posted
Are you tired of walking into restaurants and competing with a blaring, unattended television in the corner for the attention of whoever you are eating with. Do such televisions invariably draw your attention, even when you would rather they not. Would you like to be able to hear yourself think again? Well THIS is the gadget for you. I know what I want for christmas now!
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
Found the problem. While I didn't slashdot it, slashdot did. That and wired magazine both in the same day. Ouch!
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
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That man is my hero! He should get the Nobel Prize in physics! And he most certainly deserves an Ig-Nobel.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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That really is a great invention...though if I had used it at the Applebees during the game last night, there would have been some really pissed off people.
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
During my freshman year at BYU I received a Radio Shack TV jammer kit for Christmas. I would take that thing into the common room of the dorm on Saturday night, and if they weren't already watching SNL (this is back when John Belushi was on), I'd jam the station they were watching until someone changed the channel.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Wow. That would be fun to use. It would be nice to talk to the people you were at dinner with rather than trying to get there attention over the TV.
Posts: 747 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote: I'd jam the station they were watching until someone changed the channel.
And people changed the channel rather than kicking you out of the room? I'm sorry, that would really piss me off.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Yeah, it could make a great gag gift... that is, for someone you know you'll never be in the same room watching TV with...them. Wow. Badly formagulated sentince.
Hey this invention reminds me of Contact's S. R. Hadden's invention... from the book, I mean. It wasn't included in the movie. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? If not just respond with "What the crap are you talking about?"
Posts: 236 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
This would have come in VERY handy at two memorable moments. One was my mission. I would have loved it if I had something to just turn the TV off so I and everyone I was talking to could focus. The second was a date at Applebees. The TV there was showing some special about "Queer as Folk" or whatever that show is called, and I ended up facing the TV as me and my date sat down. Needless to say, my eyes were burned badly with visions of men kissing each other. As you can tell, it was a scarring experience and I wish I could have turned off that danged TV!!!
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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The scene from Amelie near the beginning, when the neighbor fools her into thinking that her camera causes car crashes. Remember her revenge on the neighbor? I'm very much looking forward to having this on my keychain!
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
What if their were two tv's and one was on and the other, off?
Wouldn't it be illiegal for them to do this? For one thing they're affecting someone else's property, and isn't their that law on electronics that they can't send out interrference to other stuff or something like that.
quote: At Best Buy, neither customers nor staff responded as one set after another turned off -- Sony TVs first, then a JVC and an Apex, all from a single click. The interview was easier without competition from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Wouldn't it be harder to get a TV without actually seeing the resolution and stuff?
quote: A wall of TVs in the waiting room showed a loop of constant Kodak ads. Burke had prototypes in his bag and made a bank of screens go off with one click.
wouldn't kodak have payed for these ads to be shown?
quote: Altman said people who hear about TV-B-Gone start thinking about other nuisances. Friends have asked for ways to jam ....... and kill car alarms.
Yeah, criminals would love this.
Posts: 2489 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Hmm. Why does it matter to me if there is a television on in a restaurant? I'm pretty sure that I can choose not to watch it, despite how tv tries to "rope me in." If the people I were with couldn't stop watching it, then I'd have to ask myself some questions about our relationship, not look for a device to turn the tv off.
posted
You are all wrong. Mankind's greatest invention was air-conditioning. I know because the temperature right now is 87 degrees.
Posts: 910 | Registered: May 2000
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quote: Are you tired of walking into restaurants and competing with a blaring, unattended television in the corner for the attention of whoever you are eating with. Do such televisions invariably draw your attention, even when you would rather they not. Would you like to be able to hear yourself think again?
Sometimes. In those cases, I either don't go to a restaurant that has TV's or I ask to be seated away from them. If that's not possible, I can ask the waiter or manager to turn it off. I don't buy a device that lets me screw with the rights of the other patrons.
Those restaurants have TV's for a reason. Obviously, some of the patrons want to watch them, especially during sports.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Refrigeration. The ability to artificially create ice is one of the major definitions of a 1st world country in my opinion.
Posts: 1533 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Comes a close second. Without the lightbulb, generator plants and power lines wouldn't have been strung up, and there wouldn't have been anywhere near the same incentive to create&produce most of the other electrical&electronic gadgets.
I go with the refrigeration though. The desire to produce cold at demand created a need for tough high-strength material for the heat-exchange coils. The need being met by the invention of iron&nickel alloy steel. Without such steels, machinery and tools would have remained either too brittle, too soft, or too prone to corrosion for the following wave of inventiveness which produced the SecondIndustrialRevolution to have occurred.
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Plumbing is the jewel in the crown of western technological civilization. No question about it. If I could choose only one technology that I wanted to continue working in a major disaster or outage situation, it would certainly be plumbing.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Defenestraitor, this is a little late, but I know exactly what you're talking about, and I agree completely...the only difference is, that invention blocked out ads (at first), and then later on religious programming (if I'm remembering correctly...I lent someone my copy of the book a few years back and she hasn't returned it yet).
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Mankind's Greatest Invention, according to "The 2000 Year Old Man" (Mel Brooks) is ...
wait for it.
...
Celophane.
(It seems that this routine is not public domain. I can't find it on the Internet, but it is some of the funniest stuff to be heard.)
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Yes, but would they have known it was you? ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
I'm sorry, that would really piss me off.
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got one for my mom too
