Seriously Needleman, enjoy yourself more. I think your just upset because you didn't think og it first. Poor sport!

[c0d3w12.com]

What? "Instead of all of us being united under the umbrella of press, some of us were arbitrarily deemed bloggers and others press."

[gizmodo.com]

@rafe: Would have helped you to spot that photographic evidence of Gizmodo's press credentials before you wrote the item, wouldn't it?

No matter what color Gizmodo's CES badges were, the site is known as a blog, is it not? Its writers are bloggers. What they did was stupid. I fact-checked that twice.

@rafe: "I fact-checked that twice."

I bet you even ran it through spell-check too; no confusing you with a blogger then!

No, the difference is that the press doesn't sabotage the presentations.

According to Gizmodo, Jason Chen or Gizmodo was given a "blogger" pass, not a press pass.

I might add that the difference between a blogger and a journalist is that a journalist has an editor who decides what to publish - to prevent things like "We sabotaged CES and here's the proof that we did it" from getting posted on the internet.

@OMG! Ponies!: @rafe: Relax. It was a joke. Just because we don't do things the way you do, I don't see why that is stupid. The site has proved its intelligence. Did you see that we got Bill Gates to cop to Vista not being so good today? The point is that if we do things the way you do them at CNet, we're CNet. If you do things the way Giz and Engadget do them, you're actually...Crave. (Which I like, and do not call stupid.) Why is this so emotionally disturbing to you both? Motorola, well that was a mistake, as my explicit orders to my video person were to not interrupt press conferences. But that is for me and Moto to sort out tomorrow.

@OMG! Ponies!: Definition of Press to ponies: Compliance with corporate america. Great.

@Brian Lam: The dumb thing was posting it on the internet. Or at least not getting someone up above to give you a go-ahead to post it on the internet.

I agree with Brian, tech people are too fucking uptight. Live a little, it was a hilarious prank. Something that would make Cacophonists proud. CES needed a little culture jamming and I'm stoked to see Giz has the balls to do it. Don't let the uptight nannybots get to you Brian.

Whatever. These lame-ass consumer electronics companies should be thanking the Gizmodo guys for stirring up some excitement around CES. Hell, I bet this is the first time most of us have even thought about Motorola in a year. Have you ever seen a lamer presentation?

These toy companies owe every bit of caché they have left to the two gadget blogs. Without Gizmodo and Engadget, Walt Mossberg would still be the only consumer tech column worth reading.

It was a childish stunt, plain and simple. I'm thinking less of you guys than I do Scoble - well done!

Seriously the most cranky wet blanket article ever.

People go to trade shows to gawk and have fun. Gizmodo was a bit childish, but come on - if these companies are really so incensed by this prank, let them pull their advertising from Gawker properties and switch to RF remotes.

Yeah. That'll happen.

@Brian Lam: "Crave. (Which I like, and do not call stupid.)"

Okay, I'll do it: Crave is stupid. Nothing personal, CNet dudes, but come ON. You know it's stupid. Readers know it's stupid. It's stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

@Brian Lam: Different is one thing, but dumb is dumb. And I didn't say the whole site is dumb, just this stunt. Please resume normal blogging. Thank you.

There's no difference between what they did and someone walking into any other event and disrupting it. Air-horn at a wedding or funeral? A culprit doesn't get to pick when an event is suitably irrelevant to the victimized party that they can do and ruin it. It might make no impact, it might cause people to lose jobs - it's not for Gizmodo to make the call if it was just a funny prank or not. The impacted party gets to make that call.

Bloggers have worked hard to try to be accepted as serious journalists - this just set back those efforts by more than a step or two.

This has to be one of the lamest flame wars I've ever seen. Whether you two are journalists or bloggers is irrelevant. You both are acting like big unproffesional babies!

You should both be ashamed and reprimanded by your respective companies. I would also believe an apology is deserved by both of you....Grow up already. This town is big enough for both of you...

Dad has spoken!

(1) Bloggers aren't media. Blogs have opinion, language, color, and style.

(2) Bloggers only want media credentials to get access to cool information, so they can blog about it.

(3) What gadget news did we get in the past week? The only thing I heard about was a large panasonic. That's not a gadget.

(4) you can't ban gizmodo. They will enter as consumers and blog.

(5) even if you ban gizmodo, consumers won't miss out because there wasn't any good gadget information during the past week.

