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Beep! Beep! You have Broken the Law.
medscaper writes "Authorities in China are using computers to spam mobile phones of law-breakers until they turn themselves in. Apparently, lots of illegal advertisements as stickers with mobile-phone numbers listed are placed around large cities and are becoming an eyesore. So, the authorities call the cell phones incessantly with recorded messages that demand the "businessmen" to turn themselves in."
I think the idea is that they only go after the biggest offenders, so if you wanted to create trouble for someone you'd really have to go out of your way posting thousands and thousands of these stickers everywhere
The article discuss that. It says that they would have to pay fees to change their number, and they would lose any business from their ad.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
Authorities in China are turning to technology to nab vandals--they use a computer program that spams the wrongdoers' mobile phones until they turn themselves in.
Officials in Hangzhou, the capital of China's Zhejiang province, have developed a system which bombards mobile phones with pre-recorded voice messages, according to the official newspaper, the People's Daily.
Businessmen who put up illegal advertisements which contain mobile numbers have become the target of the computerized phone-spammer.
According to the report, illegal stickers have become an eyesore in recent years, with China's coastal and urbanized areas blighted with a blizzard of advertisements.
This is because the postcard-sized stickers, which promote everything from fake identity cards to counterfeit academic certifications, are cheap to produce and offer some anonymity.
The new system rings the mobile phone numbers of illegal advertisers at 20-second intervals, said the People's Daily.
Upon answering the call, the wrongdoer hears the pre-recorded message--"You have broken the law by posting illegal ads. You must immediately stop this activity and go to the Hangzhou Urban Administrative Bureau for punishment."
Those who prefer to change their "poisoned" number rather than face punishment incur the fees and inconvenience of switching, and also lose any business their ad might have generated.
The system also dents the advertisers' bottom line as ad respondents are unlikely to get through, thanks to the mobile barrage. As the anti-sticker scheme is newly launched, results have yet to come in, said the report.
Ordinary folks need not worry about being spammed by mistake as the phone numbers are taken from photos of illegal advertisements, said Wei Yunxiang, an official with the Hangzhou Urban Administrative Bureau.
The numbers are also checked manually and require the approval of a senior official before the bombardment can begin, he told the People's Daily.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
I suppose if your enemy posted up your number all over the place *AND* you answered your phone trying to sell something, you'd get in trouble.
BTW, if you made a few ads and posted them, people interested in the ads would spam the number in response to the ad, regardless of the state's actions
"You should turn yourself in, lawbreaker"
So what if you change your number, So what if you block the police.
THIS IS CHINA!!!! You are not protect from the Government. The phone company is not autonomous (no one is, not even the enterprise zones along the south east coastal areas.
This is not the USA where the police have to work within the rules. This is MAINLAND CHINA kids, ive been there a lot and can tell you the following:
#1 if you got the clout you can get anything done
#2 if the police (read government) decides your a problem, you can kiss it goodbye!
#3 You cant block the police/govt over there with your silly little 900 / 3 blocking DIPSHITS!!! they already offer 100% censorship (this includes phone systems)
As it is so painfully obvious, that most of you NIMRODS have never been over there, had you, you would understand very cleary why CHINA is NOT the USA!!!...
And actually this will probably work VERY well for China!
In NYC, there are cameras set up at every intersection. If you run a red light, they take a snapshot... ...about a week later you receive a ticket in the mail, with a photo of your car going through the intersection and a closeup of your license plate. Try and talk your way out of that ticket!
=Smidge=
Busting someone for drugs earns the department all the cash and assets of the person. Busting someone for hit and run gets them nothing but paperwork, and the expense of dealing with it.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Yeah, actually...I would say RTFA, but it's the first time I actually read one in five years - I sorta had to to submit it - but it says that the police personally verify all numbers by calling them first before turning this thing on, and even then, a senior administrator has to personally vouch for the number.
So, I guess it's his ass if they goof.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Actually the Chinese and Japanese languages lend themselves better to text messaging. I suspect that's why it is so much more popular in Asia, along with the fact that it's still a nightmare to send messages between providers in the US (i.e. dumbass wireless companies shooting themselves in the foot).
The difference is that a single character typically represents an "idea" rather than a sound, although there are some cases of the latter, as well. When you can make most words in your language by combining at most 3-4 characters, it is much more efficient to express yourself in writing compared to English, whose average word length is 5 (according to my typing teacher from high school). Added on to that, Asian languages don't use a lot of the "superfluous" words you find in English like definite articles, pronouns, etc. Also, a lot more of the content is picked up by context and left "unwritten".
So, packing all of these language "features" together means that it takes a lot less writing to express exactly the same concept. As a point of reference, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is 752 pages in English (paperback edition), and 210 pages in simplified Chinese (also paperback).
p.s. a side note on "predictive text input"
US cell phones have "predictive text input", Chinese and Japanese phones have this as well, and for a much longer time. It is a necessary component of entering any kind of text into a digital device in Asia, and has been constantly researched and developed basically since those languages were available on computers. If you want to try this out, and you have Windows 2000 or XP, try installing the IME for Chinese or Japanese, and playing with it.
This doesn't work. In my area, they tried this and it got shut down pretty quick. Unless there is a solid picture of the driver in the car, it does no good. The driver is to be fined, not the owner of the car.
Too many cases had to be thrown out, due to "Yes, your honor, that is a picture of my car. However I was not driving my car."
"Who was driving your car at that day and time?"
"Well, that was 3 months ago by the time I got the mail and got this court date was set, and I don't remember if I let Marv, Harry, or Bill drive it to get lunch that day. Or it could have been my wife or daughter, I don't know which one of us took the car that day."
Burdon of proof of the driver is on the State side, not the accused. As long as you can give a reasonable doubt whether or not it was you, then you're off.
Now if they were to have several camera angles with polarized lenses take a picture, to combat window glare, they may have a chance of these holding up in court.
Photo Radar is the same way, it proves too hard to prove who was driving the car, it takes less effort for an officer to hide behind a road sign and write tickets to the person sitting in the drivers seat.
I definitely agree that people need to stop running red lights, as that is more dangerous than pretty much any other traffic violation, but these automated systems have a very long way to go before they will be acceptable evidence in court.