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Repel Bugs With Your Cell Phone
telstar writes "Starting Monday, SK Telecom Co. in South Korea will begin offering a ringtone designed to repel mosquitoes for the one-time price of $2.50. The ringtone, inaudible to humans, has a range of three feet, and functions just like any other ring-tone from your cell." Now if only there was a ringtone to repel bugs in code! Sorry, I'm full of bad jokes today.
This ringing sound.... or the odors that attract them to you in the first place?
.unsigged
Ehh... why would i buy a ring tone that i can't even hear?
Customers can then play the sound by hitting a few buttons on their mobile phones.
The idea is not to use it as a ring tone, simply to play it manually when you want to get rid of mozzies. If it actually works as advertised then it sounds like a decent idea to me!
Disclaimer: The above comment was made while under the influence of too much coding and not enough sleep.
Use full strength Muskol and you'll be bite-free! (A great Canadian invention.)
sulli
RTFJ.
from the defeating-the-original-purpose-of-actually-hearin
Brilliant, guys. Simply stellar.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
That is seriously the most intelligent funny post I've ever read. Congrats.
First of all, most cell phones store ringtones in a compressed PCM-like format, ADPCM, for instance. PCM sampling rates for most phones top out at around 22 KHz.
The speakers in such phones also can't reproduce high quality sound in even the ranges they are rated in, and the quality, response and dbm it takes to drive the speakers drops off considerably as the frequency goes significantly below or beyond its rated frequency response. Piezo elements could do it but those are rated for a single frequency or set of frequencies and all but the oldest phones still have them (those don't support ring tones anyway).
Perhaps they observed a different effect -- waving the phone in the air with the ring tone emmited will naturally rouse the insects.
I'll stick to bug spray and avoid the swamp lands, thank you.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
As someone who recently had West Nile I can honestly say that it was a pretty shitty (no pun intended) evening of cramps and fever. I'll take that anyday over paranoia and semi-constant exposure to the nasty potentially cancer causing chemicals in the majority of bug sprays. Oh, and once you've had West Nile you can't get it again.
I live in Ontario and get to watch the constant commercials and news stories about the great threat of the mosquitoes. I do understand that certain segments of the population (the old, the young, the sick) should take precautions, but I don't like the fact that people are dumping chemicals in all of the standing water around to cut the mosquito population. My neighbour was dumping misc chemicals into the rainbarrel that he uses to water the lawn that his children play on. Paranoia kills common sense.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama