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Low-Tech Cell Phone Blocking
nigelc writes: "This BBC story reports on Japanese work to come up with a low-tech solution to cell phones in cinemas! Hey, if it can stop the person next to me from going 'Hey, dude, guess where I am?,' I'm all in favor of it."
Now, I understand that you get reflection and you can normally see more than one antenna, but this could cause whole other problems with people sheilding other areas as a side effect. I mean, what if I live next door to a cinema and they install this? Suddenly I can't receive mobile phone calls in my house because I'm in the shadow of the cinema!
This raises all kinds of interesting issues. Can I force another property to stop blocking my radio waves? Does it devalue my property (probably, in today's modern soceity, yes.) I know whenever I've looked for places to live in the last few years one of the first things I do when I walk in is see if I can get mobile reception.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
The first place I saw the idea was AskTog, May, 2000. But he has an update saying the technology has been developed by a company called bluelinx.
"In my values, freedom is more important than 'serving users' in a mere practical sense." -- RMS
Canada is considering making it legal for businesses to actively jam cell phones because there are so many people like you who won't turn off their phones when requested.
So let's say one of these theatres with RF-shielded walls caught fire. The firefighters rush in, with their VHF two-way radios. But they are now blocked! So if they have to radio warnings, like, "Get out of there, the roof is about to collaps!", they don't hear it, because the wood part of the walls may be on fire, but they are still standing, ferrite intact.
Firefighters died in the World Trade Center *because* the building's construction (the shell had steel vertical beams very close together) blocked the signals from the command on the ground, telling them to evacuate. (This was written up in IEEE Spectrum, I think in April.) Now you want theatres to have this problem, just because some jerks are too tacky to put there phones on "vibrate" or go to the lobby when they get a call?
I'm a parent, and as somebody else noted, we sometimes need to be reached on an emergency basis. I have had to leave a movie because my cell phone *vibrated* and the babysitter told me, while I was standing in the lobby, that there was a problem. I would be hard-pressed to patronize a theater that didn't allow me that luxury.
Back in the sixties, my father was a physician who was often "on call" during his few hours of not actually working. He had an answering service that he checked in with all the time. I think he had occasion to leave them the phone number of the theatre (reserved seat stage, not movie), and his seat, so that an usher could fetch him. We don't do that nowadays; we expect radio waves to do the job. It can be done with minimum annoyance to fellow theatergoers. Blocking is a bad idea.
a cell fone blocking system could be potentially life threatening, some doctors are allways on call, but does that mean they shouldn't enjoy a night out, if their cell fone is blocked and its an emergency a patient of theirs could die, this is why at a theatre if someones fone or pager goes off i ask them if their a doctor, if not i chuck ice at them for the rest of the show
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Breath man, I see your point and you are definitely correct. fmaxwell has a point, and it is somewhat valid. My guess is that if you only have one pediatric urologist in your area it's a fairly low populous area. Hell, I grew up in an area of about 20K-30K people and we had 2.
:)
Living in a large city, there is always the back up. I know a few doctors and specialists who are on call. When they are on call they make sure that they don't do anything that would be interruptive. It's called courtesy. The problem is most of the young drones and lackeys of corporate culture think their servers are more important than those around them. They think because they're the ones that get called they're important. They aren't, but let them live that way -- when they grow up they'll realize otherwise. I'd say most doctors and actual important people don't like to be interruptive or make a scene at all. That's why you rarely see one scamper out of a movie theater.
Just my $0.02. But, you are right, and I'd help with the anal-retentive beating
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I'm shocked that with all of these posts no /. readers have pointed out that use of such communication jamming devices isn't kosher with the old FCC. Any US theater trying to use this will find the feds knocking at their door... and that is a shame.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
What i'd like to see, and haven't seen mentioned yet, is a standard for cell phones to switch to vibrate/standby/whatever upon recieving a 'silence beacon' signal. The phone would just have a 3rd setting: ring, silent, or auto. If it comes in range of a silence beacon, it switches to silent. When it goes out of range, it can switch back to ring. It's voluntary, so if you're expecting life or death communications you can leave it on ring, but people are still free to take you phone and throw it. This, along with a ringer schedule to switch to vibrate during meetings and classes, should help a lot if people are willing to use them.
I should be able to put people in physical danger so I can talk to my girlfriend on the flight.
Physical danger? Not quite. Cell phone signals do not even come close to affecting aircraft avionics; the frequencies are all wrong, and with even the fundamental being above everything we use, harmonics aren't even an issue. The real reason for the prohibition is the FCC--when you're up high, you can hit a lot more cell phone repeaters (see also: 39,000 foot tall antenna tower), taking a disproportionately large portion of the infrastructure. You can rest assured that using a cell phone in flight will not put anybody in danger.
Incidentally, I'm a flight instructor and instrument flight instructor, so I do know a little bit about these things. Just so you know.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca