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."
matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably just a matter of time before an emergency requires a quick call to 911 that gets blocked by this illegal tactic. And then nasty court battles... the "blockers" will deserve it. You don't silence rude cell phone people by cutting off the cell phone universe. You don't stop obnoxious car drivers by blockading the interstate.
There are better ways to deal with the issue. It requires a little courage on the part of those who are violated, but it's better than the alternative. Personally, I do think cell phones are way overused and a general nuisance, certainly the way they're used today. But I'm coming out with guns blazing the day I can't get emergency help for me or someone who needs it because some gutless wonder is using one of these devices and my cell phone is rendered more useless than it already is.
From the article, one of the makers of a jamming device offers up this weak rationalization:
Back to my example of bad and dangerous drivers... yes, there's a "collective right" to "control" bad behavior, but you wouldn't blockade the interstates in the interest of "control". Similarly, to unilaterally disable all cell phones is ludicrous.
In pre-response to:
I do propose at some point the ubiquitous rude behavior on cell phones dictates some solution. I hope sooner rather than later. Jamming.... is not the solution.
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
I hear cattle prods are fairly effective. Oh sure, it briefly increases the noise level, but it's well worth it.
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
If you carry that jamming device in your front pocket you'll be saying that to your nutz sometime soon.
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Alternatively, if a Restaurant wanted to ensure that their customers were not overburdened with cell phone calls they could build some copper mesh into the walls creating a faraday cage in the establishment without running afoul of the law by enacting the use of active jamming devices. Simply make it clearly noted that cell phones will not work within the premises and t
Re:matter of time (Score:4, Interesting)
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I use my blackberry for business as well as to keep in touch with friends. If a restaurant has bad reception, that's actually a pretty big disincentive against me going there too often.
As for rude phone users - funny, that's not too much of a problem over here in the UK. Perhaps yo
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
France?
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I'm not getting into a physical confrontation with someone who might assault me over their cell phone.
I WILL jam them if I think fit, and will simply play it cool and note that my cell does not work either if the question comes up. Trying to educate rude people is useless, and shooting them is usually illegal. Their rudeness give me the right (IMO) to do what I damn w
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
The rudeness does not give you the right (in the opinion of anyone who matters, I.E. a judge) to "do what [you] damn well please". In fact, using this as your defense in front of a court is likely to land you the maximum sentence (or largest fine) for demonstrated lack of respect for the law.
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
IF you can get it to a jury trial, then the opinion of the judge doesn't particularly matter - it's the opinion of your "peers" in the jury that matters.
... what's the issue. As long as they've advertised the fact adequately (I'm sure the manufacturers of jammers could come up with some legally satisfying wordage to go onto a "We don't like inconsiderate mobile users" signs, so you can kill three birds with one stone), then there's nothing for the de-phoned person to complain about. After all, coverage is far from universal.
Of course, that is, IF you can get it to jury trial. Which is getting rapidly harder.
I don't particularly see that expressing this sort of opinion in court would be particularly harmful to your case though, or to the sentence were you convicted. Or to the sentence after you'd appealed over-sentencing.
Someone upthread suggested that there would be trouble when an emergency occurred in a place where cellphones were blocked. I wonder on exactly what grounds. Cellphones aren't certified as emergency equipment (so there's no come-back on the manufacturers in the event that they don't work) ; cellphone networks aren't certified or advertised as emergency equipment, so the operators can't be held liable in the event of the networks being unavailable in an emergency (remember that when the July-the-whenever bombings went on in The Smoke, the mobile networks were overwhelmed by people sending "I'm OK" and "I'm un-OK" messages, rendering the network unusable in exactly the same way that some of these jammers work). It might also be a good idea for people pursuing this line to stop showing their metropolitan prejudices for a few seconds and read up on the actual coverage levels of the country : covering 99%+ of the population can be done with around 70% coverage of the land area. And since it costs significant money and effort to service base stations, that's a situation which isn't likely to change significantly in the foreseeable future. Mobile phones are only going to be usable where there is significant population density. So, if you have a an emergency in an area of low population density, then you're not going to get mobile service. And you're pretty unlikely to get landline service either. Which throws you back where you've always been - relying on your own internal resources.
