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Distress Signal Emitted By Flat-Screen TV
pinqkandi writes "CNN is a running a story on an Oregon college student's flat-screen Toshiba TV which was releasing the 121.5 MHz international distress signal. He was unaware of the issue until local police, search and rescue, and civil air patrol members showed up at his apartment's door. Apparently the signal was strong enough to be picked up by satellite and then routed to the Air Force Rescue Center in Virginia. Quite impressive - luckily Toshiba is offering him a free replacement."
I'd originally read this on CNet a while ago.
And the (CNet) article points out something of relevance - with so many new devices and what not, our radio spectrum is increasingly becoming very muddled and interference a lot more commonplace. I wonder if existing regulations would do, or if new ones be required.
Something to think about.
And I wonder how powerful that signal must have been to have caused such interference. Either that, or the receiving satellites must be having one hell of a resolution capability.
The latter also provides some food for thought - if their satellite equipment is sensitive enough to find out interfering signals from a Television set, wonder what else they can (and do) eavesdrop
What kind of Tempest attacks do take place, I wonder. Satellite Van Eck Phreaking?
~adjusts tinfoil hat~
The problem is that while in your particular instance it may seem stiffling to your company, those regulations are in place because not all companies can be trusted to stick with the specs in that case.
It becomes a question of business ethics, and we all know how most companies are when it comes to those. This device probably passes the test, where probably has a probability of 0.00001.
_That_ is why strict regulations are needed, IMHO.
And oh btw, nice players at Slim Devices, quite the coolness.
I'm certainly glad that it was detected and responded to. I hope the spectrum doesn't get too messy and create this situation often, but it does show that someone is paying attention when there is a cry for help. (Thinking out in the ocean here).
college student (no money)??
the dude has a flat screen TV doesnt he?!
Error: Id10t detected
I don't when that radio noise could be coming from the apartment a half-block away from the machine keeping me alive in the hospital.
;-)
No thanks.
It was a DeLorean coupe - it only had 2 doors. /. would get this wrong! :)
Can't believe someone on
The reason for non-interference isn't to protect the manufacturer, it's to protect the public. What the holy blue devil makes you think this burden should be waived for small companies?
.... I'll start up a gas station, and since I'm a small company, I can dispense with all those silly safety regs. I'll put stickers on the pumps "You should probably not smoke around here."
Let's carry that concept on thru
Or I can start selling homemade cars, put in some cheap airbags made of a CO2 cartridge and a mousetrap on a hairspring for a trigger, along with a "probably works" disclaimer. That should do the trick.
Geez buddy, get a grip!
Infuriate left and right
Just a little something to keep in mind - all it takes is one (faulty) popular model putting out EMI interference to fuck up an entire range of the spectrum into unusability. So yes, I STRONGLY support keeping tight screws on EMI interference, because you can't rely on Corps to be ethical and act responsibly if it weren't legally mandated. And, as the Netgear NTP issue so eloquently demonstrates, even after you tell a company that they are doing harm and need to stop, they might not necessarily do it.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Well this happened to my set also when I was a kid. The signal was audio tho. After a while we figured out my kid sister had somehow got inside the TV. Long story short, some midget lady came over and pulled her out somehow and she was full of buggers. So we dunked her in the tub. Anyway, the whole house imploded and we moved to a high-rise apartment where troubles soon followed.
Why do you think they currently react to "emergencies" like this leaking tv? Because if they don't someone could die.
Rescue services have to respond to every call even if they know it is false. Because if they guess wrong peoples life are at stake.
They also can't just send a clerk on a moped to find out because if it is real that would loose time.
It says a lot about politicians that in these days of cutbacks no-one is doing anything to cut down on the money wasted by deliberate false emergcengy calls. Send the kids to a few months of re-education. Post 9/11 it should be easy to label them as the terrorists they are.
And no I never made a crank emergency call as a kid. There are just somethings you don't do.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You are an idiot.
And the competitors in India and China don't have this certification rubbish.
Any and all electrical and electronic equipment in the US is subject to regulations, whether they are manufactured inhouse or imported - to prevent unwanted and potentially harmful interference.
bureaucratic goverment drones like you impose a mountain of useless paperwork on small businesses.
I happen to be the owner of a small business myself, and I find the regulations to be quite useful and justified, they're the reasons we do not have a million conflicting parts and standards out there.
But a small business is killed by such stuff.
Yes, and people are killed if there were no regulations. Would you rather have someone die because an CD-player interfered with their pacemaker interfered, or would you rather help small businesses "prosper".
Btw, the reason China is providing cheap stuff is because they have little or no laws on labour condition and blatantly practice harmful trade practices like under-pricing. I guess if we could make you work in a sweatshop for 20 hours a day for a pittance, you would be happy?
Get your facts straight before talking through your ass.
Hey guess what...when I don't get to CHOOSE which cable company to use, then you are a monopoly.
Most cities contract with one cable provider and PROHIBIT other providers from laying cable. Thus, a monopoly.
We're not guaranteed cable, true, but that doesn't change the fact that cable is a monopoly in most cities in the US.
Then that is a problem with the city.
That being the case I would write a letter to you representatives. Clearly this is not fair. Your city and others like should allow other cable companies the option to lay down their own network and installing their own cable taps next to your residence.
Life is not for the lazy.
Meanwhile... IT'S A FREAKING TELEVISION! "TV" and "crash" should not be sharing the same sentence.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Fox News is more popular than CNN and MSNBC combined. How do you explain that? Oh, that's right - here on Slashdot we are the master ra- I mean intellectual elite, and are much smarter than the unwashed masses.
Please give me an example of "fiction" provided by Fox News. Or how about just biased reporting. I'll give you one I got in just 10 minutes watching CNN - a Democratic pundit claimed that Bush had no hope of winning New Jersey. Meanwhile, the last poll I saw had Kerry leading by only four points with the margin of error being 3.4 (USA Today). Paula Zahn did not challenge his assertion.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Download it (bt) if you're too cheap/lazy to buy it.
Remember slashdot kids, if it's on TV on in your local movie theater, it's got to be true, right? Honestly, I think most people here just tow the slashdot-party line, if you take my meaning. It's just popular to bash Fox News, because, heaven forbid, they might have intelligently voiced conservative viewpoints along with the intelligently voiced liberal viewpoints IN THE SAME SHOW!
Fox News is more popular than CNN and MSNBC combined.
You should watch So I Married An Axe Murderer some day, when you aren't so deluded.
May Mackenzie: Charlie, hand me the paper.
Charlie Mackenzie: Mom, I find it interesting that you call The Weekly World News "the paper." A paper contains facts.
Stuart Mackenzie: Hey! The Weekly World News has the most readers of ANY newspaper on the planet! You're going to say that's coincidence?
"People watch/read it, so it's right" has got to be one of the worst arguments I've ever read. I'm actually embarassed for you.
Let me guess. You are part of the 65% of Americans who STILL think Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Fox news is a total joke. The only sad part, is how many Americans actually take their world view from Fox's reporting. You may like it, because they wrap every segment in a flag, an spout off about patriotism at every turn. The rest of the world watches it, and just laugh at how uninformed Fox really is. To put it in perspective for you, imagine listening to opinions from a foriegn country, both leadership, and populace, where all of their opinions, and policy decisions were backed with quotes from the Weekly World News. That is how off target Fox is.
The funniest part of course, is you are being fed your daily propaganda by an Aussie loon!
TODO: Insert witty sig
Most places prohibit this for a reason, not just caprice. Cables are buried under the streets. If you had five local cable companies instead of one, then you have five times as many street-digging projects and five times as many patched-over paving jobs.
Assuming you have enough competition, some of those companies will go under and leave your city or town with this mess on their hands.
Not sating I think this is a *good* reason, but I keep my TV to that "off" channel anyway
Doing my part to piss off the religious right.
The horizontal sweep theory is nice... Except that it's a PLASMA TELEVISION. Plasma and other non-CRT devices have no need for magnetic deflection. :)
All of these tales have been discredited as urban legends.
No, I never said that Fox News was the ultimate source of authority over any factual information. I simply pointed out to the original poster that the existence of dissenting information doesn't make one or the other more or less valid.
I agree with your last statement though, my grief has always been that the majority of the people here at slashdot tend to just ride the bandwagon. It's popular to hate Bush|Ashcroft|Fox News|both major presidential parties|Religious people|Microsoft and the list goes on. I doubt few people could make real cogent arguments for their hatred of any of those things without calling names like school children. The simple fact that it tends to be fueled by hatred makes it's almost impossible.
Just wait till BPL (Broadband Over Powerline) starts crapping on ELT and other government emergency frequencies.
Sigh...
Just one bit about Fox News somehow seperating their reporting and their opinion, that's not really true. Obviously you don't pay too much attention or you trust what they say too much to accurately analyze what they say.
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.