changed the advertisement based on your shopping preferences? The Sacramento Bee reports: "Soon, this sign along the Capital City Freeway will be able to change its message based on what radio stations motorists have tuned in.""Yeah, Chris can't spell. He and Rob should form a club. *grin*
I haven't seen it yet, you insensitive clod!
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
TWO misspellings of "Sacramento!"
What I listen to in my car is nobody else's business. Anyone know how I can go about installing shielding around my radio?
Soon, the billboards will be giving us advice ala LA Story. "I think you would be happy if you bought a Gap Denim Jacket!"
lol brb g2g
fp
Considering the type of "music" I listen to, people will be treated with some good porn when I drive by. Too bad for all the traffic accidents that will follow, though...
Speeling machines anyone?
And watch the number of accidents increase 10 fold because drivers are too busy looking at these billboards. I'm avoiding Sacramento (I know... spelling is badass).
_________ Help me get a PSP!
seventh!
i think wrapping your entire car with tinfoil and chickenwire may do the trick. then again, that might possibly amplify your signal :-/
seriously, what's it show when you're not listening to a radio? or, even more interesting, what happens when i'm tuned into those sex-talk shows that come on after midnight. that has the potential to cause quite a few accidents!
$2 sand niggah action! sup niggahs!
wait a sec, how can some sign detect what radio station I'm listening to? all I have done is tuned into a frequency... there is no transmitting or anything, no bouncing back a signal.
This just doesn't make sense to me.
So how exactly do these billboards figure out what radio stations people are listening to? Do radios emit EM signals that can be used to determine what they're tuned to (it's been a long time since I took a physics class, somebody help me out here)?
Gotta love sacramento. Next thing you know they'll be watching us with cameras inside our tv's. Double-plus ungood, indeed.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I remember being taught that all radio reciever's leak signal and transmit it back out the recieving antennae.
Is that how this thing would be working ?
I hope they show some pictures of naked, shaved pussy.
"The billboards won't actually tailor their messages to individual passers-by. Instead, the signs can be programmed to change based on the listening habits of the majority of people driving by at a given time."
Hmmmm...so I will see ads tailored to the idiots who listen to top 40 drivel? Sounds great, way to target me.
One other minor detail, since when do trolls get their posts approved on slashdot. Ceo of the Clit eh?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wait a second. This could be a good thing. This is companies actually using advanced, high-tech devices to affect the consumer and give a more relevent expeirence. I mean, integration of higher and higher technology into daily life is one of the goals right, as it'll increase the demand for cheaper and better versions of technology. Discounting the 1984-Orwelliean aspect of this, this could actually be a positive phenomenon, ushering in new advances in advertising that could carry over to security or everyday automation of various tasks.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
S-A-C-R-A-M-E-N-T-O
The occasional typo is fine. Misspelling the same word twice in the same story is just not acceptable. Especially when it's something that's so crucial to the story! And so easily looked up!!
Slashdot will never be accepted into anything even remotely resembling the mainstream until the editors actually edit something!!!
The grammar on this site is atrocious, as is the spelling, and will soon lead me to switch to The Register, or even news.com for my home page.
MMM... the sensationalism of those head lines. I must say they really aren't anything like the ones in Minority report which didn't change content to suit the user, they gave each person and idividualized sales pitch. Please dont mod me down, thats just an observation. Second... can one really determine from someones listening habits what they are into shopping for. I listen to NPR and punk rock... I have trouble stereotyping both of those to a similiar set of products. I mean really, someones internet usage shows what they are interested in, their radio only know their music preference. Third, the distraction factor is mentioned in the article but I don't think enought weight is geven to it. In Atlanta, where I am from we had one of those electronic billboards that got a court order to only have slowly changing adverts because it was to distractung. If one of these got that sort of court order it would turn into a cool radio scanning static billboard that hemmoraged money.
I can't find my
Hrm. The article describes what the billboards do, but they completely avoid the question of how these mystical "sensors" work. I thought I understood how a radio reciever works, but I don't understand how you could remotely determine the location of a radio *reciever*, much less *what* frequency said reciever is (um) recieving.
I'm thinking of cases in totalitarian governments during the last 100 years where people huddled around banned radios trying to get the BBC, or of the case of the BBC roaming around trying to find people who have working televisions but don't pay their television tax. Could sensors like this be used by govt.s to determine from outside a house whether there was a functioning radio/television reciever? Could similar tech be used to locate illegal cell/police scanners or radar detectors (in areas where such things are illegal)?
Would it be possible for me to build such a scanner and then legally walk around seeing what passing cars are listening to and what people are watching on tv, just out of curiousity?
Is there a physics major in the house?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I only listen to NPR, what are they going to sell me? A platter of dead tree? Hah!
Bored with karma, be a fan/freak
"here's no passive way to do this at all"
They have mirrors with strings strategically placed around the vicinity of the billboard/freeway.
When a car drives past a camera detects the cars velocity and starts adjusting the mirrors untill one of them can peek through your windscreen and see where the dial is set.
I wonder if it works for vehicles with no read/side windows ?
Which freeway in Austin? Or perhaps this is about relatives in near Washington DC? I have some other relatives in New Mexico... is that it?
The PERV in front of you is listening to 'LOVE LINES'!
Paid for by:
The Moral Majority
AFAIK radios are passive devices, with negligible radiofrequency emissions.
Combine the technology behind these and these and well, who needs to scan your eyes...? Thought police anyone?
What happens if I'm listening to non-terrestrial radio (XM, Sirrus) or listening to a CD, like say, the new System of a Down CD (then they'd know how much I hate ads and corporate america). I still think billboards that have video are too much of a distraction. In todays world of abstracted liability, is it possible that I can sue this company if someone is distracted by their billboard and hits me?
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
...for a different reason. I've driven by the one that went up in 1999 a few times, and every time I wonder "How schweet would it be to play Quake 3 on that?"
What do you expect from a guy whose handle is "k0osh.CEOofCLIT"?
I hope it has a good refresh rate lol
Not only does this invade my privacy, but it broadcasts information from which my income, age, etc. can be derived to everyone AROUND me!
...now I have to find a pop-up killer for my car stereo! Ohhhhh what a world what a world
"It is essential that justice be done
there are no good radio stations.
Soon, this sign along the Capital City Freeway will be able to change its message based on what radio stations motorists have tuned in.
Does that mean if someone is tuned into Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern the billboard advertises the nearest place they can pick up some taste/informed-opinions?
...Sac-o-tomato was a hotbed for consumer testing. We used to get all the new softdrink flavors and designer cookies, chips, etc. before many other regions around the U.S. Remember, as go California, so (eventually) goes the rest of the U.S. Nothing to brag about, however.
Another reason to pirate music and burn them onto CDs. I hope the RIAA are happy. :P
did someone say Capital City
SCREW FLANDERS
Sacremento?
Question everything
Where I come from we have a country wide radio station called triple J. It plays songs about 6 months before the commercial stations pick them up. Anyhow, it has no commercials, so will this billboard switch off if I ever drive past it?
I drive by the Auto Mall sign mentioned in the article every weekday. I agree about the distraction problem. It is especially noticeable at night because the sign is so freaking bright.
Too bad I don't listen to the radio.
DCMonkey
Jesus.
WTF is it with advertising?
Is there ANYWHERE I can go, where I'm not going to be subject to obnoxious marketing?
I wish they'd spend their time, energy, and money on making advertising less intrusive and less obnoxious. Then I may actually pay attention to something I read.
If this keeps up, everywhere we go it's going to be like a trade show, where all the advertisers are just trying to make the most noise and flash the most lights to grab your attention away from the other guy.
Please give your opinions on what you think the billboard will display when...
1) The car stereo is tuned in onto (eg. freq in MHz) 99.5FM while at the back seat, another person is listening to 110.5 FM.
2) The person has a TV installed instead of a radio.
3) A bus which has no radio passes by, but the passengers are listening to at least 10 different radio stations via mobile radios.
4) A police car passes by.
I got a few more possible situations, but these are the more interesting ones
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
"Hi! It looks like you're using your PDA, would you like some help?"
"Hi! It looks like you're trying to listen to the radio, would you like
a. A step-by-step guide on listening to your radio.
b. A radio tutorial.
c. Continue using the radio.
And voila, radio dropouts every few minutes on all highways!
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
if someone was listening to Rush, i think the ads would show the nearest outlet store that deals in Nazi SS uniforms.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I listen to NPR. Does this mean I have to put up with CSPAN and NASA TV commercials!?
MOD MY LAST POST DOWN ... so used to using Enter to tab between fields, which I know is really bad ... and unfortunately Submit is the default button)
.. for those of you who drive along Route 80 (aka Capital City Freeway) near Sacramento at night you already love the Ford billboard. It is a full size billboard with active lighting. They choose the advertisements so poorly as to cause drastic color changes. Not so bad, but for the fact that it is immediately in front of you on a left hand turn, compound with the fact that it is brighter than the brake lights on the car in front of you. It seems to be less "flashy" of late ... but it still sucks.
(sorry if that last post was empty
Anyways
Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
I drive this section of the Cap City freeway quite often (used to be several times a day, now it's a few a week), and I couldn't tell you how many times I've inched past this spot at about 5MPH. So what happens to this thing when you've got six lanes of traffic inching by, and they're all listening to different things?
:\
Of course, my biggest concern is wrecks. This particular spot is already a popular wreck site, with the Garden highway exit, the CalExpo grounds (location of the yearly state fair and dozens of other big draws), the way too narrow for its capacity American River Bridge and curve, and one of the biggest shopping malls in the region all located off of this short stretch of overcrowded highway. The LAST thing this spot really needs is another visual distraction
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
OK, I know very little on the subject, so I want to know if it would work to shield the radio, but not the antenna. Would the internal frequency it still leak "back up" the antenna? Could you extend this in some way so that it wouldn't? (Second, unshielded receiver box, sending a "shielded" signal to the receiver/decoder/whatever.) I mean (given you're paranoid enough) you could probably make a box to encode the whole signal digitally and send it encrypted to a shielded box for digital processing. If you were desperate.
(And for those who say "who cares, why be so silly over such a small thing"... well, it might not matter now, when your radio station of preference is being monitored, but at some point, it will. That's when this knowledge becomes useful.)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I hate the way slashdot links stuff but at least be consistant. "The Sacromento Bee" should be linked to the main page of the sacramento bee, and "reports" should be linked to the report.
Yea. Thanks. I feel better now, Bob.
Sure. He's got a point. Its not likely this particular bit of tech is all that intrusive. But he picked a horrible way of trying to make the point. Doubleclick was constantly criticized for their use of tracking cookies (and why I block them, but not neccissarily other ad banner sources). Then they were lambasted when, after several years of creating a database on tracking user traffic, went back on their word and announced they would use their newly purchased commercial mail database of US residents and attempt to merge the two; thus removing the promised annonymity.
Perhapse Bob will pick his comparisons better next time around. Of course, he's in the advertising industry. "Critic" or not - he's probably pretty clueless on the topic of personal privacy.
It could be fun messing with these.
Imagine 10 or so pocket radios modified so their speaker leads were clipped, all on and tuned to different stations, all wired into one power supply that you connect in your trunk.
Let the billboards figure That one out!
Then again, my experence with radio anymore is 2/3rds comercials and only 1/3rds music, and of that small percent, under 10% of the time is anything i care to listen to on, so to me this wouldnt be much of a problem.
The billboard idea itself is sorta neat actually.
However knowing that soon after they will have cameras to take pictures of your licence at the same time and match that to who you are using the wonders of databases, may make the jamming option more attractive.
That is if you dont want them to know what you listen to.
They could just take samples of the pattern a few days a year, and program the sign to meet that pattern for the rest of the year. I doubt the demographics really change that dramatically that suddenly that the board needs to change on-the-fly for every driver.
Yeah, just put a Faraday cage around it. Get rid of the antenna, too; that gives off all sorts of fucken signals.
Dude, er, it's still just a billboard.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
I'm a DJ you insensitive clod!
please answer quickly because I'm going to bed shortly and ifI don't know the answer I won't be able to sleep
So you're trying to tell me the billboard has a receiver so sensitive to pick up on the internal oscillator in my car radio. Not only will it pick up on this EXTREMELY low level signal, past all the noise and crap in the air, it will take an aggregate of all the cars in the area and figure the most listened to station.
No... First off your method of demodulating an FM signal is all wrong. You got the first stage right. The RF is broken down into an intermediate frequency (IF) by mixing it with a locally generated signal. But then you are all wrong. The IF is not rectified and filtered in an FM receiver. That is for AM.
In FM, the IF is run past a discriminator circuit. A change in frequency is interpreted as a change in amplitude and thus produces the audio.
Finally, even if they did have a receiver that was able to pick up the signal on my local oscillator, en-casing the radio chassis in copper shielding would then definitely keep the oscillator signal inside WITHOUT blocking the signal on the air. That's why you have an antenna.
If it was so easy to tell what radio frequency one was listening to, what would I (as a member of the US Navy) do? The enemy would know what frequencies we were listening to. That would get them one step closer to breaking our encryption and listening to our messages.
Next time do a little research before posting.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
Da man doesn't like criticism!
Note these errors were by different individuals, submitter (Sacromento) and editor (Sacramnto). It could be a regionalism.
I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation. Maybe they use cheap keyboards. And the headlines are written on CD-R's and typos can not be altered. Dyslexia maybe? Blurred vision? Don't rush to judgment.
I have to admit I my eye breezed right by both! I'm infected.
I was going to correct all the errors, but see the AC that is the parent of this message for a better explanation than I could probably do.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I saw this on a billboard recently... it sounds like it would suit you fine. :)
the link
I mean, I haven't looked at the protocols that digital radio systems use (XFM or whatever they call it), but I suppose it's not impossible that the thing has two-way capabilities...
May we never see th
What the hell is so sensational about theheadline? I really didn't gasp in awe or anything. All I thought was "why didn't they come up with this sooner?"
can one really determine from someones listening habits what they are into shopping for
For starters, if the majority of the drivers tuned into a radio station that plays country music, you wouldn't show ads for clothing like "GAP", but rather for "Marlboro Classic" (yes they have a clothing line) etc.
In Atlanta, where I am from we had one of those electronic billboards that got a court order to only have slowly changing adverts because it was to distractung.
If you read the article you'd know that the billboard changes every few minutes. That's slow enough imo :). But you're right though, people still might be distracted by it! (ooh, sarcasm meter went off the charts!)
If one of these got that sort of court order it would turn into a cool radio scanning static billboard that hemmoraged money.
I wish I could hemmorage money: it would be worth the discomfort, but quite embarassing when you're paying your bill ;)
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
If I don't have the radio on can it not show anything for me? Just like turning javascript off.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
A guy who listens to death metal would get a funeral home ad...
uhh, that'd be Sacramento, not Sacramnto or Sacromento.
I never been so broke that I couldn't leave town.
Isn't that how the Cat Detector Van in the Monty Python skit works? It picks up on the local oscilators in your unlicensed cat.
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
A new way to amuse myself while gridlocked in traffic. Get everyone around you to scan quickly though the entire dial and watch the sign have a nervous breakdown. "Their all listening to this, no that, no this AHHHH!!!!"
I can't find my
So what happens when there is more than one car going by with more than one stationed tuned in? Does the billboard switch between them immediately? What about a long string of cars? I have in mind a billboard frantically changing to keep up with the flow of traffic, such that it just looks incredibly silly and that no single advertisement gets more than a second of exposure.
Me fail english? That is unpossible!
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
I don't look at billboards. I look at important things, like road signs.
The coolest voice ever.
I could just see this technology being used to ferret out "terrorists". Imagine, you are listening to 2600's radio show and suddenly you are mysteriously pulled over...scary stuff
Lets think for a moment.. My radio emits RF leftovers. "They" can pick up that information, process it, and then market to me based on that knowledge for money. Thank goodness. I can now passively sniff WiFi all day long. Or is this not a two way street?
...
My CRT emits RF. What happens when they can pick that up? Think thats far off?? Okay, what about WiFi? Can I write a program to sniff the 30-some odd WiFi hotspots in my neighborhood.. and based on their physical location and the data I gather, market too them? Why or why not??
Think the analogy doesn't apply? What about the sattelite internet that uses sattelite downlink and landline uplink.. that is broadcasting to all of north america.. more than any single radio station.. This could set a dangerous precedent, no?
were all driving around lsitenign to pirated mp3's anyway.
the death wolf
I would leave a sig, but I forgot my password
The sugestion is that if a billboard changes in a drivers immediate or peripheral vision they will be distracted/alarmed by it.
This much different from seeing a billboard off in the distance and reading it at your leisure as you approach.
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
So I can see the billboard with a lot of pink color?
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
This might be deemed illegal by those picky FCC folk, but how about deliberately broadcasting a misleading signal?
:)
As for legality, well, if it's OK to leak the heterodyne frequency, can't I send out some others at the same level? Make them think I'm listening to 12 stations at once? If it's not legal, how about I just hook up add'l radios tuned to other stations, and without speakers?
Just a relatively aggressive and probably cheap DIY solution. And mischievous.
I'd be interested to see what shows up when I turn to some death-metal radio station...
You're just the picture of civility, aren't you.
Whenever someone points to the adverse effects of the 'net on human discourse, you've just volunteered a fine example.
Originally the idea was to use a computer controlled multi polarized liquid crystal windshield system to align the crystals so that they have opposing polarity in each layer so as to block direct sunlight. Don't you just hate it when driving east in the morning or west in the afternoon and have to put up with sunlight in your eyes when it is below the visor level? Do you try to align your head so the sun is behind the rear view mirror? Well this idea would block the sun by tracking the direction it is at.
So I was thinking. Why not add some more smarts to the computer software and have it scan the field of view looking for tell-tale billboard signs, and automatically block them out, too?
Well, I can dream, anyway.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Aren't you the guy that claimed that you were head of Nintendo R&D, and then had someone else (a few articles back, IIRC) point out that they knew the person in charge of Nintendo R&D and that you weren't him?
Furthermore, you've been giving what you claim is inside information about Nintendo on Slashdot, which I can hardly see the head of a corporate R&D division doing. I've worked in corporate R&D, and they're quite secretive, -- and more so the higher they get.
Finally, the heads of Nintendo's two R&D departments are, according to Planet Nintendo, Takehiro Izushi (R&D section 1) and Kazuhiko Taniguchi (R&D section 2). There is no "Nintendo Advanced R&D" division that I could find any reference to, nor is the informal term "head" a title that is likely to be used in the formal Japanese corporate culture. Finally, I find it rather unlikely that a non-Japanese person such as yourself would hold such a high-ranking position at a large Japanese firm.
Finally, I find it beyond belief that the head of "Nintendo Advanced R&D" would beg on Slashdot for details of how modchips work, when there are engineers aplenty that have worked hard on exactly this problem present in hordes working in Nintendo's R&D departments.
Sir, I accuse you of being both a troll and a fraud! To the Foe list with you!
May we never see th
and things start to get scary.
People assume they have privacy in their cars. The article above points out that the stations passers by are listening to are gathered in aggregate, and not linked to an individual.
But could the same info be linked to individuals by optical license plate recognition? Tough in a traffic jam, but maybe source of the signals could be triangulated.
A car radio's RF leakage, if you can call it that, could become another criteria for buyers.
Oh, for a room with a view of the sign, a tunable Gunn oscillator, and a reflector to beam my signal at the sign.
Hours of fun, convincing the sign that everybody leaving the football game is listening to a PBS classical music station.
For more fun and games with Gunn oscillators, see also trolling for taillights.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Great, first they want to control what I can do with my computer, now they want to use my radio frequency to target ads to me? Where do I sign up for the implants so they can just beam this crap directly into my cerebral cortex. I wanna be a drone to corporate marketing.
Is the messaging going to tell me something I already know? Or is it going to tell me something I don't already know? If it's something I already know... then it is useless. If it's something I don't already know... then I don't want other people on the road to know it!
Sex - Find It
The reason why LO signal leakage absolutely does occur in any practical radio receiver is that there's no such thing as a perfectly-directional RF amplifier.
The local oscillator signal is generated and mixed with the incoming signal at a very early stage, relativley close to the antenna. A long way before the limiter/discriminator stage, in other words, and in a portion of the receiver that's architecturally identical regardless of the mode being demodulated. Different IF frequencies are used by FM, AM, and TV broadcast receivers, but the front-end topology is the same: one or more RF amplifier stages feed the incoming signal into the first mixer, which is also fed by the first local oscillator. This signal chain is not perfectly unidirectional.
RF amplifiers are usually characterized by a handful of key parameters -- their noise figure, their ability to operate properly in the presence of strong signals as well as weak ones, and their forward gain (also known as 'S21'). But any real RF amplifier will also have a reverse gain parameter ('S12') describing the attenuation a signal applied to its output undergoes on the way back through to the input port. With the untuned, resitively-matched gain blocks popular in RF work these days, the S12 parameter is often just barely better than S21. The same is true of the mixer itself; it has a decidedly-finite port isolation spec that describes how much of the signal at the LO port will leak back through the RF port. The cheap unbalanced mixers used in consumer-grade receivers aren't exactly state-of-the-art in this department.
The bottom line is that significant, detectable LO leakage DOES take place through the antenna regardless of how well-shielded the rest of the receiver is. It's entirely believable that a stationary billboard receiver could be designed and optimized to look for LO leakage from passing cars. Remember that even the cheapest radios today use highly-stable phase-locked LOs, so the required signal-detection bandwidth at the billboard is very small indeed.
Military receivers often have two or even three RF stages preceding the mixer, not to maximize front-end gain but rather to cut down on LO leakage to make the receiver (and its user) harder for the enemy to direction-find. This practice dates back at least to the BC-series receivers used in WWII. Not much new under the sun here.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Radio?!? Soon cars will have gizmos that receive windows media streams over the internet via their wireless internet connection. The major commuter highways will have wireless internet service as soon, no doubt. These "smart" signs are doomed.
I could have sworn I read that, oh well....
Hmm, made me do a doubletake here... I think I need some rest...
Hey, this is my sig, if you don't like it, STOP READING MY POSTS!
So I point out that someone's probably a troll, supply evidence, and get modded down as offtopic by a buddy of said troll? Lovely.
Slashdot's going to *need* a trust system that interacts with their moderation system, and soon.
May we never see th
Make sure you get into a wreck in plausable sightof the "smart billboard", state loudly and frequently that you were distracted by it, and sue the maker of the billboard, the people running it, and whatever product was being "advertised" when you had your accident.
There's probably some "vacation time" you can get from your "hurting neck" in addition.
They want to stick it up, use it. Since they are targetting it to specific tastes they assume culpability.
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
To the parent troll: your friends can keep modding me down, and I can keep reposting the truth over, and over, and over. I've got more karma than you have mod points, and once people take a look at this for themselves, you're going to start getting modded down. If I'm wrong, post a followup and tell Slashdot why I'm wrong, because trying to prevent my posts from being read isn't going to work.
Here's the content that was suppressed:
Aren't you the guy that claimed that you were head of Nintendo R&D, and then had someone else (a few articles back, IIRC) point out that they knew the person in charge of Nintendo R&D and that you weren'thim?
Furthermore, you've been giving what you claim is inside information about Nintendo on Slashdot, which I can hardly see the head of a corporate R&D division doing. I've worked in corporate R&D, and they're quite secretive, -- and more so the higher they get.
Finally, the heads of Nintendo's two R&D departments are, according to Planet Nintendo, Takehiro Izushi(R&D section 1) and Kazuhiko Taniguchi (R&D section 2). There is no "Nintendo Advanced R&D" division that I could find any reference to, nor is the informal term "head" a title that is likely to be used in the formal Japanese corporate culture. Finally, I find it rather unlikely that a non-Japanese person such as yourself would hold such a high-ranking position at a large Japanese firm.
Finally, I find it beyond belief that the head of "Nintendo Advanced R&D" would beg on Slashdot for details of how modchips work, when there are engineers aplenty that have worked hard on exactly this problem present in hordes working in Nintendo's R&D departments.
Sir, I accuse you of being both a troll and a fraud! To the Foe list with you!
And, sir, I must say that I find your claim in your User Bio that you earned three PhDs in three years highly unconvincing.