[I suppose I should enlighten people to my experience of life-threatening incidents : a number of NDEs doing variations on the theme of mountaineering ; a guest at my aunt's guest house having a heart attack (the ambulance took 45 minutes to get to the house from receiving the call and some tens of minutes to receive the call from the nearest landline. Which is a long time to do CPR unassisted. DOA.) ; lift-threatening helicopter failures every half-decade or so, over sea or threatening to crash us into oil drilling rigs a hundred miles or so from a base station, and up to 10 metres and an aluminium chassis away from our mobile phones ; oh, and flying a car off a snow-covered road which did have mobile coverage because it has a significant population density. I know perfectly well how useful emergency services a long way away are compared to my "internal resources".]
Concerning whether businesses are liable, in some way for communications lost due to having jammed mobile access in their volume
The deep reason that mobile phone jammers are illegal in the UK is that the Government don't want private citizen to go around using (or abusing) the radio waves, except in ways which the government has sanctioned. Part of this might be the technical concern that inept circuit designers w
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Someone upthread suggested that there would be trouble when an emergency occurred in a place where cellphones were blocked. I wonder on exactly what grounds.
I think on grounds that the blocking was intentional, whereas all the scenarios you mentioned were unplanned. To make the obligatory bad car analogy, it's like the difference between running over you because my brake lines ruptured and running over you because I meant to. You're dead either way, but the latter would probably land me in prison afterward.
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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.
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Informative)
It may be illegal, but the chances of actually being 'busted' are very small unless the device happens to actually cause enough damage/disturbance to attract serious law enforcement attention. The same laws and FCC regs apply to CB radio, and those regulations...especially regarding transmitter power and intentional interference..are broken constantly and regularly with complete disregard and derision.
The FCC field investigation operations are woefully understaffed and underfunded, and availability of "export-only" and foreign manufactured radios whose transmitters exceed US CB transmitter power limits by a large margin, as well as covering frequencies outside band limits, and extremely high-powered external transmitter power amplifiers (known as 'linear amplifiers', many well in excess of 1 kw) is ubiquitous.
A person using one of these cell phone jammers would be in much, much greater danger of a beating from an aggrieved cell phone user than he would be of any possible legal action by the FCC.
Cheers!
Strat
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Being the source of a low power jamming signal that should only last ten seconds at the most? Yep you are correct, not legal.
Given that, the idea behind the a portable device is that only cell signals should be affected, and y
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Untrue. The MPAA ratings do not have any legal force, and are simply guidlines that pretty much every chain and most independent theaters follow. Excepting pornography (which would be NC17), there are no legal restrictions on what a child can see at the movies, at least in the US.
Re:matter of time (Score:4, Informative)
Under law, the importation, sale or use of cell-phone jammers is banned in the United States and can result in Federal Communications Commission fines of up to $11,000 daily per device. An FCC spokesman said the fines have been levied against people for not holding a license to use the devices.
"The FCC rules are clear," said Travis Larson, spokesman for the international Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. "Jamming is illegal, but whether there is an exception made for law enforcement is a decision the FCC will have to make."
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
On the topic of public rudeness, we should be able to jam the internet when people take Internet Anonymity as a right to be overly flippant. Let's see, Swiss army knife here...just need to find the right cable....What town do you live in again?
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
For restaurants, hair salons, etc., there's a simple solution -- just make it a policy, and have the guts to enforce it. Post little "No cell phone usage inside this establishment" signs. If people ignore the signs, politely remind them of the policy. If they continue to ignore it, throw them out, just like with any other customer who violates a policy of the business. Make common-sense exceptions for 911 calls. (They could even put that on their signs, if they wanted to.) Whatever business they'd lose in aggrieved cell-phone-addicted customers, they'd probably gain in others who appreciate the peace and quiet. The jamming thing is sneaky, cowardly, and dangerous.
