"These vans have specialised equipment which enables us to track down TVs and our inspectors have a right to go into these homes and ask for licences. People need to remember that the vehicles do exist and are obviously not conspicuous."
What a joke. Can you imagine a truck that drives around your neighbourhood with electronic equipment that can tell if you have a TV? First of all your television is a passive receiver, that means that it doesn't give off any kind of signal that could be traced. The only two ways that I can think of for a van to "detect" if you have a TV are radiation and sound. Some people claim that a the Cathode Ray Tube used in your average television give off radiation, the Inspector Vans may be scanning for this but that makes you wonder about the real health risks of watching the boob-tube. Also it means that people with plasma and LCD screens, not to mention the various types of projectors are getting away scott free! The TV Inspector Vans might however be using very powerful spying equipment to listen into our homes and check if there are sounds of a television, but this raises all sorts of questions on privacy and our rights. In short the whole "we know who you are, so you'd better own up" is a tactic intended to scare stupid people.
Talking about a waste of money: why the fuck does the South African Department of Road (or whatever they're called) have to adversative on TV? What do we have a choice to use another set of roads? Why didn't anyone tell me about the alternative private road to Jo'burg that was well maintained and didn't have a construction site every 100km. If you haven’t seen the ad yet look out for it: it has a guy hitchhiking from Jo'burg to Cape Town and getting a lift in the smallest car ever mass produced. hilarity ensues. When he eventually gets to Cape Town he turns around and starts hitching back again. It's supposed to be because he loves driving on South Africa's roads!! WTF????
Speaking about stupid governments: Zimbabwe detained the US ambassador because he wondered off the trail at the Botanical Gardens. Apparently he was found walking on a hill that overlooked uncle bob's house. Shots had previously been fired at the prez's house from this hill and so now it's a no go area. Never mind that the house is 2km away or that the ambassador was obviously unarmed, he was detained anyway. Check out the story to see such great quotes as:
"The ambassador must consider himself very lucky that he is dealing with a professional army that the Zimbabwe National Army is, elsewhere, and definitely in America, he would have been a dead man. His adventure is really dangerous."
"The incident on Monday had been part of a US plan to effect "regime change" in Zimbabwe."
Oh and speaking of paranoia: or is that propaganda? Our esteemed leader (sarcasm drips) Thabo Mbeki has accused an unnamed foreign donor of paying South African non-governmental organisations to attack the ruling African National Congress before the 2004 elections. Sound familiar? Well just replace "unnamed foreign donor" with "Tony Blair" and "South African non-governmental organisations" with "the MDC" and you'll spot where you recognise it from. Is this a sign of a global conspiracy against the great African nations who have thrown off the yokes of oppression forced upon them by their former colonial masters? No, it's just a tried a tested political strategy that enthrals the masses and muddies the waters of the actual issues like the Jacob Zuma trial or the Tony Yengeni corruption and drunk driving stories. Remember nothing unites the masses like a common enemy.
Further in the article Thabo goes on to ask: "Is there an African civil society?" I think you may have hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial thought-processing appendage.
While we're on the subject of morons: actually I've got nothing that even compares to the sheer stupidity of the previous story, so I'll just post you a looter guy pic. "they were up to no good, and started making trouble in my neighbourhood."
In less serious news Ananova reports that a hypnotist has been robbing banks in Moldova. Bank tellers are not allowed to make eye contact with customers for fear of being put into a trance. The hypnotist makes them give him money and then gets away after ensuring that the victims forget everything about the encounter. Man that's my kinda guy, exploiting his powers, not for good, but for awesome! It's like if you were able to become invisible, wouldn't you go hang around in the girls change rooms?
schpat
5 comments:
Aerials create magnetic fields around them as well. The technology is not that arcane, or that complex, or that invasive, I am just highly doubtful that the SABC posesses it. Pure scare tactics will probably be about 80% as effective as an actual ghost recon team of trackers, and cost far far less.
How was PE? I notice that you've carefully avoided saying anything about it at all.
How strong is this magnietic field? How specific is it to a TV antenna? I'm guessing the magnetic field is only generated when the TV is in use?
Also like I said this was monday's post that I typed and was ready to press "publish" on when I got the call to rush off for an eight hour drive. Watch this space for more.
There is still one more post that I had started already and want to finish before I go into my crazy week.
Cool, fair enough =) I didn't realise that this was _actually_ Monday's post delayed, I thought you were just making a comment on lack of posteriness ;)
I would imagine that the field is pretty specific to each type of antenna and what type of wavelength they are receiving (UHF or VHF for terrestrial TV). For example, I doubt any but the grossest detection tools would confuse it with an FM or AM antenna field. This is all speculative, tho, since this kind of tech would probably have to be very sensitive.
The signal will be pretty fucking weak, and I doubt this would have any real sort of range. You'd probably have to park outside the person's house to get any reading at all.
I don't think it would produce a field while not actively receiving a signal, since the signal you receive is dependant on charge on capacitors in the tuning device. However, a VHS machine does the same job of tuning into an aerial as a TV does, so an aerial plugged into a switched-on VHS is functionally identical to an aerial plugged into a TV that you are actively watching.
Moonflake offers an interesting insight to the process of TV detection. But, she appears to have forgotten that they can inverse the phase polarity on the main interface board and reduce the interference of the gamma-goza radiation.
Hey, I'm talking theory here, not practicality ;) Or pseudo science
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