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The Max Headroom Incident

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111–120 of 208 posts

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#111
Couple of comments:

- This is posted and discussed frequently

- This was a pretty impressive feat of engineering

- The most unusual thing is that this remained secret. Because there were a few people involved and three+ can't keep a secret. They don't even have a reason to anymore. I've often wondered whether this group of folks died shortly after this.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet effectively did not exist in 1987. Even the most tech savvy people didn’t have access. That didn’t start to change until the early 90’s. Al Gore’s contribution was actually important.

The popular, misguided jokes about Gore "inventing the Internet" come from the work he did in Congress in the 70s and 80s, and into the very early 90s, when he was one of the first politicians to embrace and push legislation for it. He was definitely influential in its adoption and proliferation, insofar as politicians are important in funding all these things, and acting as evangelists. There's a pretty good Wikiped…

> The popular, misguided jokes about Gore "inventing the Internet" come from the work he did in Congress in the 70s and 80s

I think most people got it from this interview he did with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. At least that's how I remember it. The jokes started flowing the next day. The number of people who knew of his work on internet related legislation pales in comparison to those who heard him say this on a major TV network.

"I took the initiative in creating the internet"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnFJ8cHAlco

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#113
post #48

Hey, you can't talk about Max Headroom without talking about The Art of Noise. The Art of Noise (with Max Headroom) - Paranomia (1986): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU

Since we are bringing up Max Headroom, I would like to put a word in for Blipverts. These were part of the fictional subject matter of the first Max Headroom TV Show. They were advertisements that make old people watching them explode. Bryce, the engineer behind these adverts, uses the wonderful line, "I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it." This was amazingly prescient back in the 80s given where we are now in adtech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intoxicants may have been involved. "May have" seems weak. Nothing about the second intrusion screams sobriety.

i believe there were cuts in the video so it was prerecorded. cuts that apparently were so clean it was another piece of evidence they had some access to some professional equipment as consumer grade equipment of the time wasn't up to the task

It could have been put together in one of several schools in the area from consumer grade sources.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#115

Couple of comments: - This is posted and discussed frequently - This was a pretty impressive feat of engineering - The most unusual thing is that this remained secret. Because there were a few people involved and three+ can't keep a secret. They don't even have a reason to anymore. I've often wondered whether this group of folks died shortly after this.

I admit my memory may be spotty - but was there any reason to believe this could not easily have been pulled off by 2 people - ie a married couple? Sure relationships break up but I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#116
Someone on Reddit had a lot of insider knowledge about the max headroom incident and he claimed he was 90% sure he knew who they were. Two brothers if I recall - let me try to find it.

Edit: Seems over the years he determined it was not them! Still an interesting read. https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_kno...

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#117

Haven’t heard about this before but it reminds me of a scene from the 1995 movie “Hackers”. Scene in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdha_OV5saI IMDb page for said movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ I wonder if the scene in Hackers was inspired by the real world hacks that the OP article talks about.

Hackers is still one of my favorite movies. Forgetting the Hollywood exaggerations, that is pretty much how the culture was in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. It was entirely nerdy, a little punk, there were a lot of arcades and pizza deliveries and dumpsters involved, and there were some incredibly douchey self-described villains suffering from megalomania.

The wild west hacker days were pretty amazing, and that movie portrays all of the insanity pretty well, if cheesily.

Edit: Got caught up in the nostalgia and forgot to mention that the hacking moments, however cheesy, are all based on real hacks. The TV station take over, Kevin Mitnick's social engineering, John Draper's (Captain Crunch) phone phreaking and others. Not to say that those people are the originators of those methods, just the most infamous ones at the time the movie was made.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#118

Someone on Reddit had a lot of insider knowledge about the max headroom incident and he claimed he was 90% sure he knew who they were. Two brothers if I recall - let me try to find it. Edit: Seems over the years he determined it was not them! Still an interesting read. https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_kno...

[deleted]

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#119

Couple of comments: - This is posted and discussed frequently - This was a pretty impressive feat of engineering - The most unusual thing is that this remained secret. Because there were a few people involved and three+ can't keep a secret. They don't even have a reason to anymore. I've often wondered whether this group of folks died shortly after this.

I admit my memory may be spotty - but was there any reason to believe this could not easily have been pulled off by 2 people - ie a married couple? Sure relationships break up but I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave.

> I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave.

Is that possible?

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#120
post #48

Hey, you can't talk about Max Headroom without talking about The Art of Noise. The Art of Noise (with Max Headroom) - Paranomia (1986): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU

Since we are bringing up Max Headroom, I would like to put a word in for Blipverts. These were part of the fictional subject matter of the first Max Headroom TV Show. They were advertisements that make old people watching them explode. Bryce, the engineer behind these adverts, uses the wonderful line, "I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it." This was amazingly prescient back in the 80s given where we are now in adt…

All the networks were obsessed with real-time audience metrics, which is even more prescient.
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