*Mod Parent up!** (Score:5, Interesting)
That same train of thought would work great... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"The government" isn't just some enemy gang. It's the people delegating some labor by consensus, applied by rules equally to everyone.
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Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
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How did you manage when there was no CT scans and you had a pretty fucking car accident?
How did you manage to avoid being infected by meat with worms when there was no fire to cook it?
How did you manage to travel cross-country for having an urgent surgery when there were no planes?
How did you manage to avoid getting a nasty disease having casual sex when there were no condoms?
How did you manage to avoid seeing you kids dying
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If you think you can compare them you're really missing the point.
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking of missing the point... he wasn't comparing cell phones to CT scans.
How did you manage to proscrastinate at work when there was no
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The answer to how people managed without cell phones is pretty simple. Sometimes they died when they might not have had they been able to contact help more quickly.
--Matt
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:4, Insightful)
(BTW, why is active jamming unacceptable because of 911 calls, but copper mesh in theater walls to achieve the exact same end allowed?)
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(Also the copper mesh isn't traveling the airwaves)
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If you got to the hospital an hour after he died, there'd be a large amount of 'matterin' about it. The difference is you being there when that person needs you.
"(BTW, why is active jamming unacceptable because of 911 calls, but copper mesh in theater walls to achieve the exact same end allowed?)"
Boy do I agree with you about that. There was an article on that years ago on Slashdot. I brought up th
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.
Update the message (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people have managed to figure out that ringing phones and talking is inconsiderate and attracts undue attention, but haven't yet managed to make the giant mental leap needed to figure out that an audience waving dozens of little flashlights around is equally distracting.
If you're in a theater and need to have a conversation--ANY CONVERSATION--then go outside. Or stay home.
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You're right, I haven't had a lot of experience with this. I've lived in three major cities since the obiquity of cell phones. (Los Angeles is one of them...) I've seen a NUMBER o
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
People a hundred years had no expectation of continual, interrupted connectivity, and even today it is enjoyed only by a limited subset of the world's population; I find it hard to treat such connectivity as a necessary element of the human condition.
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Holy crap, do you seriously not understand why a person would want to say goodbye to their parent before they passed away? I feel sorry for yours.
I don't care what people a hundred years ago expected. People a thousand years ago had no electricity and no plumbing, but I'll bet you'd be pretty pissed if someone intentionally blocked your sewer pipes up.
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
This statement is the fundamental attitude problem with rude cell phone users. You imply that the probability of there being an actual, life-or-death event, during the two hours of a movie, that only your specific attention can prevent, is high enough that you must answer every single call immediately, regardless of the inconvenience to others. If your attention is so critical to the functioning of the world, perhaps you should consider forgoing the distraction of a movie or dinner out until a competent person can be found to stand in for you for a couple hours.
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you successfully sue a cell phone carrier because your emergency call didn't get through because you were in a dead spot? Bet you can't.
Can you successfully sue a business owner because his building is built with plaster with metal particles, reinforced concrete or drywall with metal mesh that blocks your signal? Bet you can't.
So no, there is no right to always available cell phone service. Jamming is illegal only because any sort of unlicensed transmission on a licensed band is illegal. Laws to make passive jamming illegal would have some very nasty repercussions in all kinds of places, including for the carriers themselves.
Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
To the others who will inevitably pop up in this thread claiming that they need to be "on call" for a job or something:
1) You're not that important. Really.
2) If you actually ARE that important, you shouldn't be fucking around at the movies without arranging for someone to cover for you. Really.
3) It sucks to be on call. That doesn't mean you're entitled to make life suck for everyone else in the theater. It's not all about you and your personal convenience. Really.
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A little over the top there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention society seemed to get along just fine before the invention of the cell phone. Landlines work for 911 as well, you know. And if it's a pay phone you don't even need money...
