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Long Term Effects of Gizmodo CES Prank
theodp noted that someone from Gizmodo brought a TV-B-Gone to CES and used it to turn off a wall of monitors during demos. Funny yes, it earned him a ban for life and may have repercussions to other bloggers struggling to be treated as equals with traditional journalists in the future. But also this might lead to a future with encryption on remotes.
Yeah, or presenters sticking electrical tape over the remote sensors on the displays.
Electrical tape over the IR port at shows. Problem solved.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The only reason to put encryption in would be to prevent people shutting these things off at product demos and restaurants. Turning them off at restaurants isn't a widespread problem (unfortunately), and at product demos, duct tape is going to be a lot more popular in the future.
I wish they would stop calling these things "gates", and worry about the future of bloggers. Yes, the CES created two classes: "press" and "blogger", and yes, members of that underclass acted in a juvenile manner, bad enough to cause a stink that will appear in the "press". It will appear in the "press" tomorrow. See, yesterday it was all over the blogs, and now it's hit the aggregators. Sooner or later those with press credentials will catch on to the story.
How did he get caught? Are you kidding me? He posted a video of himself doing it, proudly stating his first and last name in the intro to give himself credit.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
Well if the blogger's aren't willing to act like professionals, then they won't be treated as professionals.
In the article it stated they weren't being taken as seriously as the Press; and when someone decides it'd be cute to do some practical joking, at the expense of others, it just reaffirms the assumptions they aren't to be taken seriously.
http://gizmodo.com/343348/confessions-the-meanest-thing-gizmodo-did-at-ces
The guy should be banned for life. At least with IR remotes you can stick a bit of tape over the receive to stop it. I imagine that wireless technologies could be extremely vulnerable to similar pranks (and sabotage). Imagine the trouble someone could cause just by blocking signals, or sending spurious malformed messages designed to kill a device.
Funny, no; childish, yes.
It's a shame spanking is no longer deemed appropriate.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
What's funny is Brian Lam's comments over on Valleywag. He's basically saying "What's the problem? We're not really the press so we shouldn't have to act professional." In essence, he's reaffirming many people's stance that many bloggers don't deserve to be treated with respect.
They needed insight to believe that the invitees wouldn't act like little children? Give me a break - why would you assume someone would be an asshat like that? While this is one of those things that at first seeing of the video you might think, "that's funny" - the second thing you should be thinking is "what an ass" and the third would be "I guess we will need to cover the IR ports next time to stop the next asshat".
There really isn't any excuse though for this kind of behaviour. It is flat out wrong to be interfering with the show. No "security researcher" cred for this; it is just mean.
A ethical line is crossed when a blogger creates the news instead of reporting it.
I just saw the video. I did not know what was this about. At first, I thought it was hilarious. Yes, the prank was nice. But then I thought that such acting is vandalism. I mean, the company (maybe motorlola?) that got their monitors turned off while it was presenting really should be able to sue these guys for vandalism. I know they should grow a sense of humour, but at the very least the guys should apologize publicaly to the companies that they affected.
This kind of stuff is what you do only *ïf* you are prepared to face the consequences, and even though maybe turning off TVs would not have a lot of effect at the doctor's office or at some random public area, in this kind of technology shows it really affects the people.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
What would you give me to go to the MacWorld keynote with an Apple remote. Imagine how pissed Jobs would get if every time he tried to show a new app on an iMac of MacBook, FrontRow started up and then started browsing his shared music.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I really think that the only reason for such a device to exist is to make a list of all the self centered arrogant people who buy one to purge them from society.
The device is designed to turn off other people's TVs. If you don't like TV, or televised sports, avoid those places that have them on. Be a discerning consumer and create a market for places that will provide and pleasant atmosphere for you. Don't be a petulant child and turn the TVs off. I don't come into your place and turn your computer, or stereo off, or slam shut the book you are reading. If I did you'd take great offense, and would feel violated. Well the world is not all about you. Get over it. Don't do things whose analog you wouldn't like done to yourself.
