yea yea yea. Radio waves + number of cars. duh.

Well, the tower needs to siphon all that energy to summon Gozer the Gozarian. Duh.

I once caught the crabs from a chick around there, so yeah - I believe it.


POTATO SALAD!

It's just Leona Helmsley's ghost.

agrees.

hyperspacemonkey: Well, the tower needs to siphon all that energy to summon Gozer the Gozarian. Duh.

dammit I came in here to say that.

Now the Cloverfield monster is having an effect on car transmissions? I don't care, as long as it keeps on eating all the Upper East Side Hipsters.

Crude: agrees.

That was the World Trade Center, not the ESB.

skinink: Now the Cloverfield monster is having an effect on car transmissions? I don't care, as long as it keeps on eating all the Upper East Side Hipsters.

The Cloverfield Monster has heard enough about Ron Paul and the genius of No Country for Old Men.

I was there yesterday. Saw 3 cars on tow trucks in less than 1/2 hour.

But only saw 5 all day elsewhere in the city.

/Plus my cell got a weird while I was in the Walgreens downstairs..

No match for Mephisto's Trapezoid.

Who you gonna call?

I thought they gave up doing EBS test (pops) from the ESB..

/man, that tone was annoying
//remembers CONELRAD
///slinks away

Well most keyfobs broadcast at 315mhz and that is pretty much used for government/military sort of stuff in vhf and uhf, not so much public tv and radio broadcasts

/wonders if tinfoil hatters will use that info for anything

hyperspacemonkey: Well, the tower needs to siphon all that energy to summon Gozer the Gozarian. Duh.

Excellent work!

robsul82 That was the World Trade Center, not the ESB.

911truth: Simpsons did it!

hyperspacemonkey: Well, the tower needs to siphon all that energy to summon Gozer the Gozarian. Duh.

I thought the Daleks had the Empire State, and Gozer had the West End. Well, I guess it's hard to tell with King Kong hanging around the place too. Wow, between all of this and that Cloverfield monster, why is everyone staying in New York?

/hotlinked

Here in Milwaukee, right by the WTMJ building, the key fob for my car doesn't work, unless you're about a foot away from the car. I always figured it was interference from some sort of radio waves, there's about a half dozen huge antennas all around that area.

morbo: Here in Milwaukee, right by the WTMJ building, the key fob for my car doesn't work, unless you're about a foot away from the car. I always figured it was interference from some sort of radio waves, there's about a half dozen huge antennas all around that area.


Same in San Francisco near the Sutro tower. Has a zillion antennas on it. The keyfob only will work if you touch the car with it. The keypad on the door works fine.

/I don't own a tinfoil hat

There's another automotive dead zone I know of, I can tell scores of stories from myself and friends of cars that have broken down on I-84 between exits 64 and the Mass border. All manner of breakdowns too, not just electrical.

I have one:

The entire state of North Carolina. You know you're in NC when you see your first abandoned car on the side of the road.

I WANT TO BELIEVE

skinink: Now the Cloverfield monster is having an effect on car transmissions? I don't care, as long as it keeps on eating all the Upper East Side Hipsters.

Upper?

You sure you don't mean LOWER East Side Hipsters?

Hipsters who who's parents from the mid-west can afford to have their kid live in Manhattan, live in the LES. Their less fortunate parents who pay for their friends live nearby in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Long Island City.

I used to park at a Navy lab and periodically my keychain transmitter wouldn't work at that location. Never had a problem elsewhere. Luckily I had an override in my car so I could disable the engine cutoff, but I saw several other people have to get their cars towed away from that area before they could shut off their alarms and get them to start. So yeah, I could see this Empire State Building thing being true.

hyperspacemonkey: Well, the tower needs to siphon all that energy to summon Gozer the Gozarian. Duh.

+2.27

I say it's plausible. As an avid fan of Mythbusters I would like to offer my services to confirm this myth, provided I get to work with her.

I was born on 10th Street in the East Village. I'm so hip my balls have skullets.

Since this appears to be a GhostBusters thread:
I was attempting to modify a firefox extension the other day, I ran across a link inside the code to a page about XUL (XML User Interface Language):http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul (new window)
Thought it was kinda interesting...

LemSkroob:

Your point is correct, but, your explaination of it SUCKS

medius: I have one:

The entire state of North Carolina. You know you're in NC when you see your first abandoned car on the side of the road.

Where?

/lived in NC for a long, long time.

kbarham

It seems every few miles on the highways there is a car with an orange post-it slapped on the window. I always thought the drivers had been raptured.

Though it may not be that there are more abandoned cars than in other states, just lazier tow truck drivers.

I only lived there 3 years, but I can see how they'd blend into the background after a while.

04tuna:
For those that don't have firefox or are otherwise unable to open said link, enlighten? :)

The Spousal Unit and I lived in one just outside of Albany OH while I was in Grad school at OU.

