Boston shutdown

One of the more astonishing things to come out of the "Aqua Teen" promotion in Boston was the complete lack of awareness of the officials. As a Slashdot poster commented, how can someone confuse an IED with an LED? You could hand that to a first year electrical engineering student and he could make the determination immediately that this was not a bomb.

There are two forces at work:

1.) Newly formed security teams want to demonstrate how responsive they are.
2.) The local government is now embarrassed.

One of the prosecutors indicated that having batteries made this suspicious.

I think I recall that ... you know... um.. Energy is CONSERVED. I would be much more suspicious of a device that was providing light without being powered...perpetual motion here I come.

How the hell do you think it can light up!? It has to have power supplied. Of course, if you aren't thinking then I guess it makes sense.

You see mayor fat tongue/other drooling idiots of Boston, voltage is a measure of electric potential, and when there is path by which current can flow between the two potentials, we call this electric power. When the voltage applied to a Light Emitting Diode sufficient to overcome the forward voltage threshold, current flows and it, as its name suggest, emits light!

This is a perfect example of "Security Theater". The citizens have a right to be angry at the city shutdown, except it should not be directed at the two guys who hung these up, but at the staggering incompetence of their elected officials.

--Joey