"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

[iomud]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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!

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...

[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.

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

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?

[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?

[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?

The joke's on them!

[shivianzealot]

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

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 ?

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"?

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

Death metal

[Cheese Cracker]

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

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?

[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.

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.

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.

Spoofing

[Michael Woodhams]

Oh, for a room with a view of the sign, a tunable Gunn oscillator, and a reflector to beam my signal at the sign.

Hours of fun, convincing the sign that everybody leaving the football game is listening to a PBS classical music station.

For more fun and games with Gunn oscillators, see also trolling for taillights.

Parent is a fraud

[0x0d0a]

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

To the parent troll: your friends can keep modding me down, and I can keep reposting the truth over, and over, and over. I've got more karma than you have mod points, and once people take a look at this for themselves, you're going to start getting modded down. If I'm wrong, post a followup and tell Slashdot why I'm wrong, because trying to prevent my posts from being read isn't going to work.

Here's the content that was suppressed:

Aren't you the guy that claimed that you were head of Nintendo R&D, and then had someone else (a few articles back, IIRC) point out that they knew the person in charge of Nintendo R&D and that you weren'thim?

Furthermore, you've been giving what you claim is inside information about Nintendo on Slashdot, which I can hardly see the head of a corporate R&D division doing. I've worked in corporate R&D, and they're quite secretive, -- and more so the higher they get.

Finally, the heads of Nintendo's two R&D departments are, according to Planet Nintendo, Takehiro Izushi(R&D section 1) and Kazuhiko Taniguchi (R&D section 2). There is no "Nintendo Advanced R&D" division that I could find any reference to, nor is the informal term "head" a title that is likely to be used in the formal Japanese corporate culture. Finally, I find it rather unlikely that a non-Japanese person such as yourself would hold such a high-ranking position at a large Japanese firm.

Finally, I find it beyond belief that the head of "Nintendo Advanced R&D" would beg on Slashdot for details of how modchips work, when there are engineers aplenty that have worked hard on exactly this problem present in hordes working in Nintendo's R&D departments.

Sir, I accuse you of being both a troll and a fraud! To the Foe list with you!

And, sir, I must say that I find your claim in your User Bio that you earned three PhDs in three years highly unconvincing.

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]

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.

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. ;-)

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.

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.

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!

Listening to CDs

[vanyel]

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