Slashdot Mirror
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Brings Boston to a Halt
An anonymous reader writes "An ad campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force featuring the Mooninites Ignignot and Err caused major security concerns in Boston, MA when magnetic light displays were mistaken for possible bombs. The displays included one of Ignignot flipping the bird (as hard as he could), but Gov. Deval Patrick was not amused."
...nerds get their pants pulled down and they are spanked with moonrocks.
Someone found one of the devices under a bridge last week and posted a few pictures to Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanderlin/tags/aquate enhungerforce/
-- Please insert another quarter
I salute our brave leaders for their quick and level-headed handling of the situation.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
That they spared Boston from the Quad-Laser.
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Frylock: You are not a prophet, Shake! So stop this madness!
Shake: Frylock, I cannot do that. God hath commanded that I do his will or the Earth will blow up!
Frylock: My ass he did!
Meatwad: God's gunna blow up the world?
Shake: Oh yeah, brutha! He ain't too pleased with YOU in particular, Meatwad!
Meatwad: ME?!
Shake: Oh yeah.... He saw you touchin' yourself--
Meatwad: I don't touch myself!
Shake: In the bathroom!
And then there was E
This used to be on youtube, but it's been pulled. It's now up at a safer place. Some local people I know have actually been able to deduce locations from the video and obtain a couple of these "devices." Boston area slashdotters up for some scavenger hunting? athf-lightsnipes-boston.flv
Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my disk????
The article says they got worried when they saw the wires and circuit boards. The knowledgable terrorist will doubtless package his payload in a fashionable briefcase now that he has been alerted to this penchant.
Damn you Aqua Teen Hunger Force! You have DOOMED America!
I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw this:
p ng
http://www.catastrophicerror.com/~endo/Ignignokt.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
"Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it can creep."
-from "What It's Worth" -Buffalo Springfield
It really makes me sick that we're at the point where people mistake everyday things for bombs and have homeland security called in. I can't even ride my universities bus holding a wired up circuit board (for a class) without people looking at me like I'm about to blow them up.
Yes, because in Soviet America, anything outside normal trains of thought is illegal.
Then again, that just proves that if terrorists paint their IED's pretty colors and put Mickey Mouse on it, I'm fucked...
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
One of the articles I read said:
'Officials said it contained an electronic circuit board with some components that were "consistent with an improvised explosive device,"'
Okay, now, come on. These are really large circuit boards with a whole lot of LEDs soldered on to them. Nothing more, unless there are some other really messed up packages out there that haven't been reported on. Those officials sound like they have features consistent with smart police officers, in that they breathe and eat, but the similarities probably end there.
Well, they got their money's worth on this advertising campaign!
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
A friend of mine tried to tell the local FOX News affiliate.
They laughed him off.
Idiots.
I live in Boston, and I can say that the day was very tense.
Why? Because the media put out a big scare story that turned out to be nothing?
which you'd expect no matter what when dealing with batteries and unknown electronics in a sneaky location in a heavy traffic area
Maybe you should just stop paying attention to every little scare mongering story that gets released. Personally I'd direct some attention over to the media outlets for publishing a story with no information, who's only result was to un-necessarily scare people. A few weeks ago it was a strange smell in NYC that everyone assumed was the work of terrorists. I'm sure there's about 20 other stories I'm missing because...I've stopped paying attention to these junk stories.
AccountKiller
trying to sell it on eBay for $5,000 bucks! Unfortunately, I live in Boston (where I'm assuming all mooninites have been rounded up) but if you live in another city, go and steal yourself one! Then sell on eBay for big bucks....
0 078002362QQihZ011QQcategoryZ28009QQssPageNameZWDVW QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/Adult-Swim-LED-Ad_W0QQitemZ32
" You have to take these all seriously, because who knows if they're threats or not?"
Well, I do. It's obvious that a beer sign, light bright, or flickery street light are not bombs, although you and apparently others in Boston don't know this.
" I'm mad as hell about this ad campaign because when it comes time to pay for all the police activity today, you can bet your ass Ted Turner won't offer to foot the bill."
He shouldn't foot the bill. Any jerk could tell those signs aren't bombs. Turner doesn't owe dick for the local po' being stupid and overreacting.
Please don't try to justify this pathetic overreaction. We've become a nation of fearful neurotic idiots.
If someone wants to blow up a bridge, they will blow it up. They can strap dynamite to their torso and hug support beams. They can drive an explosive-filled car into a stanchion. They can fill a boat with fertilizer and float underneath. No matter how much we freak out over nothing, no matter how many times we give up our rights, take off our shoes, and do other retarded inappropriate useless things.
Even if we were dealing with a coward terrorist who wasn't willing to commit his life, you wouldn't see something with wires and batteries sticking out. It'd be out of sight, or look like garbage.