This might have been a rant. It might be a troll. But I really would love to hear a justification of this device that does not amount to a fascist imposition of one person's will upon others. And these things do not have enough buttons to really validate the rudimentary universal remote argument, and they are targeted at individuals not institutions, so I won't buy that some institutions with large numbers of TVs might find it useful for start/end of day stuff.
Not to mention dangerous to one's health.
I really find your post offensive in the sense that it adds nothing to the discussion and seems to be refuting something that was not said. What was the point of your post, really?
No one fucking said trade shows never go under. What the fuck?
affect, damn it, affect, you ignorant turd; unless this is some weird creation myth.
omg they can not be allowed to encrypt remotes!!! information wants to be FREE!!!
What an asshole thing to do. It wasn't funny at all, and their 'apology' was worse.
Would be useful for parents of fat kids too. Make the chubby little fucks get up once in a while.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I would expect Gizmodo's chances of attending future press events are circling the toilet now. A shame, they have always done minute by minute coverage of the "One more thing..." and Macworld keynotes.
If I were a marketing staffer or PR guy I wouldn't want them anywhere near a press conference. People can lose their jobs over press demos not working, so they aren't going to take the chance of inviting four year olds in the future.
an entertaining prank to be sure, and a surprise that no one's tried it before on this scale. There's no excuse for there not to be black electrical tape over every IR receiver on that set of displays.
If you leave something THAT open to pranking at a public or semi-public event, it's going to happen. That's like leaving LAN jacks open all over the place at the conference and having an unsecured credit card processing machine on the same network. You deserve what you get for that level of carelessness.
On a completely different take, this is not possible with every remote. For example, all Apple remotes have the ability to "pair" with a computer, to prevent a computer from responding to any remote besides its own This is not rocket science, and it's not new. Pairing of remotes to equipment has been going on for years and won't cost them a nickel more to add to the chip. It involves each remote having and transmitting its serial number along with the command, and the computer can simply be told to only listen to commands from one (or a small group of) serial numbers. The only thing they will have to deal with is the occasional tech call from a customer that's managed to pair a different remote to their unit.
I for one would like to see this happen several more times until the manufactures get their heads out of the sand. This is unfortunately what it takes to motivate them. They won't lift a finger until it starts to cost them.
Additionally, it's sometimes hard to find where on a set the IR receiver is at. On the Apple's it's behind the big apple on the front of the unit or the black dot near the latch on the laptops. On some sets, where they have a large black border, it can be hard to locate. Also, the prankster should have been very easy to spot for anyone educated in such things. Most digital cameras are VERY senstitive to IR light, and to anyone with a digital camera looking at the LCD preview screen, or to anyone with a web cam pointed into the audience, that remote would go off like a strobe. It should have taken them less than 20 seconds to find this joker.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
You, sir, are a douchebag. Same goes for your coworker and manager.
Try to comprehend this: IT'S NOT YOUR FUCKING TV.
Instead of being polite and asking the proprietor, "Excuse me, would it be possible to turn the TV off?", you impose your will on them and anybody else that comes into that establishment.
Do I like TVs in these places? Usually not. If there is no one around, I'll ask the owner or staff member to turn it off or to let me do it. NEVER has such a request been refused. If I was refused for what appears to be no good reason, I'll remember that for next time and not give them my money.
>someone who graduated from DeVry isn't "really" a programmer since he didn't get an MS in CompSci or Maths or whatever.
If he can write good code, it doesn't matter if he has a degree or a diploma or nothing. You will find very few people here on slashdot who disagree with that. So I don't see why a McDonald's burger flipper blogging on politics cannot have better commentary than a graduate of Harvard Journalism. Journalists have to earn the public's respect, something they have been failing at the last 20 years. I get a sense that journalists have some warped sense of entitlement towards their degree and profession.
My (glass) windows are not secure against big hurled rocks, and it's a fairly obvious "security hole". I'd be happy to prosecute anyone doing that for vandalism, not conclude that I need to change windows or board them up. Stop trying to defend an asshat, it's perfectly reasonable for someone to bring a TV to a presentation without someone turning it off or yanking the power cable or unscrewing the fuse, even though it's not permanent like breaking a window. This is simply malice and he deserves to be banned.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Turning off TVs showing a football game in progress at a sports bar has been shown to cause beer bottles, shot glasses, and college students to defy gravity. The seem to spontaneously launch into the air, gravitating toward the point of RF emission that induced the sports footage vacuum.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
...on the hour, every hour, for the duration of the show.
No sig today...
When even at your local gym they know how to put a little piece of tape over the IR receivers' port, how comes this is not accomplished by high-tech show operators?
You could also use non transparent IR blasters to control and block unwanted nerd attacks out.
It is normally not a PC though, there are dedicated AV control systems out there (AMX, Crestron et al).
Being a control systems programmer, I happen to know many of the sets at trade shows, especially AV trade shows, are under RS232 control!
Often this is because of the impracticality of the remote - many only have a single on/off button on the IR remote.
You press it, half of the displays turn off.
You press it again, some of the display toggle from on to off, some toggle from off to on.
You end up using a rolled up sheet of paper to go around each one to set it on / off.
Unfortunately not many of the models have the ability to lock the IR out via the serial port!
>Yes he disrupted a couple of demonstrations, how many times had the presenter been through his script? For how many days? What exactly was lost by this disruption? How will the consumer electronics industry survive this loss?
Ever presented anything to an important client? Now as you are doing your presentation and right in the middle of it, take out your visual portion of it. Now pretend that the visual portion of it is what you are selling.
Not exactly so small.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
People just like to see their words in writing whether they have any clue what they're talking about or not. What else is new?
Earlier this year Gizmodo pulled a prank on supposed sister-site Kotaku, putting the infamous and inappropriate tubgirl image to the Kotaku front page. After that I pretty much stopped reading, and lost all respect for, Gizmodo and it's writers and editors. Apparently that was justified. Maybe they should think about exactly why Engadget is kicking their asses.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Wow, you're really not going to like their cellphone jammer...
Try moving strong magnets across your c.r.t. displays, its fun!
This is only safe with weak magnets.
Neodymium magnets, such as those you can salvage from hard drives, can not only magnetize the shadow mask, they can permanently distort it. Degauss cycles will not fix that - the only way to repair a monitor damaged in that way is to replace the picture tube.
Do this in a retail environment and you may find yourself talking with the police.
Putting moderation advice in your
To save people a few seconds of having to google stuff or whatnot, here's a link to the video in question on Youtube.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
Hey! This is an opportunity for COMPLEX ENGINEERED SOLUTIONS! DON'T GET IN THE WAY OF OUR FUN! Actually, I don't see why the presenters couldn't have just said "ha ha ok *turns monitor back on* Now, as I was saying..." or the pranksters could have just turned the monitor off for 5 seconds, turned it on, laughed and waved their TV-B-Gones to the presenters and walked off. Is turning a monitor back on that big of a deal?
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
The CES's Blogger-B-Gone device is working just fine.
Encryption is not needed. Replacing the original factory IR receiver with a coax link to the head end (program source cabinet) is the simple solution. Make up cables and route them with the video lines for complete secure control. This is a simple job for a good TV shop to remove the original IR diode and replace it with an optocoupler. This makes monitors and TV's immune to stray IR signals in a room.
The seem to spontaneously launch into the air, gravitating toward the point of RF emission that induced the sports footage vacuum.
If I was a geek (I am), up to no good (I am not) and intent on being discreet in that type of hack, it's easy to remove the IR diode from the remote and with a length of wire, remote it to your MP3 player headphones. Nobody needs to know you did it.
I have modified remotes in the past for another purpose. In a head end in a hotel, a rack of satellite receivers can easily be messed up buy using a full power remote to change the program on one receiver in a rack. I have changed the LED current limiting resistor from a low resistance to several K ohm to make a remote with less than a 6 inch range. It was perfect for changing the channel on just one receiver instead of the entire rack.
The truth shall set you free!
What you did was vandalism. Pure and simple. If your manager was smart, he would be looking for an excuse to fire you. After all, if you are willing to screw with one business because there is a little bit of movement in the corner of the room, then just imagine what you would be willing to do to a business that you are on the inside of when there is a bunch of movement.
Seriously, the "I don't have a TV" crowd don't even realize how ignorant they are. I can assume by your wording that you do have a TV, you just watch movies instead of broadcast television. Here is a secret. Movies are not inherently better than TV. Heck, even books are not inherently better than TV.
And the Cosby joke you reference isn't saying the parents are right. It is saying that parents are self serving pieces of crap that will be unjust to get what they want. By using that quote, you are openly admitting that you don't care about right or wrong as long as you get your way. Do your children know that you are a bad person, and are willing to screw them for your convenience?
It seems like you need to calm down. I don't think you are fully considering the implications of turning off somebody else's television.
Secretly turning off somebody's tv is not a trivial act. Have you considered that a restaurant proprietor who knows nothing about electronics and a lot about food might ignorantly assume something is wrong with his television, and that he might spend hundreds of dollars trying to fix the problem?
Moving a chair in a restaurant isn't exactly going to trick anybody into thinking that the floor is suddenly on an incline, so it's hardly comparable. More comparable acts include walking up to the television to turn it off, or telling the proprietor to turn it off. This is what the post to which you are replying suggested.
I wouldn't at all be surprised if the main fallout from this stupid, purile prank, is that the manufacturer of TV-B-GONE gets in trouble over it.
I work as an applications engineer for a startup chip maker that sees many of its products end up in consumer electronics gear. My company exhibits at CES every year, and I've been involved in the preparations for the event for the last three years. I could talk about the tens of thousands of dollars that we spend, or the thousands of man-hours spent preparing for the show, but that's not particularly interesting or relevant here...many companies spend far more. No, where this cuts to the bone is that I could be (and have been) that guy up there on the stage. I could be (and have been) the guy who pulled all-nighters getting the demo ready for the show. For many companies, image *does* matter, and never more so than when you're a startup trying to articulate to your customers why exactly they should care about your stuff. CES is critically important for this purpose. I'm glad that these guys got some chuckles out of their stunt, but in the end it was an incredibly immature thing to do and bannination from the show is far too lenient a punishment in my opinion.
vandalism - Willful or malicious destruction of public or private property.
Pray tell, what did I destroy? The TV still functioned. They turned it back on just before we left. NOBODY noticed that it was off except my table for around 30 minutes. The place was packed and the 50 inch plasma was 15 feet directly in front of me. The workers can't speak English and were too busy to serve meals to turn off the TV.
Actually my current manager is the best manager that I have ever had. He gets technology and he gets people. He stands up for me, and is very understanding of personal situations. The coworker that wanted three of them is one of the most ethical people I know. It is a huge stretch of the imagination to say, "turn off tv" to "sabotage databases". I would never, ever mess with the data at my job. I work with the transmission of medical records. It is not an exaggeration to say people could die if I do that. Why kill someone's mom or son because I hate my job?
Yes, I have a projector hooked up to a DVD. It is on for two hours once maybe every three days. I do this because it would be way too easy for me to sit down and watch TV and waste my evening. My six year old would be watching ALL THE TIME. So I cut down on the amount he watches, and I have much more control over content. Instead of "American Idol" he and I build Legos, and he learned to read at a very early age and do math at a very early age. Not having broadcast TV in our home has been one of the best decisions that my wife and I have made. I don't know about you, but I like quiet. Quiet allows me to think. Quiet allows me to work. Quiet allows me to have conversations and relationships with people I care about. Why do you crave distractions?
It is saying that parents are self serving pieces of crap that will be unjust to get what they want.
Wow, are you 19 years old? Do you have kids? In the same comedy bit, Cosby said, "My wife and I used to be intellectuals." And then they had kids. I am not the world's best husband or father, but I do try my best.
I think you're missing the GP's point. That poster doesn't care how you feel about TV, he cares about you surreptitiously turning it off against the wishes of the owner or whoever has the right to control it. It's no different than walking into a party and changing the music everyone is listening to without asking. You aren't a jerk for not liking TV, you're a jerk for being rude to others.
While I'm being pedantic I'll just go over the top and mention that I think you're misusing [sic].
"95% of all Slashdot
"Too bad you, like most 20-30 year olds in the entitled generation (just guessing from your attitude) had to take it too far."
While I wish that I could have that extra decade of life that your ad hominem attack tries to grant me, unfortunately, I am not.
It isn't the lack of TV that makes you ignorant. It is the belief that the lack of TV is somehow a positive trait. The amount of quality TV that is produced today is simply massive. The fact that you are unaware of it points to your ignorance.
"Movies > TV due to no commercials and no need to justify another season."
Are you really trying to argue that trying to create repeat business lowers the quality of a product? Really? That is ignorant.
"Also you can usually fast forward through all the ads at the beginning."
Apparently you are ignorant of the existence of this neat device that has been around for almost a decade. It's called a DVR. Check it out, and you won't sounds so ignorant when you complain that you have to watch commercials if you watch TV.
"I waist far less of my life watching ads and more keeping up on what is going on in the world. If more people did that instead of watching TV perhaps you would be less aware of current media hype and more aware of the truth."
And where do you get this great truth? Newspapers? The Internet? Your religious leader? The coffee shop? I have yet to see any form of communication that is any more reliable that TV. In fact, the most successful method of determining the truth of a subject that I have found has been to hear from multiple sources, and compare them to see which is the most plausible. Please, let me know where this "truth" is, as I am always willing to add another source to compare credibility with.
"and thus waist your time watching American Idol and/or Fox News,"
While I watch neither, it is ignorant to think that spending time doing either is a waste. It is a very sorry person who toils their life away without any entertainment. Thinking that anyone who enjoys a different form of entertainment than you is wasting their time is... well... ignorant.
"or can't figure out how to use netflix"
It is ignorant to think can't figure out how to use Netflix, or for that matter that they don't use Netflix, just because they are smart enough to understand that Netflix is not inherently better than broadcast TV (whether that be over the air, cable, or satillite).
"to get a show you can watch on YOUR schedule and saving 15 minutes per episode."
[see comment about DVR above]
"Books > Movies as they stir creative portions of the brain"
Absolute BS. There is at least as much crap published in books as there is on television and in movies. The only benefit that you will get from reading a story over watching the same story in a movie is that you will get practice at reading. Once you get past about a sixth grade reading level, you are not even getting that, as you will have already mastered reading. Both TV and books deliver a specific set of information in any segment. Everything that is not delivered is ripe for the imagination. Claiming that books stimulate the imagination and movies don't is just plain ignorant. Have you ever watched a kid play with an action figure from a Movie? They are rarely recreating the movie.
"and never have ads to begin with."
Uh... That is a mighty ignorant thing to say. It is a rare home that doesn't have a book without ads. Try this. Go into your kitchen. Look on top of the refridgerator, and microwave (thats where a lot of people keep them, your might be kept somewhere else). See that thing labeled "Phone Book"? Open it up. You might see an ad or two. Hell, I just walked over to my book shelf and looked in the first eight books. Every single one of them had ads. 6 were technical manuals, and two were fiction. Come to think of it, I don't know that I have ever seen a book witho
Heres a test: take some code somebody has been working on for 4 weeks and move it somewhere to make it look like its been deleted then watch them for a few hours whilst they try to explain to their boss what happened. You expect them to laugh once you produce the 'deleted' code? I mean it should be funny, no lives were lost right?
Main Entry: vandalism
Pronunciation: 'vand-&l-"i-z&m
Function: noun
: the willful or malicious destruction or defacement of property
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 12 Jan. 2008.
You should stop talking. Your actions cannot be justified, and your attempt at it just makes you look worse.
Pray tell, what did I destroy? The TV still functioned. They turned it back on just before we left. NOBODY noticed that it was off except my table for around 30 minutes. The place was packed and the 50 inch plasma was 15 feet directly in front of me. The workers can't speak English and were too busy to serve meals to turn off the TV.
Put it this way: You're rushing down a single-file escalator, and there's a person in front of you. Instead of saying, "Excuse me," you shove your way past the person. Your initial attempt at justification is like saying it's not a big deal because the guy didn't get hurt, he dusted himself off and everything was back to normal. It wasn't like you pushed him down the escalator or anything. Then, you go on to effectively say, well, the guy's handicapped, so it wasn't as if he could retaliate. And then you also include the interesting bit of information that the guy doesn't speak English, as if that changes anything, or makes you better than him somehow.
Of course, your boss and your coworker condone and would willingly partake in such behavior, as if it was the most natural thing to do. So if they were right behind you, they would've pushed their way past the guy as well right behind you.
Actually my current manager is the best manager that I have ever had. He gets technology and he gets people. He stands up for me, and is very understanding of personal situations. The coworker that wanted three of them is one of the most ethical people I know. ...
Instead of "American Idol" he and I build Legos, and he learned to read at a very early age and do math at a very early age.
I don't care how great of a father you think you are (and I'm not saying you're not), how awesome your boss is, how ethical your worker is in the workplace. They're irrelevant. And the fact that you don't like television because it interferes with your ability to function normally is also irrelevant. It's not your television, it's not your restaurant. If you don't like the environment there, you go find a better place. Otherwise, if eating there is so important to you, deal with it. If you seek to impose your will upon others, and you think that's OK, you're a douche by my book. And if your environment actually condones such behavior, there's a lot of douchebaggery going on around you.
Oh, and it's interesting you say your coworker is one of the most ethical people you know. They say that the measure of a person isn't by what they do when there are consequences or the threat of consequences, but by what they do when there are no consequences. Quite frankly your coworker might be ethical, but that may be because he does not want to risk his job. I'm not so sure he's the kind of person I'd like to associate with. And I'm not sure you are either.
Look, nobody's perfect. Everybody's going to get pushed past that line at some point, and if we haven't already, we're all going to do something wrong to someone, or a group of people. But most people at least have the decency to be shameful about it; they do go around boasting about it, much less try to defend it after they bring it up. You remind me of the other douchebag here that started boasting about how he insulted this girl by calling her a slut, and how him and his buddies ganged up on her boyfriend for trying to defend her. But these things happen to even the best of us. It's not something to be proud of though, and moreso than the act itself, that is the most offensive part I find about what you've said.
Pranks involving TV-B-Gone were funny when I was in high school. If I was 14, I probably would've had a go
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
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Hey kids! Having trouble figuring out if using your TV-B-Gone is ok? Not sure if you're doing a public service, or just being a jerk? Here's a simple test you can try at home or "in the field":
Any time you would use your TV-B-Gone, ask yourself "Would I be comfortable just walking up to wherever the TV is and turning it off, without offering any explanation to anyone else here?" Then ask yourself "Would I be comfortable announcing in a loud voice 'I'm going to turn off the TV now.' before clicking your TV-B-Gone?"
If you answered "no" to either of these questions, then yes! You're being a jerk! You're merely using technology to hide from responsibility for your actions, and justifying it to yourself!
If you answered "yes", then you're [probably] fine! But consider putting this to the test by actually announcing your intent to everyone before just quietly clicking "off" and not telling anyone!
Have fun! And remember kids, ask your parents before you try this at home!
And charge him union rates for the labor.
That'll show him. It'll probably bankrupt him.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA