"Smart" Billboards Debut in Sacramento 465
k0osh.CEOofCLIT writes "Remember the billboards in "Minority Report" that scanned your eyes and changed the advertisement based on your shopping preferences? The Sacramento Bee reports: "Soon, this sign along the Capital City Freeway will be able to change its message based on what radio stations motorists have tuned in.""Yeah, Chris can't spell. He and Rob should form a club. *grin*
Minority Report - RUINED (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Minority Report - RUINED (Score:2, Insightful)
wow! (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you expect? (Score:4, Funny)
Privacy? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Privacy? (Score:2, Insightful)
its all done with strings and mirrors (Score:5, Funny)
They have mirrors with strings strategically placed around the vicinity of the billboard/freeway.
When a car drives past a camera detects the cars velocity and starts adjusting the mirrors untill one of them can peek through your windscreen and see where the dial is set.
I wonder if it works for vehicles with no read/side windows ?
Re:Privacy? (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. All they have to do is monitor the radiation from the local oscillator in your radio. The British government uses this to detect unlicensed radios and TVs. To stop them modify your radio to use a non-standard IF.
Re:Privacy? (Score:5, Informative)
This is also how UK residents who operate their TV sets without the proper government license are ferreted out. A van cruises around the neighborhood listening for radiated TV local-oscillator signals from unlicensed households.
Re:Privacy? (Score:5, Informative)
and what you are talking about is not the case.. the BBC transmits a subcarrier with a tone on it that is easily detectable. It's the same detection scheme used by american cable TV companies to snif out people stealing cable tv. It's a simple device and putting the subcarrier there makes it air tight in court.. trying to say that "we detected what channel your tv is tuned to doesnt work in court... saying we detected our special signal we transmit to catch them.... does.
Re:Privacy? (Score:3, Informative)
There is a signal injector that creates a subcarrier for an analog TV channel, it is inserted before the modulator so that it becomes part of that channel... I.E. put it into HBO, Showtime, Skinamax, etc... the pay channels that are supposed to be premium channels.... what is most stolen here in the states.
this subcarrier is decoded by the Tv's reciever... it has to because the TV is trying to get the video + audio + SAP (or what is now descriptive audio channel) + the stereo indicator carrier + everything else.
because Televisions dont do anything with this signal the TV ignores it. From what I remember It rides Near the SAP audio subchannel so that it get's decoded completely by the television... I.E. the carrier signal rides with the audio signal all the way up to the final stages before it's converted to audio. this gives it the best path for propagation. It's a low frequency carrier inside the carrier around 90-150Khz so it makes it past all the IF stages. I cant remember the exact operating frequency... and I do believe it is agile in that regard also... It's a nice unit.. completely controlled by PC with the ability to watch/detect the resulting signal after the modulator.
I'll see if the head end techs will let me grab the manual from them.
Spoofing (Score:5, Interesting)
Hours of fun, convincing the sign that everybody leaving the football game is listening to a PBS classical music station.
For more fun and games with Gunn oscillators, see also trolling for taillights [supernet.net].
Re:Privacy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Privacy? (Score:2)
Re:Privacy? (Score:2)
Not really; these people aren't trying to pick up the signal from any single car, but rather pick up the total signal from all the cars combined. All they have to do is listen on all the frequencies and pick out the strongest one.
In addition, these people are in the fortunate position of caring very little about errors. In normal circumstances, an error rate of 25% would be terrible; here, they probably wouldn't care, and quite likely wouldn't even be aware of the errors.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Privacy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Privacy? (Score:2)
-Vic
Re:Privacy? (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, have you listened to the radio, ever?
Re:Privacy? (Score:2)
Re:Privacy? (Score:2)
Re:Privacy? (Score:2)
Re:Privacy? (Score:2)
But seriously, is what radio station you're listening to really that personal? Some people feel the need to let EVERYONE in a two and a half mile radius know exactly what radio station they're listening to...
Shield Your Radio (Score:2)
LA Story (Score:5, Funny)
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Sacramento? (Score:3, Funny)
Good idea. :\ (Score:3, Informative)
generally (Score:5, Funny)
seriously, what's it show when you're not listening to a radio? or, even more interesting, what happens when i'm tuned into those sex-talk shows that come on after midnight. that has the potential to cause quite a few accidents!
smart?? (Score:5, Funny)
"Smart" Billboards Debut in Sacramnto
does anyone else see the irony? i hope so.
Re:smart?? (Score:2, Funny)
(and yes, I do see the spelling error)
So how . . . (Score:2)
Re:So how . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Yep - as do television sets.
It's called heterodyning, and is used to decode FM (frequency modulated) signals. Basically, you mix the signal coming in with the frequency you want to listen to, and the signal at that frequency gets amplified (due to the interference), and the outcome of that is rectified, amplified, and is ultimately what you listen to.
So the billboard picks up the frequency you're mixing the incoming signal with (because you need a frequency generator to create that frequency, and they will emit it -- there's not much you can do to stop it short of burying it in a completely metal box -- which kind of stops the incoming radio signal).
Simon
Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
OK, I know very little on the subject, so I want to know if it would work to shield the radio, but not the antenna. Would the internal frequency it still leak "back up" the antenna? Could you extend this in some way so that it wouldn't? (Second, unshielded receiver box, sending a "shielded" signal to the receiver/decoder/whatever.) I mean (given you're paranoid enough) you could probably make a box to encode the whole signal digitally and send it encrypted to a shielded box for digital processing. If you were desperate.
(And for those who say "who cares, why be so silly over such a small thing"... well, it might not matter now, when your radio station of preference is being monitored, but at some point, it will. That's when this knowledge becomes useful.)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)
If you're paranoid you can build your own receiver and have it use a non-standard IF frequency. It would really jack up the price of the receiver as you would not be able to take advantage of cheap off-the-shelf components - you'd have to design something akin to the transistor radios of the '60s and '70s which were packed full of individual transisors as opposed to today's designs which use one or two ICs.
The reason this works is because 10.7 MHz is such a common IF, meaning that the internal oscillator runs at either (FM station frequency)+10.7 MHz or (FM station frequency)-10.7 MHz
Wow, you do not work with much radio... (Score:2, Insightful)
No... First off your method of demodulating an FM signal is all wrong. You got the first stage right. The RF is broken down into an intermediate frequency (IF) by mixing it with a locally generated signal. But then you are all wrong. The IF is not rectified and filtered in an FM receiver. That is for AM.
In FM, the IF is run past a discriminator circuit. A change in frequency is interpreted as a change in amplitude and thus produces the audio.
Finally, even if they did have a receiver that was able to pick up the signal on my local oscillator, en-casing the radio chassis in copper shielding would then definitely keep the oscillator signal inside WITHOUT blocking the signal on the air. That's why you have an antenna.
If it was so easy to tell what radio frequency one was listening to, what would I (as a member of the US Navy) do? The enemy would know what frequencies we were listening to. That would get them one step closer to breaking our encryption and listening to our messages.
Next time do a little research before posting.
This city gets better and better every day... (Score:2)
Hang on, before you Troll... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hang on, before you Troll... (Score:2)
Re:Hang on, before you Troll... (Score:4, Insightful)
This goes double for advertising technology. The point of a billboard is to make you think about something other than what you're thinking about when you're near it. Improving the ability of people with money to distract me from my life might benefit somebody, but it sure as hell isn't me.
Sensationalism/ Listening habits/Distraction (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sensationalism/ Listening habits/Distraction (Score:3, Interesting)
Advertising agencies which selectively advertise on certain stations based on listener demographics would tend to disagree with you here. Sure, it's not an exact science, but every bit of information about a person helps fine-tune their demographic a little more and produce better ad targeting. NPR and punk rock, combined, tell a lot about you as a consumer, really -- from these two facts, we can glean some pretty good probabilities about your age and political leanings, for example.
How does this work? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm thinking of cases in totalitarian governments during the last 100 years where people huddled around banned radios trying to get the BBC, or of the case of the BBC roaming around trying to find people who have working televisions but don't pay their television tax. Could sensors like this be used by govt.s to determine from outside a house whether there was a functioning radio/television reciever? Could similar tech be used to locate illegal cell/police scanners or radar detectors (in areas where such things are illegal)?
Would it be possible for me to build such a scanner and then legally walk around seeing what passing cars are listening to and what people are watching on tv, just out of curiousity?
Is there a physics major in the house?
Re:How does this work? (Score:2, Informative)
How about an electrical engineer?