It's such an irrational fear. How many people have been killed in the past hundred years in the US by little boxes with wires and batteries sticking out? How many have been killed by auto wrecks? It's jaw-droppingly lame, and it's getting worse. We'd be better off panicking about ceiling fans, lightning bolts, or bunions.
We don't even need terrorists anymore. All it takes to shut down a city is cowering, whimpering, losers afraid of their own shadow.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Somebody set us up the bomb!
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
I saw this as I was coming into work this afternoon on our big screen (thank god for the military having most of their televisions permanently tuned to FOX NEWS for the "situational awareness" it provides...) and my jaw just dropped. It's really hitting me lately how much our country is changing, and there is very little that individuals can do about it. I feel like standing on top of a soap box and yelling at people till i'm blue in the face, but I know that's fruitless.
Wake up...
All your base are belong to Google.
what first grade did you go to?!?!
maybe i was ill that day...
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Surprisingly only Boston had a problem with this when TFA mentions that these are up in 9 other cities. Likewise I've only heard Boston-based posters complaining about how this was irresponsible and something that obviously looked a lot like a bomb so it needed to be investigated.
I know it's fashionable to complain about these things now, but war on terror or not, this was unnecessary and dumb. It could have been done in any number of ways that did not involve bringing Boston to a halt in the middle of the day. I think the response was the correct one and I hope that if this ever happens in my city the response is exactly the same.
And if these bored TV execs thought about it for more than five seconds and didn't do this - then the terrorists are winning as well? I think not. This is about common sense and basic civil responsibility.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
In the second grade, they taught us to make pipe bombs. Important tips like not buying the pipe and caps at the same hardware store, paying cash for everything, how to make detonators from flashbulbs and clothespins, and so forth. You really missed out!
This is what happens when you've had 6 years of being told that the terrorists are out to kill every single last one of us in our beds.
The next time you're about to say "if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" remember this story, and think about some wacky cartoon guys trying to have a little fun. They are now being threatened with who-knows-what just because we've got leaders that piss themselves at the thought of islamoliberalnazis coming in the night to rape their women, cut their throats and give their kids video games with pictures of naked breasts.
There is a serious downside to buying into the current wave of fear-mongering being perpetrated in this country. I understand that they're doing it to make us easier to govern, but it's going to have consequences that the powers that be cannot imagine. One of those consequences is that we're starting to seriously think our leaders are knuckleheads. And cowards.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Here's your problem. A bomb does not "look like a bomb". People think a bomb is a bundle of sticks of dynamite with a bright red digital timer, preferably bleeping. But bombs don't look like that.
qntm.org
So it the person who called this in - they should be charged for the mess.
Bullshit. Someone (most likely someone who's never even heard of ATHF, much less knows what a Mooninite is) saw an an odd-looking device attached to a potentially suspicious target and reported it. The bomb squad blew one up, and investigated the others. Yes, some roads and bridges were closed, but the city wasn't evacuated, the national guard wasn't called out, no one was rounded up. By the time I heard about this, it was already over. The system worked the way it should.
Turner, on the other hand may have something to answer for. As part of my job, I leave electronic monitoring equipment for days or weeks in pubic places. Even before 9/11, I knew better than to do so without informing the authorities - if I can't inform someone in charge, I attach a note to the device saying "this is a sound monitoring device for project XXX. If you have any questions, call John Smith at (617) 555-8944." I have heard from many colleagues who did not take these steps, and had their $5000 devices blown up by the bomb squad (again, this stuff was happening before 9/11).
If Turner took these steps, and officials got their wires crossed, then yes the authorities obviously overreacted. But if the city wasn't informed, the city took all the right steps. Did you expect the authorities to just ignore the devices because they looked cute?
I couldn't agree more. These were placed on heavily traveled bridges. The police probably couldn't have cared less about what the device looked like, except for the fact that there were more than a half dozen of them strapped under bridges across the city, and they hadn't heard about them. I'm not sure what the chain of events was, but if you're the official responsible for saying "sure, leave the bridge open until we get down there to check it out" and the next thing you know 15 cars went flying into the harbor because the Zakim bridge went kaboom... well, Let's just say I can understand his point of view. And believe it or not, this is all coming from someone who takes immense pleasure in asking people who are so worried about dying at the hands of the terrorists whatever they shall do if they get behind the wheel of the infinitely more dangerous contraption called an "automobile."
As part of my job, I leave electronic monitoring equipment for days or weeks in pubic places.
What type of sick experiment/fetish is going on there? To each their own...
This is a sound monitoring comment for post #17836518. If you have any questions, call Abdul T. el-Bomber at (555) 555-2662. Please quickly leave a message when the beeping stops.
Bandwidth exceeded. Placed back onto YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doD_VpT_yAY
Of course, with the police and such talking about nailing whoever did it to a cross, what a surprise that nobody stepped forward to quell the madness.
It was a stupid stunt, with a moronic response by the authorities. It also worked 100%, due to how moronic the response of the Boston authorities was. There's a difference between quickly closing down the immmediate area, investigating the sign while doing so, and then discontinuing the closures after the all clear, and what they did. They closed everything in a wide area, called in heavily armed units, caused considerable panic, and then gave the all clear while screaming about throwing whoever did it in the abyss. In other words, the decision makers acted like irrational mental cases screaming at the invisible monsters from space rather than calm intelligent people dealing with a potential dangerous situation.
CNN is running this article, but the picture has been edited out the offensive finger.
I find that interesting they will edit a "drawn" finger but will show blody dismembered bodies.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Please. You're reading a site with the tagline "News for Nerds". You should already know the required reading.
You should already own and have read all of these, and if you're truly pretentious you should be able to quote relevant passages. Also, to retain your nerd and/or geek credentials, you must be able to quote from two or more of Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Stargate, Firefly, or Andromeda. You will be expected to pick one of these as a religion* and from time to time wage holy war on the rest for forsaking The One True Way. Also you must be able to recite on demand the Spam sketch, the Dead Parrot sketch, and 90% of the Princess Bride script**.
If you wish to branch out from required reading, other popular choices are Twain, Shakespeare, Crichton, and Mark Minasi.
(e.g., theater [or is theatre more proper?]While either is correct, the "Enlightened" tend to use "theatre". I tend to make a distinction in that "theater" is the building and "theatre" is the performance within, but that's mostly because I suffered with a thespian roommate for a while and the brainwashing eventually wore me down. You may choose as you wish.
Thanks in advance!My pleasure! Please feel free to stop in again anytime you need a helping hand :-)
* - Star Trek, ** - Inconceivable!
"Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
The police apparently learned what bombs look like from hollywood movies and comic books.
The MPAA should definitely foot the bill.
Sooo, we should have detonated New Orleans?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
<hides in bomb shelter due to suspicious-looking cereal box on counter>
Likewise I've only heard Boston-based posters complaining about how this was irresponsible and something that obviously looked a lot like a bomb so it needed to be investigated.
I'm from Boston. I stood on the subway for a over an hour (normal ride time: 30 minutes or so) because of these dipshit "indie" artists that did this for Turner. Check out one of their websites. Wow, aren't they cool? They know how to use animation programs, video projectors, video cameras, and have dreadlocks. They use pen-names that sound uber-cool, and lots of hip artist-y language.
They should have heard the language on the subway when the conductor announced we'd be delayed because Sullivan Station was shut down on account of "a suspicious package."
Their stunt shut down 93 North, the orange line, several Charles River bridges (which are heavily trafficked.) These idiots planted electronic devices on private and public property, something they knew they shouldn't do, over-reactions from police aside. Let's be absolutely clear here: these clowns had zero business putting this stuff on property that wasn't theirs and they knew it, but decided to ignore that, because this whole thing probably made them some pot money.
One of them is sitting in jail, as of about half an hour ago. Let's see how he likes being inconvenienced.
Please help metamoderate.
Real IEDs do not have flashing lights or a ticking clock on them, unlike the movies would have you believe.
How anyone could confuse these things for anything dangerous makes me wonder how incredibly stupid the people in charge of our security really are.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
...the Scooter Libby trial, where "copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by defense attorneys for former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case". http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013107Z.shtml
If there's one thing you can rely on, it's bad news for the Adminstration being accompanied by a hyped-up terror scare that turns out to be nothing.
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
...it only took a hours to blow up a LiteBrite but it took weeks to respond to a devastating hurricane?
This is insightful?
Would the "weeks" it took to respond to Katrina include the Coast Guard flying of people off of their rooftops the same day the storm blew through? Or are you thinking more about the days in advance of that hurricane that the mayor of that town and the governor of that state wasted in not actually evacuating the city's residents (you know, the ones not complying with the evacuation order) with their sitting-idle fleet of buses? Why talk about response to a major disaster when you can talk about the choice to live below sea level where hurricanes regularly hit, and then not leaving town when you're told to?
Doesn't matter. You're obviously a trolling twit. Or, you're serious, and also say completely non-non-sequitorish things like, "Isn't it funny that poor people get cancer when the NSA now has ways to back up petabytes of data in a drinking straw?"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There has actually been arrests made.
u spicious_devices
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070201/ap_on_re_us/s
There is a war going on for your mind.
Well, he did say it was for "Project XXX"!
> I'm from Boston. I stood on the subway for a over an hour (normal ride time: 30 minutes or so) because of these dipshit "indie" artists that did this for Turner.