May we never see th
Damn, and I thought the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show jumbo-tron billboard on the Gardner Expressway in Toronto was distracting! Oh, wait a sec, these new billboards won't beat that. ;-)
If I read the article correctly, it could detect what 60% of the cars driving by were listening to. Frm the looks of the sign, it looks to be directly overhead, which means they could use semi-directional sensors, filtering out a lot of the extraneous noise. Add that to the fact that while one car's oscillator might be all but negligable, 50 cars all tuned to the same frequency might be a different story.
Rykard
Breaking the Internet one standard at a time, since 1999
I've seen all these posts about how the BBC uses vans and the principle of heterodyning to sniff out people without a license. I don't live in the UK and I don't know anything about it, but I'm curious now. What's the scoop on TV licensing in the IK?
[the doorbell rings]
Mike: That'll be the front door.
Neil: I bet I know who's got to answer it.
Mike: But, Neil - you like meeting people!
Neil (to camera): If I had a penny for everytime I had to answer the door, I'd have five pound sixty three!
[Neil gets up and goes to door]
Vyvyan: It's probably someone unbelievably boring!
Neil: Oh, no! It's the TV Detector Van!
Rik:MIKE, YOU BASTARD! Why didn't you buy a licence? I can't go to prison! I'm too pretty! I'll get raped!
Mike: Yeah, steady on! Steady on! We're not beat yet! All right, the time has come for diplomacy!
Neil: Oh, no - he's asked me if we've got a telly! I think I'm gonna have to lie! Bad Karma!
Mike: All right - the time for diplomacy is over. Vyv?
[Mike unplugs the TV]
Mike: Chuck the telly out the window!
Rik: Get rid of it! Quickly! Quickly!
[Vyvyan picks up TV and throws it at the window. The TV bounces off the window]
Mike (to camera): That, I did not expect!
Vyvyan: What if we sneak it out past him into the street?
Rick (to Mike): Yes! Yes! Yes! Mike, you go out and point to the sky, right, and say, 'Look at that interesting thing up there!'
Rick (to Vyvyan): You disguise the TV as an old woman, and sneak it past him!
Mike: Rick, suicide may be a great hobby - but I wouldn't do it for a living!
Neil: Lads, I've told him we don't have a telly, and I think that's thrown him a bit - but it won't hold him forever!
Rik: Good thinking, Neil! Keep it up!
[Rick starts writing in a notebook]
Mike: This is a very tricky spot, but Mike - the cool person - will squeeze it! Rick, stop crying!
[Rick rubs his eye]
Rik: I'm not crying - I just got something in my eye, that's all!
Mike: Vyv? Eat the telly!
Vyvyan: That's a completely brilliant idea, Mike! I've been wanting to do this for a long time!
[Vyvyan grabs the TV and starts devouring it. Rick continues writing]
Rick (writing aloud to himself): (It was the other three, not me. I had no idea what was going on, it really was the other three!)
[cut to front door. Neil is talking to a man]
Neil: All right, don't rush me - that's not an easy question to answer. 'Have I got a telly?' There could be, like, a number of different replies. I need some time to think one up, you know?
Mr Bastard: We know you've got one - we detected it!
Neil: Oh - so you've just been playing with me all along?
Mr Bastard: Well, it's better than playing with yourself! Ho-ho! A cheap sexual allusion - makes the world go round!
Neil: Ugh!
Mike: Neil, you haven't introduced me to your new pal.
Mr Bastard: Bastard's the name!
[he shakes Mike's hand]
Mr Bastard: But you can call me 'Right Bleeding' - all my friends do. Or did.
Mike: What do you mean?
Mr Bastard: I killed him. Where's your licence?
Mike: As the eunuch said to Mussolini, 'I haven't got one - and if I did, I wouldn't show it to you!'
Neil: That was a really cheap joke, Mike.
Mike: I'm saving up to pay the licence fine.
Neil: Don't tell me you haven't got a plan.
Mike: (I could never resist a challenge.) Neil, I haven't got a plan.
Mike (to camera): I hope someone's taking this down!
[Mr Bastard shoves his way inside the house]
Mr Bastard: Right - where's this telly? Ah-hah! So you do have it! You little runt!
[he walks over to Vyvyan, who has successfully eaten the TV, save for the cord, which hangs out his mouth. Vyvyan waves to Mr Bastard]
Mr Bastard: The old trick, eh? Eat the telly before I get a chance to nick you!
Vyvyan: It's a toaster!
Mr Bastard: It's a telly, you yobbo! Now give it back - I want to nick you!
[he grabs Vyvyan's hands, puts his foot on Vyvyan's stomach and pulls. Mike quickly intervenes]
Mike: Mr Bastard! Mr Bastard! OKAY! Now, toaster or telly, the contents of my colleague's stomach are private property! And if they get damaged in any way, we sue!
Mr Bastard: Well... I can wait! I've dealt with your sort before!
Mr Bastard (to Neil): Where's your toilet?
Neil: Oh, upstairs. Just follow your nose.
Rik: That's just great, Neil. Tell the fascist where our toilet is!
Neil: Shh!
Mr Bastard: I'm going up there now, to wait. I know how to wait! And I promise you, son - when that telly comes out the other end, you're nicked!
[he slowly slinks up the stairs, then comes back and looks at the bomb for a second, the ascends the stairs again]
Vyvyan: It's all right, lads - I always poo before I get up!
----- One piece short of Legoland
Because, as everyone knows, driving down the highway without reading all the billboards is stealing.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Just do what I do when you're driving down the road and you see a billboard, close your eyes! This way, the advertising won't influence you.
For some reason, a few seconds after I close my eyes, people start honking their horns. I haven't exactly figured out this correlation.
In certain parts of the city there are so many billboards that I just keep my eyes closed for the entire drive.
Geoffeg
here
Nooo! Don't pick up the ph^##(# +)0% %... no carrier
Yeah, Chris can't spell. He and Rob should form a club.
That should be, "Rob and him." Just your correction corrector doing his job, no need to worry ma'am.
...and everybody will just be listening to one form of ClearChannel or another...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
... I'm listening to Sirius and the frequency I'm listening to is in the GHz range? :)
Fine, I accept that they have the ability to show me ads based on what I am listening to on the radio. What does that tell them about me? I see a few big problems with this concept...
1. People are forcefully aggregated into classes of stereotypes based on a radio station. If someone listens to country music, and the result is that they only ever see ads for pickup trucks and farm equipment on billboards that claim to "know them", I think that they might get a bit pissed after a while.
2. What does a radio station actually tell about me? the only stratification I can really see is age... the music for the young kids that can't drive yet, and the music of older people. Personally, I have presets for EVERYTHING. I listen to R&B, classic rock, classical, alternative, country, talk-radio, and sometimes I even listen to the aural assult of the young-kid stations. (what I would really like is an ambient groove station) So which ad is appropriate for me, and how would they know?
3. The ads will not be personalized for "me". They will be personalized to the strongest signal that the billboard gets from the passersby, i.e. the average for the current group of traffic. How often would this average station actually change? Wouldn't it be easily defined by the demographic of the neighborhoods around that region of the freeway? Don't regular billboards already do this? Whenever I drive through the "not so great" areas of Dallas, I see an abundance of ads for planned parenthood and the like. If these were the magic "I know you" billboards, it is unlikely that my one car playing classical music would have enough signal to override the predominant signal in that area. (And if it did, I would be in fear for my life as some snooty opera advertisement pops up and everyone starts looking for the guy who is in the wrong neighborhood).
I guess if I was looking for an advantage, if you had a bunch of these things all over the country, then you could just upload your stereotype-based ads to a nationwide database, and the billboards automatically pick the ad for their area based on their data. You could skip the process of geographic demographic data collection. I doubt many people will ever actually see the board change for them as they drive by.
not impressed.
Methinks the billboard company is gilding the lily a bit. Tools to forecast driver consumer preferences already exist, and they're no less accurate than electronically peeking at your radio dial.
Animated boards are expensive. That means the outdoor company will only be putting them in high-traffic locations.
Hundreds of cars might pass the board in a one-minute period. It takes about four seconds to absorb a well-contructed outdoor display. Obviously, the data isn't going to be targeted at individual motorists. It'll be an average of traffic flow over some given period of time.
That makes the radio tuner data much less useful. All the billboards will be doing is determining localized listening preference. I gotta tell ya: it ain't gonna be much different than the Arbitron radio ratings already available to the industry.