This works because nearly all receivers use the superheterodyne principle. The receiver converts the incoming signals to another frequency where most of the amplification and filtering is performed. To do this conversion there is an oscillator, called the local oscillator, in the receiver and this is what can be detected by the billboards. In AM radios the local oscillator is 455 kHz higher in frequency than the station the radio is tuned to and you can hear it by putting two radios very close to each other, tuning one to a station near the high end of the AM band, then tuning the other radio to 455 kHz below that station's frequency so that you hear a tone.
The same thing can be done with FM radio, TV and most other receivers. The reason it works is that all receivers are built using the same basic design so the difference between the local oscillator and station is known.
Re:How does this work? (Score:3, Funny)
Expample one:
Radar detector detectors. These work by detection the frequency emitted by the local oscillator inside certain radar dectectors. The workaround wich followed was for radar detector manufacturers to simple change their LO frequencies.
Example two:
Store anti-shoplifting mechanisms. Those little tags that they put on just about everything these days are actually small electric circuits tuned to resonate at a specfic radio frequency. when you walk though the entrance/exit of the store, you walk between at a transmitter and a receiver. The tx/rx transmits at two radio frequencies. One is the frequency of the tags and one isn't. When a person walks through the gate, the amplitude of both frequencies at the reciever drops. If a tag passes through the gate, the one frequency is going to drop in amplitude more than the other, because of the resonance of the tag. Shoplifter nailed.
Something similar to either one of these methods might be usable, but I can't tell you which one as the article doesn't give this type of information.
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Informative)
The output is fed through a low-power Schottkey diode [semiconwell.com] to clamp the waveform and lock onto the desired frequency. I'm sure you can tell what I'm getting at: in order to receive frequency RF, one must generate frequency IF [bldrdoc.gov] via local oscillations (LO), and IF directly corresponds to RF. Stephen Wolfram points out [wolfram.com] the relationship V[IF] = V[RF] + V[LO] for increasing and V[IF] = V[RF] - V[LO] for decreasing. Armed with this formula and decent knowledge of the radio's tank circuit, it is trivial to pick up the LO and IF frequencies your car radio transmits, albiet inadvertedly, and customize the billboard contents accordingly. Quite simple really.
Re:How does this work? (Score:3, Informative)
Why don't you go to an explantion of superheterodyne receivers [attbi.com] and learn how they really work?
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't you think it would be amusing (for a while) to go out with your own transmitter and transmit false LO and IF signals, causing the billboards to think that there was suddenly an enourmous surge of traffic listening to country music? It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out the appropriate LO and IF frequencies to emulate someone listening to a local station, and it would be interesting to see how the advertising companies target markets according to their music tastes. For example, what do they think that people who listen to the opera will buy?
As well, I would be interested to see how the billboard company would respond to this (not to mention I would like to see all of their data infused with "anomalies"). I'm guessing they would try to sue your ass off by claiming that you were "stealing real customers" from them, but how well would that hold up in court?
The joke's on them! (Score:4, Funny)
Possible Message... (Score:2)
Paid for by:
The Moral Majority
Re:Possible Message... (Score:2)
Just the Radio? (Score:2)
Re:Just the Radio? (Score:2)
As for liability, billboards cannot "change" (article's word) more than once every four seconds. I don't know if this applies to just the advertisement (i.e. you can change what you're advertising for more than once every four seconds) or the image displayed. In the latter case, the best "video" you'll get is 1/4 fps...
Kinda cool... (Score:3, Funny)
Worse than invasion of privacy (Score:2)
Re:Worse than invasion of privacy (Score:2)
Smart advertising. (Score:2)
Does that mean if someone is tuned into Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern the billboard advertises the nearest place they can pick up some taste/informed-opinions?
At one time... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:At one time... (Score:2)
Perfect. Just PERFECT. (Score:2, Interesting)
WTF is it with advertising?
Is there ANYWHERE I can go, where I'm not going to be subject to obnoxious marketing?
I wish they'd spend their time, energy, and money on making advertising less intrusive and less obnoxious. Then I may actually pay attention to something I read.
If this keeps up, everywhere we go it's going to be like a trade show, where all the advertisers are just trying to make the most noise and flash the most lights to grab your attention away from the other guy.
Re:Perfect. Just PERFECT. (Score:2)
Calm the fuck down. (Score:2)
What wll happen in the following circumstances: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) The car stereo is tuned in onto (eg. freq in MHz) 99.5FM while at the back seat, another person is listening to 110.5 FM.
2) The person has a TV installed instead of a radio.
3) A bus which has no radio passes by, but the passengers are listening to at least 10 different radio stations via mobile radios.
4) A police car passes by.
I got a few more possible situations, but these are the more interesting ones
Re:What wll happen in the following circumstances: (Score:3, Informative)
And in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
"Hi! It looks like you're using your PDA, would you like some help?"
"Hi! It looks like you're trying to listen to the radio, would you like
a. A step-by-step guide on listening to your radio.
b. A radio tutorial.
c. Continue using the radio.
And voila, radio dropouts every few minutes on all highways!
Annoying "Active" Billboards (Score:2, Interesting)
(sorry if that last post was empty
Anyways
What about gridlock? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, my biggest concern is wrecks. This particular spot is already a popular wreck site, with the Garden highway exit, the CalExpo grounds (location of the yearly state fair and dozens of other big draws), the way too narrow for its capacity American River Bridge and curve, and one of the biggest shopping malls in the region all located off of this short stretch of overcrowded highway. The LAST thing this spot really needs is another visual distraction
Re:What about gridlock? (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA! (Score:3, Informative)
Alleviated Fears (Score:2)
Yea. Thanks. I feel better now, Bob.
Sure. He's got a point. Its not likely this particular bit of tech is all that intrusive. But he picked a horrible way of trying to make the point. Doubleclick was constantly criticized for their use of tracking cookies (and why I block them, but not neccissarily other ad banner sources). Then they were lambasted when, after several years of creating a database on tracking user traffic, went back on their word and announced they would use their newly purchased commercial mail database of US residents and attempt to merge the two; thus removing the promised annonymity.
Perhapse Bob will pick his comparisons better next time around. Of course, he's in the advertising industry. "Critic" or not - he's probably pretty clueless on the topic of personal privacy.
Fun messing with them (Score:2)
Imagine 10 or so pocket radios modified so their speaker leads were clipped, all on and tuned to different stations, all wired into one power supply that you connect in your trunk.
Let the billboards figure That one out!
Then again, my experence with radio anymore is 2/3rds comercials and only 1/3rds music, and of that small percent, under 10% of the time is anything i care to listen to on, so to me this wouldnt be much of a problem.
The billboard idea itself is sorta neat actually.
However knowing that soon after they will have cameras to take pictures of your licence at the same time and match that to who you are using the wonders of databases, may make the jamming option more attractive.
That is if you dont want them to know what you listen to.
seems unnecessary (Score:2)
They could just take samples of the pattern a few days a year, and program the sign to meet that pattern for the rest of the year. I doubt the demographics really change that dramatically that suddenly that the board needs to change on-the-fly for every driver.
Downright Frightening (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, that chilled my blood. Where does this go next? Combine this with the Homeland Security, Office of Information Awareness, Asscroft, eDNA, and an administration bent on keeping an eye on each and every American citizen's buying/browsing habits...
But that's another (1984) tangent, where they presume they can know everything about you based on a few habits. It still bothers me that I can be listening to a country radio station and suddenly I am pigeon-holed into a demographic that buys jacked-up pick up trucks, loves to hunt, and hangs out at pool halls with break-bar-stools-over-each-others-heads night each and every Friday. And don't doubt that Big Bro won't be wanting a piece of this action to browse for "suspicious activity."
Of course all of this depends on them being able to connect such things as radio stations to individual consumers, but I have no doubts that they are trying their hardest to achieve just that. If you disagree, please re-read the above quotation.
Re:Downright Frightening (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess what I am trying to say is that these ads are not going to be targeted at *you*, but the current status of the highway's demographic ( although I guess if you do see a comercial for "the best head-bashing-bar-stools-in-town" you might want to reconsider stopping at the next truck stop)
Basically, in the morning commute, most people in Sacramento are probably listening to something easy like the Breeze 105.1 or perhaps an oldies station like Cool 101.9. The advertisers will probably want to put something up that is more targeted to the morning commuter (and will be able to determine this by the increase in friendly talk/music morning programs). Then, later in the day when local High Schools get out (but before the standard work day is done), there is in increase in 98 Rock and KWOD 106.5 (or even 102.5 or 103.3) and they can target a younger demographic. In actuality, this is not too much different then advertising on tv. There are lots of car comercials between 5 and 9. Between 11 and 2 there is an increase for accident attorneys and ITT Tech. 2-5 is filled up with toy comercials. etc...
