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Manipulative DVD's: Another Reason Against CSS 90

Posted by michael from the a-gramme-in-time-saves-nine dept.
duesi writes, "According to c't 7/2000 at least one DVD contains manipulative messages. They have been sent a copy of "The march is over," about which a reader complained. He said that some scenes contained noisy pictures. The c't technicians found nothing technically incorrect. But when they filmed the DVD off the screen and checked picture after picture, they found hidden messages in some scenes. For example you see a guy drinking some wine and suddenly, just for a fraction of a second, the text "DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE" appears on the screen. There are other messages like "Respect your parents" or "No firearms at school". The best thing about the story: If you DeCSS the film, those funny messages disappear magically... To me, this seems to be like hidden censorship or even a test for mass manipulation. References: c't 7/2000 P. 42."

Neil Franklin offers a translation:

"Andrej Schutka noticed that a DVD of "The March Is Over" (country code 1 edition) was showing flickering in 3 scenes. Slow motion and single step revealed nothing in the pictures. But running at normal speed and recording it from screen with a camera and then single stepping the video showed that sublimal messages were being inserted for 3 times 2 frames:

"Don't Drink And Drive" in an restaeurant scene
(pictures of this one are given in the article)
"Respect your parents" in a father/son fight
"No Firearms In School" in a school room scene

Note that these messages are not in the picture frames themselves, as they do not display in single step, they are also not in the subtitle "subpicture" data, as switching off subtitles does not affect them. They are also nowhere else in the entre picture data extractable by DeCSS. It is therefore assumed by c't that they are stored in the CSS tracks which DeCSS does not dump to disk.

Note also that this means that displaying such secret data must be part of the DVD specification, built into every device, known to all NDA-subjected designers (how else would any device know to display them?). That is, we have here a real conspiracy (by DVD Forum? MPAA?) hidden behind the NDA secrecy intended to protecxt trade secrets from competitors. Clean case of abuse of law.

c't thinks that this feature may be the real reason that country codes exist, to pander to different countries political whims. Political Correctness at work, the customer is shitted.

This article is of course a victory for hackers, as DeCSS has just been lifted from the status of "DVD on Linux enabler" to "medium of proof for cheating" in the style of CPHack.

This case, if it gets known far enough, has all that is needed to sting every type of activist:

DeCSS supporters for its use as tool to find such stuff
anti-corporates for such scheming
anti-NDAs/anti-secrecy for the abuse to hide such schemes
anti-law-abuse in general
anti-advertising for the use of sublimal messages
anti-Political Correctness for the first message
youth rights for the 2nd message in this case
gun activists for the 3rd message in this case."
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Manipulative DVD's: Another Reason Against CSS More

Manipulative DVD's: Another Reason Against CSS

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  • For whatever it's worth, check the contents [heise.de] (translated) [altavista.com]. It does say "DVD: Videos mit versteckten Botschaften" or "Video with hidden messages".

    So apparently this isn't a /. hoax, at least. Of course it's hard to say if it's a c't hoax. Anyone have the actual physical magazine to verify what it really says?

  • heh (Score:1)

    by Mike Hicks ( 244 )
    Okay, this is an AFJ [tuxedo.org], but the idea is at least moderately interesting.. Subliminal advertising was tried long ago in movie theaters (promoting the refreshments, of course). More recently, we've seen the anti-drug poster and situation placements in popular TV shows. While it is regarded by many people as a Bad Thing, it all happens on a fairly regular basis.

    I don't think I mind the more obvious placement of items (i.e., things you can actually see for more than a single frame), but subliminal advertisement is a messy idea and should be stomped out at all costs.
    --
    Ski-U-Mah!
    Stop the MPAA [opendvd.org]
  • right - nobody has stolen those tapes yet
  • What about just changing the names, and making "Informative" into "Troll" and "Insightful" into "Flamebait", so we can have (Score: +3, Troll)?

    I mean, that's basically how it works *now*, you'd just be fixing a bug! Yeah, that's it...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    I didn't see this story at all, even in German. Couldn't they make up a correct link next time?

    Oh well, linking to German is better than mangling it, I guess.

    I did find this April Fool's joke [heise.de] on CT, though. Replacing a real estate site with a porn site, what a great idea! Or maybe they could start an "Amateurs" site with real estate agents... :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].

