Suspitious Devices Found In Boston, MA

Both Turner broadcasting the City of Boston, and the national media should be ashamed of themselves. Turner inc. TBS for not notifying the cities after putting these devices out, the city of Boston for becoming paranoid over such devices and the national news media for making a mountain out of a mole hill.

The two men arrested should obviously of apologized opposed to being smart ass's to the media also. I would of if I were in their situation.
 
When I first heard about the story, I, too, thought, "What were those guys thinking?" (The "guys" being the guerilla marketers.)

Then I saw a picture of the device and I thought, "What were those guys thinking?" (The "guys" being the authorities.)

I mean, if there was any device that was obviously not a bomb, it was that one. I've been in Grand Central Station when someone actually claimed to have a bomb and it caused less hysteria than the Lite Brites.
 
When I first heard about the story, I, too, thought, "What were those guys thinking?" (The "guys" being the guerilla marketers.)

Then I saw a picture of the device and I thought, "What were those guys thinking?" (The "guys" being the authorities.)

I mean, if there was any device that was obviously not a bomb, it was that one. I've been in Grand Central Station when someone actually claimed to have a bomb and it caused less hysteria than the Lite Brites.


It looks like..It looks like....Oh my God....A magnetic LED sign!!!
 
And yet, "they [the magnetic devices] have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia." No other city felt the need to have the police bomb squad blow up one of the devices; notice that the devices had wires, batteries, and a ciruit board; and conclude that because bombs had wires, batteries, and circuit boards, these devices should be considered improvised explosive devices.

Yikes, I must have missed that paragraph. I stand corrected.

But in any case, it made a heck of a good anti-terrorist drill. :D
 
My question is, why would a terrorist make a bomb that lights up at night, and looks like an Atari 2600 character?
 
The local officals were panicy and not thinking. Now, they're embarassed and pressing charges. Can't fight city hall.
 
The local officals were panicy and not thinking. Now, they're embarassed and pressing charges.
That implies that being embarassed and pressing charges means they are no longer panicky and not thinking.
 
The mayor of Boston is an ass, and may actually be stoopid. But then the War on Terror apparently necessitates taking people who have committed no crime, and because other people are hysterical ninnies, throwing the book at them. The mayor has to justify why his city ground to a halt and huge costs were incurred for no good reason whatsoever. This is not a good start.

Accepting that I consider placing any device large enough to do functional damage in any type of area where that might matter to be criminal (or more precisely should be), what gives the rectum breathers the right to advertise anything in areas not paid for and recognized as for ads? Oddly, my major reason for feeling that way about came from being a room with a bunch of intelligent people and an advertising dinosaur. We were discussing LEGAL non-guerilla advertising and new developments (legal and non-guerilla) that would be improvements -but which all could be avoided in some way (I have a right not to have ads forced on me). The dinosaur was getting more upset and finally - as we were discussing OLEDs and uses for them - stood up, interrupted with"What we have to do is start using our influence with the government and our representatives to get some laws passed that require people to watch our ads (rapidly degenerating into a thing about how advertising moved the economy, raised standard of living, yadda). Problem is - skipping the stupidity of giving terrorists another useful idea - they could probably get 10 to 12 cities multi-bombed before it was figured out if this silliness is allowed - by letting it pass, we are giving advertisers more time/possibility to waste our time trying to sell us stuff. (If not clear, I am not an advertising person but I know and work with some as well as indirectly training people in the art of doing it LEGALLY and appropriately). I loathe guerilla advertising that requires an unprepared and unwilling audience because it is usually pointless and indirectly costly (that means, if you are going to do this silliness save it for raves, mud races, college homecomcomings, JDCs etc where it might do some good). An irritated - or worse, frightened/inconvenienced public is likely to remember you - but that's the much less important part of the advertising.
 
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My question is, why would a terrorist make a bomb that lights up at night, and looks like an Atari 2600 character?

OK, he MIGHT, but it's highly unlikely that this is how he'd do it. Real bombs don't have little flashing lights and countdown timers as Hollywood seems to think. Geeze, whatever happened to critical thinking? If this is how it's going to be post 9/11 I'd say the terrorists are winning.
 
Bostonians overreacted big time. Now they're going to ham it up and play the blame game to draw attention away from how embarrassed and stupid they are.
If you haven't seen them yet, check out what the devices actually looked like here

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I'm admittedly not an explosives expert, but the pictures clearly show a circuit board covered with LED's that is powered by batteries at the bottom. Where exactly does the bomb fit into the picture? If you have only read the story in the newspaper, you might conjure up mental images of big, ominous looking, bomb-like boxes... but these were not so.

You can also watch a video of the "suspicious devices" being put up by the defendants: here

Does the finished product look suspicious to you? I realize its better to be safe than sorry when it comes to bomb threats, but would any reasonable person jump to the conclusion that these devices are dangerous?
I think not.
 
My question is, why would a terrorist make a bomb that lights up at night, and looks like an Atari 2600 character?
Lite Brite is a pretty scary toy. Thank God Cartoon Network didn't go through with its plans to have little meatwad cupcakes in Easybake Ovens... Boston probably would have assumed there was genocide going on. :p
 
New twist. It is possible that the marketing company knew about the panic and decided not to tell the police that they were responsible.

The Boston Globe is reporting that the two men who put up the devices claim that they were told to keep quiet about the incident.

The laughter faded late Wednesday morning when the friends saw television footage of police blowing up one of the signs and realized what was happening. The friends e-mailed links to the footage to one another. About 1:25 p.m. Berdovsky e-mailed several friends and said the advertising firm had told him to keep quiet, friends said.
 
THOSE MONSTERS! HOW DARE THEY PUT UP LIGHTED CARTOON CHARACTERS IN THIS POST 9-11 WORLD
 
Well turns out Turner bought their way out of trouble. To bad the poor hippees dont have money. Then they could buy their way out of the still standing felony charges.
 

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