Properly programmed radio stations have very predicatable listener compositions. Take a Classic Rock station, for instance: the typical listener will be between 35 and 49 years of age. He is 70% likely to be male. He is about 45% likely to be married.
You can take this further, computing the possibility he has kids and his approximate ages. More importantly, you can interpolate this data against retail databases which qualify the likely incomes and buying habits of people in these demographic cells. There are plenty of industry tools which do this, such as Scarborough Research's databases.
That's how the billboard companies will pitch their clients. They'll merge the radio listening data against something like a Scarborough study and--boom--we can see that a certain number of drivers during a given hour will make a car purchase within the next month. The billboard chooses a Chevy ad. If you know where most of the traffic is heading, you can even tag it with dealer info. Awesome.
But the billboard company really doesn't need the gee-whiz realtime radio snooping. It's a gimmick. Their sellers can already work out the data with existing desktop tools.
Imagine that: hype from advertising execs. Who would have figured?
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Finding out what large groups of people are interested in doesn't take this fancy technology. It's been done for years using simple statistics. I cannot believe that making the leap from most common radio station on the road at time-X to product of greatest intrest to advertise could be more accurate that a simple statistical analysis (i.e. survey, or do a several scans at different times using this channel detection technology-- no need to maintain it constantly).
I already have a pretty good idea what the data will show:
most popular @ morning: talk show featuring two overweight men with deep voices and 7th grade reading levels.
all other times: clearchannel station with greatest reception - impossible to differentiate listners' favorite genre since all of these stations will be playing "a mix of your favorites from yesterday and today's greatest hits!"
ôó
I'm sure you can tell what I'm getting at: in order to receive frequency RF, one must generate frequency IF [bldrdoc.gov] via local oscillations (LO), and IF directly corresponds to RF. Stephen Wolfram points out [wolfram.com] the relationship V[IF] = V[RF] + V[LO] for increasing and V[IF] = V[RF] - V[LO] for decreasing. Armed with this formula and decent knowledge of the radio's tank circuit, it is trivial to pick up the LO and IF frequencies your car radio transmits, albiet inadvertedly, and customize the billboard contents accordingly
Hmmm...
So this array 'V', that holds all these values, where is it initialized??
I mean if I can get hold of the source code to my radio, I can easily change the IF variable (#define or whatever).
Looks pretty easy, but then I'm sure these "smart billboard" people didn't expect they'd be dealing with a C programmer.
I hope it isn't written in Java - that would explain why my channel seek moves so slowly.
If you have a transmitter that's not more than 100mW ERP transmitting a nice sine wave around the mixer frequency of FM radio, anyone living nearby can just point it at the billboard and voila! The billboard will likely read only your frequency. Make a directional antenna and make it even better. Best of all, as long as ERP is not higher than 100mW, there's absolutely nothing they can do - no more than you can do anything about them. Fight fire WITH fire!
We have a local community radio station which tends to the left of the spectrum. Does this mean that if I'm listening to Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, that there'll be an "Impeach Bush Now!" billboard that pops up?
One could only hope.
Reminds me of the Martian who changed form depending on whom it was with... although it didn't have the filtering and averaging technology proposed here, so it died a horrible death...
As 40,000 motorists zoom by per minute, I'm sure those ever changing boards are going to make sense.
Also, where I live, 90% of the ads would be in spanish. Fan-fucking-tastic!
Sir, you obviously have no life other than to post FOUR rebuttals on here. :-)
As to whether or not you believe me, I could care less.
And yet you care intensely as to what others think, as evidenced by your response and my almost immediately modded down first two exposes.
I have not given any inside information about Nintendo R&D whatsoever that is not available elswhere.
I see. Other than policy? You also claimed that what you were posting *was* an inside secret. You could be lying then, or you could be lying now...tkae your pick.
As for your other concerns, I work for a more secretive internal R&D organization within the company, apart from R&D1 and R&D2. This organization is a black one, much like the "Skunk Works" of your Lockheed Aircraft in the USA.
*snort* Okay, let's pick this one apart. Yet the *existence* of Skunk Works is hardly kept secret by Lockheed, though its actual work is not trumpeted. It is hard to imagine to benefit to a company in keeping the *existence* of a division secret. Yet even if I were to believe this, that the very existence of your division is a secret withheld by Nintendo from the rest of the world, then you have just contradicted yourself. You have claimed that no information not available elsewhere was released by you -- except, of course, the existence of your top-secret, black, utterly unacknowledged by Nintendo department. If this is so secret, why put it in your public bio *and* your signature? Indeed, the only sort of person who would gain at all from something like this would be a sham trying to gain undeserved respect.
We are looking at technologies now that are at least 1-2 generations beyond GameCube.
Ah. 1-2, eh? Well, *one* generation is exactly what you're calling "regular" R&D's goals. Your work cannot be all *that* hidden.
As for Japan, even they
You use "they", though you claim to work in Kyoto?
Nintendo, and Sony, and many other corporations
Circumstantial evidence, but Nintendo and Sony are the first two companies that most American gamers think of when they try to come up with the names of Japanese corporations.
Last I checked, Xbox is not a Nintendo product, hence, we would not have too much concern over it.
We "would" not? You mean, "if" you worked at Nintendo your group "would" not have too much concern? I believe the word you should have used is "do": "...we do not have too much concern...".
I won't even entertain your attacks on my academic credentials
Heh. Okay.
but if you read my bio and do some arithmetic, you will find that I started graduate studies at MIT five years before I got my first degree.
Oh, really? I had read your bio as claiming that you started *undergraduate studies* at the age of 16. Impressive, but not unheard of. So if we read your bio, you would have had to have completed all primary, secondary (or the Indian equivalents thereof -- I know little of the Indian sub-college education system, and undergraduate schooling by the age of 16. That is, while not entirely impossible, is very unlikely. You then completed three doctorates concurrently over the next nine years -- again, while not impossible, extremely unusual. I know only one PhD personally that peruses Slashdot, and he is younger than you claim to be -- most 42-year-old triple PhDs are unlikely to be blowing their afternoons posting to Slashdot.
I shall entertain no further correspondence with the boorish likes of you.
Convenient, that. It certainly saves you from having to, say, like to your three doctoral theses, or any of the papers that you wrote while working in academia. The funny thing is that at least in computer science, the overwhelming majority of published papers are also available on the Web. Google does an excellent job of indexing both PDF and PS format papers. Yet, strangely enough, I find no useful references to anyone by your name.
Oh, there's a Samir Gupta who was a management professor (not what you have any of your claimed PhDs in) who was co-author on a single rather basic distributed systems paper. Unfortunately, he was still in academia almost a decade after you claim to have left.
There's another Samir Gupta who worked for Renaissance Software, but graduated in '93...far later than you claim to have graduated.
You are, of course, free to point Slashdotters to any of your theses.
Or, of course, you could give up on this troll account, and start a new one. Perhaps your next one will be a bit more plausible, and you will make fewer mistakes.
If I had to guess, I'd place you as an undergraduate in college, probably in the United States.
Troll Hunting is the new, exciting Slashdot sport. See how many you can flush from the brush!
May we never see th
Think how targetted the ads on your favorite radio station are. That's how targetted the billboards can be. Is that really such a great privacy risk?
Please, don't give credit to Wolfram where he doesn't deserve it; he already gets way too much undue credit.
It should read:
Eric Weisstein points out...
I wonder how those pesky little culture jammers are going to react to this? How do you jam a moving target?
Will the ad be rendered static if I park a ghettoblaster two feet from the actual ad, or will it be smart enough to call the cops for domestic disturbance?
This may be a troll (or at the least a very late April Fool's joke by the Sacramento Bee) - it seems rather improbable to me, despite its technical feasibility.
Not to mention the submitter's record, plus his website (a popular trollbait).
Great, I live near Sacramento... just what I need... driving down the road late at night.. listening to Art Bell... YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER! DR MUY CHIN WILL SHOW YOU HOW! And thus the increase of bozos wearing magnetic rings will increase... What a wonderful world this will be!