(6) the gadget news is all Apple these days. That's coming up in the near future. That's not CES.

(7) the Gizmodo video brought more attention to these TV vendors than they would have received otherwise.

(8) what financial damage was incurred? It was a short little bit. If your tech vendor couldn't figure out how to turn the TV back on, that's a personal problem.

(9) we found out from CES that the best gadget was the TV-B-Gone remote. That's a cool gadget.

(10) Let's not forget that people read blogs and bloggers get credentials because bloggers give free advertising. It's too bad that you can't control that advertising with a boring press release.

(11) CES must not forget that their audience, the so-called consumer, blogs when he/she is not at CES.

Why shouldn't bloggers add a little entertainment to their reporting and to dull proceedings like CES.

@Brian Lam: "Did you see that we got Bill Gates to cop to Vista not being so good today?"

Oh please. It's not like you cornered and badgered an answer out of him. You interviewed him, asked him a pretty broad question, and HE VOLUNTEERED a coy little remark about Vista. That's hardly what I'd call "getting him to cop to it."

@DudeAsInCool: Because you're screwing with people's jobs here. It's one thing to pull off a stunt that has a lot of flash and bang and little more. It's another thing entirely to directly mess with someone's important presentation or the display booth they spent days setting up.

Trade shows are no fun at all. Long hours, lots of hard work, and enough idiots to make a saint pull out his hair. All for a little OT pay and some airline miles. The last thing anyone needs is some sophmoric little stunt making life harder than it already is.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go ball up and rock back-and-forth in a corner to the Trade Show Flashbacks this post brought up.

This story was probably the best entertainment/edutainment/advertainment to come out of CES this week. I had the same laugh but OMG reaction to the video. Oddly enough, I probably got one of the best feels for CES out of that one particular video.

It was unfortunate, but I hope the Gizmodo guys don't get in too much trouble for their Denial of Service attack. It was educational.

PS: Are the vendors going to secure their IR ports next year?

Unplug the Gizmodo servers right in the middle of Macworld. Then have Brian Lam come telling the world how it was such a funny "prank" to have their business down during one of their busiest times of the year.

All I have to say is:

This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the
following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and
(2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that
may cause undesired operation.

Now what would be funny is if Motorola followed Gizmodo around next year and shined a high power green laser into their cameras all day. What a hoot.

@OMG! Ponies!: you really are insane.. you know that? I THINK YOUR OPINION HAS BEEN NOTED!. hence the topping of my list of waaahmbulance drivers. If this is how you react to a prank I wonder how you react when someone actually wrongs you.. now, stop, take a deep breath, take a look in the mirror, and repeat after me: even if my opinion was as important as i think it is, people have heard me.

@Brian Lam: Brian, seriously, you don't need to listen to all this crap.. it's not that big of a deal.. honestly a lot of your fans come to your site for it's color, and style, and humor.. I know i do. And if I'm correct they banned one person right?.. but even if they banned all of gizmodo.. it wouldn't be that big of a deal.. CES is cool, but it's still a bunch of salesman pushing products.. I think you guys do a good enough job reporting straight from your favorite chair. And I guarantee 90% of the people claiming to never visit gizmodo again are full of crap. why?.. because when it comes down to it.. you give a fair, real world evaluation of our favorite gadgets, while keeping it interesting, which isn't that easy in the tech realm. Turn into another cnet.. no thank you.. please don't let the overpopulation of tight asses make you reanalyze your blogging strategy.

again.. @OMG! Ponies! [www.stfu.se]

Was the stunt funny? No. Was it immature? Yes.

That the difference between bloggers and pros.

This stunt is typical of the level of professionalism displayed at Gizmodo.

Hopefully Brian and the rest of the crew at Gizmodo have learned a lesson about acting like jackasses and biting the hand that feeds them.

Everyone has to grow up soemtime.

I almost didn't register, because the prevailing opinion here is clear. Clearly most people here have never had a corporate job in sales & marketing, and don't appreciate the gravity of what was done. That's fine. Mock me all you want. You've motivated me to do something I rarely do--write letters. To you, to Phil Torrone and Make magazine for colluding, to the CEA, and anyone else that may occur later. The best part is, I don't have to work hard to make a persuasive letter--you've done it for me. I'll post the letter to the CEA here.

-------cut------

I've worked the floor at CES as an exhibitor.

What Gizmodo did was appalling on many levels, and I now read that Brian Lam has been sanctioned (banned) from future events. I'm writing you today to argue that this is not a strong enough punishment. Gizmodo and their parent, Gawker media, need to be banned permanently from CES. Why so harsh? Because they don't believe they did anything wrong.

Even if you were to ignore the poor judgement of publishing the activities in the first place (what sensible editor would publish their employee disobeying a direct order and interfering with press events? What sensible editor would fail to fire or heavily sanction such an employee immediately?)... even cutting Gizmodo and Gawker the slack to say, "Ok. One renegade employee does not a company make, we must have a measured response".. one must consider Brian Lam's retort on valleywag (7th comment from the top: [valleywag.com])

[redacted]

See? It's a joke! Instantly turning off 40 TVs on the show floor with customers around (and from experience, no remote controls available for exhibitors to quickly rectify this) is a "joke". We pay big money to be there, to be seen, and to present a certain image.

These people are not news media. They act like petulant children and must be treated as such. I implore you to punish them more strongly.

----- cut -----

So in closing, I will encourage you to keep it up. The more you defend these actions... and the more that people who criticize these actions are lambasted as humorless, the more severe the consequences will be.

@Brian Lam: As an Editor, you're single handedly destroying the credibility of Gizmodo by saying this is way Gizmodo conducts themselves. I'll admit I laughed, but it's ignorant to shut off TV's in the middle of a presentation. I guess you were completely oblivious to the fact that you were invited to report rather causing shenanigans in the name of ruining presentations. I see both sides of the argument, but did you not have the journalistic integrity along with being so inconsiderate to do such an childish act?
I visit Kotaku daily, and I remember Tubgirl, which I let slide. At this rate, apologies won't help if you continue to use shortsighted logic in your pranks. I'm not saying you have to stop having fun, but at least think of the repercussions of your actions against your blog before other conventions stop inviting you, or you lose more traffic. I'm not trying to bash you, I'm trying to warn you before you cause irreparable damage to your blog's credibility.

This "prank" as it has been labeled breaks the bond of trust between a memeber of the press and everyone else. Compare this to a reporter turning off the lights at a White House press conference. Would it make the people in on the joke snicker? Sure, but like all juvenile, uncreative, and cruel "pranks" it is only funny to those in on it, everyone else is would be worried that something is wrong or worse someone might be in danger. But of course the kids that pulled this "prank" would never think of this. I would wager that all of the participants of this dubious act are under the age of 25, however, you will not always be. How funny will it be in 20 years when some kid pulls a prank like this, runs your business presentation, costs your company millions of dollars in business and ruins your shot at a promotion or a bonus. Then you get to go home and tell you son (or daughter) that you won't be able to help them with college like you expected to. Or how about down the road when you are trying to get a real job and and the butt you are trying to kiss is attached to the toes you stepped on at CES.
Does my scenario sound far-fetched to you? Well, my only response to that is good, because I'm getting older and I appreciate how much easier you make it in the professional work-place for me to succeed where you fail. See the longer you are unable to make it through the day without making fart jokes to your boss, the longer I know that our bosses will never give you anything important to do.

In closing, please save all those snark comments up until you have something better than, "Those stiff tech people are dumb for not knowing how to turn their monitors on" or, "thank God Gizmodo has the balls to do this", or finally, "You're just jealous that you didn't think of it first". Oh we thought of it, we threw cherry bombs down the toilets in junior high school. Then when we got caught, we were suspended and our parents had to pay for the repairs. Now that was a prank.

@Brian Lam: come one you interrupted sales demostrations, you were fucking up the motorola dude... do you have any idea of what kind of stress the tech guys have to keep those tv's running? do you know how important was the presentation for the Motorola dude? your childish, idiotic, snobbery prank only shows that you don't respect anyone because you have self labeled as above everyone, RESPECT BRIAN FUCKING RESPECT... this is what is all about, if you fucking turn off the tv at gizmodo is one thing, if you go fuck up the work of other people isn't funny at all, you are not respecting them, with what you have been telling, you are destroying the credibility of Gizmodo -what is left of it, the fanboysim, the one sided notes, the stupid and less than informative articles-, also you have opened the doors for other idiots like you to start doing "pranks" and being the headache of people WORKING AND EARNING THEIR SALARIES at electronic conventions... are you happy with this? as said before RESPECT OTHER PEOPLE!.

It is surprising that at this time you still believe it was not such a big deal, your thick skull can't understand that thanks to that prank affects a community as a whole -the community of tech bloggers-.

Yet you have been sitting cowardly behind your monitor, writing a half ass apology with a video that shows no remorse, without getting in contact with the people that was affected thanks to your stupid team's prank, BRAVO, what a man that takes responsibility for his and his team's action!

And finally stop believing Gizmodo is the only and irreplaceable resource for vendors to get their gadgets known, there better written, less fanboyish, with more information sites that have been eating your toes for a long time, if you loose contact with the companies you fall dude.. as simple as that and other that will behave maturely will gladly accept the position gizmodo has.

Yet again for someone who is afraid of looking naked women -something that should be natural- isn't so surprising to see such idiotic, childish, irresponsible, immature, responses.

I remember doing stuff like this; we'd use universal remotes to shut off TVs during presentations and stuff.

Except we were in grade school when we did that.

Very professional, Gizmodo.

I have to agree with the majority of commenters, it was a juvenile prank and, to be honest, the site should apolgize. Pulling jokes on people is one thing, interfering with someone's job is quite another.

You've been to trade shows -- you know you only have a moment or two to communicate your message ... if the monitor goes out, the message is that the products aren't reliable. The people there had NO possible way of knowing why the monitors turned off ... can't you understand that? Those companies paid a large cost there -- personally, I think they should attempt to recoup the cost of the presentations you guys interupted.

Whether you like it or not, Brian, CES is about the exhibitors, period. If you want to be considered a journalist, then try to follow the first rule of journalism: don't make yourself the story. The companies that exhibit at CES pay a crapload of money for the right to demo their stuff to potential customers. Just because Gizmodo (or anyone else for that matter) finds the demos boring or stupid doesn't give them the right to be disruptive. What sucks is that Gizmodo's stupid prank and even stupider defense of it perpetuates the stereotypes about bloggers and makes it harder for those bloggers who take their jobs seriously to be taken seriously by the people they cover. Brian, just give up trying to justify this. And fire the douche who did it.

Arguments over journalistic decorum at a trade show. Love it.

@nojo: Arguments about fucking other people jobs up. Journalistic decorum? How about good old plain decency?

Where do you work NOJO? Maybe Gizmodo can go there too.

@sing4england: hey, ya big fucking retard.. brian didn't do it... the cameraman did,. so why don't you point your faulty aggression elsewhere.. go eat some fish and chips or something ya giant crying vag.

@whiskey: Well, I don't work for Motorola, Panasonic, Dish, Dream Gear, Intel... or Gawker Media.

The cameraman's behavior was unprofessional and immature, and as a tech journalist I can't support it.

But it was also hilarious.

I've been reading comments about this on a few sites now just to get a feel for what people are saying and it's pretty amazing. Amazing in that there are a good number of people that are saying things like, "stop taking things so seriously". I wouldn't have as much an issue with what this guy did if he went up to a wall of monitors on display, shut them off for a bit and turned them back on, while I personally don't think it's all the funny, I suppose getting a couple of tech support people to freak out about why 10 monitors all of a sudden stopped working might be humorous. On the other hand, this guy spent quite a bit of time walking around the show with one mission, to disrupt as many presentations as he possibly could. Brilliant move to video tape it and show the world, but that's another story... In a few former jobs I've presented on stage at these types of shows for as few as two people and as many as 400 (not a show, but a local user group).

The preparation that goes into one of these is quite intense and what makes this particular prank upsetting is that many of the presenters are sales people who have invited large clients to their booth. If I couldn't get out to see a client for whatever reason, but knew they were going to a show we'd set up a time that they'd come and see my presentation and we'd talk after. Many times it was a presentation that meant a few thousands dollars worth of commissions for me. Now, would a monitor going out cost me a sale? No. Would my reaction to that monitor going out cost me a sale? Maybe if I couldn't handle the pressure or the situation, but that's my problem. The only issue is that the people attending these shows, particularly one as big as CES, only have a small amount of time to see a presentation before needing to move on so they can see everything they came to see. If this guy comes up, shuts off my monitors, turns them back on, turns them off, etc., etc., my guy might just decided we can't get our act together and move on. Could that cost me a sale? Yes, because now my company and I don't look professional.

Before you jump all over me about not being prepared, I would like you think about the pre-show meeting where people sit around thinking of plans for "what if..." How many companies have someone that woul