Good man. While it might not make up for the heartattacks you gave those poor presentation monkeys, it shows goodwill, of a sort. :3

Reilaos, Putting the 'Fun' in Dysfunction!

I'm making this comment from within MacWorld... Wait until you see what's about to happen to Steve's presentation at 9:12am.

liquidsoapdispenser

blah...blah...blah...over 30 comments and it just goes on, and on, and on...

It was a prank... get over it... not like they damaged any expensive equipment... not like anyone got hurt...

Would any of you want some cheese with that WHINE?

xint

@ItsMrJP: um...what?

EMoShunz

I thank Gizmodo for doing their jerb and testing tvbgone in a real life prank scenario, still waiting for a full write-up though.

blackti3

I seriously feel we are beating a dead horse now. This whole thing, while immature, has been blown out of proportion. Yes I agree during the presentations was wrong, but out on the exhibit floor I think it is great. Who knows we may see some IR encryption come out of this. It's just another one of those things someone does and makes people realize there is a need for something they didn't even know before.

But seriously lets just move on. Kudos to Mr. Lam for manning up.

ryanworrell

@EMoShunz: you have been a whiney bitch thru the frst 800 comments. why are you pretending to be level-headed now?

on a side note the people for and against this tvbgone prank have gotten almost as bad at the xbox360 and ps3 fanboys. (myself included)

Continue the comment wars fellow spartans?

ItsMrJP

Since y'all keep bumping the story, I'll bump my opinion. This was a funny prank, but if you're trying to be a respected, we-interview-bill-gates, weblog, you don't pull shit like this. You can still cover the news in a unique style without becoming part of the news, or acting like a bunch of dipshits with laser pointers at the movies.

I remember watching the Panasonic dudes set up and tweak their TVs for HOURS, and it would totally piss me off if I was them.

omnibot2000XL

I consider Gizmodo the Seanbaby of new sites. Yes, you are often crass and offensive, but I always have a great time reading the posts here. Yes, the stunts often backfire and cause problems, but you usually take responsibility, and laugh at your own mistakes.

Sure, you scare away some companies, you offend others, but what it all comes down to is the fact that they must respect Gizmodo for the huge amount of people that it connects with everyday. Does Giz follow a system not unlike US foreign policy, where it likes to ask forgiveness, as opposed to permission? Yes. Can it do so because it has the power of numbers and influence behind it? Yes. Does it occasionally abuse its power? Yes. Do I plan on leaving either the US or the Giz?

NO.

Keep up the good work, take your licks when you deserve them, and keep giving me content that I can't do without.

JP.

zenpoet

@FubarGuy: ditto, time to let it go.

tbartley

@c-threepio: [stfu.se] please. Thank you.

Lam, dude, you should have delayed your "confession" to see if anyone did get into trouble and THEN posted the damned video. That way, once the video DOES come out and some fuitcake DOES report it back to CEA, you guys could say "hey we waited for SOMEONE to cover/report this incident and till now nothing" (assuming it would have been nothing)

Okay, the prank was silly (but hilarious) and you're doing the right thing by calling up the AV d00ds. Does not change the fact that I've got you as one of my homepage(s) besides Gmail.

Rock on!

kvstud

@ANoel:
Set aside about 5 hours and do a search for "Gizmodo CES Prank." Sit back in bewilderment at the amount of publicity, amusement and/or furious anger that it hath wrought.

NFlames

If that wasn't a shameless self-bump, I don't know what is...

dataguy

It's nice that you are taking into consideration anyone who could have gotten into trouble due to an overreaction by a boss trying to cover his/her own ass. That is the sign of a good prank: 1) Prank someone or some group 2) Record and put it on internet 3) Take responsibility 4) Don't apologize if no one was hurt 5)???? 6) Make sure anyone who suffers repercussions because of said prank are exonerated. 7) Pizza more.

luxera

Just back from a totally tech-less time off.
FTW happened!?
Can anyone tell me in 15 words or less?

ANoel

You apologized. If they still can't accept. F-them. Damn hypocrites. They acting like the had never played a prank before.

Earthslide

Good for you.

applesaucejx

@c-threepio: Hooray! Now go away.

m4ximusprim3

Making sure no one ever gets in trouble for it is my highest priority, and I'll be taking the rest of the week to call around and double check that is the case. Honestly, I'd rather resign than have that happen to anyone.

Seems like just not pulling the prank would have been easier.

SinistarX

Yeah, how about no?

Seriously, this was stupid. And it's not going to blow over for some of us; those of us who can see being affected by something like this, and realize that Giz has just educated a new generation of idiots in acting out their control fantasies at tech shows.

Forget it Giz, you're dead to me.

c-threepio

Blam, you have won my respect back. Great job!

Simple_thinking

The CES prank was childish, and one of the most amazingly brilliant stunts anyone could have pulled. I'm so glad they had the balls to do it, and they are more admirable for fessing up...but honestly, the prank caused no lasting harm. Industry guys tend to take themselves way too serious...so what if your TV went out for two seconds during the event...it's not the end of the world. Well done, giz.

strether

oh leave it alone already, i laughed, some people whine, you win some readers , you lose some others, stop crying you babies, didn't anyone think of putting a little piece of tape to the IR receiver? i mean it's not like they took a sledgehammer to the tvs...jesus (although the one in the conference was a little too much, all of the others cracked me up)

Cheve

How great that you are taking the steps necessary to ensure that no one is harmed by the "prank". An apology (a serious one) would be better (IMHO) but at least you are kind of conceding, with this article, that it might have been dangerous for some jobs and you are making sure your actions do not harm anybody else.

I'm still not fond of what you did at CES, but this is a step in the right direction.

whiskey

@yoshi: Exactly, let it go. Any more posting about it just comes across as more grandstanding. It's barely even news, move along people - nothing more to see here..

FubarGuy

Excellent, Brian. Two enthusiastic thumbs up!

Monty

you guys really deserve a time out and no snack

discounteggroll

@TheCutSquad:
"obvious troll is obvious."-internet

mitchel_stevens

Who cares if they got in trouble? The aggravating part is being fucked with while trying to do your job (which you probably don't enjoy) by a couple immature punks. That would be the part that pisses me off.

binaryfiend

Brownie points for re-posting Belladonna Video, but you can still re-sign.

Oh wait, you said resign, not re-sign!? I guess no signing bonus for you!

It's still your organizations fault, hence the concept of one person making everyone look bad, which this incident has done in many peoples eyes. Fact still remains that you are one of the most popular tech blogs around, not tech news sites. I appreciate that you get to cover certain events, but someone in your organization took a prank too far according to CES and it should be punished.

"While you are under my roof, you will abide by my law!" - Me

TheCutSquad

@Brian Lam - Thats why I still hold my respect for Gizmodo. Whether or not it was as bad as some (douche bags at tech crunch) guys think, the fact at hand is that no one has gotten in any trouble over this. I actually thought to myself that it's amazing this has never happend before.

Either way, props on taking responsibility into your own hands.

ImTheKing

...oh C'mon it was hilarious.
I don't think it was that serious...

xint

i've been trying to sit on the fence on this one. but that is the first reasonable, level-headed post i've read on the subject. most are either too defensive, reactive, accusational, etc. that is responsible mr. lam, good for you to follow up just in case.

EMoShunz

You guys should lie low and focus on what you do best. It will blow over.

Don't draw anymore attention to this.

yoshi

with the posting of the video you at least made the AV techs innocence apparent.
Stunt: silly
Taking responsibility: priceless

wanago

Lets hug it out bitch.

PCLoadLetter

"Honestly, I'd rather resign than have that happen to anyone."

Open the floodgates, commentards.

homerjay

@strether: I agree completely, it's not as if they stood there the whole day at one booth sabotaging it. Just a couple of times to catch it on video. I'm sure it's been done before, but with the publicity, vendors can now prepare properly for this.

auroragb

i think it was a totally funny prank! do you think that with all of the geeks there, someone *wouldn't* bring a remote control of sort (like a universal channel changer).

if:
1. av tech could not figure out how to turn the tv on
2. av tech did not bring a remote
3. av tech didn't think to cover up ir receiver

..the av tech should get fired (or at least yelled at). handling this should have been part of his job responsibilities.

i say do it again next year to see who's been paying attention.

i would like to see some clever individual who would modify the tv to display "knock that shit off lam!!!" when the "off" signal is present on the remote input.

il1lupo1970

The only serious questions about all this are : Why hasn't anyone done it before ?
Why did noone think of putting electric tape on the IR receivers. Back in the time when I worked on a booth at a tradeshow, we made reasonably sure noone but is could play with the monitors (masking tape on IR receivers, disengage the buttons if possible and so on)... And that was years ago.

franssukse

@binaryfiend: Some people welcome almost anything to break up the monotony of work (yes, presenting can get monotonous too). I don't think any of the Gawker crew takes his or her self seriously enough to get upset over the occasional harmless prank, and I see no problem with encouraging everyone to lighten up a bit. Life is more fun when you make a game of it.

swags

It looks to me that Gizmodo has either purposely or inadvertantly created a variation of the Streisand Effect. Kudos for them, I bet readership (is that a word?) is up, and hits are through the roof because of this.

And for all you lame uptight yuppie wanne-be posters that think this is a harmful act, kiss my ass and Giz's at the same time.

If you don't like what they did, then go read some other pansy, hold my hand techblog. You turds.

KodyRoss

@ANoel: {15 words} giz employee turned off tv's in a prank at ces, during presentations in some cases. {/15 words}
my estimate: 60% pissed, 20% thought was just funny, no harm, 20% didn't really care much.
if you choose to read the probably 1000 comments over various web sites on this, be prepared for a lot of flame posts.

EMoShunz

I beleive you, but my tommygun don't.

GizFanAlpha

Here is a little story about cause and effect.
Back when telephone operators were first employed they predominately used young men. These "youngsters" were predisposed to playing pranks on the customers. Yes, these were the first prank phone calls. These pranks became such a PR nightmare that they fired all of the young men and replaced the operators with much more mature women. This is why your stereotypical telephone operator is a middle aged woman (e.g. Lily Tomlin's portrayal of Ernestine).
So just remember that everytime you stray from your business's mission to play a prank on a large customer base, you never know where it will lead.

nospamsam

@cirby: I find it amusing that you (and others) are convinced that this must be the case - that there are people in trouble, jobs are at stake, money is lost, lives are ruined, inordinate amounts of time are never to be seen again...

You don't have to "spend several minutes disabling and re-enabling IR ports" on TVs. Just slap a piece of electrical tape over the port and move on. Two seconds and you're done.

If some guy's boss is a big enough dick that he blames the guy for a minor technical difficulty, I'm guessing that employee already gets shit from his boss for a lot of other things, so this lecture will just be like any other.

If a guy is going to get fired for a thirty second technical difficulty in a single booth out of hundreds at an annual show attended by people who will find out about the electronics on display one way or another, I'm guessing the job he has is shitty enough that he can find another one really quickly - like the drive-thru at Arby's.

It was a prank. It was amusing, people laughed, and I really, really doubt that anyone got fired over it. Those actually at CES who weren't amused by it are very likely over it by now and already salivating over whatever The Savior of Personal Computing (Stevie) is going to proclaim to his Apple kingdom as I am writing this.

Those on the internet, however, who have nothing better to do with their time but whine and bitch out a tech blog for pulling a prank, are going to be bitching and whining about this for weeks, if not months. Get a freakin' life. Or some fresh new porn.

Either get a sense of humor and/or move the hell on, or quit reading Gizmodo. It's a free weblog. You're not really hurting them by being one of a small handful of readers with pine trees up their asses who decide to take Gizmodo out of their RSS reader over this - OH NOES.

shifuimam

Sounds like you're starting to realize it wasn't all that funny. Still hope someone follows your crew around with a green laser next year.

The Brain

Shoot me now.

CW

yah. Don't get caught up in the hype, Giz. It WAS funny. DAMN funny.

tremans

I think it's interesting that you believe that nobody got in trouble for this little escapade.

For one thing, the guys who would be in trouble are probably a thousand miles or more away, and most of them (and their bosses) never heard a word about the "prank" side of what they think was a screwup on the part of some tech. There's probably some guy sitting in ANOTHER exhibit hall somewhere getting a lecture about making sure the plasmas REALLY, REALLY work from a boss who only uses the Internet to check his email and the football scores.

No, you're not going to "know" from just calling around, since most of the folks who do that sort of work don't work for the actual companies who owned the booths. Most of those guys are freelance technicians who work for some company two or three links down the chain.

You'll get some receptionist from the owners of the booth, who will ask, "did anyone get in trouble for that stupid CES thing with the displays," and everyone will say, "well, no, none of us did." You'll get the answer you wanted without getting the truth.

Meanwhile, some sub-sub-subcontractor is letting some guy go for not magically figuring out that the booth was being sabotaged by an idiot with a remote, or some other guy is going to get six months of crap from the guys he works with because "remember that screwup at CES and how Bobby couldn't fix it?"

Not to mention that, for some indeterminate time, EVERY tech who sets up a display like this will have to spend a few extra minutes per day disabling (and re-enabling) every IR port on every machine they set up, because some other idiots will take your position (that it's funny) and will be trying to recreate the scenario.

Congratulations. You just cost a few thousand people a few dozen hours EACH per year.

And you still won't admit that it was a completely stupid and unprofessional thing to do, or punish the people involved.

cirby

@PCLoadLetter: haha, love the phrase.

rainfever

@crucifix99: Welcome to the club!

swags

@cirby: good god man.

BBQSALAD

@ElSnapitan: shhhh.

BBQSALAD

I love Giz. And well done on the friggin Apple keynote today. The other guys where offline right after the start while your servers stayed strong through-out the entire thing.

BBQSALAD

This past week of comments has made me retarded. I might as well start shitting myself and wearing a helmet.

crucifix99

Giz was just field testing the Jobs-be-gone (a top secret project from Microsoft). It didn't work at the Motorola booth and apparently did not work today at MacWorld either.

nocar

Once again, farting in church is not excommunicatable offense. Silly, funny, but not fatal.

Get over it.

geschmidtt

So you are going to call all the companies that could have been affected by this???? Really? I'd like to see your list of what companies you THINK are or were affected by this. What about the freelancers that work for themselves?

ElSnapitan

ElSnapitan

From what I understand, which isn't much....

CES has an age limit on who is allowed into the expo. Probably because of such things as this. And maybe the reason they didn't put tape over the IR receiver is because they want to:

A. Use their own remotes.
B. Would like the option of showing merchandise with out flaw... aka: tape
C. Honestly thought people would act like adults. Go figure.

But I do think this is a much better response than the last one and I applaud Gizmodo for it. You may not care what I think, but I approve this message. ; )

AaronC

I note that a lot of the whiners are names I never saw post at Giz before.

I also note a lot of them say "I am never coming back" but they keep coming back and posting more. (How can we miss you when you just wont LEAVE.)

So a guy got kicked out of CES, big deal. I have been kicked out of better places for similarly stupid stunts. I was escorted out of the Smithsonian for running UP the DOWN escalator on a church camp summer trip to DC as a giggly 15 yr old school girl. I learned my lesson and have never disrespected another escalator. Point being, its done and over and no one was hurt, same as the CES. Laugh and move on people.

Curves

haha - 5min ago it was on german tv ( pro7) in a boulevard show.5 minutes before the simpsons started. i think some people saw it.
they mentioned that now gizmodo won´t be allowed to go to such shows. is that true - did you get response from somewhere ( cebit)?

harakiri

Leaving IR ports open at CES is akin to leaving system settings open on a public computer. It's just asking to be messed with. Giz, you've done CES a favour. Then again, let's see what they do about it next year…

pure241

@ImTheKing:

So how come if you are so MAD at Giz for it, why are you still here? Abandon all hope and go some where else. I mean they are "evil" for doing it right?

Eigtball

While it is probably true that no one lost their job, it would be hard to measure the affect on sales for the companies whose presentations were compromised by the "joke". The purpose of CES is not only to introduce new products, but to establish connections with potential sellers. A botched presentation can have a affect. I work with several businesses that spend hundreds of thousands to be at CES. If someone's attempt at "humor" would have a negative affect on their investment, they would act accordingly. I am also surprised that this has not happened before. I'm sure that there will be protections setup to prevent this happening again and a policy to deal with those who carry it out. Despite the carnival atmosphere of CES, it is all about business and not only money is at stake, but the viability of some smaller companies. We all like humor unless you are the victim and it causes definative problems. Let's hope a lesson is learned.

jeffp1

Whoa Gizmodo,
You've got plenty of Apple minutiae to keep getting hits!

No need to keep mining this subject for 'em.

As it is I think Homerjay has once again put it perfectly.

strider_mt2k

@cirby: If someone hacks Giz for 15 seconds and Giz is back up and running THE WORLD DOESN'T STOP NOR CARE.

How many times have you watched TV and gotten dead air for a full 30 seconds? Do you think someone gets fired for that? That's MILLIONS of people potentially changing channels yet it happens daily on most networks.

Even if the screens cut off for a full minute that equates into 1/60th of an hour... 1/720th of a day's work. Please.

I don't care who your boss is... If he/she can't get beyond a 15 second incident they're most likely a poor boss. I'm a former military officer, so I have just a little bit of insight on leadership, pressure to perform, and fubar situations.

So, get off of your soap box.

And, before you go on about pressure I guarantee you that, in the scope of the world, a 15 second hiccup is absolutely nothing.

DustyButt

No harm? I'm going to have to disagree. You guys screwed up presentations that companies were making, with who knows what important people might have been there when you did. If I were the guy doing the presentation, I would be pissed. Especially the Motorola guy, you know he's under enough pressure as is. It's not like Motorola's losing marketshare or anything. If you had been caught, you would have been kicked out right then, and rightly so. For the people who think it was funny, would you have thought it was funny if you were the presenter? Or how about the people who spent a lot of time developing the darn presentation?

And don't give that BS about how you're "sticking it to the man". You do that by giving accurate reviews, not by screwing with presentations.

secretmanofagent

@yoshi: Whatever - let's paint a big-ass red bulls-eye on it!

uberfu

"Do the companies affected by a 5-15 second hitch really think that someone somewhere won't support their product because it 'turned off' at a convention?"

Yes. And yes to all of your similar questions, except for the editorial about how the "one foot out the door" thing, which reflects your opinions, not reality. They pay us to get things RIGHT, and for the most part they go off 100% correct during most shows. But when things go horribly wrong, it lands on the techs, not the guys pushing the "next slide" button.

If the story gets around (I guarantee it won't get to everyone involved, since not that many people really read Gizmodo), the gist will be "why didn't the techs put tape over all of the IR ports?" And then, six months from now, it'll be "why are you charging us all of this overtime for putting tape on the IR ports of those thousand monitors on the show floor?"

Even if nobody got fired, it's still a shitty thing to do to some poor guy who never did ANYTHING to deserve your sabotage, and who had (at best) a pile of INTENSE pressure to figure out why the things were turning off by themselves. This sort of thing can happen, but it's usually due to power brownouts or someone unplugging cables trying to get their cellphone charged, and is VERY rare.

As I've said before: when someone hacks Giz and it makes national news, will the Giz folks be so understanding about the "harmless" prank? After all, they can just restore from backup or re-edit the page, anyone can do that in very little time. They probably won't even press charges in that case, right?

Oh, they'll freak out and want the guy in jail? What a shock...

cirby

Shufuimam:
"@cirby: I find it amusing that you (and others) are convinced that this must be the case - that there are people in trouble, jobs are at stake, money is lost, lives are ruined, inordinate amounts of time are never to be seen again..."

I'm convinced because I set up trade shows and corporate meeting for a living, and have 15 years of experience in just this sort of thing. You, on the other hand, seem to be some guy outside of the industry who never had to deal with real-time, gotta-work hardware.

"You don't have to 'spend several minutes disabling and re-enabling IR ports' on TVs. Just slap a piece of electrical tape over the port and move on. Two seconds and you're done."

...per machine. And then pull the tape back off that afternoon to turn them off (many displays nowadays don't have manual power switches any more, especially the larger ones). And then put it back on the next morning after turning them back on. For one huge booth with upwards of 50 displays (or several small booths with even more). For the length of the show. Even a mid-sized show can have HUNDREDS of booths, and there are hundreds of that sort of show per year in the US alone. Do some math, if you can.

Then you have the "the display is in a cabinet or mounted too high to reach easily so the IR needs to be enabled" issue, which has no easy fix.

"If a guy is going to get fired for a thirty second technical difficulty in a single booth out of hundreds at an annual show attended by people who will find out about the electronics on display one way or another, I'm guessing the job he has is shitty enough that he can find another one really quickly - like the drive-thru at Arby's."

Actually, the guys who work those shows are VERY well-paid techs. We get to set up large multiscreen display setups, mid-sized computer networks, fairly large video switching arrangements, and the like. We get a day or two to do a job that takes the corporate types a couple of weeks (or months), with a random mix of hardware and client requirements. I constantly get to fix IT problems in minutes that a typical "consultant" takes a day or two to address.