As for suspicious activity, how many people really listen to pirate radio stations while driving on the highway? I would imagine that you would have to stay pretty stationary to receive such a weak signal.
Hell, who listens to the radio anymore anyways? Now, if they could peek into your cd player, I'd be a little more worried.
Distraction (Score:2)
More driver distractions (Score:2)
Easily Hacked (Score:2)
> will be able to change its message based on what
> radio stations motorists have tuned in."
Or based on what some hacker equipted with a simple home-made transmitter wants it to think motorists have tuned in.
smart billboards (Score:2)
Radio (Score:3, Insightful)
From my observations, I find that a lot of ads are not geared toward anything other than which groups of people are most impressionable. That is, they often don't run commercials for those products that are often bought only by people who aren't so susceptible to marketing practices. In the area where I live, there are just as many Mercedes as there are SUVs or Mazdas, but SUV and Mazda commercials run non-stop on TV. I never see commercials for Mercedes, which ties in comfortably with my theory that people who buy Mercedes are not likely to change their opinions based on daft marketing practices.
In addition to that, it's probably a well-researched fact that people who listen to certain radio stations are much more impressionable than those that listen to other stations, or to those who don't listen to radio at all. If you have just as many people driving by the billboard with classical music playing as there are top-40 tuners, you'll probably see lots of Noxzema ads on that billboard, simply because it's much easier to sell something to someone who listens to Britney Spears.
These are mostly just ramblings, but before I'm modded down, I just want to make the point that this is probably a good marketing move. It's easy to figure out which groups of people are most susceptible to advertising, and it's easy to figure out what they're susceptible to. But it may be harder to figure out what to put on a billboard based on that information. Now they have the answer.
Deflector (Score:3, Funny)
(hmm... had no idea Tux was paranoid too!) [shmoo.com]
Death metal (Score:3, Funny)
Two way street? (Score:5, Interesting)
My CRT emits RF. What happens when they can pick that up? Think thats far off?? Okay, what about WiFi? Can I write a program to sniff the 30-some odd WiFi hotspots in my neighborhood.. and based on their physical location and the data I gather, market too them? Why or why not??
Think the analogy doesn't apply? What about the sattelite internet that uses sattelite downlink and landline uplink.. that is broadcasting to all of north america.. more than any single radio station.. This could set a dangerous precedent, no?
Re:Two way street? (Score:3, Informative)
They are able to tell what radio station you're listening to by picking up local oscillator to RF leakage in the mixer stage of your receiver. A radio receiver has a variable local oscillator that is mixed with the incoming RF. That LO is mixed with the RF to produce a signal at both the sum and difference of the LO and RF. The sum is discarded (filtered) and the difference continues down through an IF filter (at 455kHz). Depending on the frequency of the LO, a certain station will end up at 455kHz in the IF stage.
In any mixer, there is leakage from the LO input to both the RF and the IF ports (this is, incidentally, how cops can tell you have a radar detector, they listen for the LO frequency leaking out to the antenna port). So, the billboard has a receiver that can tell what your local oscillator is tuned to and decide what to display based on that.
In a field of 100 cars, the billboard receives the most spectral power on the LO frequency that most of the cars are tuned to (since it all simply adds), so the billboard can also know which radio station most of the cars in the field of view are tuned to, and make a decision based on that.
A new protection product (Score:3, Interesting)
Originally the idea was to use a computer controlled multi polarized liquid crystal windshield system to align the crystals so that they have opposing polarity in each layer so as to block direct sunlight. Don't you just hate it when driving east in the morning or west in the afternoon and have to put up with sunlight in your eyes when it is below the visor level? Do you try to align your head so the sun is behind the rear view mirror? Well this idea would block the sun by tracking the direction it is at.
So I was thinking. Why not add some more smarts to the computer software and have it scan the field of view looking for tell-tale billboard signs, and automatically block them out, too?
Well, I can dream, anyway.
Victoria's Secret (Score:3, Funny)
Why (Score:5, Funny)
It's hype. (Score:5, Insightful)
Animated boards are expensive. That means the outdoor company will only be putting them in high-traffic locations.
Hundreds of cars might pass the board in a one-minute period. It takes about four seconds to absorb a well-contructed outdoor display. Obviously, the data isn't going to be targeted at individual motorists. It'll be an average of traffic flow over some given period of time.
That makes the radio tuner data much less useful. All the billboards will be doing is determining localized listening preference. I gotta tell ya: it ain't gonna be much different than the Arbitron radio ratings already available to the industry.
Properly programmed radio stations have very predicatable listener compositions. Take a Classic Rock station, for instance: the typical listener will be between 35 and 49 years of age. He is 70% likely to be male. He is about 45% likely to be married.
You can take this further, computing the possibility he has kids and his approximate ages. More importantly, you can interpolate this data against retail databases which qualify the likely incomes and buying habits of people in these demographic cells. There are plenty of industry tools which do this, such as Scarborough Research's databases.
That's how the billboard companies will pitch their clients. They'll merge the radio listening data against something like a Scarborough study and--boom--we can see that a certain number of drivers during a given hour will make a car purchase within the next month. The billboard chooses a Chevy ad. If you know where most of the traffic is heading, you can even tag it with dealer info. Awesome.
But the billboard company really doesn't need the gee-whiz realtime radio snooping. It's a gimmick. Their sellers can already work out the data with existing desktop tools.
Imagine that: hype from advertising execs. Who would have figured?
Re:It's hype. (Score:3, Insightful)
Listening to CDs (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How is that possible (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps our UK friends can help here...doesn't the BBC use a similar technology to find people who aren't paying their TV license fee? I saw this happen on The Young Ones once.
Young ones.... (Score:4, Funny)
[the doorbell rings]
Mike: That'll be the front door.
Neil: I bet I know who's got to answer it.
Mike: But, Neil - you like meeting people!
Neil (to camera): If I had a penny for everytime I had to answer the door, I'd have five pound sixty three!
[Neil gets up and goes to door]
Vyvyan: It's probably someone unbelievably boring!
Neil: Oh, no! It's the TV Detector Van!
Rik:MIKE, YOU BASTARD! Why didn't you buy a licence? I can't go to prison! I'm too pretty! I'll get raped!
Mike: Yeah, steady on! Steady on! We're not beat yet! All right, the time has come for diplomacy!
Neil: Oh, no - he's asked me if we've got a telly! I think I'm gonna have to lie! Bad Karma!
Mike: All right - the time for diplomacy is over. Vyv?
[Mike unplugs the TV]
Mike: Chuck the telly out the window!
Rik: Get rid of it! Quickly! Quickly!
[Vyvyan picks up TV and throws it at the window. The TV bounces off the window]
Mike (to camera): That, I did not expect!
Vyvyan: What if we sneak it out past him into the street?
Rick (to Mike): Yes! Yes! Yes! Mike, you go out and point to the sky, right, and say, 'Look at that interesting thing up there!'
Rick (to Vyvyan): You disguise the TV as an old woman, and sneak it past him!
Mike: Rick, suicide may be a great hobby - but I wouldn't do it for a living!
Neil: Lads, I've told him we don't have a telly, and I think that's thrown him a bit - but it won't hold him forever!
Rik: Good thinking, Neil! Keep it up!
[Rick starts writing in a notebook]
Mike: This is a very tricky spot, but Mike - the cool person - will squeeze it! Rick, stop crying!
[Rick rubs his eye]
Rik: I'm not crying - I just got something in my eye, that's all!
Mike: Vyv? Eat the telly!
Vyvyan: That's a completely brilliant idea, Mike! I've been wanting to do this for a long time!
[Vyvyan grabs the TV and starts devouring it. Rick continues writing]
Rick (writing aloud to himself): (It was the other three, not me. I had no idea what was going on, it really was the other three!)
[cut to front door. Neil is talking to a man]
Neil: All right, don't rush me - that's not an easy question to answer. 'Have I got a telly?' There could be, like, a number of different replies. I need some time to think one up, you know?
Mr Bastard: We know you've got one - we detected it!
Neil: Oh - so you've just been playing with me all along?
Mr Bastard: Well, it's better than playing with yourself! Ho-ho! A cheap sexual allusion - makes the world go round!
Neil: Ugh!
Mike: Neil, you haven't introduced me to your new pal.
Mr Bastard: Bastard's the name!
[he shakes Mike's hand]
Mr Bastard: But you can call me 'Right Bleeding' - all my friends do. Or did.
Mike: What do you mean?
Mr Bastard: I killed him. Where's your licence?
Mike: As the eunuch said to Mussolini, 'I haven't got one - and if I did, I wouldn't show it to you!'
Neil: That was a really cheap joke, Mike.
Mike: I'm saving up to pay the licence fine.
Neil: Don't tell me you haven't got a plan.
Mike: (I could never resist a challenge.) Neil, I haven't got a plan.
Mike (to camera): I hope someone's taking this down!
[Mr Bastard shoves his way inside the house]
Mr Bastard: Right - where's this telly? Ah-hah! So you do have it! You little runt!
[he walks over to Vyvyan, who has successfully eaten the TV, save for the cord, which hangs out his mouth. Vyvyan waves to Mr Bastard]
Mr Bastard: The old trick, eh? Eat the telly before I get a chance to nick you!
Vyvyan: It's a toaster!
Mr Bastard: It's a telly, you yobbo! Now give it back - I want to nick you!
[he grabs Vyvyan's hands, puts his foot on Vyvyan's stomach and pulls. Mike quickly intervenes]
Mike: Mr Bastard! Mr Bastard! OKAY! Now, toaster or telly, the contents of my colleague's stomach are private property! And if they get damaged in any way, we sue!
Mr Bastard: Well... I can wait! I've dealt with your sort before!
Mr Bastard (to Neil): Where's your toilet?
Neil: Oh, upstairs. Just follow your nose.
Rik: That's just great, Neil. Tell the fascist where our toilet is!
Neil: Shh!
Mr Bastard: I'm going up there now, to wait. I know how to wait! And I promise you, son - when that telly comes out the other end, you're nicked!
[he slowly slinks up the stairs, then comes back and looks at the bomb for a second, the ascends the stairs again]
Vyvyan: It's all right, lads - I always poo before I get up!
Re:How is that possible (Score:2)
Do superhet receivers really bounce that much back out of the antenna?
Are they using lasers to monitor glass vibrations and compare to current radio signals? Or maybe bouncing microwave off the cars and using the chassis as a resonant cavity?
I'd like to say I know exactly what they're doing, but on this one I draw a blank.
Re:How is that possible (Score:2, Informative)
Based on the frequency of the IF wave, the billboard can presumably tell what the majority of the radios in the near vicinity are tuned into.
Parent is a fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
To the parent troll: your friends can keep modding me down, and I can keep reposting the truth over, and over, and over. I've got more karma than you have mod points, and once people take a look at this for themselves, you're going to start getting modded down. If I'm wrong, post a followup and tell Slashdot why I'm wrong, because trying to prevent my posts from being read isn't going to work.
Here's the content that was suppressed:
Aren't you the guy that claimed that you were head of Nintendo R&D, and then had someone else (a few articles back, IIRC) point out that they knew the person in charge of Nintendo R&D and that you weren'thim?
Furthermore, you've been giving what you claim is inside information [slashdot.org] about Nintendo on Slashdot, which I can hardly see the head of a corporate R&D division doing. I've worked in corporate R&D, and they're quite secretive, -- and more so the higher they get.
Finally, the heads of Nintendo's two R&D departments are, according to Planet Nintendo, Takehiro Izushi [planetnintendo.com](R&D section 1) and Kazuhiko Taniguchi [planetnintendo.com] (R&D section 2). There is no "Nintendo Advanced R&D" division that I could find any reference to, nor is the informal term "head" a title that is likely to be used in the formal Japanese corporate culture. Finally, I find it rather unlikely that a non-Japanese person such as yourself would hold such a high-ranking position at a large Japanese firm.
Finally, I find it beyond belief that the head of "Nintendo Advanced R&D" would beg [slashdot.org] on Slashdot for details of how modchips work, when there are engineers aplenty that have worked hard on exactly this problem present in hordes working in Nintendo's R&D departments.
Sir, I accuse you of being both a troll and a fraud! To the Foe list with you!
And, sir, I must say that I find your claim in your User Bio [slashdot.org] that you earned three PhDs in three years highly unconvincing.
Hunting for trolls (Score:3, Interesting)
As to whether or not you believe me, I could care less.
And yet you care intensely as to what others think, as evidenced by your response and my almost immediately modded down first two exposes.
I have not given any inside information about Nintendo R&D whatsoever that is not available elswhere.
I see. Other than policy? You also claimed that what you were posting *was* an inside secret. You could be lying then, or you could be lying now...tkae your pick.
As for your other concerns, I work for a more secretive internal R&D organization within the company, apart from R&D1 and R&D2. This organization is a black one, much like the "Skunk Works" of your Lockheed Aircraft in the USA.
*snort* Okay, let's pick this one apart. Yet the *existence* of Skunk Works is hardly kept secret by Lockheed, though its actual work is not trumpeted. It is hard to imagine to benefit to a company in keeping the *existence* of a division secret. Yet even if I were to believe this, that the very existence of your division is a secret withheld by Nintendo from the rest of the world, then you have just contradicted yourself. You have claimed that no information not available elsewhere was released by you -- except, of course, the existence of your top-secret, black, utterly unacknowledged by Nintendo department. If this is so secret, why put it in your public bio *and* your signature? Indeed, the only sort of person who would gain at all from something like this would be a sham trying to gain undeserved respect.
We are looking at technologies now that are at least 1-2 generations beyond GameCube.
Ah. 1-2, eh? Well, *one* generation is exactly what you're calling "regular" R&D's goals. Your work cannot be all *that* hidden.
As for Japan, even they
You use "they", though you claim to work in Kyoto?
Nintendo, and Sony, and many other corporations
Circumstantial evidence, but Nintendo and Sony are the first two companies that most American gamers think of when they try to come up with the names of Japanese corporations.
Last I checked, Xbox is not a Nintendo product, hence, we would not have too much concern over it.
We "would" not? You mean, "if" you worked at Nintendo your group "would" not have too much concern? I believe the word you should have used is "do": "...we do not have too much concern...".
I won't even entertain your attacks on my academic credentials
Heh. Okay.
but if you read my bio and do some arithmetic, you will find that I started graduate studies at MIT five years before I got my first degree.
Oh, really? I had read your bio as claiming that you started *undergraduate studies* at the age of 16. Impressive, but not unheard of. So if we read your bio, you would have had to have completed all primary, secondary (or the Indian equivalents thereof -- I know little of the Indian sub-college education system, and undergraduate schooling by the age of 16. That is, while not entirely impossible, is very unlikely. You then completed three doctorates concurrently over the next nine years -- again, while not impossible, extremely unusual. I know only one PhD personally that peruses Slashdot, and he is younger than you claim to be -- most 42-year-old triple PhDs are unlikely to be blowing their afternoons posting to Slashdot.
I shall entertain no further correspondence with the boorish likes of you.
Convenient, that. It certainly saves you from having to, say, like to your three doctoral theses, or any of the papers that you wrote while working in academia. The funny thing is that at least in computer science, the overwhelming majority of published papers are also available on the Web. Google does an excellent job of indexing both PDF and PS format papers. Yet, strangely enough, I find no useful references to anyone by your name.
Oh, there's a Samir Gupta who was a management professor (not what you have any of your claimed PhDs in) who was co-author on a single rather basic distributed systems paper. Unfortunately, he was still in academia almost a decade after you claim to have left.
There's another Samir Gupta who worked for Renaissance Software, but graduated in '93...far later than you claim to have graduated.
You are, of course, free to point Slashdotters to any of your theses.
Or, of course, you could give up on this troll account, and start a new one. Perhaps your next one will be a bit more plausible, and you will make fewer mistakes.
If I had to guess, I'd place you as an undergraduate in college, probably in the United States.
Troll Hunting is the new, exciting Slashdot sport. See how many you can flush from the brush!
Re:Parent is a fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Parent is a fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video.nintendo, rec.games.video.advocacy, rec.games.video.3do, rec.games.video.atari
Date: 1994-02-20 19:50:41 PST
Oh brother. I remember seeing basically this same post, by this exact same author, a couple years ago before I quit Prodigy and found the 'Net.
You'd think he'd be able to come up with some better material...
Robert
eauu142@rigel.oac.uci.edu
Incredibly, this troll has been working on his thread for *over a decade*, and has spanned three different tech discussion forums (Prodigy, USENET, Slashdot).
BTW, I believe Prodigy was only offered in the United States. So, if we assume that both the Slashdot SG, the USENET SG, and the Prodigy SG are all the same guy, he definitely lives (lived?) in the United States. Still no tack on his age, though I'd still place him as an undergraduate college student in the US.
Re:Can we have some consistant linking please (Score:2)