:]
Dude, grow a pair instead of getting pissy because you got stuck on the subway for a few minutes.
Some dumbass got freaked out by a glorified Lite Brite. I hate to break this to you, but circuit boards don't explode, nor do LEDs, nor do Duracell D cell batteries, nor do wires. If your city gets this freaked over nothing, any sensible terrorist would just plant a bunch of hoaxes and laugh while you all piss yourself.
You don't want to help the terrorists win, do you?
There was only 1 on a bridge/overpass, and we're not talking about an above water bridge here.
i on1.html
Link to pics of all the locations of these things: http://www.zebbler.com/friends/ATHF/mission1/miss
The thing is *obviously* not a bomb. It's a sign. It has big glowing flashing LEDs. Come on. Use your brain, people.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a problem like this might happen
A filing cabinet left out on a sidewalk would be overlooked for weeks in some parts of Boston and most other cities, and yet pose a much more significant danger.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Pipe bombs? Ha! in the thirth grade they taught us to make NBC weapons! My bird flu even made the news all around the world. Well, biocontainment wasn't taught before grade four...
I distinctly remember going to school aged 6 or 7 in Northern Ireland as a dependant of a British military personel toward the mid 1980s and being having a regular 'security' class taken by someone in combat fatigues every week (IE someone from the military). In that class we were shown explosive device designs in use by the IRA at that time - pipe bombs, nail bombs et al, anything we should not ever touch in any circumstance if we found.
I also went to school in Berlin toward the end of the 1980s (yes, I was there for the wall coming down) and there were adverts on TV (BFBC iirc) that detailed carbombs and how to check for them, along with what to look out for with regard to suspicious persons.
Some of us grew up in a security climate vastly worse than the current one. And no, Im not the AC above.
Also, let's look at terrorism from the point of view of your Joe Sixpack Homeland Security Officer (JSHSO), or any other dude from the executive branch of the govt., They sit all day on their asses (a lot more positions were created after 9/11), get payed loads of money (more $$$ was budgeted for war on terror) and are waiting for the terrorists to attack. Well, according to the probability mentioned above, the chance of a large terrorist attack is very slim, and JSHSO is getting pretty bored. He was trained to sniff out terrorists, pop their eyes out and skullfuck the empty sockets. So are we really that surprised that they will see terrorists in every Middle Eastern person, a bomb in every blinking light, and will pull the 'OMFG! TERRORISTS ARE COMING!' trigger on every shadow. This gets their blood going, they get a high when they get to close down half a city. Then they realize how stupid they are and arrest someone so they can turn them into a scapegoat. This justifies their job position, they get to go home at the end of the day and tell their kids that 'Daddy stopped Osama today, he disarmed bombs with blinking lights that had nazi jihadists flicking Americans off'
It is pretty obvious that the terrorists already won. They wanted us to be do this and we are doing it. It is about time to smarten up. If we really want to live longer and safe, we should not smoke, drive more carefully, watch what we eat, watch our step when we get in and out of the shower and other stuff like that.
"You have to take these all seriously, because who knows if they're threats or not?"
Do you wear an earthed metal hat whenever you go out and the weather's a bit dodgy? Have you plastered your children and housepets in flexible Faraday cages?
Go look up the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack, and then the chances of being hit by lightning.
If you always wear lightning-proof headgear and earthed metal underwear in the rain, then rant away.
If not, your response is fact-free, emotion-not-intelligence-prompted horseshit caused by media over-reporting and sensationalising that has no place in a serious debate.
Seriously - what the fuck makes idiots assume that just because three people got killed by terrorists in Buttfuck, Arkensas that suddenly now everyone has to have chips in their heads and hand in their genitals for safe keeping by the government?
Look up the statistics - you're more likely to be hit by lightning than killed in a terrorist attack. So if you don't spend the same amount of time worrying about lightning as you spend worring about "t3h T3rr0R1sTs!!11!1!" you're being a nervous jumpy fuckwit.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
I would expect an interesting time at the next shareholder's meeting though (and hopefully a huge fine to spur the conversation along).
And I would expect it to go something like "Holy shit, that ad campaign got more attention that we ever DREAMED it would! The resulting increased receipts from the ATHF movie more than cover the cost of the fines we had to pay, so free hookers and blow for everybody!"
so free hookers and blow for everybody!"
We're all in the wrong business, aren't we?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The only fine that is justified here is for the trespassing and vandalism. Nothing more than that should be paid. Let the idiots who decided this was a hoax (it was NOT a hoax) and the idiots that decided it was a bomb (it was NOT a bomb and didn't even look anywhere near like a bomb ... as determined by officials in some other cities like Seattle) pay the fine. Or better yet, let them lose their jobs so people can come visit Boston some day in the future knowing that the city isn't going to overreact.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars