Comment Re:It's been awhile since the last patent storm... (Score 1) 137
Seems like a different type of "kill" switch, in fact more like "mute" than "kill" - more sinister one at that too. From the article you linked it seems a bit unclear if this can be used for specific devices only or if it's a general "Mute" All Phones In 100m Radius only.
...even the less sinister use case examples of it sound unacceptable to me, for example: I'm generally against phone use in movie theatres, however I can stand a person who's work demands him to be "on call" (provided it's closer to "in case of emergency" than "I work on sex-line) to be in movies, phone set on vibrate, and excuse him-/herself in case there is a call.
It doesn't have to be one extreme or another, and I feel very strongly about missing information (such as who attempted to call at what exact time. Or perhaps SMS messages, which get delivered later but are easy to peek at without bothering others) because a movie theatre decides to ban phone use but are too lazy to actually do any work on it and too nazi to cut everyone's connection instead. Throw out people who disturb other customers (there's more to it than just phone use, and cutting the network still leaves those problems to be) and I'm all for it, but stay the fsck away from network connectivity of the silently active phone(s) in my pocket. Heck, I could be using it for a big download I didn't think of at home, expecting to have it finished by the end of the movie - even the strongest "do naught at movies or go home" purists should have nothing to say against that. Luckily where I live disturbing the network connectivity isn't something a private business can legally do to others - also the police aren't currently allowed to do anything like cutting off the network on area of police bru... I mean, riot, but these days such "rights" can be given to authorities and taken from people no matter where you live - or what your constitution says about it - unless people get/stay informed and active.