You don't hire "fries with that" guys to install $5,000 plasmas and $100,000 projectors... some of those booths can have over a million bucks in display hardware alone, on top of the $100,000 or more to rent the floor space and the MASSIVE amounts of money spent building the booth and setting it up.

They also don't hire, well, guys like you, who don't seem to get the "do it right the first and only time" situation that this sort of thing needs.

cirby

Do the companies affected by a 5-15 second hitch really think that someone somewhere won't support their product because it "turned off" at a convention?

Would someone really lose a job because a monitor cut off for 5-15 seconds during a presentation?

If a tech lost his job for this then he probably had one foot out the door for another reason not even related to this incident. If you're operating on a stage like this and you can't handle a 15 second snafu... maybe you shouldn't have the job anyway.

I've worked on FAR more important presentations for FAR more important people and FAR worse has happened during the presentation... We all got past it, and I still recieved positive marks.

Everyone needs to get over themselves... It's an electronics convention.

DustyButt

So Giz, are you saying you didn't think through what might have happened to others when you pulled this unprofessional act? I don't think someone there would be fired but you certainly caused a lot of trouble for people trying to get a job done.

Maybe someone will cut your internet connection so you can't post stories - now that would be funny!

dalejo

As a tech, I know how things can be. When a show/event goes well we're ignored, but when things mess up (for whatever reason, even it it isn't our fault) we cop the flak.

It is good to see Brian taking some responsibility. It is a shame that it has taken so long. When this prank was authorized, and when the video was released, it should have been one of the first checks for an Editor to make. Blindly stating that everything was ok because it was only a prank, was not the right call.

Anyway, thank you for doing the right thing.

nimblesquirrel

I would be interested to find out which AV service companies you guys called. I'm guessing, oh, maybe...None! None of the manufacturers would have said that people are getting in trouble. Any AV service company would have asked to speak with your legal department. Not being able to use the IR ports on the plasma displays will cause many expensive switching equipment deployments whitch will raise the cost of AV higher and reduce the number of clients. Thanks for not getting us in trouble, asshole.

hypnophone

@BBQSALAD: Who the F&*% R U? Go toss GIZs' salad somewhere else.....

ElSnapitan

ElSnapitan

Gizmodo is Jackyl. Tom Green is the "AV industry." Guess that'll teach ya to saw up other people's desks.

[www.uberlounge.com]

scarbrtj

toooo funny I wish i would have thought of it!!!! Keep them on thier toes and keep up with the good work you are truly known for!!
deno in illinois

denotheresa

@nimblesquirrel: Ok.

You tell me of one instance of a monitor cutting off for 15 seconds directly causing a client to pull payment, or one person getting fired... for ANYTHING in the history of public presentations. Both live or recorded. Stage or screen.

I've done jobs far more sensitive with respect to pressure and audiences. You're talking about an incident of less than 15 seconds!

DustyButt

@DustyButt: Perhaps you should try to do the job, and see how long you last with an attitude like that. You can't compare issues on television with issues during a live performance/presentation.

A 15 second hiccup for TV, running 24/7, 365 days a year isn't much. While it is unlikely someone would get fired for that, they wouldn't get away with it either.

A 15 second hiccup for a 30 minute product release will cost money (and jobs). Clients have clauses in their contracts to allow them to legally refuse to pay for a thing like that. I know of people that have blown contracts upwards of tens of thousands of dollars that way.

The world doesn't care? More like the audience may not care, but the client and my boss certainly do.

nimblesquirrel

@AaronC: i agree completely.

x23

Make all the promises you like, you can't keep them. I promise you that more than one presenter got in trouble for not covering the IR sensor on their monitors. Bosses don't care that the presenters have never faced a prank like this before, they only care that it made them look bad this time. The presenters are likely to get punished for not preventing the problem in the first place, to serve as an example.

icntdrv

Maybe you don't understand how much you were affecting those people. In a presentation, when things start looking 'glitchy,' that makes their products look bad, because it makes it look like the company doesn't have their act together. Of course, then you guys, some immature wannabe journalists come along, have your fun and leave. Well, it's great you're admitting to it, but does that change what you are? OF COURSE NOT. I think what you did reflected the state of your whole organization here, and probably the reason Engadget continues to dominate the field.

Go ahead now, prove how much of a joke this blog is by censoring this comment.

vicsells

@SWAGS: Yes I'm sure those people were just waiting for someone to play a prank at their expense. When I am having a bad day some asshole fucking with me really cheers me up. Tard.

binaryfiend

oh no u should never resign. U never did any mistake. it was funny. but i also think wht ces did was right too. But resignning should be too much of a thing.

Just forget it dude nobody will remember tommorow. Comon we elected george bush again. do u think poeple will remember this about u .... u will a legend in CES though for other nerds ha ha ....

vhlaxman

@DustyButt: It doesn't matter that the incident was 15 seconds, but that there was an incident at all, and that incident interrupted the presentation.

As far as proof, I value my employment too much not to get into specifics other than to say that it has happened and not just to the company I work for.

Corporate clients pay tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of dollars to make sure their presentations go off without a hitch. Do you really think that, when they are paying top dollar, that they won't care if there is an incident that interrupts the presentation?

Despite you claim to have "done jobs far more sensitive with respect to pressure and audiences", it is obvious that you've never worked on this side of the industry, so I don't see how you can comment on it.

nimblesquirrel

Lam, yer crackin' me up. Yesterday you were all about fightin' the power. Today you're championing the poor AV techs? Next time, how about thinking of those people BEFORE you cost them their jobs?

JRo

Gah, not even the companies give a shit anymore! The CES guys got their pound of flesh, and everybody has passed it by (including the companies involved) except the fucking internet blowhards who crawl out of the woodwork to take the moral high ground and chastise Giz every time the subject is even mentioned!

It was a funny prank, a blip on the radar, and you guys still act like they started the fucking Holocaust!

Why don't you grow some damn perspective on things? Seriously, people, they had some fun, made a statement, and everybody moved on with their damn lives! Why don't you?

HeartBurnKid

BLam BLows

Trozzur

@vicsells: Presentation was never something we planned to do. Video guy took it into his own hands, 180 degrees against what I explicitly told him to do. When I saw the clips, I laughed and we ran with it. But it wasn't ever part of the plan.

Brian Lam

@shifuimam: Moaning like a bunch of sissy's indeed. People need to move beyond their damn fucken egos and just let it go.

RollingKeg

It's not a blip on the radar. Now thousands of small-minded idiots know how to screw with the tech that those of us in the exposition and event business use on a day to day basis.

To those of you who don't work in the event business, when the video goes out (how long is irrelevant) during the keynote speech given by the president of an organization that is paying a million dollars for their show, it not a big deal, it's a huge deal. Our clients demand perfection and when they don't get it, they demand huge discounts. They hold their business over our heads and are always looking for a way to get more for their money. It's an endless game but that's the way the business works.

Event production is cutthroat and the clients are always looking for a better deal. A screwup like this IR hack can cause is ALL it would take to push a client to hire another company.

To most of the world this is a non-event. For those of us who plan and produce A/V for tradeshows and events, we now have one more mode of failure that we have guard against, and we already have enough failure modes to worry about. For those who disagree, I suggest you walk a mile first, and learn something before flaming us for trying to state our case that this prank will have lasting repercussions.

av8thor

@av8thor: Yes, because nobody ever heard of the TV-B-Gone before Giz did their prank. Nobody would ever figure out to point the TV-B-Gone at a bank of TVs and push the button.

If the presentation business is so horrible and cutthroat, and a prank like this could cost millions, then why did you not safeguard against this before? A roll of electrical tape is 99 cents. That seems like much less than these ephemeral "millions" that seem to pop up with absolutely no backing evidence whatsoever whenever somebody discusses messing around with a big corporation.

It's still a non-event, just those of you who plan and produce A/V for tradeshows and events are still throwing tantrums about it because it showed a way that you screwed up.

HeartBurnKid

you're all a bunch of Nazis.

inno

@Brian Lam: Oh, I see. I'm sorry, I really took that last post too far. In truth, I really enjoy this blog. For some reason that stunt just left me feeling so violated, because it was so out of sync with what I had come to expect from Gizmodo. I apologize once again, I shouldn't have tried to insult you, and I respect you for owning up to it.

vicsells

You have to improvise your technology and not whine in a lil corner because of a lil prank. I blame the industry for not taking a proactive step against devices like TV B GONE.

Dont worry dude. We'll fight the man for ya if you need us. I show the video to everyone. Its hilarious.

knappoleon

@HeartBurnKid: It is lovely to see yet another person throw their $0.02 in, especially when they ignore all but the latest postings in the thread. The point has already been raised about the tape, but I'll condense and repeat the responses just for you:

a)In many cases, the position displays are placed in to be visable to an audience usually means they are inacessible, and the IR port is the only way to control them. Covering the IR ports is a highly uncommon practice.
b)At a tradeshow like CES, techs shouldn't have to anticipate that people with PRESS CREDENTIALS are suddenly going to act like spoilt kids with a new toy.

Not a tech screw-up at all.

nimblesquirrel

CES Display Booth = $1,000,000.00
Roll of Electrical tape = $0.99
Turning off monitor during presentation = Priceless

KodyRoss

@Dustbutt
Just so you know this was not just a one time 15 second event for the Motorola booth. It was losing a total of 4 monitors at different times several times within a 10 minute timeframe. We had the front stageright monitor go down. Then we got that back up and then lost the telerompter monitor at the back of the room as well as the monitor next to it 4 times over the course of the presentation as well as losing the stageright monitor again and then lost the stageleft monitor.

So you tell me that you would not be extremely pissed off if you were the client or the producer calling the show or the techs trying to figure what the hell is happing to your show and why the stage manager is having a primal meltdown thinking that they have the most incompetent tech in the world on their press event.

That is what happened. I was there and received the backlash of this so called prank.

Snappy

ElSnapitan

@heatburnkid
Listen I have been doing this for 10 years in Vegas and have made a very good living doing it. I have done hundreds of tradeshows and I have never had ANYTHING like this happen to me personally or heard of this happening to anybody in my close nit circle of tech friends. If I had I guarantee you I would have had them covered. I can also guarantee that I will from this show forward.

Snappy

ElSnapitan

@ElSnapitan: That's not good. Elsnapitan, could you please email me so we can discuss it?

Brian Lam

Giz posters have been banned though, including NAAFB (Not an apple fanboy)

GhostofNAAFB

Yeah av8thor why don't you offer asshole insurance to your customers? Why would you assume that an event specifically designed to help you do your job to the best of your ability would be a place you could let your guard down from idiots who just want to make a splash in the news? Don't you know that assholedom has become something not only to watch but to praise? E3 knew it.

What this really means to me is that the days of catering to tech advances is so over that companies have to pull stuff like this to scream "look at me! look at me! remember you love tech stuff! don't you remember? hello? anyone???"

don't bother replying... I'm not returning to this thread.

savium

Been lurking for a long time
@DUSTYBUTT A stretch of a comparison and I will beat it to death.
"How many times have you watched TV and gotten dead air for a full 30 seconds?"
30 seconds of darkness is extremely rare. Especially for a larger network. I work for a top 4 network and whenever there is any drop in any programming *everyone* in the company hears about it. 30 seconds of darkness on a major network at critical time and it makes the trades. If it was intentional and the risk was not mitigated (in a FMEA) there are bigger issues.
"Do you think someone gets fired for that?"
Depending on the above statement - Fired - Possibly. Cripple their career - Yes. Loss of confidence to execute - Yes.
"That's MILLIONS of people potentially changing channels yet it happens daily on most networks"
Never daily and not most networks. Viewers change the channel for much less. Our network has the ability to monitor ratings to the second and know what the impact is for programming, promos, and commericals.

Don't think this prank was up there with the impact but I respect Brian's mea culpa.

sdillon1

@ImTheKing:
Pfftt. I think it's more likely Lam is just covering his ass.

edwardh

Sorry, I didn't think the stunt was all that funny. Mind you, I didn't think it was all that big of a deal either. It was a *tiny* prank in the grand scheme of things - move on...

Daspoo

I just dont understand where anyone is coming from with the moto guy. Not only did he recover flawlessly, but Moto got more attention this ces than they should've in my opinion.. a phone that has a touch screen that creates dedicated buttons is their big release, come onnnnnn.

I would, however, like to point out that the article on the tv-b-gone you said, and I quote it is used "to power off televisions whenever the user feels like being a dick." and I think thats one of the nicer things stated in the article.. just thought it was funny

Zacharyd