"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*

Comments

Hang on, before you Troll...

[c0dedude]

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.

How does this work?

[mcc]

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?

Re:How does this work?

[lommer]

Methinks that there could be good times had by people with a clue about radios.

Don't you think it would be amusing (for a while) to go out with your own transmitter and transmit false LO and IF signals, causing the billboards to think that there was suddenly an enourmous surge of traffic listening to country music? It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out the appropriate LO and IF frequencies to emulate someone listening to a local station, and it would be interesting to see how the advertising companies target markets according to their music tastes. For example, what do they think that people who listen to the opera will buy?

As well, I would be interested to see how the billboard company would respond to this (not to mention I would like to see all of their data infused with "anomalies"). I'm guessing they would try to sue your ass off by claiming that you were "stealing real customers" from them, but how well would that hold up in court?

Two way street?

[hklingon]

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?

Spoofing

[Michael Woodhams]

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.

Parent is a fraud

[0x0d0a]

I posted a reply pointing out that this guy is a fake, and was promptly modded down, presumably by another troll crony. Well, here's the information again.

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.