Cell Phone Jamming on the Rise 942
netbuzz writes "It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone either, as the number of inconsiderate dolts who yammer away oblivious to the disruptions their yapping is causing those around them continues to rise. Pocket-sized cell jammers are becoming a hot item, while proprietors of restaurants and the like look to defend themselves as well. Yes it's illegal, but given that the rudeness is pretty close to criminal as well, it's unlikely to stop any time soon."
Pagers? Special frequency? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there some way these things could be made to not block a special frequency or pagers. Doctors and emergency workers on call need to be able to be reached at dinner and in movie theaters. Everyone else can shut up.
Source and an alternative (Score:2, Interesting)
Instead of reading a *summary* of a New York Times article, here it is [nytimes.com].
That article mentions high-powered jammers and specifically one restaurant owner who paid $1000 to install one so he could keep his employees working instead of gabbing on their cell phone.
It may be illegal in the USA to actively jam cell-phone signals, but as far as I know, there's no law prohibiting someone from passively jamming signals; see: Faraday Cage [wikipedia.org]:
Hmmm, I wonder if aluminum siding would be effective?
re: You don't stop obnoxious car drivers (Score:2, Interesting)
There are always smug fuckers in the passing lane, doing slightly under the limit all the time, with absolutely no consideration to the lines of cars behind them, or the mayhem it causes as they all try to pass in the center or right lanes.
Some are clueless, others actually think they're saving the day by enforcing the limit, and a few honestly believe that 60mph is fast-as-hell because it feels like it in their Prius.
I can't stand the baby-vigilanteism in its many forms.
Re:matter of time (Score:4, Interesting)
If there was a way of only blocking obnoxious car drivers by blockading the interstate then I'd blockade the interstate.
My interest in this is watching a film/listening to a concert. I don't want to hear a phone ring, ever. You know, the way it was 10/15 years ago. Back then, only professionals had phones/pagers, which would vibrate silently. Before that (20+ years ago), not even that. I'm proposing that no phones ever ring in a cinema/concert hall. If your job is so important that you must be reachable all the time, you have 2 options. One - you just don't attend the event whilst on call, and 2) you pay someone outside the event to look after your phone, and if it's important enough for you to leave then they can come and get you.
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Interesting)
This hysterical crazy talk about many people dying in a skyscraper because of this kind "black spot" is just nonsense (You really have to wonder how the human race made it to the 1980s without cell phones at all).
In Japan people are very polite on trains regarding talking on phones, most people wisper and cover their mouths while talking.
In the US, Australia and the UK (where I have most of my experience of it, you often encounter "Exhibition Talkers" who seem to believe the whole carriage is interested in their little world. Asking them to "keep it down please" will only result in abuse.
*Mod Parent up!** (Score:5, Interesting)
Good deal (Score:5, Interesting)
And I still want all cellphone usage by drivers treated exactly like DUI, since the accident stats are the same for drunks and cellphone users.
mark "could you drive any better if I shoved it where the sun
don't shine?"
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
What you want is a cell phone detector (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.cellbusters.com/product_info.php?products_id=28 [cellbusters.com]
Of course, then you have to be willing to forgo the miscreant's business by ordering anybody with an active cell phone outside. When I first researched this issue about six years ago, I found precisely nobody -- not restaurants, not the pharmacy, not even a freakin' movie theater -- would be willing to install a detector and order people off the property. The only places I know of that use detectors is hospitals, because some cells put out signals that interfere with things like an EEG.
apparently because we only hear half.... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3643477.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Yes.
I do to.
On Slashdot you say?
Wow that's
Yes I agree.
Re:Good deal (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Interesting)
This website [ladyada.net] details the design and construction of the "Wave Bubble": a self-tuning, wide-bandwidth portable RF jammer. The device is lightweight and small for easy camouflaging: it is the size of a pack of cigarettes.
uhm what world to you live in? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not been my experience at all. I've politely asked someone to take their cell phone conversation outside (after the third call in a 5 minutes span) in a movie theater and this guy threw a drink on me and stormed out (I later got an apology from the managers and free movie for that one).
Once a bus in a city I was unfamiliar with stops and was trying to ask someone a question and this teen-aged girl was yammering away so loud I couldn't hear anything the guy I was asking for help was saying. As the teenager took her hand off the pole to flip me off after asked her if she could tone it down for a second, the bus slowed down and she fell on her ass (won't ever forget that one).
My favorite was when I was on a plane and the flight attendant was telling this lady to please shut down her cell phone as they were going to close the doors and back away from the gate, the lady kept one waving her hands and the three flight attendents walked over and stared at her until she put her phone away. After they flight attendants went to sit down, the lady pulls out her cell phone again and instead of getting up again, the flight attendant gets on the speaker and tells everyone to stare at the woman in seat 16D... Took her another minute to shut up, which was then followed by a round of applause in the cabin. Sadly, that's the world I live in...
I don't have a jammer myself, but if I had one of these things, I'm sure there would be times that I wouldn't regret using it at all
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as people on call go, if you are absolutely that necessary that nobody else can possibly replace you, then whatever it is you do will be dead when you are. That goes for surgeons, too. Train a backup, be guaranteed on call for 12 hours a day, for the 4 hours that day you're not at work but on call, avoid danger by doing safe things, like being in or around your house (If your cellphone doesn't work, fer chris'sakes, I hope you told them to call you at home). If you really do think you're superman and absolutely do something nobody else could even imagine doing, even if you're right (I doubt you are), when you die, so does your work, and I hope that's not a comforting proposition.
Every situation I've seen someone complain about being an exception is completely off-base. If you're in a restaurant and someone is hurt, the restaurant will call 911 for you. If their phone doesn't work, try the neighbouring store. In a theatre during your on-call surgery time (Why the HELL would be this *IRRESPONSIBLE* anyways? Do you know some theatres *legally* install faraday cages to block cell signals? Is it the 24-hours on-call superman syndrome again? Do you have delusions you're TV's Dr. House)? Phone the hospital and tell them the number of the theatre when you enter. Same goes for similar establishments. If they have no phone, you're SOL, visit when you're off-call. If you're in the middle of nowhere, your cellphone probably won't be working, either, and even if it is, help is still an hour away -- you're better off trying to fix the situation yourself. If you're on a train, they have these neat little emergency stop buttons and cords you can use to alert staff that there's an... EMERGENCY!
Come on, give me some more situations, I can disprove them all (except for jammers interfering with equipment cellphones would interfere with, in which case I can only hope people carrying jammers follow the same instructions that people carrying cellphones should).
Re:matter of time (Score:4, Interesting)
Emergency Use? My Ass... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, you are right.
Yes, your use is justified.
And you make up 0.01% of what we're talking about here.
I commute to work just 30 minutes each way. At least once a week there's some idiot on the train with a cellphone conversation so loud and/or obnoxious that I'd like to hit him with something hard. At least once a day there's someone with a ringtone that was certainly carefully engineered after extensive studies as to what the most nerve-wrecking sound imagineable is and at what precise volume (maximum) you have to play it to cause inner-ear bleedings. At least twice as often there are less irritating but still obnoxious and anti-social cases that scream "I'd piss in your front yard and shit in your doorway, too".
And as far as I get the contents, it has not once not ever been something important that couldn't have waited until the asshole got home.
If cell phone jammers were legal, I'd buy one tomorrow.
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Interesting)
Simply put, the average Joe that walks into a theatre will not walk out of the theatre if they get a call from someone important. I think it's a social problem, yeah, but because it's -impossible- to catch everyone and simply "enforce the policy every time" as people above say is a solution, there has to be a more proactive approach. Regrettably, the ethics and the oddball situations prevent a lot of people from saying yes or no to various techniques.
But don't be spiteful just because you don't understand the problem. You obviously haven't had a lot of experience with people ruining other people's movie watching experience, we lose quite a bit of money refunding those tickets and giving them passes to another show because some jackass(es) in the theatre ruined their movie.
Forced Buzzing (Score:5, Interesting)
What really needs automated jamming is ringing. Phones should be required to accept a signal that switches them from ringing to vibrating. Then movie theaters, public transit vehicles, and other places where the public is forced to share a space with some people too rude to keep to themselves. Buzzing won't interfere wih their functioning, it won't privately infringe on the public airwaves except to send the signal.
The damn phones should be shipped to vibrate by default anyway, with a ringtone an explicit option, and a single puttonpress to switch between the modes.
Re:matter of time (Score:2, Interesting)
That's very funny coming from the chaps who invented soccer hooliganism
Dealing with the issue (Score:3, Interesting)
100% agreed here. The best way to deal with the issue is to actually address and *deal* with the issue. First of all it means a visible policy against the phones, or at least disturbing of others, much the same as hospitals or theatres do. The second means enforcing it. A few cases:
A few weeks ago I was in the hospital, and was please to see that most people when entering the emergency area would pop out their phones and then turn them off or at least silence them. Various people also foraged outside periodically to turn on their phones and call home, etc. One woman happily ignored the signage, and then proceeded to yack loudly on her phone, sharing her loud conversation with an emergency room full of patients (to add to this, her loud talking and cellphone giggling didn't seem to indicate any need to be in emerg, but that's a different story). I finally got tired of it and when she finished one conversation of many, asked her to kindly turn off her phone. Instantly she became defensive, with the "why should I" attitude, at which point I pointed out that the "no cell phone zone" sign she had likely noticed but happily ignored. While she glared at me for various intervals during the rest of my wait, her phone stayed off, and others seemed happier with this.
The second was in a movie theatre, with some girl a few rows up popping open her phone to send text-messages. At least the sound was off, but you'd be surprised at how bright the glare is (and yes, like any winking light in a dark room, very obvious and distracting). After text-message #3 I asked her to turn it off and she managed to do so with undue fuss (or at least if she gave me a look, it was then too dark to see). Personally I would have been happy enough if she'd done her texting with her phone under a jacket or whatever so that others couldn't see, but most people who both paying to see an overpriced movie actually take the time to watch it rather than texting.
The last, not cellular related, but similar in concept, was the local "Superstore" gas bar. The three stalls nearest the pay-booth are labeled as "cars only", but continually suffered from a plague of trucks, SUV's, and other vehicles with large or dual gas tanks. I have fond memories of one gentleman who happily to me to f*** myself after I pointed our his large dual-tanked truck was in the car lane, and he compounded his politeness by giving me the finger as he drove away. the gas bar itself did nothing for about the last two years, but in the last month has added a larger "no trucks" sign that people do seem to pay attention to. My take has always been that refusing service to those in the appropriate stalls would have worked nicely (if they're not supposed to be there, why turn on the pump for them), or even better to have wordage on the signs that say those who are using the wrong pump would be charged 7c/L extra. Profit for the gas company, and a good method for dissuading rude pump-hogs.
So the point of all this? Policies are great, but they do jack-shit if they are not acted upon or at least pointed out to those who violate them (and then, if further ignored, they definitely do need to be acted upon). Theatres and hospitals have been known to have security which deals with those violating the 'no phone' rule, whereas the gas station had been known to do nothing about it. As such, an unenforced policy is really about as effective as none at all.
Re:What's the Big Deal? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's because people in the US are descended from a bunch of puritanical zealots who just can't stand the thought that others might have entertainment, joy, or pleasure (particularly if it excludes themselves).
They hate someone talking on a cellphone on a public train (even if they're quieter than talking face to face on the train) because being on the train sucks and the person on the phone is "escaping" by talking to someone else. "How dare they not suffer like the rest of us."
They hate someone talking on a phone in a restaurant (no matter how quietly) because maybe that person is talking to someone more interesting than their own boring dinner mates.
It also comes from an anti-rich resentment from when cellphones were only for wealthy people who could avoid them. Of course, nearly everyone can easily afford a cellphone now, just like any religious dogma, the hatred for cellphones as a symbol of the rich has stuck with us.
It really puzzles me. The zealots here are railing against cell phones. They're not railing against boorish behavior. Does it matter if someone is loud in a restaurant on a phone or with the person across from them? If someone is driving erratically, does it matter if it's because they're on the phone, fiddling with the radio, or just a plain bad driver? But somehow, these people have fixated on the cellphone itself.
Finally, Americans are a bunch of people who are generally powerless in their lives and even though they live in one of the richest countries in the world, they feel they've been dealt a bad deal in life. And if they can't be pacified by a Big Mac and the latest episode of Survivor or Let's Make A Deal then they tend to take it out on each other - particularly if the other seems to be having fun or having an escape from reality.
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:2, Interesting)
And yes, I am a little cold -- but this is my position in Real Life, not just when debating on the Internet, and is consistent with the culture in which I was raised. My father didn't let me know the last two times he was in the emergency room until afterwards, and I only recently heard through an old friend about my mother's bout with cancer -- and why would they have any obligation for it to be otherwise? The knowledge would disrupt my life without making their own situations any less severe.
I worry about my wife because I'm responsible for her wellbeing, as she is for mine. My parents' responsibilities to me ended when I moved out at age 18. If she were to suffer a freak accident and die without me because I couldn't be reached, I would hurt. That doesn't change that making policy based on the exceptional case rather than the common one is, absent analysis of the frequency and impact of those cases, a Bad Idea -- and I turn my phone off in the theater, even when she's not with me.
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:2, Interesting)
If the risks implicit in putting a Faraday cage inside a theater are as significant as you suggest, their insurer should insist on such a measure being in place (and automatically enabled whenever the lights are up). If their insurer chooses not to enforce such a rule, then the risks are presumably not in fact so significant.
Re:matter of time (Score:1, Interesting)
The times article says it all (Score:3, Interesting)
If anything characterizes the 21st century, its our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people, said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. The cellphone talker thinks his rights go above that of people around him, and the jammer thinks his are the more important rights.
Or put more simply three people are involved here who think "ME ME ME". The caller, who couldn't wait to call, the answerer who couldn't wait to answer the call and the person being annoyed who thinks he has to the right to be undisturbed by other people.
First the caller, 99% of calls are unneeded and could easily have waited until a later time. People keep bringing up emergency calls, I am willing to bet my entire income for the rest of my life that if you measured all the calls that are of a real emergency nature (911 or even telling someone their wife is about to give birth) that would not even come to a whole percentage of mobile phone calls. You do NOT have to call that other person at night when you see them next day. You may want too, and technology has made it possible but their is NO NEED. Learn to understand the difference between NEED and DESIRE.
Then there is the person answering. YOU ARE NOT IMPORTANT. The entire rest of the world does NOT have to be put on hold for your convenience. Sometimes you got to make choices what to do, and this means you can't be doing something else. Lets say you think you should answer the phone in a theather, should the actors do the same? Do you want your doctor to answers his wifes call while he is working on your hearth? So why do you NEED to answer that phone NOW. I think this is part of a larger social disfunction. Take MMO's you see people complain that they take large chunks of time, and that people get upset if you leave in the middle of a raid. Well yeah, but how many of you would walk out of the middle of a say a football game? If you are in any kind of a race, do you really expect all the others to stop because your phone is ringing? I think the mobile phone is just a symptom of the larger development that some people think, the world revolves around me (they are wrong, it revolves around me) and that everyone else should fit themselves to their need.
But finally there is also the person who is offended. There is NO law, NO right, to be undisturbed. Yes there are some laws that forbid certain disturbances, anti-honking laws for instance that dictate you can only use your car horn for alerting of impending danger, but talking in public is not among them. People are free to talk in public transport. You get people who get upset by headphones being too loud who complain that they can't hear themselves talking. Eh, your talking and the headphone are BOTH interfering with my peace and quiet. Unless we introduce a law to SHUT THE FUCK UP and produce NO noise whatsoever, public transport is NOT a place of peace and quiet. Your desire for peace and quiet is NOT a right. You are just as much an asshole for wanting everyone else to be silent as the person making a noise.
It is often said that human beings are social animals, so lets see some social animals shall we? Ooh, what a lot of fighting and squabiling in even small groups. We are NOT ants who really work together, we are a pack of monkeys who are constantly fighting over everything but without a leader who can just beat the crap out of anyone who really gets out of line.
Modern techonology just brings it out more. We also allowed the controlling elements of our society to become weak and feeble. We think we are mature adults who don't need a big brother watching us, while we behave as little spoiled brats.
A simple solution exists to this whole mobile phone dilemma. Since REAL emergency calls are so rare, it would have been very easy to put in as part of the system a protocol for dealing with them. In restricted areas you would broadcast a signal "emergency only". The caller would have to send the signal that it is an emer
Cell phone is not a human right (Score:2, Interesting)
Getting into a confrontation with an inconsiderate, self-important slob is a great way to foment violence, and these days there is no telling where the violence will stop. Instead of arguing, just put an end to cell phone use and be done. Secrecy is necessary only because the practice is illegal, otherwise many venues would be proud to advertise they are cell phone free.