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Aqua Teen Stunt Costs Turner and Agency $2M
evw writes "The NYTimes reports that the Turner Broadcasting System and the ad agency responsible have reached a $2M settlement with the city of Boston and state and federal agencies that treated the light boards placed around the city as an act of terrorism (as covered earlier on /.) Half of the money is to cover direct costs associated with the response. The other $1M goes to 'goodwill funds' that will be used for response training and public outreach."
Anyone have a link to an example of anyone asphyxiating themself after duct taping their house? (And there's a sentence I didn't think I'd be typing when I got up this morning.) I did a quick google but ashpxiating and duct tape seems to get a lot of stories about all sorts of oxygen-deprivation sex acts.
Considering the reach of this little "stunt", the cynic in me might say that this whole thing - the "terrorist threat" response, and the 2mil "settlement"- were arranged before this whole thing ever happend. $2million is a bargain for the advertising this thing has generated.
A real bomb is never designed to make itself presentable/noticable. Only a dickhead terrorist would invite attention to a bomb.
Not quite the same thing. But a tactic used by the IRA was to put a big bomb and a little one near to each other. The little bomb being the one which went off first to "attract attention".
This newsstory has all the experts out in force.
Opinion A: These things don't look like bombs.
Well duh. Only proper official bombs look like bombs. Well even that isn't true because that would suggest every explosive device has the same form/look. They don't. Bombs that are just designed to go boom just look like whatever shape suits their purpose best.
Their main purpose you might think is to blow up but think about it. Do you want an bomb dropped from aircraft to be the best shape for exploding OR to fall through the air in a predictable path?
Now, what shape/look would a terrorist bomb have? If you had to stick on in a public place would you just carry a box of TNT with TNT written on it with you onto a train and hope nobody notices OR would you try to hide it in someway. Make it look like something else.
Camouflage can work in two ways. Blending in OR pretending to be something different. Perhaps even standing out in such a way that everybody ignores you. If you had to be on the street unnoticed in broad daylight what would work better, a camo outfit OR looking like a homeless beggar?
If I had to stick several bombs in public places disguising them as annoying ad displays would be an intresting trick.
Ask those people killed by boobytraps wether they thought X looked like a bomb were X is whatever blew them into little bite sized chunks.
What would you more easily dismiss as being dangerous. A box in a place were there shouldn't be one OR a ad display in a public place when these bloody things seem to popup everywhere.
9/11 happened with innocent box-cutters when everyone knows they are harmless. If the hijackers had carried machine guns they might not have succeeded (then again, this is airport security we are talking about).
Opinion B: This is all some kind of big brother slamming down on a poor little company that just tried to advertise its movies?
HELLO? Am I the only one sick and tired of ads intruding every little corner of our lives? The places they stuck these lightboards are public, meaning they belong to us all and in general you are not allowed to advertise in such places. So do you think every public place should be covered in whatever ad campaign some company has running? You would end up with a paper mache city before the month is out.
Since when is advertising a good thing? A 2 million dollar fine to run an advert campaign in an illegal place? Trivial, if this is all its costs then be prepared for a lot more crap like this. Oh wait, we already had crap like this because big companies know they are only going to get a slap on the wrist for doing stuff like this so if they have a bigenough budget they just think of it as another item on the budget sheet.
Or to put it into slashdot terms, Time Warner put up unwanted popups all over the city. I know slashdot has been losing some of its geek status recently but surely even here popups have not become a good thing have they?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Guys this scare didn't happen in some backwater school this time like it has before (http://kotaku.com/gaming/crime/xbox-live-leads-to -school-lockdown-231374.php). Everyone on these posts has sworn how stupid people would have to be to think these things were bombs (and they are totally correct) but who was it that thought these things were bombs then? This isn't those Americans everyone likes to rag on for being easy to scare-monger. This was in a clued-up metro area in touch with world affairs. They are some of the most informed citizens in the U.S.A. This is you, or your neighbour, or your Dad, or your friend.
I just moved to America, and I'm shocked and horrified how many edgy conversations you guys have about how the world is after you. It's egocentric to believe the rest of the world has nothing to do but plot your demise, but that's beside the point. It's up to every individual to get over this crap. If you the citizens of America stop having everyday conversations about how terrorists may or may not be beating at the gates, you'll stop giving them power.
And if I hear another person invoke 9/11 like it's an excuse for this kind of farce to ever take place I'll just lmao. I hardly think you can compare a hijacked aeroplane to a kid's toy flipping you off. I'm just saying that you can't make an association between what is clearly a marketing ploy and a terrorist attack unless you are trying your damndest to do so.
I am certain they will be aquited, it is the most frivilous case I have heard of in quite some time... This isn't even someone shouting fire in a movie theater. It is one of those rare occasions that no analogy could be more obviously silly than what actually happend. They planted light brights around the town and are being charged as if they were making bomb threats...
The interview with them was priceless, all the reporters got them and were dying for some great sound bytes for their story. All they got was the two goofballs talking about hair styles throughout history. Truly classic stuff.
You take it, I don't want it...
Put up flashing lights == Charges
g ?articleid=180349
Plant a fake bomb (made to look like a bomb) == No Charges
"In the hospital incident, investigators believe a former hospital employee planted the phony bomb in an office at 185 Harrison Ave. He has been identified but has not been charged, the sources said."
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.b
Same city, same cops, same time period... what gives???
Yes. I am also aware that Boston has the largest concentration of votes and is ground zero in the nanny state mentality that Massachusetts seems to embrace.
Didn't know I need to point that out.
What is your point?
The opposite of progress is congress
Your comment made me curious about the population of Massachusetts outside the Boston Metropolitan Area, so I thought I'd look up the numbers quickly:
Population of Massachusetts in 2005: 6,433,367 (source)
Population of the Boston Metropolitan Statistical Area for those parts in Massachusetts in 2005: 3,997,744 (source)
So, over 60% of the people in Massachusetts are in or near Boston.
...Also, I believe what the GP called "reccomending people use duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect themselves from terrorists" was nothing more than an official (I don't even think it was Tom Ridge) recommending duct tape as part of an emergency kit to have around... along with fresh water, canned goods and so on. He was saying it was good to have for any type of disaster, not just terrorism. Some people took it out of context and turned their house into a fish bowl. However this was not Tom Ridge's fault as the GP suggests.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You guys seem to love to call people morons, but how moronic would it be if someone used just on of those devices as a trigger for a claymore type device.
At what point will this paranoia stop? Will we call out the bomb squad and coast guard if somebody puts up a "FOR SALE" sign in their front lawn?
After all, somebody could probably figure out how to make one of those into a bomb.
This bullshit is insane.
Sept 10, 2001 everyone thought that terrorists flying planes into WTC was possible but farfetched.
Yeah, lets compare a bunch of blinking cartoon characters to airplanes hijacked by terrorists.
These guys used tried to use the panic FOR ADVERTISING and that is why they are all getting what they deserve.
No, these guys just tried to put the lit cartoon characters in prominent places where they would be seen. They did not expect that some idiots would mistake them as IEDs.