From /. article on Cartoon Network's CEO resigning over the Boston AdBomb Scare:
Q. Is it forseeable that pouring boiling water on a person will cause burns.
A. Yes
Q. Is it forseeable that pouring boiling water on a person will cause an earthquake in Uganda.
A. No.
Q. Is it forseeable that a lite-brite advertisement placed w/o permission will get taken down and a fine sent to the party who put it up w/o permission?
A. Yes
Q. Is it forseeable that a lite-brite advertisement placed w/o permission will cause an entire city to "duck and cover".
A. No
Geezus H. Chrystler, Boston, get your self-important head out of your ass.7 commentsLeave a comment
I think that the ad agency didn't ask prior permission from city officials because they knew such an ad campaign would be refused. I do believe, however that they should have let someone know after putting them up. Of course, I doubt they expected that anyone would think Lite Brite could be explosives and didn't think they'd need to cover their asses so much.
This whole thing is just absolutely ridiculous. I actually had one of my English friends ask me if it was a parody or something.
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Actually, as soon as reports started coming in, the advertising agency told the city what the 'devices' were and claimed culpability. The city said 'nope, couldn't be' and shut the city down anyway as a massive terror-scare.
Additionally, to my mind this is barely a step above printing flyers or cornstarch posters and sticking them to telephone poles and buildings. The response was outright ridiculous, and everyone is laughing at Boston right now. They're bulling ahead so they don't have to admit that they were completely, totally in the wrong on this matter.
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Yeah, but that was after the city had panicked about "bombs". A covert message right after planting them that said "hey, we've done this advertising campaign with this stuff, if you see them we're responsible" would probably still have gotten them a fine, but I doubt it would have turned into the large-scale bomb scare it did.
Regardless, those in charge in Boston are idiots and should be ashamed of their behavior.
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that is just not right
i wonder if litebrites are selling better now?
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I can't believe the CEO resigned over this shit.
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Hey I saw the devices, and putting them in "Shadowed areas, like bridge abutments, and builsing ledges, well that wasn't rbgith, and better safe than sorry. Remember, common sense isn't.
Scott
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...and were made nice and clear to be very obvious how they worked, and what they were. No other city but Boston freaked out at all, let alone to this level.
There's a difference between 'better safe than sorry' and 'shut down an entire city because of blinking LEDs' though. Seriously, this just tells everyone out there that less than $5 worth of parts can cripple Boston for a day by making something that's far less apparent how it works and would look far more like a bomb actually. Bondo, a D-cell, a strong magnet, and an LED rigged to blink.
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