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Most of the time the local oscilator in a hetrodyne receiver (Typical AM/FM) leaks back out to the antenna. The Frequencys leaking for are 455Khz above the station for AM and 10.7 Mhz above for FM. (Example Listining to 620Khz AM. Add 455Khz. Leakage maybe detected at 1075Khz. Listening to 103.3 FM. Leakage may be detected at 114 MHZ.) A simple shielded antenna amplifier will usualy take care of the detectable leakage problem for the tin hat crowd. The radio is already encased in a metal box so the car electronics does not intefere with your listning pleasure. That shield works well both ways. The antenna amplifier passes the signal one way while preventing reverse leakage from reaching the antenna.
Do a search for Superhetrodyne and Tempest for more detail on radio receiver leakage.
The truth shall set you free!
I live near Sac and one day while driving by the billboard featured in the Bee photo, I noticed that the sign had crashed. On the display in HUGE black and white ASCII was "Fatal memory parity error: 0xfff...". I got a kick out of that. Not sure if the sign was running Windows or not. If so it's the only honest Windows advertisement I've ever seen.
A couple of points....
Thanks for posting the IF freq. I did not realize that most broadcast FM receivers used good ole 10.7 MHZ IF.
Also, should you not also be able to pick up the LO on the low side of the desired operating frequency as well? 103.3 + 10.7 = 114 103.3 - 10.7 = 92.6
--fatboy
I thought all of those stations went off the air in the 70's.
From "Smart" Billboards Debut in Sacramnto to:
"Smart" Billboards Debut in Sacramento
Apparently, they are powered by sarcastic comments. See smart?? , on the 99.97% chance that a)my second post on this topic won't be as funny, b)my comedic genius has yet to be recognized, or c)my plans for world domination have not come to fruition.
...will be radio stations. Realtime ads luring listeners off whatever they're tuned to would probably be effective.
On the brighter side, now listeners of certain foaming talk show hosts can be plied with Pepto Bismol and asprin in an efficient manner.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Some radios use the low side for the local oscilator, however it is not often used as it can interfere with low band VHF TV. US TV ch 2-6 is 54-88MHZ. You don't want the FM radio putting herring bones on nearby TV's. The high side is midband cable chanels (ch 14-22 on most systems) and aircraft. You are not likely to be driving close to an airplane to interfere with it's receiver, but a home radio could mess up TV reception in the next apartment using rabbit ears on the other side of the wall. Using the high frequency for the local oscilator instead of the low side eliminates this interference. That is why most receivers use the high side. 97.1 - 10.7 = 86.4 or wavy lines to channel 6 on a nearby TV using rabbit ears.
The truth shall set you free!
Must be why airlines are paranoid about a radio onboard. It can interfere with communications.
For those who claim to hate the MPIAA so much, people here sure watch a hell of a lot of hollywood movies! (are there even any other kind?) People who haven't seen are outcasts! ;)
I'm quite surprised at all the comments about people building their own transmitters to fool the billboards, or asking "what happens if there's m different people listening to n different radio stations? won't the billboard go crazy?".
The solution to this is quite obvious with only minimal thought. First of all, any insight into what people are listening to is better than just sticking up random messages. Ultimately, the billboard company won't care if somebody successfully spoofs the radio station detector -- they'll still get their advertising dollars no matter what.
Second, with the thousands of cars that pass by, all they need to do is implement something like a 20 minute moving average. Find the top 3 radio stations listened to on average in the last 20 minutes. Broadcast advertisements suitable to these top 3 stations in the proportions detected. If the ads run an average of 10 seconds each, and 10% listen to station A, 30% listen to station B, and 60% listen to station C, then for every station A ad shown, 3 station B ads are shown and 6 station C ads are shown.
So if station C is a teeny-bopper station, then you'll get 60% zit cream and tampon ads. If station B is an oldies, then you'll get 30% Viagra and Depends ads. And if station A is country, then you'll get 10% gun racks and pickup trucks and piss-poor american beer ads.
If signal spoofing becomes a problem, they can try and weed out the "too powerful" signals and just focus on the second highest. But who cares... they're still charging primo dollars to the advertisers who want to believe that they're getting more effective and targeted advertising.
Now if somebody finds a way to tap into the signal that powers what the billboard displays, then THAT would be an excellent worthwhile hack.
I'm not listening to anything? Will the billboard go blank?
How long until some company puts up huge TVs every 100 metres all showing the same TV show, and has the audio on a set radio channel? That way, you could watch something as you drive. Cos let's face it, driving a long way (if you don't have any passengers) is boring.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Hmmm? As someone who works for them, I'd say where they touched me, they could have at least used a bit more KY jelly!
Add 10.7 to the frequencies of your local stations... program them into a scanner... sit near a major road and monitor... you'd be amazed how well this works as a sort of audience research.
To defeat detection of your own listening habits, make sure everything is well shielded, and install a preamp in the antenna line. A decent preamp will only pass signals in one direction so there's no way your LO signal can escape.
I mean, FM radio is a basically a passive technology, from the user's point of view at least. The information is there, and I pick it up from the airwaves. I don't quite see how anybody can determine what frequency my receiver is tuned to?
Or is the USA the enemy of the rest of the world?
... ... to a lot of the world the USA is manipulistic, biased, greedy, smug, invasive, bullying, demanding, threatening, dangerous and overbearing. There are downsides as well.
These things can be one sided you know
The USA has *power*. This is frightening to those that don't have it. The USA takes sides (both as a country and as a collection of people) with countries like Israel and groups like the IRA (or so it appears to the rest of the world).
Here in the UK I have seen little real *evidence* that Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaida destroyed the Twin Towers (though I do believe he was responsible), but I see the US rattling sabres and about to get us involved in a war that will cause every terrorist with a knife, gun or bomb to come boiling out of the sewers and attack my family and friends in our houses, churches, tube stations, water supplies etc. The weapons of mass destruction worry me a lot, but so do random acts of smaller terrorism; as I've lived in London during the IRA bombings and had to live with the everyday knowledge that the bag on the seat opposite me on the bus may have a bomb in it.
You learn to live with that fear, but it never goes away (too many of the bombs went off near where friends and family lived or worked and I'm just lucky that no one I knew well was actually injured or killed, though many people were).
Terrorism is bad and wrong. But I'm not convinced that the War on Iraq will reduce terrorism one iota. It may bring some level of peace to Irag (perhaps the same level of peace that Vietnam got)
Saddam needs to be stopped for what he is doing to his own people (particularly the smaller tribes in the hills), and if he is building up weapons of mass destruction then those need to be destroyed (children shouldn't play with guns, though I'm worried about how few "grown ups" there are in the world of international diplomacy) but it must be done in a way that tells the rest of the region that the US is *not* anti-Islamic or else we will all reap the whirlwind.
So basically these billboards, without your permission are reading, analyzing, recording, and acting on leaky RF transmissions coming from inside your vehicle?
How is this not illegal eavesdropping? What I listen to is personal information, and using devices specifically created to circumvent the privacy afforded by rolling up my windows seems no different than hooking up a secret tap to my cable box to see what I watch, or looking at my library records to know what I read.
Kevin Fox
here in Norway, the cabinet has decided two times to buy the Eurofighter, only to be given "an offer we couldn't refuse" by the US to buy the F22 instead.
We have oil and ice free harbors close to Russia.
Well, I've heard that in Great Britain the Ministry of Housinge has developed a working Cat Detector Van...
Look at the photo. Wouldn't this billboard be including the people driving the other way (both on the freeway and on the auxilliary road just in font of the sign)?
As a side note, how many innocents lose their rights, or their lives, whenever someone like the USA goes into "We're just here to protect ourselves" mode?
We don't want someone to POSSIBLY hurt Americans, so we will ACTUALLY pre-emptively hurt other people to prevent it. It's only acceptable if WE aren't the people being hurt.
Not that security is not important, but Dubya's war is really a $#!++/ way to do it.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Sorry for the formatting on my last reply. I mistekenly posted HTML, I wanted text. I just got off work, bad day. Sorry for the eyesore.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
Or something similar. Set up a method of overwhelming the receiver so that it always displays spanish ads or classical.
I wonder what happens when an overwhelming poor audience drives by. Ads for 40's? Cigarettes? And when the upper crust goes by, ads for diamonds etc.
It might be fun to play with the receiver and see what kinds of ads you could force. Or just park the car next to the receivers and blast punk waves and see if you can keep the same ads up.
Pleasent Diversions
[John]
Shit better not happen!
So does that mean the billboard will go out when I drive by listening to CDs?
No, it would probably fall back to raw marketing data, as though it were a static board without all the gadgetry. Kind of like today, actually, with the projected 'popular' ad displayed.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you don't like him, set him to "enemy", don't mod him down for posting accurate information. I'm metamodding the "Troll" rating "Unfair".
... why is being tolerant of outsiders a requirement for a country? I know *I* prefer it, and I assume you do, but that doesn't make it "right", just what we expect of a society. Some people expect a society to provide universal education and healthcare, to provide safety nets for the poorest and the unemployed, to ensure food and shelter, but this is so obviously not globally true (look how much of Africa and South America fails on the healthcare and education to name but two important social concepts, and the "right" to food and shelter is a luxury in far too many countries)
... and then there are the situations within countries ranging from Serbia to El Salvador (and you do remember Rwanda don't you? One MILLION dead, 100,000 still in prison on trial for genocide/murder/etc. where were we then?) ... it doesn't take religion to destroy a country, look at the Congo, or Ethiopia, or so many other "third world" countries ... yes there are Dark Forces out there, but they aren't (just) Muslims, and if you wiped every Muslim from the face of the planet, you'd just get the next bunch of Waco/Jonestown/KKK/VC/Black Panthers/Opus Dei/whatever declaring it God's will that the unbelievers be converted or destroyed.
...
... all we know is that many 10s of thousands lost their lives and I think it would have been a good idea to have taken Saddam out then while in the course of a "legitimate" war (he had invaded another country, they asked for help, voila, internationally sanctioned right to go kick the crap out of him).
"Dark powers are gathering" on every side. There is religious fundamentalism in the USA as well, blowing up abortion clinics and killing doctors, blowing up federal buildings in Oklahoma, planting bombs in Atlanta etc. And let's just take Northern Ireland as read shall we? The Chinese (not particularly Muslim) have made their views on Tibet well known, the Russians (also not predominantly Muslim) have shown how they feel about Chechnya
The UK has a significant Muslim population which is pacifist and tolerant of others. It also has a small minority of extremists that hide behind the majority to commit acts of terrorism. This is true of the "white christians" in the UK also (see British National Party, Class War etc.) Don't recall the National Socialist (Nazi) party claiming to be Muslims but they are out there too, and growing again in places like Germany
Never said the USA was "evil", but that's a very nice debating trick, thanks. I said "Is the USA the enemy of the world?" We were Hitler's enemy in WWII, that didn't make *us* evil, but it did make us his enemies. You seem to be arguing that the USA *is* in fact the enemy of the Islamic world, or am I misunderstanding your point?
Yes, in fact it _is_ a crime "to send a murderer to kill a murderer who will murder again", at least in most civilised countries (including the USA and the UK) check with any lawyer. However mitigating circumstances and various other things can be argued at trial time to get the offence reclassed as manslaughter or possibly even "self defence". Manslaughter is still a crime.
How many died during Desert Storm? How many of those were "innocent" or guilty of nothing more than a little looting? Who _really_ knows
The majority of Muslims in the UK support Osama binLaden, just look at the polls that were conducted after the WTC attacks. Go to Ilford and Bradford and look at the majority of Muslims. Tell them they shouldn't beat their women, tell them they shouldn't cage up their women, tell them they shouldn't force their women to wear bhurka (many Muslim women don't want to). You'll get a punch in the head if you ask Bradford/Ilford/Southall Muslims to allow their women to follow the English way of life. They key is they are against *the freedom*, that's the fundamental difference.
I hope so, they deserve a good beating after blowing up those ancient Buddhas in Afghanistan. Trouble is the views of those Muslims that blew it up are shared by 70% of the Muslims I know personally. This worries me greatly sometimes. Sometimes I grow a long beard and pretend to be one of them, they're very insular, and many hide a deep anger.A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
An excellent question which God will answer or not.
... it seems we have lost our ability to follow "Gods laws" and many of us have become lazy "Christians" ... and then we criticise other religions because they have a dress code. Do you criticise equally the strict Jews who require their women to keep their heads/hair covered? How about the Amish?
... oh dear oh dear, by your very writing you are condemning them to being possessions. Why don't you ask the women themselves what they think about it? I think you'll find a much higher percentage in favour of the various coverings (very few are "bhurkas" which, I believe, cover the face ... many UK Muslim women wear "hejab" which covers the top of the head and wraps around the neck but leaves the face totally uncovered, see the BBC link below)
...
..." comment. Many are insular, and many it would seem rightly so (if you scan the BBC website for stuff on Muslims you'll find that a large number of the articles are about Muslims being attacked in the streets, in their mosques and in their homes ... how biased this reporting is is hard to tell, but I think it is about as unbiased as we're likely to get in the West ... and it shows a continuing oppression and terrorisation of "normal everyday" Muslims whereever they go ... if you kick a dog every day, eventually it will bite you, and then you can justify getting out the big gun and shooting it.
... but that doesn't seem to be the Western way ...
Great, arguing about religious fundamentalism and then bringing God into it <grin!> Yes, for those that believe in God (and whether I do or not is not important to *my* position) he is the final and supreme Judge.
The majority of Muslims in the UK support Osama binLaden, just look at the polls that were conducted after the WTC attacks.
Or you could look at the polls NOW and find that the vast majority are against him, that all the leaders of British Muslims have denounced terrorism, that there are a small number of fanatical fundamentalists who do support him.
I've been to Ilford and Bradford, I'm going to a party in Ilford tomorrow night, one of my best friends teaches in an Ilford school to a class that overwhelmingly Muslim. You have got a strange idea of reality, possibly from biased news reporting or something, but no, the majority don't beat their women or "cage" them (I've never even *seen* a place that sells cages, well, except for places such as Fettered Pleasures which I think you will find sells predominantly to "white Christian" people.
Our faiths used to have "commandments" and requirements, as a Catholic I should be eating fish on Friday, fasting during Lent, attending church on the holy days of obligation, etc. and our priests should not be abusing small children
Part of most "strong" religions is a requirement to give up something (whether it is alcohol (Methodists) or the "sins of the flesh" or pork (Judaism) to blood transfusions and medication etc.) and to take on tasks (anything from the door to door of Jehovah's witnesses, to praying five times a day to wearing of particular clothing.) The strict Jews can't operate light switches or do any other kind of "work" on the Sabbath. They dress in strange outfits (of black, with big black hats) and grow their hair weirdly (sort of dreadlocks), and I've already mentioned the requirement for wigs or headscarves on their (?married?) women.
*I* have had to wear a suit and tie to work, even when I worked in a computer department that never had customers visiting (it was a secure financial system and so visitors were *banned*), and I didn't like it. I had to wear a school uniform when I went to school, which again I detested.
"Their women"
than Bin Laden.
"English way of life" is multicultural. I was brought up in Hackney (a lot of "Indian", African, Jamaican in the shops, the schools, the churches etc.) and now live in Hounslow (a few miles from Southall, one of the largest concentrations of Asians in the UK. I get four Asian TV channels on my cable TV, and my local multiscreen cinema has four screens for Bollywood films). And no, I won't get a punch in the face, because I am polite, civil, and willing to accept cultural diversity. There are many young asians and muslims (not necessarily asian) that want to follow a "western" lifestyle, and if you actually visit Ilford and Southall (as I do regularly) you will see them doing so. Yes, sometimes against their parent's wishes (and how many "white" teenage girls have been banished from the family house and told never to return because they have become pregnant at 14-16, because they have a "black" boyfriend etc. How many "white" families are happy for their "children" (under 18) to bring back boyfriend/girlfriend to sleep with them in the family house? It's just that our "rules" are so) and the stigma against "illegitimate" children has dropped massively in the last 20 years, but I still know people that were spat on, beaten up etc. at school because they were born out of wedlock.
Ask Arsenal fans how they feel about Tottenham fans and you'll often hear a torrent of abuse and witness actual violence when matches are played. It has nothing to do with religion (the Tottenham fans are tarred with the soubriquet "Yiddos" from being so near to a major concentration of Judaism (Stamford Hill and surround areas) but the punch in the face you get has nothing to do with religion.
