A cry for help/TV Hari-kiri

Guy in Oregon gets a new all-the-bells-and-whistles TV, including one whistle he wasn't expecting. For reasons unknown, it starts emitting the 121.5MHz international distress signal whenever it was turned on. Hilarity ensues.

He has been warned not to turn on the TV again or face fines of $10,000 a day for emitting a false distress signal.

in other news...

Inventor Mitch Altman has come up with a device he calls TV-B-Gone to save us from the hypnotic effects of television. From the Wired article:

The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.

The idea for TV-B-Gone was born at a restaurant in the early 1990s, when Altman and his friends kept paying attention to a TV in the corner, not to one another. They chatted about how to turn off all televisions, and he wondered if it would be possible to string together a series of "power" commands.

(both stories via Boing Boing)