Monday, February 2, 2009

Super Bowl Surprise

We, along with hundreds of other Comcast cable customers in Tucson, got a little something extra to go with our Super Bowl experience yesterday.
Hard-core porn.
Late in the fourth quarter, just after the dramatic pass-and-run touchdown by Larry Fitzgerald that put the Arizona Cardinals briefly ahead, someone inserted a 30-second snippet from an adult TV channel into the network feed going to Comcast customers.
It showed a man and woman. The woman undoes the man's pants, and he stands up and drops them, giving us a view of full-frontal male nudity.

And then he dances around.
I was watching the game with our daughter, Christina. Linda, my wife, was coming into the room with our 3-year-old granddaughter Cait. Christina is much quicker-thinking than I am, and at the first hint of what was coming she yelled at Linda to get Cait out of the room.
As a result, all Cait got out of the experience was a bit of confusion over why she was suddenly whisked away from everyone.
A spokeswoman for the cable company says Comcast is "mortified" about the whole thing and is thoroughly investigating the incident to find out how this happened.
You know how this goes. They will pinpoint some loophole in their system that allowed a disgruntled employee or hacker to break into the network feed. They will close the loophole, and express confidence that such a thing can never happen again.
Until it does happen again.

The problem is, our ability to tinker with our systems is constantly outpacing our ability to monitor and control our technology. From slapping a 30-second porn segment into a network feed to stealing 10 million credit card numbers, those of us who just want to watch a football game are constantly being outsmarted and victimized.
Unfortunately, we don't have any quick-witted mom to whisk us out of the room.

9 comments:

Tom Walker said...

Actually, Cait is our granddaughter, not our daughter. Sorry.

Anonymous said...

The specifics of the relationships aren't the issue, here. We need a quick witted mother to whisk us out of the rooms. Good grief. That is an astonishing thing to have happened and you are correct...what else is going on all around us!
Thank you.

Anonymous said...

That's quite a surprise. When I read the title of your blog, I thought you were really going to comment on the wonderful plays the football players made - never this! You're correct - technology is way ahead of controlling it.

Arava said...

I heard about this- hackers never cease to amaze me- Hurray for the quick witted mom!

Arava said...

I heard about this- hackers never cease to amaze me- Hurray for the quick witted mom!

Arava said...

I heard about this- hackers never cease to amaze me- Hurray for the quick witted mom!

Leslie said...

That is quite a surprise. And allow me to offer my sympathy about your Arizona Cardinals. But it was an exciting game.

Tom Walker said...

Hey, I was just happy that the Cardinals didn't get blown out -- oh, wait. That was the porn clip.

Marnie said...

It was a very exciting last quarter. The Cardinals played well but not good enough. Hurray for the Steelers!