It’s bewildering watching everyone freak out about the TV-B-Gone prank at CES this year. A bunch of TVs got turned off and apparently someone forgot to dig the remote out of the couch. Have we become so accustomed to TV & screens being on that we don’t recognize when their not?
People are livid all over the net. Up in arms! This is absolutely horrible for CES! Business is denied! The A/V guy might get fired! Motorola is fucked! Bloggers will PAY!! The porn stars might leave! It was mean and not cool! Puhl-leeze. Put down the pitchforks, hit the saloon and keep those dollar bills ready. No one is losing their job, the billions of dollars invested in consumer electronics will not disappear, Motorola will do just fine. That A/V guy has more than enough work that he could care for. You will still get your lap dance.
Understand that this is a simple prank. It’s a one-off that will easily be remedied by small pieces of electrical tape next year. Or maybe TV manufacturers will finally wake up to the threat of open, unencrypted television remotes everywhere. Seriously, what if Al Qaeda got the TV Remote Control Bomb and managed to turn off every single television, plasma screen and theater projection system in America AT THE SAME TIME?
I know, heavy. We are so fucked.
Sand. Just too much farking sand in their vaginers. Or maybe it’s the next set of waves coming in for people to ride the PR. I high five them 100%. Did this shit in high school. More power.
:: r ::
Can I have to root password for your web server?
I’d like to run
/etc/init.d/apache2 stop
….
Kevin:
I totally get your point, but I don’t think the prank quite rises to the level of denial of service. The room is still full of people, the presenter still has the ability to address the crowd (and from what I saw the Motorola guy did pretty well under the circumstances) and the ensuing controversy and press coverage drives more attention and traffic to all those involved. I am now actually curious about what Motorola was demoing. I probably wouldn’t have been otherwise.
In true ‘net justice,’ if any of the big phat CES companies wanted to take prank revenge on Gizmodo. . . what would they do?
What could a small company like Motorola or Panasonic POSSIBLY do prank Gizmodo back?
I mean. . . that was a pretty damn mean and random act — the remoting. Not a mugging, but certainly a random wedgie to the nerd kid with the highwater pants.
Thanks for this response. It is exactly how I feel about the entire thing. Just chill out people. You’d think it was illegal to turn off the TV like out of the movie 1984 or something.
turning tv’s of is not as bad as the apple store getting goatse on thier monitors. now that was unruly! memorable, but unruly. no one should be surprised with that photo. without warning of course.
[…] Blakeley, ended up getting him banned from the conference. Eddie Codel suggests that everyone stop freaking out about it. CES has no shortage of displays. And when MAKE offered us some TV-B-Gone clickers to bring to the […]
Not to mention it’s giving a ton of press to Gizmodo right now.
The guy did it and the conf reacted by banning him, and I don’t have much of a problem with it. I don’t see the specific hyperventilating you’re talking about, but assuming it’s out there, OK, perhaps I agree to a degree.
But it sounds like posturing, and your post here is posturing, and that’s fine, but I want to note it to justify my own posturing, which is coming up in the next paragraph.
When I hear about TV-B-Gone and people who use it, I usually think: fuck you, busybody! Probably because I hate when people get up on their high horse about other people’s personal preferences. Usually the complainer is making a tacit assumption that they’re smarter than all those other people out there.
Naturally I would never try to use the coercive power of the law to try to stop someone from expressing their viewpoint, but I might kick someone in the shins if I caught them fucking with my TV.