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Cell Phone Accidentally Turns On Stove
RevWaldo writes "A Brooklyn man can't sleep at night knowing that the bizarre inter-gadget relationship between his Sony Erickson PDA and his Maytag Magic Chef stove might leave him burned. Last Monday Andrei Melnikov discovered that his cellphone was turning on his stove when he got a call in the kitchen. The phone had been on the kitchen counter when it rang, and as he answered it and walked away, he recalls hearing a faint beep. Minutes later, he smelled smoke, and discovered that some plastic cookware left in the oven was on fire. The incoming call had somehow turned the broiler on high, a phenomenon which Melnikov demonstrated for his landlord and reporters. They believe this is the first time this has happened in the three years since Melnikov has owned the stove and the phone, but since neither device is talking, nobody really knows how long this hot affair's been going on. Melnikov and his girlfriend have put a stop to it by unplugging the oven, and they're afraid to plug it back in because of their pet chinchillas. Maytag is sending someone to "fix" the problem, but will the lonely old Maytag man really have the heart to stand in the way of such fiery passion?"
If this story is true, then it shouldn't be dumped in "IDLE".
[Although I have always suspected that "IDLE" is some sort of a weird, obfuscated, steganographic IQ-test.]
The closest I've come to this was a digital clock that would reset whenever the lights were turned off even though it was battery-powered only and not plugged into the wall. In that case, however, it was one of those clocks that gets a signal to keep the time accurate and it was mounted on the wall exactly where the wires from the switch went up. So I can imagine that it was getting some sort of false signal from the sudden change in elecrical flow nearby.
In this case, however, unless I'm misunderstanding the oven has no reason to be looking for any kind of wireless signal. How sensitive does a device have to be for a cell phone to trigger it when it would normally be getting a command from an actual internal wire? I mean... unless they decided it was cheaper to go internally wireless somehow. Nobody does something that absurd, do they?