My biggest problem with advertising in America is that it so damn effective. I have a hard time driving down the street and seeing some guy in the car next to me shoving French fries (which actually are Belgian) into his face hole at a rate only matched by competition eaters. So much of the American population is sucked into this over consuming profit driven economy that I can’t help but feel sorry for their ignorance. I don’t know where the switch was flipped in me to recognize manipulation when I see it, but it is extremely annoying to watch.

Recently there was a commercial that aired featuring that heifer Anna Nicole. Evidently her show made her enough money for liposuction and she landed a endorsement for Trim-spa. In the ad she is asked how she lost weight and she responds “It’s Trim-spa baby!” I wince every time I see it because I know that some poor sucker is sitting on his/her couch shoveling bar-b-q chips into their mouth and thinking, “you know, that’s the answer.

It seems as though there is no where for me to escape this torment. There are billboards for outdoor advertising. Television, radio, and magazine advertisements take residence inside. The new wave of advertising has hit the men’s room. This tactic makes use of that 45-second period men spend idle while relieving themselves. Nowhere is safe.

I have given up listening to the radio. Listening music through this medium just doesn’t seem worth the fifteen-minute commercial break every thirty minutes. And I am convinced that they have it timed so that they are all playing commercials at the same time. It’s public radio for me. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry taking up over one quarter of the marketplace.

The pop-up ad is not only ineffective it makes me very angry. I click on a link that is supposed to take me to hot and horny co-eds only to solicited by penis enlarging products that reduce my debt. I think these things should be illegal.

Billboards! I could do with a few less of them.

Supposably all new construction of BB's were banned in Calif. There must be a loophole. I'm just glad those florida style 3in1 boards haven't shown up here yet.

Those ones that span over the entire interstate? Yeah those suck

I don't know whether the length of adverts on US TV are longer or not. I do know however that they are far, far more irritating.

I would far rather have a three/four 3 minute breaks an hour (with one or two of them coming between individual shows) than the American approach. How bloody annoying is it to sit down to watch a show to get two minutes into to it to suddenly find yourself in a (short) ad break again. At least in the UK when you sit down to watch something you know that you will have 20 minutes to watch uninterrupted and then a handy break long enough to make a cuppa in

then a handy break long enough to make a cuppa in

They don't make cuppas in America

They don't make cuppas in America

...and now we know why, their ad breaks aren't long enough

What is more amusing is watching a show which has ad-breaks designed in but are not used - in the Simpsons they are not usually that obvious but in some older shows (eg. MacGyver, The A-Team, Fresh Prince, yes I still watch them occasionally) you get some incidental music and a fade-to-black and then it fading back in straight away! 24 was quite good because apparently all the ad-breaks were around the clock ticking bits, so when it was shown on BBC2 it was just a nice break between scenes.

Gareth

It doesn't even take a particularly high voltage, just a reasonably high frequency. It is, for example, technically possible to monitor traffic over ethernet via radiated emissions at quite a distance. Granted, it takes very sensitive equipment, but it's possible. TV or video is simple by comparison, especially since they're never actively shielded anyway.

That said, 99% of the TV detector vans are dummies, I seem to recall there's only perhaps 2 real ones in existence. They just send out demands to everyone without a license on the basis that you must have a TV. In addition, when you purchase a new video recorder, TV set, or DVD player, the shop is required by law to note your name and address which is passed along to the TV licensing people. The license covers up to 3 TVs per household, and portable receivers are exempt if they are entirely battery powered and have a screen size below (I think) 4 inches.

Note that while shops are required to take a name and address, they never check it and don't care if it's not YOUR name and address

pca

If folks want to learn more about remote TV detection, there's been some fantastic work done by Markus Kuhn and Ross Anderson at Cambridge University. Check out:

Optical Time-Domain Eavesdropping Risks of CRT Displays, wherein somebody can see what you're seeing on your TV simply by watching the reflected color of your TV set from your window.

Soft Tempest: Hidden Data Transmission Using Electromagnetic Emanations, wherein the authors note that horizontal pixel antialiasing makes it harder for your TV to be detected, but makes for an interesting anti-piracy opportunity: having your computer broadcast your license numbers in the high-frequency pixel information!

Woah. I'd better buy an LCD monitor soon or the spooks will know that I spend most of my day on this BBS!

I'd better buy an LCD monitor soon or the spooks will know that I spend most of my day on this BBS!

Believe me, they already know...



pca

Markus Kuhn

Now there's a genius.... he wrote the software which broke the encryption on VideoCrypt, used on the Sky analogue satellite system. It was called "Season 7" because of the reason why it was cracked. There followed a couple of card re-issues before they came up with a decent algorithm that would have probably lasted a very long time had Sky Digital not replaced the entire analogue system.

Gareth

AFAICR, he developed the Season interface because Sky were showing STTNG ahead of the German channels

They just send out demands to everyone without a license on the basis that you must have a TV.

Actually, I got a letter like that just a few days ago. It stated that i should go pay up if I have a Radio and/or Color TV, otherwise they will come visit some time this spring.
I don't have a TV (I *do* have a video and a projector but... that's not a Color TV, right? ;-), and I don't ever listen to radio. If by some freak accident I actually watch TV, it's not DR1 or DR2 (similar to BBC, they get 98% of the revenue from the tax (~300 Euro/year/household), no ads, but there's TV-shop on DR2 at night... yuck!).

At least here in Denmark, there's the nice little legal twist that if they come check me out, I am not required to let them in unless they have a court order and a cop with them.

Regardless, I'll probably swap the Reciever with my Amp/Preamp combo and stuff the video and the Surround Reciever in the attic, just to be 100% sure.

At least here in Denmark, there's the nice little legal twist that if they come check me out, I am not required to let them in unless they have a court order and a cop with them.

Same in the UK. Well, they need a warrant. I don't know about needing the cop.

I'm not sure how I should word this correctly, but they need the cop there to check that they don't step beyond what's stated in the warrant. Like if they're checking you out for not paying your TV Tax, they're not allowed to check you computer for illegally downloaded movies/music or look for drugs.

I dispute the premise that the BBC does not carry commercials, they carry copious commercials......for the BBC, they irritate the hell out of me.

Even worse on BBC7, they have commercials to point out how great it is that they don't have commercials. Every 6.00 news carries a trailer for programming later in the evening.
However, that isn't to say that they don't, generally do a good job....a few less makeover programmes would be an advantage....and why are we thought to be obsessed by news gathering, is it by TV journalists for TV journalists?...a great deal of it is predictive anyway: Couldn't we just have what's happened and what's happening, not what the government are going to announce a week on tuesday?

I never watch commercial television, I always record it and jump through the breaks later, I record the news every six'o'clock, so I can wind through what I'm not interested in, special reports...another insidious item that's crept into news broadcasts, and stuff I've heard every hour and half hour throughout the day.

Rant Over, and none of this is, in any sense due to my having my transmitter and tape recorder confiscated by the General Post Office, for pirate transmitting in the 60's - putting the aerial up the fire escape of the BBC building in Wood Lane was a dare and, in retrospect, an error of judgement.

Rant Over, and none of this is, in any sense due to my having my transmitter and tape recorder confiscated by the General Post Office, for pirate transmitting in the 60's - putting the aerial up the fire escape of the BBC building in Wood Lane was a dare and, in retrospect, an error of judgement.

LOL. How long did it take them to notice?

not what the government are going to announce a week on tuesday?

That'll be down to the government mostly, and its culture of spin.

I record the news every six'o'clock

I get my news from http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and I'm always disappointed when nothing else has happened by 6pm. Basically, I'm giving up my TV addiction for an Internet addiction...

I need updating here, but I am hoping that ITV & C5 etc are still not running the infamous "Erectile Dsyfunction" type ads yet???

If you've got a view on the BBC then let them know, there's a review of the BBCs charter going on and they're looking for peoples view on the BBC & it's future, you can see some of the responses they've already had. unbelievably they're mostly negative, so if like me you LOVE the BBC send your comments to:

bbccharterreview@culture.gsi.gov.uk

the website to see other peoples views is:

http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/consultation/responses.html

so if like me you LOVE the BBC

Don't get mewrong,Ithinkit'sthebestofallpossibleoptions

that'siti'moffouttogetanewkeyboard,catchupwithyoualllater.

How long did it take them to notice

Ahhh, back in business!
It's over 40 years ago, but if my memory serves me well, some weeks, maybe 3 to 4 - I've always suspected the BBC sussed it out and let the authorities know, all that held them up was that they couldn't believe it was coming from a BBC building! The transmitter wasn't actually mine, it was ex-military and came from one of the surplus shops, that were in profusion at the time, for £3.50 - some guys we knew tweeked the frequency.

The tape recorder was more serious, it was a Ferrograph - all I could afford afterwards was a cheapo reel to reel from a high street shop.

Most people doing this at the time were campaigning for more variety in broadcasting, we only had 3 BBC stations, we were operating at a tangent, we were under the impression that the populus needed four hours of blues every evening - they weren't ready for it!

I suppose we were the 60's equivalent of hackers - getting caught smoking pot and getting girls pregnant were about the only other two things we feared!

If you've got a view on the BBC then let them know

Drop Linda Barker is about all I can think of, she irritates me to hell

Who the bloody hell's Linda Barker?

While looking in google for "hate linda barker", I came across this message board:

http://www.dogbomb.co.uk/board/showthread.php?threadid=3391

While looking in google for "hate linda barker", I came across this message board:

http://www.dogbomb.co.uk/board/showthread.php?threadid=3391

Don't hold back do they? Sadly I've never seen the programme but I might now..

Don't hold back do they?

The Leonardo Di Caprio thread is better .

Lord DFS, whatever the f his name is, has just moved in round the corner, maybe I should communicate our views!
I'll never go near Currys again......Oh, I never went before......or is it Dixons, she's so frigging anNoying, I can't even think what she represents.

I'm told we're shortly getting " the making of Charlie's Angels", a programme so bad, we won't even remember Linda Barker!