"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

Minority Report - RUINED

[I Love this Company!]

I haven't seen it yet, you insensitive clod!

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Sneftel]

It's great. Tom Hanks plays a gruff, solitary cop who gets assigned a wacky, wisecracking, half-crippled psychic as a partner! Hilarity ensues as the unlikely duo track down an eeeevil murderer! A must-see!

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Anonymous Coward]

This is extremely offtopic, but minority report is a very scary movie to me, for this reason: After I got into some trouble w/ the computers at my school (they basically confused me of hacking their network, and I will admit I did some damn stupid things), I get the following phrase in a letter to my parents: "Admittedly, we are not concerned with what your son did as with what he could have done." That scares me. A lot.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Twirlip of the Mists]

havent you noticed Dubya's war on Iraq is about what Iraq might do

Sound defense policy is always based on capability, not intention. You can't read the enemy's mind, so you have to act on what he could do if so inclined. Any student-- even an armchair student-- of military history can tell you this.

If it reaches a point where the possibility that an enemy might act becomes sufficiently real, and the danger posed by that enemy's capabilities become sufficiently great, then the only reasonable course of action is to respond with military force. To do anything less is to... well, is to be Poland circa 1939.

If, on the other hand, you feel okay about the thought of another Pearl Harbor-- one involving nuclear or chemical weapons-- then carry on.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[iomud]

I liked it better the first time when it was called turner and hooch.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[cperciva]

If it reaches a point where the possibility that an enemy might act becomes sufficiently real, and the danger posed by that enemy's capabilities become sufficiently great, then the only reasonable course of action is to respond with military force.

In that case, it's time for the rest of the world to declare war on the United States of America.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[elmegil]

'Cos you know, there is definitely credible evidence that Saddam is readying chemical an nuclear weapons against us. 'Cos we say so. Yeah, that's the ticket. We Say So. Never mind having to prove it to anyone, like, congress, or the public. 'Cos that would, of course compromise national security (by demonstrating that we're just pursuing a vendetta because of perceived slights against my dad).

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[marsonist]

I equate it as such. If a formerly convicted criminal, on parole, is running down the street pointing weapons at police officers, must the officers wait until the trigger is pulled to respond, or should common sense be used. This is the situation we are in with Iraq. We have seen his past actions and know that he cannot be trusted. There are many who feel that any potential threat from Sadam could be dealt with via international political pressure. The U.N. has been trying this for over 10 years, with the only result being the suffering of Iraqi people. There are only so many ways to appoach such a situation with most options having been already axhausted.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Best analogy ever. You, sir, kick ass.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Cos you know, there is definitely credible evidence that Saddam is readying chemical an nuclear weapons against us. 'Cos we say so. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Did you miss the part where Hussein Kamel Hassan fled that country and told us that Iraq had a crash nuclear weapons program in 1990? Iraq later confirmed it.

Or what about Khidhir Abdul Abas Hamza, who defected to the US in '94 and gave us lots of juicy facts about Iraq's biological weapons programs, programs which Iraq at first vehemently denied ever existed, and then admitted to in the face of overwhelming evidence. The stockpiles found by weapons inspectors included over 100,000 gallons of botulinum toxin, anthrax, gas gangrene, aflatoxin, and ricin, and a side order of almost four metric tons of VX gas.

Iraq has a long track record of hiding gianormous weapons programs and stockpiles. They are a rogue nation and must be disarmed. The world is in consensus on this; the only point of disagreement was how.

It's a good thing you're not in charge. You'd have us sit around and wait for Hussein to detonate a nuclear bomb over Tel Aviv, or London, or New York before taking action.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Justified? Yes, in the strictest sense of military strategy. But stupid. Really, really stupid.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Peterus7]

Hey, that's just a small part. It is however the most frightening part of the entire movie: Just the idea of eye scanning machines. Just think of it: retinal cookies that could potentially store everything you looked at and accessed on the web... So pretty much say you accidently wander to a really filthy hentai site on accident, and suddenly you've got a billboard saying "Hey So and so, you like wet hentai chicks!"

Freaky.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[fatboy]

Did you miss the part where Hussein Kamel Hassan fled that country and told us that Iraq had a crash nuclear weapons program in 1990? Iraq later confirmed it.

Or what about Khidhir Abdul Abas Hamza, who defected to the US in '94 and gave us lots of juicy facts about Iraq's biological weapons programs, programs which Iraq at first vehemently denied ever existed, and then admitted to in the face of overwhelming evidence. The stockpiles found by weapons inspectors included over 100,000 gallons of botulinum toxin, anthrax, gas gangrene, aflatoxin, and ricin, and a side order of almost four metric tons of VX gas.

It's just easier for the "Hate America" crowd to set aside the reality of Iraq and simply take Iraq's word on what they have.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[arivanov]

The moderator who moded this down as troll is a redneck dubia hugging idiot.It is correct, to some extent on topic, in reply to the previous post and exactly what the rest of the world would do if they manifested dubia thinking. Thanks god they do not.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[arivanov]

I somehow do nopt remember Saddam in the war tribunal dock at Hague....

Or did you mean the specialist in ordering the shooting Afghan weddings and blowing up vehicles on the territorty of friendly states by drones?

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Here's your mistake: to respond means "to act in response." That means AFTER you've been attacked.

An attack is not the only thing to which you can respond. One can-- and should!-- also respond to threats, implicit or explicit. This is called "defense."

but if you throw the first punch, you're the bully

I have no problem at all with the US being the world's bully if it means that history won't record that the 21st century began with a decade of all-out theater war. Iraq has already demonstrated their willingness to use their weapons against their enemies; they invaded Kuwait, they launched missiles against Israel, they fought US troops during the Gulf War. We know they have the capability to make weapons so horrible we cannot allow their use. We know that it's probable that Iraq already has such weapons in stockpiles that have yet to be revealed.

If Iraq lays down their arms, completely and without reservation, and allows the world's inspectors to march over every inch of their soil, they can save themselves from this war. But if they have any intention of retaining weapons, if they have any intention of trying to deceive the world, there will be consequences.

A quick war in Iraq, followed by the absolute destruction of the Hussein government and a few years of (relatively) peaceful occupation is preferable to the use of a single chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Bearpaw]

It's just easier for the "Hate America" crowd to set aside the reality of Iraq and simply take Iraq's word on what they have.

It's even easier for people to set aside the reality of the world, and simply label anyone who disagrees with US administration policy as part of the "Hate America" crowd.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Twirlip of the Mists]

"Implicit or explicit?" That sounds like "real or imagined." The problem is that YOU decide you feel threatened, regardless of whether a REAL threat exists.

Well, yes. Evaluating the seriousness of a threat is a judgment call. That's why we put the best people we can find at the top of our military and political hierarchies, rather than folks like you who don't seem to be bothered by the idea of a madman with C, B, N, or R weapons.

You may not have a problem with the US being the world's bully, but the rest of the world does.

Kinda like how France had a problem with the US after World War II?

Tell you what. When the various countries that make up the rest of the world reach the point where they don't have to have their asses bailed out of an invasion or a totalitarian regime or a civil war or widespread anarchy every few years, the US will happily step down from its present role. Until then, it's Pax Americana, baby.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[Rick the Red]

why the double standard for Korea and Iran?

Because Daddy doesn't have a score to settle with Korea and Iran.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[fatboy]

Several members of congress agreed that there was "no new information indicating a new threat".

Oh that's right. Well forget then. If a "several members of Congress" think that he's not a threat, he must not be a threat. It's not like they singed a cease fire agreement yet still fires on our aircraft in the no-fly zone.

The point is, Bush is just trying to distract the country from the fact that he failed to get Bin Laden and can't manage the economy to save his life.

Oh, so your are simply paying politics. Nevermind.

If we needed to bomb every place that was that kind of a threat, why the double standard for Korea and Iran?

Because Iran is not a threat and Korea has not been defeated by the U.S. and signed a cease fire agreement.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[fatboy]

Funny, the same argument can be used against 'if Bush says he is a threat' that you used against my congress quote. Hm. Funny that.

Too bad for your arguement, Congress agrees with him.

Just because Saddam can shoot at us in the no fly zones despite his agreement not to does NOT imply that he's a clear and present danger of using weapons of mass destruction.

If they are breaking the cease fire agreement, What else are they doing. Gee, let's send in inspectors to see. If they won't allow the inspector's to do their job, the cease fire is off. Let's make _sure_ they don't posses such weapons.

They are not logically linked, idiot.

Ah, but yes they are. It's called credibility. You know, the thing your argument lost when it devolved into an ad hominem attack.

Re:Minority Report - RUINED

[fatboy]

So tell me one more time how it is that Iran and Korea don't get the same war threats?

Because they are not breaking a cease fire treaty that was singed when we defeated them in a war.

wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

TWO misspellings of "Sacramento!"

Privacy?

[Edgewize]

What I listen to in my car is nobody else's business. Anyone know how I can go about installing shielding around my radio?

Re:Privacy?

[cornjchob]

if someone can infer the radio station you have tuned in, trust me: you're going to need more than rf shielding. more like a club to whack whoever's in your back seat listening along. there's no passive way to do this at all. this has got to be some sort of hoax, or the billboards are detecting an external peripheral hooked up to your stereo. uh uh, no way.

Re:Privacy?

[jumpingfred]

Remove the radio antenna. Unfortunately this interferes with your ability to listen to radio stations. You could also design a radio that demodulates the signal in a different way than most other radios do. So that the emissions from your radio will be different than the others.

Re:Privacy?

[quark2universe]

Yeah, it's called a CD player. Listen to a CD and there will be no invasion of privacy.

Re:Privacy?

[John Hasler]

> there's no passive way to do this at all.

Wrong. All they have to do is monitor the radiation from the local oscillator in your radio. The British government uses this to detect unlicensed radios and TVs. To stop them modify your radio to use a non-standard IF.

Re:Privacy?

[EvanED]

I'm generally one of those knee-jerk reaction people when it comes to privacy, but I don't have a problem with this. It's no different from someone having a webcounter on their site. I suspect you don't stay away from sites that count visitors?

Re:Privacy?

[goon america]

The best way is to build a farraday cage around it (and the antenna).

Re:Privacy?

[John Miles]

Sure, there's a "way." Most FM radios in the US, presumably including the ones in most cars, do their analog signal processing work at an intermediate frequency (IF) of 10.7 MHz. To convert the station's frequency to the IF, the radio uses a local oscillator tuned to either Fincoming+10.7 MHz or Fincoming-10.7 MHz -- usually the former, since it means the range of the oscillator is smaller as a percentage of its output frequency. So if you're listening to a station at 95.5 MHz, your radio is emitting a very weak local-oscillator signal at 106.2 MHz. A receiver at the billboard's location only has to watch for the LO signals corresponding to the stations that are paying to advertise on it at the moment. Often you can demonstrate this yourself by putting two FM radios next to each other, tuning one to a blank spot on the dial near the high (or low) end of the band and sweeping the other one back and forth across the band until it appears to interfere with the first radio.

This is also how UK residents who operate their TV sets without the proper government license are ferreted out. A van cruises around the neighborhood listening for radiated TV local-oscillator signals from unlicensed households.

Re:Privacy?

[packeteer]

Your antenna has nothing to do with it. If this isn't a hoax then the way they would do it is by picking up radiation from the tuning pieces of your radio. Very hard to do as a car is flying down the high way, from far away, and having to pickup a small amount of signal in a VERY noisy environment because of all the other cars. This would be a nightmare to develop.

Re:Privacy?

[Istealmymusic]

Switch to XM.

Re:Privacy?

[krs-one]

In America, *most* DJ's suck. However, there are a few DJ's (mainly on the rock stations) that are pretty funny (Walton & Johnson from Rock 101 in Houston come to mind). Sometimes CD's just get boring to listen to, especially if its the same songs repeated forever. The radio at least gives me some variety.

-Vic

Re:Privacy?

[cperciva]

Very hard to do as a car is flying down the high way, from far away, and having to pickup a small amount of signal in a VERY noisy environment because of all the other cars

Not really; these people aren't trying to pick up the signal from any single car, but rather pick up the total signal from all the cars combined. All they have to do is listen on all the frequencies and pick out the strongest one.

In addition, these people are in the fortunate position of caring very little about errors. In normal circumstances, an error rate of 25% would be terrible; here, they probably wouldn't care, and quite likely wouldn't even be aware of the errors.

Re:Privacy?

[goon america]

ahhh, but seriously, you could probably build a jammer that would flood the frequencies they were using to detect what you were listening to. It wouldn't have to be too strong, because the information you're sending out is only a accidental side effect, anyway.

But seriously, is what radio station you're listening to really that personal? Some people feel the need to let EVERYONE in a two and a half mile radius know exactly what radio station they're listening to...

Re:Privacy?

[Myco]

I cannot believe that your argument for listening to the radio vs. CDs is that CDs have just "the same songs repeated forever."

I mean, have you listened to the radio, ever?

Re:Privacy?

[rmohr02]

Some stations are worse than others. The station I listen to seems to repeat songs pretty rarely.

Re:Privacy?

[rmohr02]

My car doesn't have a CD player. And don't tell me I can buy one of those little cassettes with a wire that goes to your CD player--I wouldn't have anything to put the cassette in. I'm also cheap, so I'm stuck with the radio. Also, I've never won Aerosmith tickets from a CD I've bought.

Re:Privacy?

[rmohr02]

If you live near one of said billboards, mod a radio in your house to emit a very strong signal and leave it on all day.

Re:Privacy?

[Lumpy]

have you actually tried to detect that signal outside a vehicle? ok now do it to a MOVING TARGET.

and what you are talking about is not the case.. the BBC transmits a subcarrier with a tone on it that is easily detectable. It's the same detection scheme used by american cable TV companies to snif out people stealing cable tv. It's a simple device and putting the subcarrier there makes it air tight in court.. trying to say that "we detected what channel your tv is tuned to doesnt work in court... saying we detected our special signal we transmit to catch them.... does.

Re:Privacy?

[drmofe]

This is also how UK residents who operate their TV sets without the proper government license are ferreted out. A van cruises around the neighborhood listening for radiated TV local-oscillator signals from unlicensed households.

Interesting. That's what we were always TOLD the detector vans were doing. But then recently I read Robert Littles _The Company_, a semi-fictional acount of the CIA in 1950-1990s and he sorta described a technique of snooping radio frequencies to find if any (Soviet) covert listening devices were operating in a given area. One of the characters suggested mounting this mobile listening post on a laundry truck and driving through a neighborhood. Which is exactly what the old detector vans looked like and did.

So this isn't old technology. In fact, with the European RDS (Radio Data System) which I happened to work on back in the early 90s, you could actually instruct the radio receiver to jump to a different tuning setting or hijack the "traffic signal" and pipe advertising into the receiver if the user happened to have traffic alerts switched on.

Maybe you could sue the guy driving behind you tuned to a different frequency under the DMCA for interrupting the advertising while you were reading it...?

STF

Re:Privacy?

[dfn5]

Ha! I've encased my entire car with lead, covered all the windows with wire mesh and have a really long grounding wire. I'll be damned if any of those bastards can find out what radio station I'm listening to.

Re:Privacy?

[John Miles]

have you actually tried to detect that signal outside a vehicle? ok now do it to a MOVING TARGET.

I could tell you, but then I'd have to... aw, never mind.

and what you are talking about is not the case.. the BBC transmits a subcarrier with a tone on it that is easily detectable. It's the same detection scheme used by american cable TV companies to snif out people stealing cable tv. It's a simple device and putting the subcarrier there makes it air tight in court.. trying to say that "we detected what channel your tv is tuned to doesnt work in court... saying we detected our special signal we transmit to catch them.... does.

It's likely that the technique used in the UK has changed over the years, but it's also worth pointing out that what you're describing makes no sense whatsoever. :) If the BBC is transmitting the 'subcarrier', what does a TV set do to the 'subcarrier' to make it detectable from outside the house? If you're talking about a TV receiving a signal off the air (as opposed to through a CATV feed that can be TDR'ed to detect connections), the only way you can detect it is by listening for either an LO signal or a (Tempest-style) deflection signal. Can you nail down some more details about the subcarrier-detection scheme you're referring to?

Re:Privacy?

[cornjchob]

Touche.

But those signals are very week, especially when going 70 mph. It doesn't make sense to me; seems as though it wouldn't be worth the trouble. These oscillators can't be putting out much power, especially considering the interference produced by the amplifier also in your car's stereo. Output needs to be insanely low, and on top of that, depending on the frequency, the billboard would have to filter out actual radio stations.

But hey, if they want to waste their time, so beit.

Re:Privacy?

[rmohr02]

Actually it is. "Dayton's (OH) rock station," 104.7 WTUE

But when TUE was bought out by ClearChannel in 1999 they kept the same callsign, format and DJs.

Re:Privacy?

[John Miles]

But those signals are very weak, especially when going 70 mph. It doesn't make sense to me; seems as though it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

Couple of points in their favor, though: they know exactly where to listen, down to the nearest 1 kHz or so given the stability of modern synthesized LOs. That means they can use a very narrow filter to detect the desired signal, and overall S/N ratio improves with 10 * log(bandwidth). Compare the 200 kHz-wide IF an ordinary FM radio uses to the 5-kHz detection bandwidth a billboard receiver might use. That's like picking up an extra 16 dB of signal strength for free.

Also, the LO signal isn't necessarily that weak to begin with... probably on the order of a milliwatt at the point where it's injected into the mixer. Many of the cheaper FM "wireless broadcasters" sold by outfits like Radio Shack put out less power than that.

I imagine that the power at the antenna might be as high as -60 dBm or greater, which is workable, but that's a wild guess. I'll have to drag a spectrum analyzer into the garage tonight and see what kind of radiated field strength I can pick up from my cars' antennas.

I don't follow your point about "interference produced by the amplifier (in the) car's stereo." That's an audio amp.

Re:Privacy?

[Arcturax]

Exactly. Besides, if your car radio is sending signals out and through the billboard, they have every right to detect them.

They aren't identifying you personally so I don't see the issue either.

Now if the billboard had a camera on it, then I would be upset.

Re:Privacy?

[.milfox]

Mmmm.. intresting.

So I wonder if we can jam it so it thinks everyone is listening to NPR .. :P Or maybe Mexican Polka... *CACKLE*

Re:Privacy?

[Lucas Membrane]

Just drive your car around in a Faraday cage. If you shield your radio so that signals can't get out, you'll be safe, but, unfortunately, no signals could get in, so you'll have to record the traffic reports on 8-tracks at home and listen to them in the car.

Re:Privacy?

[ncc74656]

if someone can infer the radio station you have tuned in, trust me: you're going to need more than rf shielding. more like a club to whack whoever's in your back seat listening along. there's no passive way to do this at all.

Guess again. You can pick up the local-oscillator signal from a superheterodyne receiver (that's everything from the 50-year-old tube radio on my kitchen shelf to the transistor radio you had as a kid to the digitally-tuned radio in your car, your Walkman, etc.) and deduce the frequency to which it is tuned. The local oscillator (a type of variable-frequency oscillator) is mixed with everything that's on the antenna. A tuning circuit then picks off one signal whose frequency is the difference between the local-oscillator frequency and the transmitting frequency of the station you've selected. Since the local oscillator isn't an intentional transmitting source, the output level is very low...but it is present and ought to be detectable with sufficiently sensitive equipment. The presence of a few dozen radios on the same frequency would help it out a bit, too.

If you want to defeat this type of system, you'd want a radio that doesn't use a local oscillator. Good luck finding a TRF or crystal-set head unit for your car. :-)

(As an experiment, take two AM radios and put them next to each other. Tune one to a station somewhere on the upper half of the dial. Tune the other to a frequency 455 kHz lower. The local oscillator of the second radio swamps out the station tuned in on the first radio, so the station should fade away and be replaced with silence. You could also try doing the same thing with FM, but tune the two radios 10.7 MHz apart. 455 kHz is the standard intermediate frequency (IF) for medium-wave AM, while 10.7 MHz is the standard intermediate frequency for FM.)

Re:Privacy?

[DennyK]

Get an MP3/CD player, if you can afford one. My JVC was well worth the $300. I can fit over a hundred 128Kbps (which is no worse than FM radio, really) tracks on a single CD. Set it on random/shuffle mode and let it run. No DJs, of course, but I personally consider that a plus. The nice thing is I can have a mix of music on the CD...everything from New Age to German industrial metal. Very nice if you have less-than-mainstream tastes in music like mine ;) My JVC lets you play random songs from one directory on the CD, or from all directories, so you can divide your music up as you like and still have a random selection. And when you get tired of one mix, just burn a new CD-R with different tunes. I haven't listened to the radio since I bought the thing six months ago. ;)

And, of course (to get back on topic), no nosy billboard will be able to tell what track is currently pumping away in your car... ;)

DennyK

Re:Privacy?

[AlecC]

Who says the sensor has to be in the billboard? Actually, it would be better about a mile back down the freeway, so the billboard can be switched to an appropriate ad in time for you to see it. Possibly a row of snsores, one per lane, on some kind of gantry.

And sure, switching to spanish ads when a group of Spanish-speakers come past, or at the time of day that Spanish-speakers tend to travel, is *exactly* what the advertisers want.

The neat thing about this from the advertisers point of view is they don't have to pigeonhole you by age, gender, race, language etc. to make a guess of an appropriate ad for your group, which will be statistically right but may well be individually wrong. They are selecting ads on the basis of a choice you have made, so if you are atypical of your socio-economic group (defined by them, of course) you get an atypical ad displayed to you.

Which doesn't change the fact that billboards, electronic or paper, are appallingly ugly, and I am very glad that we don't have a fraction as many in this country (UK) as you have in the US.

Re:Privacy?

[Lumpy]

this is going completely by memory of the equipment I know we use and what is installed and active in the headend.

