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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."
I'm sorry, but like most of the /. posters I keep my cell phone on vibrate ALL THE TIME. I'm not going to be rude and talk in the theater, but I HAVE TO GET MY TEXT MESSAGES.
"Dude, the servers are down" is the most important message I can get from mon!!!! If I can't get to one or the other data center things start going to shit fast.
Note to owners: This is a great way to get me to stay way the fsck away from your theater if you install it.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Most theatres have pay phones. 911 is free.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
So if I read this right, this paneling also blocks 97% of Wi-Fi (802.11b) signal strength? So if I want to secure my wireless network, I panel the outside walls of my building with this type of paneling, making it so that the warchalkers of the world can't get the signal? And any time I need to go building-to-building, I wire it.
(Yes, I realize this only works if you don't need access outside the building, but many applications wouldn't anyway.)
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
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.
...is a personal cell-phone anesthetizer. So I can reach into my pocket and push a button, and every cell phone within 10 meters stops working for 30 seconds (or at least long enough to drop the current call). It doesn't completely solve the problem but it would be very, very satisfying :P
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
For cinemas, concerts et c. I prefer a low-tech solution like this.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
I have an even lower-tech solution:
"Sir: Please turn your cell phone off or leave the cinema" - the usher
or:
"Turn that damn thing OFF!" - me
I remember reading a story of about a man talking on a cell phone on a ski gondola at a resort in Aspen. Another man, sitting next to him, asked him quietly how much the phone (a new, state of the art model) had cost. When the first man replied "Four hundred dollars," the second snatched it, threw it out the window of the gondola, and calmly handed him four Ben Franklins.
Japan has one lawyer for every 10,000 people. The US has one lawyer for every 300 people.
"I didn't see the sign saying the theater was blocked and I missed my big interview / wife in labor / server going down / mother dying / stockmarket crashing / etc."
US lawyers would have a field day. "Was the sign displayed properly? What font was it in? Was it also written in Swahili? What about the literacy impared?"
I just can't see it.
=brian
I'm sorry, but like most of the /. posters I keep my cell phone on vibrate ALL THE TIME. I'm not going to be rude and talk in the theater, but I HAVE TO GET MY TEXT MESSAGES.
/. posters don't keep their cell phones on vibrate "ALL THE TIME"? I don't. I normally leave mine in the car when I go in a public place.
If you can't be without your cell phone long enough to see a movie, then wait until the movie shows up at Blockbuster, rent it, and watch it at home. I do not buy movie tickets so that I can listen to your cell phone doing the vibrate/buzz thing. Neither do I want to see your glaring backlit display while you read your text messages. I don't want you tripping over my feet or my girlfriend's while you stumble out of the theatre because of your oh-so-important message. Your job does not concern me in the slightest. I would sooner see you fired than have you interrupt a movie that I paid to see.
Clue: Important people don't have to carry cell phones into movie theatres. Schmucks that work for important people are the ones on call 24/7.
P.S. Who told you that most
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.
This will really help my dating life. I always notice my date's cellphone rings in the middle of the date and then she "suddenly" has to go.
:-)
But now their phones won't be able to ring...
Theaters should just implement a spotlight system a-la the Movementarians' indoctrination video in The Simpsons. As soon as you pick up your phone, the movie stops, and you are nailed by a high-power spotlight until you hang up. This should serve as a nice deterrent. For added fun, intercept their signal and play their call over the sound system for everyone to hear. Hell, I'd pay extra for a seat if theaters around here did that!
Very good idea, IMHO.
Vibrating phones are no better if you're still going to answer the bloody thing and start talking into it.
If you're on-call, part of that deal is that you've not just got the phone with you, but are capable of answering in. In a cinema, you are not capable of answering it - if you're sitting next to me, you'll be LARTed and unable to speak at all!
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
And as many others have pointed out - LEAVE A NUMBER where you can be reached.
/side rant >
Guess what - that's what millions of people do today and what most of us GREW UP WITH. And we're still here.
If you are that concerned about your child's safety/health/well-being or you don't trust your babysitter then STAY HOME or take the child with you - IF the kid has manners.
< side rant >
If the kid doesn't have manners, both of you stay home. I'm so tired of ill-mannered, disgusting, rude children in public I could slap them and their parents silly. It's as bad as cell phones, only worse because it propagates.
I'm not a child hater - I have 3 and they are always complimented on their manners. Not because they're perfect but because most people's children are so horrifying.
<
I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
If he's on call, he should do one of the following things:
a) not go to a 2 hour movie, wait until he gets off call
b) leave his pager at the front desk and ask them to get him if it goes off
Simple enough. People apparently survived when we didn't have cell phones, so saying that blocking them in movie theaters is going to result in the downfall of Western civilization and whatnot is a bit extreme.
p.s. in my experience, pagers seem to get better reception than phones do - this might not block them anyways.
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.
"Can you hear me now?"
(silence)
"Damn!"
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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
Aluminum won't block enough signal.
Personally, I find Aluminum more than adequate for stopping annoying cell phones, if you apply a little ingenuity. Here's how:
You should start with a long aluminum rod, preferably 20 grain, weighing in between 7-15 pounds. I recommend a piece between 37 and 45 inches long and 2-3 inches in diameter.
Shopping tip: while you can obtain such a bar from any conventional hardware store, one of my faithful readers, T. Harding, maintains you may purchase such economy hardware at a Big 5 or Play It Again Sports. For our purposes, she recommends the following brand names: Easton, Demarini, or Louisville Slugger.
Bring this item with you the next time you go to a movie. When one of your fellow theater patrons' cell phone rings and he acquires the unmitigated audacity to answer it, do as follows:
1. Move in front of him with your aluminum rod.
2. Stand very close to him.
3. Quietly wave your toy over his phone.
Voila! His phone call will die out without warning! It happens so suddenly, neither party has a chance to even say goodbye! It works nine times out of ten*.
* One time out of ten, you require a liberal, repeated application of your aluminum against that subject's patella, in a downwards motion towards the bottom of the femur. Once the device is on the ground, firm (and direct) impact from your aluminum will terminate its functionality.
Solomon
"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!"
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
There are other ways to block signals.
:)
Metal works pretty well.
Or if you need to see through it, there are some forms of glass that have trace amounts of a conductive substance that will give it a mild tint to visible light but make it impassable for RF. Also fine-mesh screen works too.
I'm not sure exactly what they use in the windows, but because the company I work at makes RF power amplifiers, mainly ones for cell phone use, the building is heavily shielded to keep signals INSIDE. (Not for security, but to prevent us from interfering with nearby cellular systems, but security would be an additional benefit if we ran 802.11b) - We do make sure to use dummy loads, but even dummy loads aren't perfect. I've been working with some FM broadcast-band equipment - I'm sure it radiates somewhat, but I can walk out to my car (50 feet away from the lab), turn on my radio, and hear pure static with no sign of a carrier anywhere nearby.
This just happens to be a form of RF shielding for places where they can't afford to shield the room totally with metal/can't design such shielding in as an afterthought.
Conductive paint (perhaps containing graphite, or maybe powdered ferrite) would work well too.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?