The "Islamic World" did not blow up the ancient Buddhas, one fundamentalist regime (The Taliban) did. If you can't tell the difference, remind me to come around and burn your house down for the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, ok? Or for turning your back on the Jews etc. during WWII? Or for turning your back on Rwanda, Indonesia and all the other recent regimes that oppressed and killed tens of thousands (or more) while we didn't get involved. Do you realise how small a percentage of Muslims agreed with the destruction of those ancient treasures? Did you see the documentary reports on how the wonderful museums of kabul were destroyed with each piece of representive art (dating back many centuries) individually destroyed? Most Muslims were aghast at that, but it is the same sort of thing that happened here in the UK during the Reformation. A bunch of fanatics, sure of "God's word"
You know some very weird Muslims if you get a 70% agreement on views. I am worried by your "Sometimes I grow a long beard
Perhaps we wouldn't have so many rabid fundamentalists and fanatics (of all kinds) if we could reduce hatred in general
For more on UK Muslims, you could do worse than check out some of the BBC coverage such as
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2248735.stm
And read sites such as the Muslim Council of Great Britain, and the The Islamic Society of Britain
... this has been fun, because it hasn't descended into mud slinging and has remained civil, I wish more /. comment trees were as good as this ...
... arms sales, manipulative foreign policy ("we'll give you food aid, but you have to buy our technology, we'll lend you the money to do so, but then you'll be paying us interest forever, we'll provide (nearly affordable) medicines to battle Aids but you'll have to run your society the way we say you should" etc.) or at least that's how it looks to much of the rest of the world, I know it looks very different from inside the USA. Hence the surprise about September 11th and all those Americans asking "why?" and saying "it's because they are jealous of our freedom and democracy", no, it's usually not.
... and many Muslims around the world live straddling two societies, their religion and their society. They don't agree with the fanatical zealots that would give their lives for their faith, but they can still admire someone whose faith is that strong, in the same way I can admire nuns who take a vow of silence and poverty, and will support their right to do so, without it meaning I think I should do the same thing myself. Admiring a strong faith is not the same thing as necessarily agreeing with the subsequent actions.
... freedom is always restricted by opportunity and by individual choices. Yes, there are some that have fewer choices than us ... but that doesn't mean we are (or aren't) "free".
They're quite typical Pakistani muslims, and have a militant anti-West attitude when they arrive in the UK.
Yes, I can quite believe that. It has always been the way the many of the more fanatical have been the ones to travel (back at least to the Pilgrim fathers!)
There is brainwashing and biased media everywhere (I remember returning to the UK after living in the US in the late 1960's/early 1970s and again in the early 1980's and being very surprised that the USSR was not considered the "great Satan" and evil here in the UK, because it had been so thoroughly drummed into me when I went to school in the US)
There is poverty and inequality throughout the world. In some places the leaders blame the US for it (and in some cases there really is some justification for that
What you say about figureheads is of course true, but I think that many (?most? nearly all?) of them were sincere, even if some of them from a self-defence posture. There are Muslim commandments about how people should be treated that these terrorists have broken
I do not know the facts about Arafat (I've seen many "facts" and some of them were contradictory, and we've got a similar situation with Gerry Adams etc. and Sinn Fein over here/Northern Ireland) How do you negotiate with those groups which are tied into terrorist activities? If you don't find someone to talk to, the terrorism continues and increases, if you do, then you have to talk to someone the terrorists trust and will listen to, which usually means someone who has been an important part of those terrorist groups. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, do you have a better idea?
*Organised* religions impose this. Organised religions like Christianity, Judaism etc.
I'm glad you seem to be able to speak ex cathedra about what is and what isn't a redundant religion. Is that your personal opinion or a "fact"? And if it is a "fact", why do so many people disagree with it?
I, personally, have a personal relgion based on the one I was brought up in, but adjusted for my own comfort (e.g. the Catholic faith says "no birth control beyond the rythym method" and no sex outside of marriage. How many UK/USA Catholics do you think actually follow that to the letter?) To some people, the restrictions of a religion are comforting, it reminds them that God is in their daily lives as they say their grace before meals, their nightly prayers, wash their feet, don't eat during daylight hours during Ramadan, avoid meat on Fridays etc. They believe that "a little suffering is good for the soul". You are perfectly allowed to disagree with them, but you can only call them *wrong* in your own opinion. If it helps them get closer to their God then those restrictions have served their purpose.
Just about every religion has "rules" that prescribe your freedom. Whether it is a "requirement" to give to the poor, to not covet your neighbours goods, to not kill, to spend an hour a week in a temple of some kind etc. But then life is the same (they expect me to be in work for a certain number of hours a day and to be working and not writing slashdot replies!), the bank won't give me more money than I've paid in (or at least not without charging me extra for the priviledge), my neighbours insist on not leaving the keys in their car so I'm not free to drive it
Religions rarely teach that "freedom" is wrong, they just teach that there are limits to freedom (where it affects your fellow man, where it conflicts with something "god" has said etc.) and since it is true that there is no complete freedom (which is proveable since we have laws and lawyers and lawcourts) what "freedoms" we each have is partly personal choice.
And whether you accept that you can be a good Christian (for example) and not believe in the real historical existance of Jesus (as a Church of England Bishop once controversially claimed) is part of that freedom. If you choose to be in a religion, then you have to decide how much of what they teach you will accept. The Taliban had a very strong belief in certain concepts as being part of their religion, which included the destruction of priceless artefacts. You and I know this to be bad and wrong, they knew it to be God's revealed will and word. If they are allowed to have "freedom of religion" then should we have a right to stop them expressing their religion (and of course the answer is, hell yes!)
English hasn't. "ex cathedra" is in most good English dictionaries, as is "rendezvous", "pyjamas" and, strangely enough, most of the current English words come from other current or dead languages ... who would have thought?
...
You have your view of Muslims in general, I have mine, they do not meet. Nothing I say will convince you, and you have failed to convince me. I have Muslim friends, none of them want to kill me or to tax me until I convert (or if they do they have hidden it well for many years).
If an entire people admire murderers, do those people themselves become carpet-bomable?
Like cowboys and indians right? Or Rambo? CIA hit squads? Oliver Cromwell? Robert E. Lee? George Washington? William the Conquerer? Throughout history murderers and killers have been admired. If you are going to use oratory, then try to not make it too generalised or it weakens the effect.
Anyway, the way I look at it is that religion and all religous books
Ok, so this is all your personal opinion, that's fine, my personal opinion is different.
If one follows a book purely, then that book must contain zero passages of violence, ambiguity, hatred or subversion techniques.
Well, apparantly that's what *you* believe, others have different beliefs. Logic hardly ever wins over belief so there is no point in discussing this because our beliefs differ and so your logic probably wouldn't win me over either.
Oh, and the Bible contains lots as well, particularly the old testament. One of the pronouncements of Vatican II on the Bible was that the New Testament didn't replace the Old Testament but that they should be taken together as the church's teachings. There's the stoning a woman to death for picking up sticks bit. The putting homosexuals to death bit. So many other bits of biblical hatred that if you really followed the bible you'd be out killing people now.
I cannot comment on "Jizyah" since I've never heard of it before.
There are not 300 million Muslims "oppressed" by British laws. Your estimates are wildly wrong.
I already pay nearly 40% of my wages to my "Christian" rulers.
Pretty soon it's not going to be steel mills, paper mills, car factories etc.. that are the greatest harm to the environment, but all the crap wasted paper and materials that forced advertising uses. almost 100% of the unsolicited advertising I receive goes straight into the recycle bin, though I'm sure I am in the minority.
:)
I really wish a law would be passed to stop this crap. It may be unconstitutioal to prevent such a thing ( free speech blah blah blah ), but dammit it's a good idea.
I was in Suncoast video yesterday and because I used my visa card, yeah right, I was entitled to a 12 week E! magazine subscription. Dude just shoves the flier and a pen at me. GAHHH!
How about we start taxing mass marketing more. It'll generate revenue and reduce spam of all forms. Sounds good to me.
I'll stop ranting now.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man said,
"This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The second man said,
"He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his chambers, and spent an hour
trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded only in falling over and bruising
his forehead. Returning to the courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the
man whose ear was bitten. If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and
the case is dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it
and must pay three silver pieces."
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