I used to have a remote control software for palm pilot - it wasn't one-touch, but it was fun whipping it out and changing TVs in sportsbars to PBS.

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The longer I work with technology, the more I come to the conclusion that it is often a bad idea. I want one of these almost as much as I want a Cellphone jammer. The glee I would have driving to work in the morning leaving a wake of accidents behind me as people fiddle even more with their phones trying to make them work as I drive by wiping out communication for a 150' diameter...I want I want I want. Phones on driver's heads without hands-free should be illegal and punishable by cellular rectal insertion. People with a propensity to gesture to the person they are talking to on the phone while driving in traffic should be napalmed...

my quart of bile
--J

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Handsfree doesn't help. Not surprising, but you'd think they'd have checked before they went ahead with all the laws.

That said, if God didn't want us to do things with our hands while we drove he wouldn't have given us knees.

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It's not the hands so much as the focus. The average driver has so precious little to spare. And they have too much steel and airbag around them for the Darwin assist to matter.

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HAHAHA, I came here with the intention of posting something along the lines of "I want to turn cell phones off".

Now, if I could just jam the neurological signals of the person screaming into the cell phone, that would work too.

I'm not even talking about the people on the phone in their cars. I can't hear them. I mostly care about the people screaming into their phone in public.

Cell phone jammers exist. They're legal on private property in some other countries. They're often used in theaters to prevent cell phones from disturbing everyone. I want to buy one but I have no idea who makes them.

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The gadget that I would really like is something that fires a directional EMP.

Specifically, for killing thumping stereos.

(but the tv-b-gone frob is desperately cool, and I'm going to buy one as soon as I can. thank you for posting this!)

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EMP would kill the vehicle too. But doesn't electronics-frying EMP take truly vast amounts of power? And can it even be directional?

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Good call!

And funny, too because my wife and I were discussing how cool such a beast would be just yesterday.

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There's some debate about whether EMP affects cars, because they're basically faraday cages on wheels. this page for example says:

Another "myth" that seems to have grown up with information on EMP is that nearly all cars and trucks would be "knocked out" by EMP. This seems logical, but is one of those cases where "real world" experiments contradict theoretical answers and I'm afraid this is the case with cars and EMP. According to sources working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, cars have proven to be resistant to EMP in actual tests using nuclear weapons as well as during more recent tests (with newer cars) with the US Military's EMP simulators.

However, there are also lots of links which say otherwise, and I'm not sure which ones are correct, or maybe it depends on the car and the EMP :)

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Airport lounge TVs. Ahhhh.

Don't leave home without it.

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Until your suggestion, I was thinking it would be more asshole than useful. Now it is as if the clouds have parted and the sun has shone through.

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This came out a few months ago, and sounds great too: I'm no expert, but they seem to be saying that you can calibrate it to let 'emergency' signals in and out, but block the 'social' traffic.

And the tvbegone guy is about to become a millionare. Sign me up for a dozen: everybody gets one for Christmas!

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I can't wait for the first theater that kills someone by blocking a surgeon's cell phone or pager with this stuff to get sued out of existance. Secretly I'm hoping it is one of the churches that are reportedly jamming cells.

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What they're saying is that their GSM signals near 2.4 Ghz (1.9Ghz I think?) won't go through. About half of our phones in the US operate in too close of a proximity to public safety bands to effectively jam them, and things like CDMA can adapt to a small amount of noise, so you'd have to jam a wide swath of frequencies with a lot of power to have any success. It'd be costly and risky, since when you open it that wide, you could stomp on other services, not to mention it's highly illegal here still.

And the first time it interferes with an emergency responder, you're good as sued.

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The gadget I want is a car-mounted billboard vaporizer. I'd drive down the freeway erasing all those horrible ads for greed or what have you.

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But then the Billboard Liberation Front wouldn't have a canvas to work with.

Do you really want that to happen?

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I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.

-- Ogden Nash

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For years I've been wishing for a car-mounted paint gun that I could use to tag morons who change lanes or turn without signalling. I want one for my bike, too.

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"What I really want," Altman said, "Is Life-B-Here."

if only it was as simple as the click of a button on a key fob.

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I wrote Altman and told him I wanted one, and that I'd host his site so it didn't get smashed like that heh.

Internet Archive didn't have his page up, so I'm guessing this webpage is pretty new.

I wonder who's TV I'd turn off first...

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Cool, I can use it at DNA along with the IR laser for the cameras.

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Most of the TVs at the club are too shitty to even have remote controls, so you're out of luck!

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The site's back up as of a couple of hours ago, for I think the first time. I placed an order just fine - hopefully there won't be problems filling them. But it's pretty cheap and awesome enough that I'm prepared to wait...

Specifically, it's $20, including shipping.

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So I got mine in the mail Friday. Yep, it's as great as you'd expect. Like they say, it goes through a 65-second cycle to exhaust every code, but the most I've had to wait for any TV I've tried it on is maybe eight seconds.

The only problem is it's pretty "Version 1". If you press the button twice, the behavior is kind of undefined - there's no status light. It doesn't seem to restart the sequence right away, and it doesn't turn the thing off (I checked with my digital camera). So once you get it started, you have to wait 65 seconds for a reset before you can do anything else.

Not really a big problem - it's only meant for you to take it out of your pocket occasionally and flick off a TV. But when showing it off, the wait feels kind of clunky.

Oh, and once you get the TV off, hide it again. I've found at least one television that activates off of more than one code in the sequence, therefore, if you leave it going it'll turn the thing off and then back on.

The range is quite good though - the case is kind of big, and it's packed with lithium batteries. There's still room inside to make it a good bit smaller. Version 2 is going to be pretty nice...

Their web page says they're "out of stock" and taking pre-orders. However, mine arrived as part of the second shipment, so there's definitely no big shortage.

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I can't believe this was made public and reported in the "press" (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=14553, although I think the journalist confused the 2 devices), nor can I imagine how long it will last online:

http://www.ladyada.net/make/wavebubble/

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