Re:A little over the top there... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A little over the top there... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't tell me I can't do someting just because you managed to find someone that can't do it responsibly.
That's why fireworks are illegal in so many states. Little Timmy's parents can't supervise him well enough to stop him from trying to light a firecracker in his mouth and as a result I can't have any. That's also the brainchild behind prohibition. Great plan that was, eh?
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, Insightful)
However, I lack that feeling of self-importance that the entire movie theater revolves around my experience. If someone's cell phone goes off, fine. If they answer it or if it goes off again I politely ask them to get out of the theater. If someone eats too loudly, not much you can do there but tell them, because your food jammer hasn't come in the mail yet. If people are talking, ask them to stop because you can't legally duct tape their mouths shut yet. Jamming cell phones is just an unneeded cost to stop something that isn't even the most common or distracting thing that happens(at least at any movie I've ever seen). If someone does something you don't like, tell them about it, don't sit around thinking about a preemptive strike to try and control other people. Try being assertive, it works even on problems that technology can't solve.
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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 r
Nice attempt at a troll, but so deeply flawed (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem obsessed with the US of A. Explain your troll in the light that inconsidered cell phone use is HATED in all other parts of the world as well. I know it may come as a shock, but america is NOT the world. Furthermore this exact same anti-cellphone hatred appears everywhere else. The companies mentioned in the Times article sell SOME of their products to US customers, they main dealings are however in their country of origin. England and India respectivly.
Your entire troll shotdown by a simple RTFA.
Re:Three words: quit yer bitching (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't understand is your idea of cause and effect. Why do you place the blame on the people who might use a cellphone jammer when they are only a reaction to a nuisance that keeps getting worse? The "asshole" is not the guy who gets fed up with widespread blatant rudeness and finally finds a solution; the assholes are the ones with the cell phones who won't be considerate of others in the first place; if not for this, almost no one would have used a jammer. That there are so many such assholes is why being assertive is not practical -- what size mob of immature, self-important other-people-don't-exist assholes who won't take a correction do you want to confront? A jammer is a neat solution that, unlike a confrontation, guarantees that the actual cause of the problem is the one who will be disappointed. Blaming it on the jammers is effectively excusing the root cause of this problem because you dislike one of its symptoms.
That's an understandable use, but don't allow your emotions to impact your judgment. A little thought would lead to the conclusion that if your cellphone is on silent/vibrate mode and it vibrates and you leave the theater and call back where you won't be disturbing anyone, there's no incentive to jam your phone call. I doubt anyone near you would even know that you had a cellphone if you handled it this way. Unless you believe that people buy jammers because strangers have a personal vendetta against you and just want to make you miserable (they call this paranoia), then by your own reasoning the jammers won't be after you or anyone who handles this the way that you do. The more rare your politeness is (and this is increasingly the case), the more likely it is to be very much appreciated.
This really seems to be coming from an assumption that a jammer would be operating continuously. I don't own a jammer (and don't plan to since using one is illegal) but if I had one, I know I would not want a microwave frequency radiation source emitting continuously from my person. It's the kind of thing that can't be good for you long-term. Then there's the question of how heavy the batteries would be and how many you want to carry. Considering that continuous use is not at all necessary since you would only need a few seconds to disconnect a call, I think you're inventing a highly unlikely extreme-case scenario backed by an emotional time of your life to justify your universal condemnation.
I could just as easily say "You're living in 2007 now, so if you're rude and inconsiderate and your cell phone call gets dropped by someone with a jammer, then TOUGH FUCKING COOKIES." I find this easier to justify than "someone's being rude, you better lay down and take it."
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.
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Re:matter of time (Score:4, Insightful)
One possibility could be that a team of highjackers take over an airplane and use one to prevent outside phone calls.
Or...
An armed robber has one to prevent anyone from making calls during a heist.
Or...
An house burglar uses it to disable one of the new type of house alarms that are cellular.
