The ghost in the machine

A man in Eugene, OR -- Chris van Rossmann -- discovered the hard way that his television was emitting something else besides photons... CNN has the story: bq. Flat-screen TV emits international distress signal Search and rescue operation leads to apartment bq. An Oregon man discovered earlier this month that his year-old Toshiba Corporation flat-screen TV was emitting an international distress signal picked up by a satellite, leading a search and rescue operation to his apartment in Corvallis, Oregon, 70 miles south of Portland. bq. The signal from Chris van Rossmann's TV was routed by satellite to the Air Force Rescue Center at Langley Air Base in Virginia. bq. On October 2, the 20 year-old college student was visited at his apartment in the small university town by a contingent of local police, civil air patrol and search and rescue personnel. bq. "They'd never seen signal come that strong from a home appliance," said van Rossmann. "They were quite surprised. I think we all were." Toshiba was very cool about it: bq. Van Rossmann said he was told to keep his TV off to avoid paying a $10,000 fine for "willingly broadcasting a false distress signal." bq. Toshiba contacted Rossmann and offered to provide him with a replacement set for free, he said. Probably some shielding not grounded or a miss-wire at the assembly line. I remember another story about SAR -- about 15 years ago, during a very hot summer day, some of the people working at a Boeing plant in the South Seattle area decided that deploying one of the aircraft life rafts and floating down the Green River would be a wonderful way to spend a lunch break. Unbeknown to them, the SAR locater beacon is activated when the raft is inflated and about 30 minutes after they got the raft into the water, a very large helicopter was hovering just overhead asking if they needed assistance... Needless to say, these people enjoyed short careers at Boeing. DOH!