  • Re:Huh? (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    Don't link to something that isn't the article. At least someone posted it later...

    Pardon me? Of *course* I know what ROT-13 is. A while back, I posted about using rounds of ROT-26 for encryption... ;)

    unity% which rot13
    rot13: aliased to tr A-MN-Za-mn-z N-ZA-Mn-za-m

    You use it on USENET when you don't want to spoil a joke for someone. But all the jokes here on slashdot have been spoiled lately, so maybe we should have used it...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Mid 80's? More like mid 50's. And it might have been farther back than that.
  • "Do you think the exploding CDs story is fake too? "
    That one said that the CIA was willing to pay 3.5 million dollars for 50 thousand of them ($70 each) but not 1.5 million for 100 thousand ($15 each). Sounds perfectly plausible to me.
  • Did you think of that Morse code thing all on your own? If so, I think you must be a very frightening person. :-) I'm surprised Skinner didn't think to do that.
  • Actually, I didn't know that about one's own posts always being visible, but, as I have said elswhere, I actually browse at an excrutiating -1, and the sig is merely self-deprecating humor.
  • Give this 'dot denizen a +1, funny!
  • Okay, I'm just going to have to assume that you're a troll. If you're not, you're an idiot for not noticing that David Hyde Pierce and Kelsey Grammar both did voices for characters that were an obvious parody of their characters on Frasier, as was the "subliminal message", as you call it.
    -- Chris Dunham
    http://www.chamdex.com
  • What's a phallus?

    --

  • Now that I'm browsing at +2, I do avoid a lot of junk, but I sorta miss seeing my own posts

    Actually, your own posts are always visible, no matter what your threshold is set to. (Provided that you're logged in while reading. But then, you probably wouldn't be using thresholds, since you'd have to re-set them every time.)

    --

  • I never played with a movie but when younger some friends and I added images we made to the walls in Doom. We then hypnotized some of our group and showed them copies of each image and encouraged them to feel certain emotions such as anger and pain when we saw those symbols. Then after those of us that were hypnotized were waken we would feel that our games of Doom were much more vivid for a few days afterwards. It might be possible to semi-hypnotize people using a movie or game and feed them extra emotions or desires. As some people mentioned some good movies use short cuts here and there as well as symbolic items and whatever in the movies. It isn't quite the same thing but it is similar. I think totally hidden messages will be doubtful to effect people but mostly hidden messages work better.
  • This is quite obviously a April fools joke. If you've read the article: They want you to punch a hole into a black cardboard and watch your DVDs through it...
    This is based on the general DVD paranoia: The US / JP / EU version of DVD X has move features/is cut/has better encoding.
    Of course, maybe they've given another idea to the crazy American Censorship freaks.

    Jens
  • I instantly figured out it was a joke. "Don't drink and drive"? I mean c'mon, if their going to put hidden messages in there, wouldn't they put stuff like "Drink Pepsi" instead of nonprofitable crap like "no firearms at school". And the DeCSS bit is dead giveaway if stop to think for one second.

    But to be fair, it was a very good prank, I'm sure a lot of people bought it (I almost did). Much funnier than the crap^H^H^H^H stuff slashdot did.

  • After last year's excrucuatingly tedious April Fool's day, you would think the guys at Slashdot would have learned a little moderation, but apparently not. I guess skipping over all these infantile pranks for one day isn't too much payment for 364 days a year of interesting material.
  • I remember using computers, uh, 'blessed' with there software. They have some of the uh, 'best' programmers in the world. I think all computer security should be done by fool proof corporation, think about how much more secure everything would be!

  • Hah (Score:1)

    by delmoi ( 26744 )
    You had me going for a second, if I hadn't been online at 3am or so last night to see the first of the April Fools post, I might have baught it :P
  • I followed some of the links in the article, and it turns out this is actually an implementation of RFC 1907, TELNET SUBLIMINAL-MESSAGE Option [faqs.org]

    They didn't explicitly state it in the article, but having done research into telnet to write my own I/O driver I came across that option, and I couldn't figure out how to get it to work, so I just sent back Telnet WON'T and telnet DON'T. The system works by sending byte 255 'TELNET-IAC' (interpret as command) and then a 257 (subliminal message option). And then subliminal message code.

    If this is the case, that means the CCA/MPAA has code the first full implementation of telnet, perhaps some prodigious hacker can reverse engineer there code again to find out how they did it. Everyone has been complaining about 'out of range data' (whatever that's supposed to mean). But I felt deep down that it was BS, I mean, why would they put it in the spec if no one knew how to use it?
  • Hmm. No. There was another article in the same edition of the magazine. It talked about a readers CD-ROM which exploded in the drive. They spend a whole page speculating about the possible cause, and mention that some manufacturers stopped at x40 speed.

    The stuff you're talking about was hilarious, tough. I think it was in the last quickies here on /.

  • if i remember correctly from the psychology class i recently took, these images don't really have that much affect on you at all. Some tests were done a long time ago (i don't have any hard information, sorry) where movie theatres put one to two frame animations of "drink coke" and "eat popcorn". these coke animations had no affect on the consumers at all, and i'm doubting the ones you're referring to do much either.

    the kind of subliminal advertising that does work (which we studied in depth) was in more still-ads, where the consumer was able to look at a picture for a more extended period of time. the sublimality came from 'pictures' in the background, or other shapes in the advertisement that trigger subconscious effects.

    tyler
  • David Fincher didn't add those subliminals, Tyler did. He worked as a projectionist, remember?

    Now why does my soup taste funny?
    --
  • Somebody should go hack the CVS and put that in, so when Taco updates his Slash we'll all get lotsa karma

    No you wont, you all manage about ninteenth post or summit.
  • First I thought it's a hoax, but their story about CDs exploding in the player seems to be another one.

    They "even" provide an email ( DVD-Video@ct.heise.de ) for you, if you have DVDs with those messages....

    They also have a solution for easier detection....
    just put something big/black min. DIN A3 with white point on it beside your TV and concentrate!

    Really funny stuff....

    Yours
    Michael
  • This story suggests that someone put "hidden" frames in an MPEG2 stream. Yeah, right. The basis for MPEG1/2 encoding is to use information from earlier (and later) frames to achieve temporal compression. Unless you dedicate two "I" frames to each "blip", you are simply not going to have a usable sequence. This is in addition to the normal I-B-P sequence, of course.

    Then again, two seconds after thinking about this, it was obvious that this was another April fool's joke. Ok, we saw the stupid Internet cleanup story just like every year. You had your cheap laugh. Just because nobody laughed does not mean you need to keep trying. It is not funny.

    SO ENOUGH WITH THIS APRIL FOOL'S SHIT ALREADY! Can you hear me, or do I need to turn it up? (Now turning middle finger from down to upraised position).

  • Theres no chance of fooling anyone at this point with there record for the day. It looks like Slashdot wants to be theonion for a day.

  • checking out the Battelfield Earth page, I stumbled over this truly cool typo:

    Because the pubic safety is at risk Factnet demands Warner come forward immediately and publicly answer all the above allegations!

    Oh no, my pubic safety is at risk, somebody do something NOW !!!! :-)

    Roland

    PS: If there's anything to these allegatins, this is serious. Scientology should not have church status (as in Germany)anyway! Psychos.

  • *shrug*

    I was always under the impression that subliminal messages were shown ineffectual in studies, and thoroughly discredited.

    See, say

    a Skeptical Inqurirer article [csicop.org], with references.
  • Greetings, I work for the MPAA satan. I'd like to explain our reasoning bullshit behind placing these helpful mind-control messages lies inside our movies advertisements.

    You see, we belive that the citizens of the world suckers need all the help they can get to battle the evil subversions free-speech, free-thought of todays society. This is just our way of lending a helping hand. I'm sorry if the lies truth being reported about us have caused any confustion enlightenment.

    PS: Good News! The price of chocolate just went down.

  • You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.

    Love,
    C

    PS: Hey lookie--my .sig almost makes sense for once!

  • i'm sick of not knowing what the hell is true and what's not. I hate being an april fool. I go nap now.

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
  • DeCSS supporters for its use as tool to find such stuff anti-corporates for such scheming anti-NDAs/anti-secrecy for the abuse to hide such schemes anti-law-abuse in general anti-advertising for the use of sublimal messages anti-Political Correctness for the first message youth rights for the 2nd message in this case gun activists for the 3rd message in this case.

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
  • fuck?
    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
  • No. The viewing threshold is probably somewhere between 75 and 100Hz AFAIK.
  • The fallacy with all these subliminal messages claims is that the framerates of ordinary film and video are not high enough to produce the claimed effect. Even a single frame replacement in 24 or 30 per second would be obvious to a normal observer.

  • Come on, I read the article, too, and at the point where they start talking about a secret plot for mass manipulation, the story was clear.

    BTW, what was the guy's name again? Andrej Schutka? Well, Schutka is Russian for joke.

    Oh, and the broken CD is probably a April Fool's, too. I remember one article, where they wrote that a new virus would use the soundcard to cause vibrations on the hard disk heads, thus giving you a nice head crash. I fell for this one and was scared

  • I think they just said they were done with the weird translations for the day. I have to admit, despite my better judgement, I fell for this one for a second.
  • When browsing the C'T site, my eye fell on the following: http://www.heise.de/ct/inhalt.shtml [heise.de]. A page with the contents of the next C'T. It includes the line:
    DVD:Videos mit versteckten Botschaften
    Translation: Video's with hidden images. This looks very, very real to me. I haven't seen this issue in the stores yet, and I now honestly think that this article will show up in that issue. From the site search:

    2. Gerald Himmelein, Jürgen Schmidt: (ju)
    Subtile Subtitel
    Versteckte Botschaften auf DVDs
    Report, Subliminale
    Botschaften auf DVDs, DVD, DeCSS, Subliminale Werbung
    c't 7/00, Seite 42
    So, are there still people who think this is just a hoax??

  • To remove prank postings.
    Not that I mind. A little levity once a year won't kill me. I think.
    Still, If you can filter out Katz, you ought to be able to filter out this nonsense. Maybe custom filters.
    OTOH filtering itself kind of breaks the "community" up.
  • Yes, I noticed that too!!

    For even more amazing news read:

    http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-01.04.00-00 0/

    (german) Cheers, Peter

  • Hell, I don't know if the story is an April Fool's joke or not, but it wouldn't be the first time something like this had been done. I seem to remember there being messages in movies long ago that sent people streaming to the concession stands for goodies. When I flip through my old Playboys I can even find hidden messages and such in advertisements. Anyway, I thought that there was legislation passed preventing this sort of message insertion. Anybody have any idea on the legal aspects of this?
  • I honestly thought this sort of thing was banned in the mid eighties after cineams started showing cans of Pepsi and the like to get people to buy more. Also, does anyone know if there are any long term after affects of subliminal messages?
  • Ah well. This one would be soo nice if it were true.

    Perhaps if I just wish hard enough... "Auntie em.." No that's wrong.

    Ah, yes. "I believe, I believe, it's silly but I believe." Now do we get to toast MPAA's ass!?!?


    TangoChaz

    "It's not enough to be on the right track -- you have to be moving faster than the train." -- Rod Davis, Editor of Seahorse Mag.
  • Yes, of course don't work.
    I must stop now, because have the desire to
    send all my money to slashdot.
    What happens to me?
  • Haha, good joke! I really liked it. However, you all should be aware that the message-interleaved-with-movie thing was done in turn of the century movies. Why? Profits. Imagine someone sitting in a movie theater, watching a movie. Every so often, a frame would display a picture of popcorn and other treats. Before long, the viewer would experience a subconscious craving for popcorn, to which he would respond by buying some. Now *that's* marketing! Cheers!
  • Of course this is another April Fools joke. Especially the bit about DeCSS'd rips not displaying the images. This would imply that DeCSS uses a different algorithm to decode the image stream. Yeah, right.

    It's very amusing none the less. Especially as this is slashdot and most people don't know what they're talking about. I'd bet good money that many people will 'hear about this' and spread it along as truth. I wouldn't be surprised if some non-techie started telling me about subliminal messages in DVDs in a few weeks time.

    On the other hand...

    *maybe* this is part of the Moral-Right conspiracy. It starts off as a joke and in a few months time no-one will believe that DVDs have subliminal messages.. because we all *know* that that was part of an April Fools Joke. Right?

    pass the crack pipe, please..
  • yeah, i'm a little slow

    wow, replied to by the legendary ubertroll. i worship you. this is indeed a great honour.
  • According to a security expert from NSA who goes by an internet handler Analyzer the slashdot.org site's HTML pages contain manipulative messages ingeniously disguised as embedded JavaScript code. Mr. Analyzer Many believe that the messages are created by a viral binary file implanted into one of the server side components that is responsible for HTML processing and that the mastermind behind this staggering attempt to infiltrate the volatile minds of slashdot readers in order to demolish the delicate balance of their virtually community of dedicated open source allies. They say that the file in question bears was implanted by one of the long trusted of the most active authors of the site. Let us not throw accusations and let us not fall into conclusions, so we will not name the provocateur although he might be familiar to a great many of you and the first letter in his name is 'H' and the last one is 's'. So who is he, this disguised individual, is he the mastermind who likes getting hot grits poured into his pants by a juvenile goddess N. P.? Or maybe he is simply a pamphleteer of the unknown culture of tribe of underground creatures that call themselves T-R in the name of their great and powerful god Oll.
    So let us look up bravely in the name of all that is good and logical and let us say once and for all, one time-forever, no more! No More! We shall never surrender mister Hemos. We will continue viewing the site so many of us love and cherish. Slahdot.org will stand up to all that is subliminal and repetitive, disguised and encoded, closed source and ipo'ed.
    Our Freedom can not be taken from us, not by you not by anyone! No Pasaran!
  • Actually there could be some truth to this. I mean just take at Walt Disney's the little Mermaid , there are all kinds of hidden and subliminal messages. In fact, there is even a phallus on the front cover of the video! Take a good look at the left side of the cover in the castle part and you'll find it.


    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
    www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
  • Actually it is possible to encode extra frames in but it would require the insertion before the post-processing where the data is compressed into the MPEG2 format. My question is how exactly they would extract the hidden message back out of the data once it is compressed. It would be virtually impossible. I guess someone could figure out an algorithm for this but I doubt that it has been done yet.


    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
    www.npsis.com [npsis.com]

  • I *was* going to fin dsomething to moderate up.

    Now, I'll wait until there is some vestige of reality in the "News" story before waiting a while, as usual to let some people have a real think before posting.

    Besides, "News" here can usually be checked for veracity by the sheer number of people pointing out how the same was written up / editorialised / discussed / fully exposed SOMEWHERE ELSE 3,4,5 days or months ago depending on how clued in they are

    Hrumph, now everyone's going to post some really deserving comments and they'll just languish at 1 or AC 'cos I cant mod now

  • Slashdot Poll!

    When do you want this litany of Fool "stories" to end?

    [ ] Midnight EST

    [ ] Midnight PST

    [ ] Midnight BST (British Summer Time)

    [ ] Never (I'm gonna Troll all night . . )

    [ ] As the editor's decapitated heads fall softly to the ground, in the narrative of this outraged last ditch post I'm writing to *BEG* for some Real News

  • I see the label every celebrity who doesn't believe in jesus a cultmember and every movie they star in a recruitment attempt by this cult wackos are out again.

    ---

    "What is that sound its making?"
  • If you look near the upper left corner of the top page, it says "The onion will return on April 5th." Sometimes they take a week off, and thats where they tell you.

    ---

    "What is that sound its making?"
  • PAL and NTSC both use two interleaved fields. I'm sure these refresh (VSYNC) at 50Hz (PAL) or 60Hz (NTSC). This means it SHOULD be possible to insert an image for half a frame which would be below your viewing threshold.
  • It can happen... if you're modded, say to 5, and then someone mods your comment as troll, it will show (Score: 4, Troll).

    Happened to me earlier today... I was so proud to be such a high ranking troll. *sniffle*

    love,
    br4dh4x0r
  • Me too, and I'm still trying to figure out whether the cigarette burns in Fight Club were part of the movie. I must say I left the theatre in a disturbed state.
  • You assume that slashdot readers are normal!

  • For starters, I'm not a regular c't reader, but I stumbled across this page [prostudio.com] a week ago which seems to be by the people researching/designing the exploding CD. I could be incorrect, and this could be completely unrelated to the c't article, but these people talked about selling to the US, so it's either the same people or a striking coincidence.

    A snippet:

    For the past two years, deep in the heart of Switzerland, a small team of engineers and chemists have been working on the development and fine tuning of the ultimate CD destruction device.

    I make no judgements on the truthfulness of the originally-mentioned article.

  • Dear anonymous coward, I am actually bored enuff to answer this rhetorical question (tho Troll I suspect you be!):
    >What is the point to this hot grits
    >crap? Please give me some answers.
    >Am I the only one that gets anoyed
    >over this stuff?

    There are two races on the earth. Human and Troll. Trolls are young. As they grow up they "experience a freakish metamorphis" and mutate into Humans. This is known as the breeding phase. Usually it stops after sufficient Trolls have been produced.

    // slashdot is a cigarrette break for nonsmokers
  • Help! I'm having trouble with my Computer! I put $100.00 in the money slot of my PC to send /. money, and now my computer isn't working right! I didn't get a receipt from /. either! Please help ;-)
  • This, for strange reasons, reminds me of a story I was reminded about in my politics lecture a few weeks ago.

    We (New Zealand) had this Prime Minister called Robert Muldoon. A strange guy, but he had quite a spine at times. He was a bit before my time too, he was around in the late 70's early 80's.

    Anyway. The Prime Minsiter's (PM's) office used to get a telephone call every few days from a man saying the SIS (Our version of the CIA but with the ability to screw with/monitor local and international affairs) was interferring with his brain from their satellites in space (NZ doesn't have any spy satellites.... Can't afford them, don't want 'em). Anyway, this man would usually talk to the PM's secretary and she'd say stuff like "No no.. We don't have any satellites.. The SIS isn't monitoring you.. Why would we mess with your brain waves? That would be bad.. etc etc etc".

    But one day, while she was on the phone (These calls could last over 20 minutes) the PM shouts through the door that he needs to speak to her and she says "Just a minute, I'm on the phone". He asks who it is and she quickly explains who it is on the phone and what he wants. The PM asks her to put the loon through to him, and she does.

    The loon never rang back.

    Interested, the secratary asked later what he had done.

    "It was simple, I listened to what he had to say. Then I suggested he get a bowler hat (Round thing) and line it with tin-foil and wear it on his head".

    Apparently this story is in her book, which I have not read.

  • It reads:
    sendmoneyto_xeno_

    or

    Send money to _xeno_.

    Too bad I don't include my e-mail address :)
  • I made a similar point elsewhere in this thread, but I used something off www.urbanlegends.com. This article, in comparison, is AWESOME.
  • As far as I know, it is illegal to to this... In movie theaters and on broadcast TV. I know that the practice was stopped in the 50s... but, of course, there were no videotapes in the fifties.

    Josh Sisk
  • Slashdot must use subliminal messages because 2 months ago (before I found slashdot) I never read any news on the net. 2 months later I religously read 3 news sites and passivly read about 10 others and the refresh button on my browser is wearing out!

    Food for thought: Imagine subliminal messages were shot at you via morse code your entire life and then one day you actually learned morse code. What do you think would happen?
    ------
    www.chowda.net [chowda.net] -- Student seeking summer intership. Chea... inexpensive programmer!
    ------
  • I think I thought of it myself, but who's to say really? All these subliminal messages floating around I'm not sure I ever actually "think".
    ------
    www.chowda.net [chowda.net] -- Student seeking summer intership. Chea... inexpensive programmer!
    ------
  • If that was the subliminal message I guess I'd be here less.... I think the implementation language is not an issue really... although I think I have seen Java flash "Don't hate me because I'm bloated" several times... might just be me though...

    ------
    www.chowda.net [chowda.net] -- Student seeking summer intership. Chea... inexpensive programmer!
    ------
  • uhh...before asking about a word's meaning, check out www.dictionary.com -- I mean, I'm still a complete fool but at least I'm not asking totally stupid questions.

    as for phallus, take your pants off...I imagine you'll see some sort of vestigal organ there.

    if not, then you'll see a gap for where this vestigal organ is to be inserted.
  • it is only on the original cover (wich I have btw). They made a second cover after people started to complain, and I think the issued some kinda recall or something...now the videos are going on e-bay for about $20-40 --I am the Monkey Messiah-- --ookiscoming.cjb.net--
  • I can't think of anybody at all [min.net] who would sink so low as to use subliminal messages to get their point across.

    It's just silly [min.net]. Very, very silly [min.net].

    And that's my final answer.

  • This is really pretty simple. You have some text file somewhere on the disc that says something to the effect of

    At time index 1:21:34:12 insert message "Taco sucks"

    and the player overlays it on the picture automatically.
  • It's a pity they didn't thing to include a subliminal "don't reverse engineer the encryption" message.
  • And you know what the worst part about Fight Club was? I now notice the "cigarette burns" for reel changes. Damn you Fincher! :)

    Pope
  • In order to fully capture this data, you need a DVD player with a disgronification circuit in the video path. This will also allow you to hear the backwards Satanic messages found on Slim Whitman records.


    For those of you who don't get this joke, this is a reference to a very similar joke pulled by Rush Limbaugh, back before he sold out and became just a shill for the extreme right.

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  • Who in their right mind would (MODERATE ME UP) think about inserting (SEND ME MONEY) messages into peoples (BUY ME A SPORTSCAR) DVD's?

    This sort of mindgame (RESPECT SLASHDOT) is disgraceful. Is there any proof (JOIN AOL) that this sort of messaging (EAT BURGERS) works?
  • Submliminal messages may be illegal, but no evidence has ever been brought to show that they're even slightly effective. The laugh is on the advertisers, in this case.

    see this url for a list of cited studies: http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/subliminal.ad vertising/subliminal_messages_sources.ht ml

  • ...more about those who tell them.

    I'm sorry if this is offtopic - I just can't help it, and it's pretty interesting, too.

    Here in Denmark the newspaper Berlingske Tidende [berlingske.dk] brought an april's fool joke in the form of a breaking-news story: The main point of the article was that, for the last two years the U.S. have been monitoring the television habits of the Danes (As you may be aware the European privacy legislation is much stricter than the American, and here we're always overly freightened by everything American, especially Echelon).

    According to the article the Americans have been registering people who have been watching hardcore porn on TV excessively. The information gathered will now, the article says, be used to limit access to the States for those people. In other words, if you're a Dane watching too much pornography it's not likely you'll be eligible to be a tourist in America.

    What does this tell us?

    1: That, compared to Americans, Europeans have minority complexes and second thoughts about the technological future. This I believe is the reason why everything is only now taking off here.

    2: That april's fool jokes can be bad for your TV habits.

    3: That there's a reason why Babelfish doesn't support translation from Danish to English and vice versa.

  • Shameless! (Score:3)

    by Mr. Neutron ( 3115 ) on Saturday April 01, 2000 @09:57AM (#1157375) Homepage Journal
    Why, how could anyone even think about such a shameful tactic as using subliminal messages redhatsux. I mean, a product or sevice should stand on its own merit useslackware. I think this is a telling sign of how evil the movie industry is colorlsrulz.

    --Pat Volkerding.

    --

  • The sad thing about this joke... (Score:3)

    by Pliny ( 12671 ) on Saturday April 01, 2000 @10:43AM (#1157376) Homepage
    Is that there is a problem right now with subliminal messaging in a movie. Not being covered by anybody either...

    Battlefield Earth Allegations [factnet.org]

  • Open Group tried that when making X11R6.4 non-free (Score:3)

    by divec ( 48748 ) on Saturday April 01, 2000 @10:58AM (#1157377) Homepage
    Good Idea: If I ever need to do something evil [spy on users, etc.], announce it on Apr. 1st. No-one will believe me and I can get away free!

    Good idea, but too late - the Open Group tried this in 1998, when announcing that X11 would be non-free in future (see here [slashdot.org] for the slashdot article).

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday April 01, 2000 @09:45AM (#1157378)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • TGFBabelfish (Score:3)

    by G27 Radio ( 78394 ) on Saturday April 01, 2000 @09:48AM (#1157379)
    Well, I guess we're not done with Babelfish for the day yet. And yeah, this has got to be another April Fools day joke. One would think that if the CSS designers were talented enough to be able to encode secret messages within their encryption algorithm they'd also be able to make their encryption secure...

    numb

  • This is not the only DVD! (Score:4)

    by bcilfone ( 144175 ) on Saturday April 01, 2000 @10:50AM (#1157380) Homepage
    I've seen this and it is absolutely true! Just the other day, I rented Stigmata on DVD, and while I was watching it, I noticed that there were a couple of scenes with some visual artifacts in them, so I tried to do a slow motion and zoom to see what was going on.

    Well, the player was right at the scene where the girl is telling the priest how she doesn't believe in God. I was stepping through it, and as soon as she finished saying "God", there was one blank frame, immediately followed by a black frame with blood red lettering that read "There is only one true God". When I stepped to the next frame, my DVD player starting spinning uncontrolably and smoke began to pour from my television.

    Immediately after, the power went out in my apartment and the two square miles around me. As lightning repeatedly struck my DVD player, an angel appeared in my living room to bring me a message from God. She told me that by using DeCSS, I was stealing money from the righteous MPAA and I should never use linux again because so many poor folks paid for their MCSE and that linux damages the ability of the marketplace to innovate.

    I have never seen anything like it. The weirdest thing though was that when I DeCSSed it, no angels appeared!

    I think the obvious solution is that no one ever attempts to break CSS again, because that's how God wants it.

  • Near-subliminality has a place in art (Score:4)

    by 22984 ( 149499 ) on Saturday April 01, 2000 @10:09AM (#1157381) Homepage

    This an April fools joke, I assume?

    Anyway, anyone who saw Fight Club might have noticed that director David Fincher put in several such near-subliminal images.

    Several-frame apparitions of Brad Pitt's character
    (this is just noticeable enough, and makes a lot of sense near the end of the film)

    When Edward Norton's character is frantically trying to tune out something to the effect of "burning" and "flesh", the exact dictionary defintions appear on screen for approx. 2 frames each.

    And, at the very end, just as Brad Pitt's character did with children's films in Fight Club, a frame of pornography is shown for a fraction of a second.

    I missed some of the subliminal images the first time around, and apparently some have studied crowd reaction during these moments. Almost exactly as Pitt's and Norton's characters show when they splice in subliminal images, there is a strange aura of confusion regarding that scene.

    This ends up serving the director's purpose masterfully, but there is an issue. Some people may be afraid of being "influenced" aside from their own will. This is valid, so we must see if 'near-subliminality' is subliminal enough.

    But, when using IMAGES, one isn't trying to send a hidden message, but to create and enhance the mood of the film. Which is something we go to movies expecting to see, right?

    Final food for thought: From the people I've spoken too, the one's that missed the images tended to dislike it, and have a significantly slimmer understanding of the film.

  • Besides, subliminal messages don't work (Score:5)

    by Fastolfe ( 1470 ) on Saturday April 01, 2000 @01:19PM (#1157382)
    Besides, everyone knows (or I'd have thought) subliminal messages don't really work. There was a story last fall about how it was just a hoax to get funding out of the government.

  • ROFLMAO (Score:5)

    by fReNeTiK ( 31070 ) on Saturday April 01, 2000 @10:09AM (#1157383)
    Whahaha, I can't believe you fell for it, duesi.

    Well actually, I can. At first I believed the story and spend a whole hour transcribing it into a submittable feature for slashdot. It was going to be my great day. A story by me on slashdot.

    Then I recalled that this was the april's issue of c't, and that they had a truly excellent track record of april 1 pranks.

    Last year, they distributed a small FTP client for windows, which they claimed used the QOS field in TCP headers to accelerate file transfers by an order of magnitude. As you all know, this field actually exists, so they printed a longish article explaining how TCP/IP works, complete with extracts from the relevant RFCs, to make the prank more believable. I think they used up 4 pages for this. As late as october, they still had people mailing them to complain that the software didn't work. Hilarious.

    ...Or an older one where they presented the latest Microsoft GUI project, which supposedly featured a fully 3 dimensional desktop. A friend of mine tried to convince me for a whole evening that it wasn't fake (the screenshots where very well made).

    To any c't guys reading slashdot: You're the best!

    On a related note (and to the other c't readers around here): Do you think the exploding CDs story is fake too?

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