300+ acre farm. In a 225 y.o. farm house on the road with another road T intersecting.

You had to go about 2 miles in any direction to even see another house. For some reason, cars would die or crash or run out of gas or etc. within walking distance of our place.

And for some reason, the people who had car trouble couldn't get ANYBODY to come and get them. You'd be surprised at the number of times we had to haul one of them to a service station or home with their kids because they had the kids on visitation and their allotted time was running out. Christ!

We thought about getting some tee-shirts made with an old rotary phone that read: You have no friends in Meigs County. and give them away as consolation prizes.

yagottabefarkinkiddinme: I say it's plausible. As an avid fan of Mythbusters I would like to offer my services to confirm this myth, provided I get to work with her.

This thread needs more Kari.

EVERY thread needs more Kari.

maybe the gobment has sumtin there to foil radio controled detonators

Is it so damned hard for someone with a scanner to see if there's EMI leakage jamming car RFID transponders?

By the way, this led me down a side path about these allegedly "theft-proof" keying systems. Summary: not so much. (new window)

Reminds me of when all the garage door transmitters in the Las Vegas valley stopped working for a week. Link (new window) In searching for the article I found another one mentioning the same effect in Ottawa. The Canucks think its the US Army's new LMRS radio system (I know, its redundant) which operates in the 300MHz range, along with garage door openers, as was mentioned previously by pocketrubbish.

hyperspacemonkey: Well, the tower needs to siphon all that energy to summon Gozer the Gozarian. Duh.

you have the wrong tower

/this just in, cult of skaro wanted for questioning

eggrolls wins.

All that electronic remote-controlled shiat is the stupidest thing you can have on your car. That your entire vehicle can be crippled because of a jammed airwaves or a "bad chip" is just retarded. The people who invented that crap have no sense and the people who buy it have even less.

I still won't buy a car that has power windows or doorlocks. I worked on a truck that needed a new power-window motor. $200. For a used one. My car window won't roll down? $5 in lube a mallet and I'm good to go. *I* can roll my windows down with my car motor off. Can you? When I unlock the driver's door of my car, it doesn't unlock all of the doors creating an opportunity for a baddie to jump in and attack me or steal my car.

most power door locks (at least GMs) only unlock the drivers door on the first press. to unlock all doors, you must release, and press again. (sometimes annoying when passengers hear the first click and grab the handle anyways, thinking they will get in)

Yet another reason I'm delighted to drive a 45-year-old car every day. Even the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear bomb won't knock out my ignition system (should I be lucky/cursed enough to survive such).

its all the dalekanium that was in the tower.

SilentStrider: its all the dalekanium that was in the tower.

I was thinking the same thing....this, and the sudden appearance of hundreds of direly needed artificial legs has time travel written all over it.

Crude: agrees.

That's all I came to see. Glad I was not disappointed.

"All I remember about the last 3 months was giving a guest lecture at Villanova. Or maybe it was a street corner?."

On Sep 17 2007 my Suzuki GN-125 gave up the ghost after 92,100 hard city miles.

I left it dead on the roadside and walked off with a smile on my face, I sure got my money's worth out of that bike.

I bummed a ride with a friend to pick up my new motorcycle later that day, and said: "See there? That's where my bike died on me-----"

Just about then his car blew a water pump $500 worth, by the time we got to a place to refill the radiator, he had nearly lost an engine.


The following day I was driving by there in my spare bike, and it too started sputtering when it passed that place.

I am convinced that stretch of highway has a joo-joo on it or something.

There was also a 5- mile stretch of highway I drove to work every day: flat ground with no obstructions anywhere. My car would run perfectly until it got there, then it would start coughing and sputtering, and would struggle along on 3 to 5 cylinders, barely making headway, until it ceared the "hexed" stretch of roadway. It did this EVERY SINGLE DAY in exactly the same place.

I have never seen anyone who can explain this phenomenon.

Maybe it's witchcraft.

UPDATE TO PREVIOUS POST: The car was a 1969 Mercury Marquis with a 429; no computers on board, and no radar or radio transmitters anywhere nearby.

Both Spiderman and Superman hang out around there, so it's possible the buildup of kryptonite (piled there by Lex Luthor to thwart Superman) and excessive webbing (from Spiderman swinging by) might be causing problems.

Either that, or EMP's from the Batmobile's nuclear drive is shorting out the cars.

Too bad most of the FM radio signals coming off that tower are total crap. Why not just turn off the power and kill two birds with one stone?

Kari needs to post some of the stalker letters she's gotten, I', sure there are lots and I'm sure they hilarious.

Back on topic, as a former radio nerd I remember their is this weird effect that while normally getting closer to a transmitter gives you a better signal, being too close will cause some weird effect to kick in where you can't get the signal. I'm talking like 10 meters away from an FM transmitter though, not that far. If your close (but not really close) then the signal can be too strong and cause the signal to cut out due to simple overloading which can be fixed by adding an attenuator.