That said, I don't think the technology should be banned outright because any of the above would be able to make it from generic parts and it would have some legal uses.
As long as it remains on private property and the signal does not interfere with cell phones outside the property any business should be allowed to use one as long as they have signs posted that they disable cell phones.
Of course as it stands now, FCC regulations prevents even legitimate use so this has become a black market of sorts.
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
"Your honor, my client was viciously raped after the attacker use the Jam-O-Matic 5000 to keep her from calling the police. We're asking $3.2 billion."
I wonder to what extent a judge or jury would buy their rationalization.
Same old same old (Score:5, Insightful)
1) the rise of telemarketing (answering machines were non-existant for the average consumer)
2) instead of phones being hard-wired into the wall, you could actually get the now-familiar phone-jack
There was all sorts of yelling and screaming and apocalyptic predictions about the thousands of people who would die because they had disconnected their phones from the wall socket, and wouldn't get the warning phone call that their house was on fire, or some natural disaster (flood/fire/whatever) was coming their way. Guess what, it didn't happen.
One incident I do remember is when my employer was short-staffed in one office. In addition to someone being on vacation, and someone else on a long training course, another employee in a rotating shift position got pregnant, and was unable to continue, especially with the shiftwork. Because I had done the same job a few years earlier, I got pulled off my regular duties, got a 1-week refresher course by the shift supervisor, then went on rotating shifts by myself for a month.
The morning after my first graveyard shift, I got home around 8:00 AM, and was not exactly 100% lucid. I undressed and crashed into bed... only to be awakened 3 times in the next hour and a half by telemarketing assholes. Fortunately, I had a condo with the "new" phone jacks, and disconnected it from the wall. If the phone had been hard-wired, so help me, I would've "disconnected" it "the hard way".
Similarly, I don't think that society is going to callapse if cellphones become unreliable. Unlike you young whippersnappers, I remember the ers BC... Before Cellphones. Civilization survived thousands of years without cellphones, and can do so again.
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The same can be said for electricity. So, does your logic hold up there?
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You have no expectation that your cell phone will work in any particular place. Are you going to sue someone if an emergency happens in a spot with poor service because of tower layout? How did we handle emergencies when we didn't have cell phones anyway? Oh right, land lines. I'm pretty sure most plac
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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 silenc
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Recently, I interviewed for a tech job with the [ area ] ambulance service. Part of the job would be to carry a cell or pager in case the systems went down. Yeah, the ambulance systems. If the 911 system went down, there would be a call to come in and fix it.
I didn't get the job, but that doesn't mean the job doesn't exist. Imagine that - 911 goes down, and they can't call you for help.
The guys who use c
hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
What a BS arguement (Score:4, Insightful)
With a restaurant, it's not a problem. Why? Well probably because there's no need for me to be tuning in to the conversations of those around me, cellular or otherwise. If they're at normal volume, and the person isn't directly positioned to address me, it's pretty obvious that they're not talking to me, and I've never found a reason to assume otherwise.
This of course doesn't apply to those that speak at a conversational level that would put a stadium PA system to shame, but that's a different story, and one that should be address by either the restaurant, or perhaps a brave individual who is willing to point out the rudeness of such things on the hopeful assumption that the disruptive party will cease the conversation - or reduce their volume level - without becoming confrontational.
Rudeness vs. Illegality (Score:5, Insightful)
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(my pet hate - children in restaraunts.. they just run around screaming and, occasaionally, throwing food at the other guests, and all their parents can say is 'isn't he cute'. NO HE FUCKING ISN'T. LEAVE THE BASTARD AT HOME!!).
I agree with "Matter of Time" (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
A new hack needed (Score:2, Funny)
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]:
Mobile phones and radios may have no reception inside elevators or similar structures. Some traditional architectural materials act as Faraday shields in practice. These include plaster with metal lath, and rebar reinforced concrete. These affect the use of cordless phones and wireless networks inside buildings and houses.
Hmmm, I wonder if aluminum siding would be effective?
I see your hyperbole and raise you a lawsuit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, while I can see the harm of a cellphone ring during a live theatrical performance, such as a play or an opera, it's merely an annoyance during a movie. And as far as restaurants are concerned, well, it's not like asking the offending patron to STFU is going to stop the globe from spinning. And sysadmins, doctors and other "on-call" professions have a right to eat, don't they?
Re:I see your hyperbole and raise you $500 per day (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A mind forever blabbing... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's probably the stupidest think I'll hear today. Congratulations.
Cell phones have replaced pagers for most people. Am I allowed to get IMs, or do I have to turn those off too?
Blockers should be shot (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just illegal, it's totally unethical. My wife and I both carry cellphones - I'm a sysadmin and she's a surgeon and we're both on call basically 24/7. And yet, you'd never know that we have them, because we mute them when appropriate and never start conversations when we shouldn't. Instead, we'll either step outside quickly to answer them or let it roll to voicemail so we don't kill ourselves and others as we dive over rows of seats and then respond ASAP. Cell phone jammers punish the jackasses in theaters that we all love to hate, but they also punish the majority of users who are quiet and responsible.
Imagine that you or your mom or your kid has a problem with their recent surgery and is desperately trying to reach their doctor who went to a movie, but some smug asshole with a jammer is blocking the call. Kinda puts it in a different light, huh?
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We are always on call, even on vacation. Always.
Fortunately for me, the FCC takes my side.
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I don't get it. You sign up for a job and voluntarily say you'll be on call 24/7/365, and only when people start blocking cell signals do people sit up and say "Wait a minute! I deserve to have some sort of life!"
Something is out of whack here. Either people have a really skewed view of their own importance in the world (likely) or else have trouble following the choices they have made about the way they lead their lives to their logical
not this again (Score:5, Insightful)
i STILL have yet to be intruded upon so heinously (in fact not at all i can remember) by someone on a phone either at a restaurant, movie, play, etc that makes me think this is at all a rational response (i live in a metro area of 2.2 million. so it's not like i'm in the sticks where no one has a phone).
i rotate on call shift with the other IT guys. granted i won't goto a movie or something that would be boned by the intrusion, but i won't stop myself from going to a nice restaurant because of it and expect that i'll be reachable.
if this were a story about DRM everyone would be crying that the MAFIAA is "screwing over the responsible ones because of the bad acts of the few". if i'm on my phone at the store, i get off before standing in line, don't do it at the bank, don't do it at movies, if i'm at a restaurant i'll quickly goto a better place and call back.
there was another poster who got it right, establishments need to make it known to patrons if they allow phone use and enforce it. not pull some underhanded sneaky bullshit. that will piss customers off more.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately even 'making it known' has little effect. I work for a University Theatre Department. We always announce before a show to turn off your cell phones and pagers. We have to use wireless intercom systems, and on some shows wireless microphones. Cellular phones can and do interfere, we g
Ha! Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Rights? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the cell phone users perspective: I have the right to use my cellphone for critical situations and needs.
From the cell phone jammers perspective: I have the right to not be forced to listen to your conversation.
Somewhere in the middle there is a gray area where both parties must be respectful of one another.
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, that's not true. In tests where they had people go through an obstacle course where they were 1) drunk, 2) on the phone, or 3) sober the groups #1 and #2 performed about as poorly (much worse than #3). However, when complaints were raised about this method of testing a more appropriate test was devised - a real-world driving scenario (not an obstacle cou
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you heard the phrase, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? Anybody who gets a DUI should be thanking their lucky stars that it's what, a fine and a six month suspension, maybe, instead of a vehicular homicide charge.
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.
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:Emergency Use? My Ass... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a doc, and I have NO problem switching off my phone when I go to the movies or at a fancy restaurant. If I'm expected to be available, I simply don't go to those places that day. And I doubt very much that anyone can make up a more pressing reason to be reachable than me. It's just bad manners, there's no excuse.
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.
