You also don’t know ahead of time if someone will be playing their MP3 machine so loud in a public place that you can hear the tune through the headphones. What are you going to do to stop this annoying intrusion on your quiet time? Forcibly remove the batteries and steal them?

That would be a crass, stupid, anti-social and senseless response. Especially since I’m likely to get beat up. No, I’d ask him (do women play music too loud in public?) very nicely to turn it down. (I’ve done so on an airplane, and it works). However, that’s not possible with the airport TV.

I understand CNN Headline News comes packaged with my trip to Chicago. And though I frequently agree to fly and accept the consequences, I did not make a political agreement that U.S. airports should not have private owners. Hence, non-private-owners and their annoying TV’s, are in some real but vague sense, thrust upon me. I can’t expect a choice of TV or non. But, I’m used to that sort of thing. One deals with it.

And personally, I wouldn’t use a gizmo to shut off the TV in any public space, but it seemed to me that your original argument about respecting ownership, though not logically requiring the ability of people to work differences out with the owner, hinted that the ability to dicker or make a small stink is the civilized route. Since the airport TV owner is absent, and couldn’t care less, a TV zapper is really messing with the other TV viewers. This is just childish.

I also oppose these zappers, and would not carry around an adapted Palm Pilot. The TV killing power is just too strong, and I’d wind up becoming some wiseass electronic graffitti artist.

(Just in case I didn’t pull it off well, that’s sarcasm.)

We sometimes have to put up with situations that are harmless, but that we wouldn’t choose for ourselves. Adults learn to cope with grace. It’s called character. Adolescents (of all ages) look for ways to force everybody to do what they want.

Secondly, these are going to just be exceedingly popular in school settings, where the teacher is simply trying to use video images to educate, and which already has a problem with the local idiot bringing in a universal remote. Problem is, these keyfobs are much harder to detect and confiscate than a universal remote controller. Ironically, I’m sure many of the morons proposing such “activism” are educators themselves, given the extreme degree of liberalism present within the educational profession.

Ultimately, why stop at this? Hate the laptop users in your favorite cafe? Bring a 2.4GHz wireless network jammer! Don’t want cell phones going off while you’re trying to enjoy your latte? Bring your handy cell phone jammer.

Sheesh.

About 1978 or so, I had to catch a flight out of the airport in Columbus, Ohio. At the time it was a small facility, with linoleum floors and some bare plastic institutional chairs scattered around the concourse for people who were waiting for their flights.

The only color came from murals on the walls, showing a carpeted and lively airport with large potted plants and fountains playing in the middle of the public areas. Bars and restaurants were open, and the tanned and fashionable crowd went about their business with smiles on their faces. The captions stated that this was what Columbus International would look like someday as soon as the city fathers got the money.

The flight I needed to board was cancelled due to bad weather, but I could catch another plane in Cleveland, Ohio which would take me to Chicago so I would be able to board a connecting flight and complete my journey.

The Cleveland airport was the exact image of the murals, except the crowd wasn’t as fashionable or tanned. They weren’t smiling, either.

But murals showed the Cleveland airport of the future, a bustling and high-tech facility that was low maintenance and efficient. It was going to happen just as soon as the city fathers could expand the airport.

So I boarded my flight and deplaned at O’Hare in order to continue my journey. The airport at Chicago looked exactly like the murals in Cleveland. I suppose the Chicago city fathers knew that they had the penultimate in airport design because there weren’t any murals on the wall.

James

BTW, the new terminals at the Ft. Lauderdale, FL airport are a model of what appeals to me in a public place: no TVs (or they’re well hidden in the bars), pretty tropical fish in big aquariums incorporated in nice, big, sound-deadening pillars, and a minimum of PA announcements. I think the designers tried to make the place as tranquil as possible.

1. Some people are not assertive, and prefer passive aggression to simply asking to have a TV shut off.

2. Some people are unwilling to accept that they won’t always get their own way about everything when other people are around.

Or, to put it simply, they’re immature brats. Far be it from me to declare that immaturity or brattiness are B-A-D BAD when, in the right context, they make for good comedy. There are certainly situations, involving a few good friends rather than the general public, where this device might have a good practical joke application or two.

But the fact that some believe this is a political statement says a lot more about them than it does about TV.

For the record, I don’t like TV, cancelled cable years ago, and can’t really stand most TV content when I do happen to see it. Why? Because it’s stupid. So is this “movement” and so is this device, at least as part of the “movement”.

You also don’t know ahead of time if someone will be playing their MP3 machine so loud in a public place that you can hear the tune through the headphones. What are you going to do to stop this annoying intrusion on your quiet time? Forcibly remove the batteries and steal them?

Sure, you have to go to an airport in order to board a flight. But the airport isn’t your property, and you have made a conscious decision to use air travel as a way to get around. It appears to me that you could either put up with it or find some other way to get to where you’re going.

Wouldn’t the first step be to ask the proprieter to either turn the TV off or down?

To my mind that’s really the only step you have when dealing with a TV placed in a privately owned business.

James

1) I wouldn’t touch a TV in a private establishment, since ownership and control are obvious, and you could ask to have a TV lowered or shut off.

But what about the morality of tinkering with TV’s in quasi-government-owned and operated public spaces–in particular, airport seating areas, where TV’s are loud and ubiquitous? In essence, these TVs have no local owner or gatekeeper. Am I expected to protest and lobby and petition the airport, when I may not even know ahead of time if TVs are going to be in the specific terminal/gate area I will be going to?

2) I should be able to program my palm pilot to do the same thing as the turn-off device — and more, since I can have the Palm Pilot figure out how to change channels and raise and lower volume as well.

That is exactly correct.

The problem with that is that the TV owner wouldn’t be able to control the set with their own remote. If the TV is in a high place, it could be very inconvenient for them to change channels. (or turn it off on the *request* of a patron)

I’m guessing that it won’t be too long before many public spaces have the blocked sensor window that you suggest, but it’s ridiculous that it could come to someone having to sabotage the functionality of their own TV in their own business just to be able to create the environment that they want.

I was sitting in a video conference one and the inset with our end of the line showed bright light coming from the windows with the blinds closed (the sun was heating them) and flashes from our laptops trying to set up infrared links to gossip behind our backs.

As anyone can see in my post of a few days ago, I watch far more television than I should, than any normal person does. But I don’t go to sports bars. That’s me. They can live without my business; this is a college town and on Saturday afternoons those bars are packed. I don’t see any of them going under & the guy sports enthusiasts who barkeep seem quite happy. Personally, I think that’s great and every once in a while, by chance, I spend an hour there and kind of enjoy the fact that it is so not-me.

I see this behavior a lot. People claim to be controlling things when in reality what they really want to control is people. Gun control advocates are like that.