There is a signal injector that creates a subcarrier for an analog TV channel, it is inserted before the modulator so that it becomes part of that channel... I.E. put it into HBO, Showtime, Skinamax, etc... the pay channels that are supposed to be premium channels.... what is most stolen here in the states.

this subcarrier is decoded by the Tv's reciever... it has to because the TV is trying to get the video + audio + SAP (or what is now descriptive audio channel) + the stereo indicator carrier + everything else.

because Televisions dont do anything with this signal the TV ignores it. From what I remember It rides Near the SAP audio subchannel so that it get's decoded completely by the television... I.E. the carrier signal rides with the audio signal all the way up to the final stages before it's converted to audio. this gives it the best path for propagation. It's a low frequency carrier inside the carrier around 90-150Khz so it makes it past all the IF stages. I cant remember the exact operating frequency... and I do believe it is agile in that regard also... It's a nice unit.. completely controlled by PC with the ability to watch/detect the resulting signal after the modulator.

I'll see if the head end techs will let me grab the manual from them.

Re:Privacy?

[Kombat]

If you've encased your car with lead, then you wouldn't be listening to ANY radio frequency. It works both ways, you know.

Re:Privacy?

[John Miles]

Interesting info. So the van outside watches for leakage of the amplified 90-150 kHz signal from the baseband circuitry, huh? Hard to believe there's enough radiation to pick up... you need a fairly-efficient antenna to 'broadcast' signals at that frequency, not just stray bits and pieces of wire. TEMPEST interception works because deflection yokes make nice loop antennas, but I wouldn't think this carrier would make it through to the deflection circuitry (at least not without causing horrible artifacts in the picture).

I'll have to do some Googling on this one.

LA Story

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon, the billboards will be giving us advice ala LA Story. "I think you would be happy if you bought a Gap Denim Jacket!"

Great!

[NetDanzr]

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...

Sacramento?

[jessemckinney]

Speeling machines anyone?

Good idea. :\

[gt25500]

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).

generally

[radiashun]

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!

Re:generally

[Tablizer]

i think wrapping your entire car with tinfoil and chickenwire may do the trick.

How cute: A "Jack" antenna ball wearing a little foil hat......to match the driver's

So how . . .

[achurch]

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)?

Re:So how . . .

[spectecjr]

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)?

Yep - as do television sets.

It's called heterodyning, and is used to decode FM (frequency modulated) signals. Basically, you mix the signal coming in with the frequency you want to listen to, and the signal at that frequency gets amplified (due to the interference), and the outcome of that is rectified, amplified, and is ultimately what you listen to.

So the billboard picks up the frequency you're mixing the incoming signal with (because you need a frequency generator to create that frequency, and they will emit it -- there's not much you can do to stop it short of burying it in a completely metal box -- which kind of stops the incoming radio signal).

Simon

Re:How is that possible

[Rude Turnip]

I don't know anything about the tech behind it, but it is quite possible to detect what radio station you are tuned into. Supposedly, some ratings services go out in vans with antennas and take a measure of what stations people in cars listen to.

Perhaps our UK friends can help here...doesn't the BBC use a similar technology to find people who aren't paying their TV license fee? I saw this happen on The Young Ones once.

This city gets better and better every day...

[JanusFury]

Gotta love sacramento. Next thing you know they'll be watching us with cameras inside our tv's. Double-plus ungood, indeed.

Re:How is that possible

[cybermace5]

I'd like to know a bit more about the technology as well.

Do superhet receivers really bounce that much back out of the antenna?

Are they using lasers to monitor glass vibrations and compare to current radio signals? Or maybe bouncing microwave off the cars and using the chassis as a resonant cavity?

I'd like to say I know exactly what they're doing, but on this one I draw a blank.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.

Re:Hang on, before you Troll...

[Elbereth]

I have no idea what you just said. Can you rephrase that with smaller words and less run-on sentences? I think you just said, "Hey, this is cool" using 250 words, but I'm not sure.

Re:Hang on, before you Troll...

[dubl-u]

Integration of higher and higher technology into daily life isn't one of my goals, bucko. Making each day better than the one before is, of course, and sometimes technology helps that. But the mere technology for its own sake doesn't improve anything, or the people in server rooms would be the happiest motherfuckers on the planet.

This goes double for advertising technology. The point of a billboard is to make you think about something other than what you're thinking about when you're near it. Improving the ability of people with money to distract me from my life might benefit somebody, but it sure as hell isn't me.

Sensationalism/ Listening habits/Distraction

[Nalanthi]

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.

Re:Sensationalism/ Listening habits/Distraction

[Myco]

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.

Advertising agencies which selectively advertise on certain stations based on listener demographics would tend to disagree with you here. Sure, it's not an exact science, but every bit of information about a person helps fine-tune their demographic a little more and produce better ad targeting. NPR and punk rock, combined, tell a lot about you as a consumer, really -- from these two facts, we can glean some pretty good probabilities about your age and political leanings, for example.

Re:Sensationalism/ Listening habits/Distraction

[Myco]

Everyone is a terrorist until proven otherwise.

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Is there a physics major in the house?

How about an electrical engineer?

This works because nearly all receivers use the superheterodyne principle. The receiver converts the incoming signals to another frequency where most of the amplification and filtering is performed. To do this conversion there is an oscillator, called the local oscillator, in the receiver and this is what can be detected by the billboards. In AM radios the local oscillator is 455 kHz higher in frequency than the station the radio is tuned to and you can hear it by putting two radios very close to each other, tuning one to a station near the high end of the AM band, then tuning the other radio to 455 kHz below that station's frequency so that you hear a tone.

The same thing can be done with FM radio, TV and most other receivers. The reason it works is that all receivers are built using the same basic design so the difference between the local oscillator and station is known.

Re:How does this work?

[theLOUDroom]

I can't tell you exactly how this thing is supposed to work (the atricle doesn't have enough information) but I can give you some ideas:

Expample one:
Radar detector detectors. These work by detection the frequency emitted by the local oscillator inside certain radar dectectors. The workaround wich followed was for radar detector manufacturers to simple change their LO frequencies.

Example two:
Store anti-shoplifting mechanisms. Those little tags that they put on just about everything these days are actually small electric circuits tuned to resonate at a specfic radio frequency. when you walk though the entrance/exit of the store, you walk between at a transmitter and a receiver. The tx/rx transmits at two radio frequencies. One is the frequency of the tags and one isn't. When a person walks through the gate, the amplitude of both frequencies at the reciever drops. If a tag passes through the gate, the one frequency is going to drop in amplitude more than the other, because of the resonance of the tag. Shoplifter nailed.
Something similar to either one of these methods might be usable, but I can't tell you which one as the article doesn't give this type of information.

Re:How does this work?

[Istealmymusic]

Okay, time for a clue. As I'm sure you know, your radio antenna receives all wavelengths simultaneously. The receiver has to filter out all but your tuned-in frequency. To do this, a so-called resistor-capacitor (the cap being your tuning knob) "RC tank circuit" is utilized to provide an oscillation to beat against the mish-mash of the received environmental waves. Local oscillators of this kind are powered by a solid-state Gunn oscillator in a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL).

The output is fed through a low-power Schottkey diode to clamp the waveform and lock onto the desired frequency. I'm sure you can tell what I'm getting at: in order to receive frequency RF, one must generate frequency IF via local oscillations (LO), and IF directly corresponds to RF. Stephen Wolfram points out 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. Quite simple really.

Re:How does this work?

[Anonymous Coward]

This explanation is really messed up. RC tank circuits don't exist but LC (inductor and capacitor) tank circuits, or resonant circuits, do. Gunn diodes are a good component for building a microwave local oscillator; phase locked loops are a system for building a stable local oscillator. Finally, schottky diodes don't "clamp" the waveform but they are often a good choice for use in a mixer.

Why don't you go to an explantion of superheterodyne receivers and learn how they really work?

Re:How does this work?

[WCMI92]

If I recall correctly, the FM frequency is 10.7 MHz from the station being listened to.

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?

Re:How does this work?

[Istealmymusic]

Thanks for setting me straight.

Re:How does this work?

[lommer]

You have to emulate the signals becuase if you just had 1 radio, it wouldn't make much of a difference. The trick is to get your own transmitter and transmit those signals at much higher power, thus tricking the billboards into believing that there's hundreds of radios all listening to the same station...

Re:How does this work?

[quintessent]

Reminds me of the Duck Tales criminals...

"You can take that from us. We stole it fair and square"

Re:How does this work?

[Kanasta]

Why don't we all just buy a $10 radio and put it under the billboard?

OK, lets have a roster for replacing the batteries every few days...

Re:How does this work?

[Reziac]

I have a better idea. Continuously run your tuner up and down the entire spectrum fast enough that the billboard can't keep up with the stations your radio passes by. Slashdot those billboards but good. :)

The joke's on them!

[shivianzealot]

I only listen to NPR, what are they going to sell me? A platter of dead tree? Hah!

Re:The joke's on them!

[kitzilla]

YOU get a chardonnay ad. ;-)

its all done with strings and mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

"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 ?

Possible Message...

[_Sprocket_]

The PERV in front of you is listening to 'LOVE LINES'!

Paid for by:
The Moral Majority

Re:Possible Message...

[mstyne]

Or one of those "sexual stamina pill" or "erectile dysfunction" commercials...

Re:How is that possible

[Samir Gupta]

I presume that they work on the superheterodyne principle which 99% of commercial radios out there use. Basically, when picking up radio waves off the air, a radio will remodulate the radio waves to an intermediate frequency inbetween the carrier frequency, and the final output which is sent to the amplifier. This intermediate frequency is emitted by the oscillators (ie, your radio receiver is also a transmitter, which is why radio "receivers" are banned on commercial airliners like cell phones are) and can be picked up and detected just like any other radio wave.

Based on the frequency of the IF wave, the billboard can presumably tell what the majority of the radios in the near vicinity are tuned into.

Just the Radio?

[doormat]

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?

Re:Just the Radio?

[EvanED]

Just radio.

As for liability, billboards cannot "change" (article's word) more than once every four seconds. I don't know if this applies to just the advertisement (i.e. you can change what you're advertising for more than once every four seconds) or the image displayed. In the latter case, the best "video" you'll get is 1/4 fps...

Re:Just the Radio?

[fishbowl]

"As for liability, billboards cannot "change" (article's word) more than once every four seconds. "

That may be a California thing... I've seen full motion, full color video in Texas and in Las Vegas.

Re:Just the Radio?

[EvanED]

Well, without saying that this rule is independently in place elsewhere, it is just a CA Dept. of Transportation regulation, so yeah, it's a California thing.

Kinda cool...

[ActiveSX]

...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?

[Zen Programmer]

What do you expect from a guy whose handle is "k0osh.CEOofCLIT"?

Re:What do you expect?

[Dahan]

For example, a split infinitive isn't necessarily a fatal grammar mistake, but it is generally that accepted that it is bad grammar.

Actually, it's generally accepted that people who think that split infinitives are bad grammar are anal-retentive people who seem to think they're speaking Latin rather than English. There's nothing wrong a so-called "split infinitive."

Re:What do you expect?

[pmc]

'Spelt' works, but it is an ancient spelling.

Not in the non-US English speaking world. A bit like "Whilst".

'Spelled', on the other hand, refers to only one thing

Spelled is ambigious too - if you spelled someone, you relieved them temporary from duties or work, or possibly put someone under a magic spell. You spelled by having arranged the letters of a word in order, but if you spelled something out you explained in great detail.

Worse than invasion of privacy

[techmuse]

Not only does this invade my privacy, but it broadcasts information from which my income, age, etc. can be derived to everyone AROUND me!

Re:Worse than invasion of privacy

[EvanED]

No, all it does is show information from which people can determine what perhaps 30% of the people around them are (they can detect 60% of what people listen to, and caters to the majority. That assumes there are two stations. With more, you could have a plurality in which case 30% could drop to 10 or 15%.

Smart advertising.

[Nathdot]

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?

At one time...

[djupedal]

...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.

Re:At one time...

[Cyno01]

Yeah, milwaukee is allways getting new products too. McDonalds brats, pepsi blue, mt dew code red... I dunno, sometimes it irks me to be a test bed.

Re:At one time...

[Xtraneous]

One of my friend's father is a wholesale candy distributor. What does this mean? I get candy before it is even released\announced to the public. Sour Skitles [sic]? I had these about a year before they were out.

I've had lots of other things, but at 12:35 am, my mental accuity is down to the level of a monkey with a typewriter, and cannot remeber what else.

Perfect. Just PERFECT.

[CleverNickName]

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.

Re:Perfect. Just PERFECT.

[Istealmymusic]

Hawaii. Zero billboards.

What wll happen in the following circumstances:

[MoThugz]

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

Re:What wll happen in the following circumstances:

[Myco]

RTFA. This is a huge billboard, not an individual-targeting device. It polls the majority of cars passing by and uses the resulting demographic data to select targeted ads.

And in other news...

[tgrotvedt]

...MS has introduced Clippy on billboards that detects what you are doing:

"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!

Annoying "Active" Billboards

[theedge318]

MOD MY LAST POST DOWN
(sorry if that last post was empty ... so used to using Enter to tab between fields, which I know is really bad ... and unfortunately Submit is the default button)

Anyways .. 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.

What about gridlock?

[BrianH]

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 :\

Re:What about gridlock?

[LostCluster]

It's a majority rules kind of thing... the strongest LO frequency it finds is converted back to the station it corresponds to, and that is what determines which of the four ads show. If there's no way to make any sense of the signals, then the board just remains in place showing whatever ad the last group of cars that it could make sense of indicated.

Re:What about gridlock?

[JabberWokky]

The road system in California is the worst in the country (barring the possibility of the upper mid-west, which I haven't been though). Not only does Sac have the hideous signage (CA is clearly at the bottom rank for uniform signs and marking) and random order of exits on the freeway (this goes left, that goes right and you lose a lane, whups, here comes a lane in from the left), there are two totally different roads called 80 that split off. They both have the same interstate shield background - one is colored, and the other is outlined. Beautiful for those new to the area *and* when you're trying to remember which 80 has the exit to, say, Howe Avenue (which, like many exits, has a one way exit, and no on ramp. Others have on ramps and no exit, or one way only exits and onramps). Frikkin' beautiful. In the Bay area, at least the roads have decent capacity, and crisscross each other nicely with different numbers. (LA is another story - LA and Manhattan are truly scary).

And while no place really has the "worst drivers", California certainly doesn't rank up there.

--
Evan "Did a slow cross country road trip this year"

Hmm...

[oGMo]

So the billboard picks up the frequency you're mixing the incoming signal with (because you need a frequency generator to create that frequency, and they will emit it -- there's not much you can do to stop it short of burying it in a completely metal box -- which kind of stops the incoming radio signal).

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.)

Re:Hmm...

[libre lover]

That's precisely how the local oscillator is detected - it leaks back up the antenna and is radiated.

If you're paranoid you can build your own receiver and have it use a non-standard IF frequency. It would really jack up the price of the receiver as you would not be able to take advantage of cheap off-the-shelf components - you'd have to design something akin to the transistor radios of the '60s and '70s which were packed full of individual transisors as opposed to today's designs which use one or two ICs.

The reason this works is because 10.7 MHz is such a common IF, meaning that the internal oscillator runs at either (FM station frequency)+10.7 MHz or (FM station frequency)-10.7 MHz

Alleviated Fears

[_Sprocket_]

Sure - the initial knee-jerk reaction is concern for privacy. But thankfully, Bob Garfield ("ad critic for the trade magazine Advertising Age") asures us:

Garfield said the billboards are similar to Internet banner ads, which are sensitive to the user's Internet history.

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.

Re:Alleviated Fears

[mithras the prophet]

Well, maybe Bob doesn't mind, since Bob is also a radio personality himself.

(admittedly, for non-commercial NPR, and he does a great show that skewers the media -- including NPR -- for their biases and kowtowing to sponsors, but still...)

Re:Alleviated Fears

[_Sprocket_]

You'd think he would make a better comparison considering his background. Even if he wasn't up on the technology itself, surely he's aware of Doubleclick's history.

Maybe I misjudged Bob. He could be making a snide side-remark.

Or he just goofed.

(or more likely the reporter did)

Fun messing with them

[dissy]

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.

seems unnecessary

[goon america]

Isn't this kind of a waste? I mean, unless they tinker the thing to be REALLY sensitive, and thus flickering between different ads constantly, won't the radio stations follow pretty much the same pattern every day?

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.

Shield Your Radio

[Tom7]

Yeah, just put a Faraday cage around it. Get rid of the antenna, too; that gives off all sorts of fucken signals.

Calm the fuck down.

[mstyne]

Dude, er, it's still just a billboard.

Re:Can we have some consistant linking please

[Erpo]

Hehe. :) How about if they were more consistent with their spelling? "The Sacromento Bee" is bad enough, but they have it spelled correctly in the headline.

Wow, you do not work with much radio...

[qwijibrumm]

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.

Re:Wow, you do not work with much radio...

[.milfox]

Yes. And our TEMPEST shielded radio room can process traffic from signals sent to us because our antennas are OUTSIDE the TEMPEST shielding. Duuuh. :P

So if you TEMPEST shield the car radio, it should block the IF output, since the IF source is not hooked up to the antenna. Yeesh.

Re:Wow, you do not work with much radio...

[spectecjr]

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.

Yes, it does. TV detector vans in the UK work on this principle -- and no, they don't work off vsync or hsync flyback voltages (well, ok; they use that to tell if you've got a TV) -- they can actually tell which channel you're watching, based on the carrier freq. you're using to decode the VHF/UHF signal.

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.

Same difference. No; seriously. If you take the signal and pass it through an integrator, you get exactly the same net result. There are more elegant ways of decoding the signal which reduce noise, but this is decoding at its most basic. You did all the hard work when you mixed in the carrier frequency.

Now, if you're encoding stereo on the signal, then yes, you need a discriminator.

Here's a basic mono-FM signal receiver.

As I said, there's not much to it. Note the diodes for rectification of the signal.

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.

Yup... that's the case. That's why the Navy doesn't use FM for sensitive communications; they use spread spectrum.

Simon

Re:Wow, you do not work with much radio...

[spectecjr]

Finnally, I apologize for the harshness of my reply. You seemed to oversimplify things so much that I thought you were talking out your ass after physics 101. Please accept this appology

Hey, no problem. I deliberately simplified things because the target audience most likely didn't know anything about radio; if they did, they'd already know what the deal was :)

The key thing for me in understanding how all this stuff works was when I realized that to receive and decode a radio signal, all you need to do is to introduce a non-linearity (the same way a cat's whisker set works). After that, it's all just a matter of fine tuning the filters.

Simon

Shhhh!

[MacAndrew]

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.

Maybe they mean digital radios?

[0x0d0a]

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...

Death metal

[Cheese Cracker]

A guy who listens to death metal would get a funeral home ad...

Cat Detector Van

[SimHacker]

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.

Re:How is that possible

[John Miles]

Do superhet receivers really bounce that much back out of the antenna?

Superheterodyne receivers don't "bounce" anything at all. They radiate a low-level signal that's generated internally to convert the incoming broadcast signal to a fixed, lower intermediate frequency, where it can be amplified and processed more effectively.

BSEE for contract or hire

Sounds like you didn't get the education you paid for. :-(

The possibilitys...

[Psx29]

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

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?

Re:Two way street?

[Zen Programmer]

This could set a dangerous precedent, no?

No.

Re:Two way street?

[EmagGeek]

The government goes to great lengths to shield computers they use. The CIA has equipment that can indeed snoop what's being displayed on your monitor, and also pick up your keystrokes from emissions from your keyboard cable. None of it is rocket science. It's all based on the simple principle that a current on the surface of a wire has a very predictable radiated field.

They are able to tell what radio station you're listening to by picking up local oscillator to RF leakage in the mixer stage of your receiver. A radio receiver has a variable local oscillator that is mixed with the incoming RF. That LO is mixed with the RF to produce a signal at both the sum and difference of the LO and RF. The sum is discarded (filtered) and the difference continues down through an IF filter (at 455kHz). Depending on the frequency of the LO, a certain station will end up at 455kHz in the IF stage.

In any mixer, there is leakage from the LO input to both the RF and the IF ports (this is, incidentally, how cops can tell you have a radar detector, they listen for the LO frequency leaking out to the antenna port). So, the billboard has a receiver that can tell what your local oscillator is tuned to and decide what to display based on that.

In a field of 100 cars, the billboard receives the most spectral power on the LO frequency that most of the cars are tuned to (since it all simply adds), so the billboard can also know which radio station most of the cars in the field of view are tuned to, and make a decision based on that.

Re:Two way street?

[Kanasta]

Why or why not??

Who has the bigger lawyer?

RTFA!

[rmohr02]

So what happens to this thing when you've got six lanes of traffic inching by, and they're all listening to different things?

The billboard sees all the signals coming from radios and bases its ad on the most common signal.

Distraction = Accidents

[Ratso Baggins]

Here in Oz "roadside TV" is a no-no, you cannot change a roadside billboard automatically, or with any frequency manually. This is a result (apparently) of a study on driver concentration.

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.

Re:Distraction = Accidents

[SgtChaireBourne]

Here in Oz "roadside TV" is a no-no, you cannot change a roadside billboard automatically, or with any frequency manually. This is a result (apparently) of a study on driver concentration.

The sugestion is that if a billboard changes in a drivers immediate or peripheral vision they will be distracted/alarmed by it.

The U.S. had this problem as well, but a long time ago. So it's disappeared from collective memory.

An old timer passed on an anecdote about road side ads. Creating a distraction was the reason the Burma Shave ads disappeared from the roadside. It worked fine with the old cares, but the distractions lead to accidents, once cars started cruising faster than 20-40 MPH.

However, to apeal to logic, ads are about fscking up your concentration and getting you to think about some thing other than what you are currently thinking. when you're on the road, especially in heavy traffic, you should only be concentrating on driving. Impairing a driver's ability to concentrate leads to accidents (death,injury,expenses), this has been shown again and again with alcohol, cellphones, and even advertisements.

Any Porn radio stations there?

[jonr]

So I can see the billboard with a lot of pink color?

Re:Go right ahead, guys

[Trusty Penfold]

So put ads on road-signs.

Speed
55
Coke
is
it

---
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.

How about ... JAMMING?

[MacAndrew]

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. :)

A new protection product

[Skapare]

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.

Combine with license plate recognition...

[eduardodude]

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.

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.

An elegant technology from a more civilized age

[John Miles]

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.

Bogus moderation

[0x0d0a]

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.

Re:Bogus moderation

[0x0d0a]

Identifying a troll is, IMHO, always valid, at any time. It wasn't until this point that I'd realized that his past few posts had contained bogus information.

Second of all, his account is new, and he's consistently placed his bogus sig at the end. He's almost certainly in the first phase of the Slashdot Troll HOWTO -- build up some karma, than abuse it.

The sooner you can catch them, the easier it is. It's much more annoying to let this slip until there's a +1 bonus, hundreds of posts, and people honestly think that there *is* a high-ranking Nintendo official posting to Slashdot.

I'd have no complaint with the same comment if he was posting from a normal account, instead of trying to build up the reputability of a "trolling" account.

Even if you want to go entirely by post content, his .sig was in his post.

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.

Re:Parent is a fraud

[LucVdB]

If it isn't good old Samir. Little has changed in nearly a decade - Slashdot, I give you this wonderful Usenet post of February 1994 by Samir Gupta, Ph.D.:

Hello, non-SEGA gamers! I am DR SAMIR GUPTA, PH. D, head of SEGA's New Technology research department, and I would like to tell you about some of the wonderful accessories that my department is researching, and will be available in the near future! We will be issuing a formal world wide press release in a few days, but we are posting this announcement to all you USENET users because you are some of our most loyal customers! I hope that this makes you consider SEGA as a gaming choice. This is technology that will forever change the face of video gaming, which is why I am posting this in non-Sega groups as well. I hope that this does not create any flames, but appreciation for video gaming technology as a whole and how far it has come since the early days.

First, we have SMELL-O-VISION. This is a innovative accessory which connects to the modem port of your SEGA Genesis system! This device can synthesize any smell known to mankind, and will greatly enhance YOUR enjoyment of SEGA with special SMELL-O-VISION software! The first will be LEISURE SUIT LARRY SMELL EDITION, by Sierra On Line. (Whew! check out that bathroom smell!) SMELL-O-VISION will be available in late 1995. (We still have to iron out some bugs in the molecular synthesis unit.)

Next, we have HOLO-GENESIS. HOLO-GENESIS is a 3-D laser holographic projection device for your Genesis. It can display 3-D rendered images, in full-color, in real-time. It uses a special Intel/SEGA HGX-1 3-D graphics coprocessor. Coming in mid 1995!

Then, there is SEGA COCKPIT. It is a full-sized replica of a standard jet fighter cockpit, complete with working gauges. The best part is that it will have a hydraulic system, like that found in our arcade games! So you can move n' groove with the action! It is R-360 based, so you
can rotate along all 3 directional axis, and can generate forces up to 8 Gs! Barf bag is not included! First game will be FALCON 3.0, ported directly from the computer game.

Next is SegaTalk. This is a HIGHLY ADVANCED SPEECH RECOGNITION DEVICE, which can recognize voice in real time! It can distinguish context, and can distinguish almost any accent. Preliminary tests indicate a 0.000001% error rate. The secret is based on a secret US Air Force device to let pilots control aircraft weapons systems by voice. We have adapted this military technology for entertainment use. (NOTE: This device is subject to export restrictions by the US Defense Department and will not be available in all countries, due to the sensitive nature of the technology used) Available in fall of 1995. The first game will be Ultima 7. But, in this version, you can actually carry on full conversations with the characters, using your
VOICE! And they talk back to you! The game will have a dictionary of about 500,000 English words, and can recognize very complex grammatical structures.

Well, that's all. I hope I have whetted your appetite for SEGA games, and I hope you look foward to the best SEGA has to offer you in radically new technologies for your gaming enjoyment.

Dr. SAMIR GUPTA, Ph. D
Head, SEGA New Technology Research Department
Tokyo, Japan
sgupta@research.sega.jp

Re:Parent is a fraud

[0x0d0a]

The SegaTalk mentioned there is definitely impressive. 0.000001% error rate, with 500,000 English word vocabulary? Hell, not only does that far outstrip our best current prototype built at Carnegie Mellon University, but it also can handle, via speech recognition, 100,000 more words than exist in the Oxford English Dictionary, many of which are homonyms.

Not only that, SG was *already* working in Japan then, despite the fact that Sega is almost entirely a US company.

Oh, and the fact that he was labasted for being a fraud then as well...seems he didn't know about the Japanese .co.jp domain, and made an invalid false email.

Re:Parent is a fraud

[0x0d0a]

Unfortunately, assuming this is the same guy and not a copycat, he used a free newsserver to post his message back then. So we don't get to find out where he is through the nearly decade-old headers, which is too bad. It would have been quite a find. :-)

Re:Parent is a fraud

[0x0d0a]

Even more incredibly, from the thread you linked to:

Newsgroups: rec.games.video.nintendo, rec.games.video.advocacy, rec.games.video.3do, rec.games.video.atari
Date: 1994-02-20 19:50:41 PST

Oh brother. I remember seeing basically this same post, by this exact same author, a couple years ago before I quit Prodigy and found the 'Net.

You'd think he'd be able to come up with some better material...

Robert
eauu142@rigel.oac.uci.edu

Incredibly, this troll has been working on his thread for *over a decade*, and has spanned three different tech discussion forums (Prodigy, USENET, Slashdot).

BTW, I believe Prodigy was only offered in the United States. So, if we assume that both the Slashdot SG, the USENET SG, and the Prodigy SG are all the same guy, he definitely lives (lived?) in the United States. Still no tack on his age, though I'd still place him as an undergraduate college student in the US.

Re:Parent is a fraud

[0x0d0a]

Read the thread that you just linked to (and the ones linked to in other responses). He was shot down back in '94 as well.

I admit that I am somewhat curious as to whether the guy just opportunistically used an old troll by someone else, or whether he's actually been carrying this on for over a decade.

Victoria's Secret

[Andrewkov]

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. ;-)

Well

[Rykard]

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.

Young ones....

[decaying]

[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!

Why

[3ryon]

Because, as everyone knows, driving down the highway without reading all the billboards is stealing.

This is no big deal.

[geoffeg]

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

From the article

[The Pi-Guy]

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.

Hmm...

[Hard_Code]

...and everybody will just be listening to one form of ClearChannel or another...

What happens when...

[Guppy06]

... I'm listening to Sirius and the frequency I'm listening to is in the GHz range? :)

Sure it's doable, but it's pointless

[A non moose cow]

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.

It's hype.

[kitzilla]

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?

Re:It's hype.

[GospelHead821]

What this allows them to do is change the targetted demographic in realtime. They're allowed to change it as often as every four seconds. If the majority of the sample (60% of passing motorists, according to the article) are listening to a classic rock station, as you suggested, the appropriate ad may be for an automobile. On the other hand, if it's ten at night and the majority of motorists are listening to pop music, then the billboard can be changed to advertise Old Navy or Noxema. The gimmick here is not that the sign accurately targets any particular demographic. The gimmick is that a single sign may accurately target the most prevalent demographic currently looking.

because statistics weren't invasive enough??

[binarybum]

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!"

Hope my radio is open source....

[gymbrall]

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.

Get your unlicensed 100mW tx ready!

[StandardCell]

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!

Hunting for trolls

[0x0d0a]

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!

Think about it

[csnydermvpsoft]

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?

Re:shielding around my radio

[Technician]

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.

Re:Great Just What We Needed

[interstellar_donkey]

Where do I sign up for the implants

What do you think that flu shot you recently had was?

I wanna be a drone to corporate marketing.

Yes, we all do. Be patient.

Re:shielding around my radio

[fatboy]

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

You listen to porn music on the radio?

[orichter]

I thought all of those stations went off the air in the 70's.

The best customers of this...

[kitzilla]

...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.

Re:shielding around my radio

[Technician]

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.

Confused billboards? NOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What if...

[symbolic]

I'm not listening to anything? Will the billboard go blank?

A whole TV program

[caluml]

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.

How has Clear Channel touched you today?

[Newer Guy]

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!

Tempest Attack

[KFury]

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.

Re:How is that possible

[cybermace5]

Anonymous Coward defense aside, maybe I didn't get the education I paid about $29,000/year for. But I did once learn something about heterodyning receivers, IF and sideband demodulation.

And no, by "bounce" I didn't mean transmit the original signal back out of the antenna. I just don't currently work in RF, and didn't realize automotive receivers radiated that much energy in the demodulation.

Apparently you do work in RF, and have a few years of experience as well. Obviously, it still hasn't taught you some of the rudimentaries of respect.

HAW HAW HAW M. PYTHON REFERENCE!!!

[poot_rootbeer]

Well, I've heard that in Great Britain the Ministry of Housinge has developed a working Cat Detector Van...

capability, not intention

[IPFreely]

It's good to see that the RIAA and MPAA are following sound military procedures. The best way to protect ourselves from those pirates is to physically limit their ability to copy goods rather than wait and see if they actually make illegal copies. It doesn't matter that you aren't actually a pirate or were not intending to copy anything illegally. Just stop before you COULD do anything we don't want.

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.

Listening to CDs

[vanyel]

So does that mean the billboard will go out when I drive by listening to CDs?

Re:Is the world the USA's enemy?

[Beliskner]

Is it in the interests of the United States to look Islam-friendly?

Think about it - which muslim countries are tolerant of outsiders, and which Muslim countries have succesfully resisted the creep of Wahabbishm?

Turkey doesn't count because it just elected an Islamic Government which due to *strong* international pressure is sheathing its sword for the moment, Singapore and Malaysia are collapsing under Islamic subversion, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chechnya, Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Indonesia, Nigeria and Somalia don't even need mentioning due to recent events. Islamic Cyprus is constantly threatening war with non-Islamic Cyprus. Dark powers are gathering.

Are there any countries in the world with a significant Muslim population which are pacifist and tolerant of outsiders? Dubai is the only one that springs to mind, but it's surrounded by Wahabbism on all sides.

So is the USA evil? Well is it a crime to send a murderer to kill a murderer who will murder again?

Re:Nothing will be solved by our discussion but ..

[Beliskner]

... 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)

An excellent question which God will answer or not.

"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 ... 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.
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 ...

The Muslims are the only ones with massive funding from Saudi oil money, which is paid for by anybody with a car. Whoops I support terrorism whenever I fill up my tank. Thanks to incompetence, Russia is in the same financial situation as Africa, so inter-warlord hatred and the resultant genocides don't surprise me.

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.

You seem to be arguing that the USA *is* in fact the enemy of the Islamic world, or am I misunderstanding your point?

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.

Re:Still nothing will be solved by this ...

[Beliskner]

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 ..." 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

They're quite typical Pakistani muslims, and have a militant anti-West attitude when they arrive in the UK.

Perhaps we wouldn't have so many rabid fundamentalists and fanatics (of all kinds) if we could reduce hatred in general ... but that doesn't seem to be the Western way ...

Hatred is profitable - arms sales.

all the leaders of British Muslims have denounced terrorism

Figureheads have no choice, denounce the WTC attacks or we'll put you on TV and send you to jail. Wha counts is what Muslims say behind closed doors, and in their own houses. Remember that in Palestine, Arafat constantly talked of peace whilst daily suicide bombings were taking place.

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 ... 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?

Religions *impose* this. That's the problem, you must be free to not follow the religion. If your religion teaches you that freedom is wrong, it's a redundant religion.

Re:Probably my last comments ...

[Beliskner]

There are Muslim commandments about how people should be treated that these terrorists have broken ... 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

CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE - The nun who takes a vow of silence is doing it for herself and to herself only. If instead she were to take a vow to stab anybody she sees on the street, one must not admire that vow. The Muslims however are different, they do indeed admire that vow, the vow to kill others of a different religion/faith/freedom/capitalism. Is it moral to admire murderers? If an entire people admire murderers, do those people themselves become carpet-bomable?

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?

ex cathedra? Latin died for a reason, mate. Anyway, the way I look at it is that religion and all religous books are simply lesson 1, which still the vast majority of people cannot understand due to their own voluntary ignorance. The trouble is that voluntary ignorance is a good thing - the Doctor that sees you (I know) doesn't know what the hell he's doing, but we all wish to believe that he does.

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".

These people are called "base men" by the top philosophers, and these are the people for whom the Bible, etc. was designed. If one follows a book purely, then that book must contain zero passages of violence, ambiguity, hatred or subversion techniques. The Bible contains some e.g. eye for an eye. The Koran contains lots e.g. Jizyah tax on non-Muslims living in a conquored Muslim state which will gradually increase until the conquored population can no longer afford food and dies off or converts. Since murder is part of the Koran (Jizyah) anybody who truly follows Islam is a terrorist - the only Muslims who are nice are the ones that ignore the Koran and do their own thing, but these people admire and are inspired by the former murderers which is a problem.

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!)

Exactly! The Taliban is just a buzzword though. By my estimation, there are 300 million Muslims who share in the Taliban's destructive beliefs and would follow them if they weren't "oppressed" by British laws, which by their population growth they will be setting in the UK before long. Then under Sharia law you and me will pay 10% of our wages to our Muslim rulers, then 20%, etc. until we either starve to death or convert to Islam, so it is written in the Koran (I'm not joking). The UK is predominantly Christian, but who would know? The Hindus and Irish who have arrived in the UK have also forgotten their heritage in order to "blend in", whereas the Muslims attempt to impose their religion on the native population, now that's the difference. Try to buy non-Halal meat in Afghanistan/Pakistan, you'll be spat at, and your home address will be passed to local gangland killers (my Uncle was killed this way).

Environment

[Flamesplash]

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. :)

Re:Latin may have died

[Beliskner]

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).

I'm glad that that's your situation. Many of my friends have been beaten up by young Muslims (sometimes with baseball bats) in Southall, Brick Lane, Green Lanes, East Ham, Canary Wharf, Croydon, Bradford, Manchester. I also have some nice Muslim friends who don't give a crap about the religion and eat pork, and I like them a lot. They also hate these people.

Agnostic Muslim = Good
Religous Muslim = Bad

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

One nice man surrounded by a thousand evil men will surely be turned to evil, and may even start believing that evil is good. So at the end of the day, I don't have to convince you, as if the world becomes evil, you yoursef will be inextricably affected.

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

That's why the UK and US are "free" to some extent - because we ignore the religous nonsense. The leaders of the Muslim people I know don't care about the passages of peace and love, they just preach hate and Sharia Law. I walked into a restaurant in Ilford today and a 7-year old Muslim child seeing that I wasn't Muslim told the chef to put poison in my food so that he could go to heaven. The chef nodded at him approvingly but was unable to do anything as I watched him like a hawk. They gradually exclude you from their society. If you move to Ilford Lane you'll agree with my point of view within a year. Of course if you live in a sheltered part of the Cotswolds, crime doesn't exist and everything I write here can be ignored safely.

I cannot comment on "Jizyah" since I've never heard of it before

It's an extra tax penalty that you must pay if you are not a Muslim