If people would just be polite (Score:4, Insightful)
If people would just be marginally polite and turn off the audible ring then theaters wouldn't be so tempted to jam cellphones. It's not like it's that hard to put a phone on vibrate to see a movie. If a call (silently) comes in that's THAT important, the lobby is only a few seconds away.
If it's not important enough to go to thee lobby for, it's not important enough to answer at all.
When checking out at a store, the cashier and people behind you do not want to just wait around while you quack on about your new shoes, little Johhny's report card, what's going on, etc. The cashier is NOT the one being rude by trying to get you to at least have the courtesy to complete the transaction and get out of the way before you complete your conversation.
I don't get it.... (Score:5, Funny)
Emergencies and physicians (Score:5, Insightful)
Radio waves do not know their discrete boundaries -- I don't have too much of a problem with jamming on private property in theory, provided the business informs the consumer very well that the premises is jammed. Therefore, doctors, etc. can avoid this area when on call or need to be reached, and people can 'vote with their wallets'; in truth I would not be a patron of such a place. However, in practice jamming signals can creep elsewhere, to the neighboring restaurant / apartment / out on the street. This clearly can be very dangerous.
Numerous people have commented that you should not expect to receive cell phone signals everywhere. This is true, and also why physicians still carry low-tech pagers, which have much more of a signal range. In clinical practice, all reliable systems for emergencies have redundancy. For instance, an interventional cardiologist in the middle of the night may be paged for a patient with a heart attack. If the operator doesn't hear back from the doctor in 5 minutes, he pages again and tries another form of communication (cell phone, land line..) If still no response, a backup doctor may be paged (extremely rare). Ideally, this redundancy works across different modalities (e.g. not all cellphone / 900 MHz etc.)
For some reason, probably historical, most doctors consider cellphones unreliable, and pagers completely reliable. For good systems, there must be redundancy as above in all situations. A half year ago, I got a nasty email from another doctor saying that I didn't return a page; I thought the person was crazy and they hadn't paged me, or paged the wrong person (still not sure what happened), but again, had they a second / backup method of reaching me, it would not have been a big deal. My role was not critical in that situation, so nothing happened (also why we didn't have critical redundancy), but if this had been due to *intentional* uninformed jamming, appropriate action would be taken...
The low-tech solution (Score:3, Funny)
I know it's not as fun as making a neat gizmo to do the job, and obviously it increases your chances of getting knifed by a teenage gangbanger exponentially, but as another comment said, jamming runs the risk of jamming a 911 call.
By listening to the douche say "nuthin, I'm just kickin it at the movies...", you ensure that the call is of a non-vital nature, and therefore rude as hell.
This aggression shall not stand, Dude!
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
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:endangering lives (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Quick! Outlaw tunnels and buildings too thick to allow cell phone signals!
But seriously... It is kind of silly to think that someone can rely on a cell phone 24/7 for emergency issues. As an anecdotally statement, there are parts of the building I work in that are complete dead zones depend on which direction I face. Maybe they used too much concrete or my service pr
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What, the fire alarms have all been replaced with "in case of emergency, use your cell" signs or something??
Re:Full support (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll just lay on the floor breathless, your life slipping away as a crowd stands around you in increased frustration as they're calls to 911 won't get through.
The coroner will find the jammer in your pocket later, when he inventories your possessions before tagging your toe and zipping up the bag.
And all because you didn't have the stones to just ask people to please turn off their phones so you could hear better.
Re:Anything but normal social interaction.. (Score:5, Funny)
1) they have both hands busy, and therefore can't fight
2) if they do, they'll soil themselves
3) they have to immediately explain their actions to the called party.
People are terribly self-centered, and you'll never get around them. It's like the kilowatt jam speakers in people's car trunks, and how they'll rattle the dishes in an neighborhood. They can't hear the sound of my paintball gun over the tops of it-- and I'm sure of this. I hate to waste rounds, but the cars sure do look psychedelic when they pass thru my 'hood.
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