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Stop Cell Phones Without Stopping Pacemakers...
metoikos writes "A company based in Fairfax, Virginia, has come up with a subtler method of
preventing cell-phone addicts from using the world as a phone booth than a faraday cage or even those little hand-held jammers.
Cell Block Technologies (that name must go over well with law enforcement) is developing a smoke-detector sized device which sends signals of 'no service' to cellphone frequencies, prompting phone to send calls directly to voicemail.
Admittedly this is better than messing with everything that uses the same frequencies cellphones do . "
with a subtler method of preventing cell-phone addicts from using the world as a phone booth
What about business people, doctors, police, etc. who need these devices to work?
And talk about lawsuit material. Someone gets hurt, but can't call 911 on their cell phone because it is being jammed by this (or a similar) device.
Hell, aren't devices like these illegal anyways?
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I can see churches and assembly halls getting them, as well as theaters and restaurants, just to lower the asshole quotient, but this raises issues.
What if an emergency call is blocked, or a call about something incredibly good?
What if it were Darl's call to Linus apologizing for the lawsuit that was blocked? (Hey, we can dream.)
This shouldn't be used except in controlled circumstances, although personal-sized models of this will be fun to play with.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
This is a good idea if its only for incoming calls. By only blocking incoming calls people can still make their emergency phone calls. And if someone is making an outgoing phone call at the Opera then that is an offense punishable by castration. So I say block the incoming calls.
Free speech often means interfering / annoying those around you, just ask any protestor. Why should only people who can afford $100 dinners be able to eat dinner without cell phones? Sounds pretty discrimanatory to me. If someone is rude during a movie, they can always be asked to leave - the cell phone is a moot point.
As you go into a high-class opera house, you check your phone at the desk, give them your seat number, and relax and enjoy(?) the show. Partway through, an usher comes to your seat, and quietly tells you that a Darl McBride is on the line. You then walk to the desk, and take the call there.
It would probably be possible to temporarily reroute your phone number, too.
There should be a law requiring/prohibiting that (Please circle one)
This device would be illegal in the US (unless they've somehow received FCC aproval).
The FCC will crack down hard on people using this device. All it takes is one complaint from a cell customer or provider to the FCC, you don't have to file a lawsuit.
The fines for transmitting in unauthorized bands are pretty hefty and I doubt that anyone who is attempting to block cell traffic would be willing to put up with repeated large fines and/or jail time for not complying.
-- Is it a right to remain ignorant? -- Calvin
I've yet to be disturbed or annoyed by someone using their cell phone. I take mine with me everywhere, but then again, I turn off the ringer and just use the vibrate function when I'm in some place with a lot of people. Of course, I don't disturb anyone because no one really calls me...ever....(sob)
But are people really annoyed by cell phones so much? Also, what's with these draconian laws with driving and cell phones? They say it's because you'll get distracted. But then again, shouldn't they outlaw radios...and talking to others in your car?
Just wondering.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I would have to agree with the AC below (or above me), but for different reasons. If a doctor or some other professional needs to use the phone for matters of life or death, then I think I can be inconvenience for a bit while they take their call.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
As soon as a story is posted about blocking cell phones, everyone chimes in with reasons why you just can't take away the precious cell phones. So here's my new low-tech, royalty-free method to stop people from using cell phones in movie theaters.
1. Post a sign saying that use of cell phones in the movie theater is prohibited and cause for removal.
2. When you notice someone on a cell phone, or get a complaint about someone on a cell phone, remove the offender.
3. Do not refund their money.
- if you are in an area where you can't lock onto any cellular control channel, either due to there being insufficient signal from any cellsite basestations, or
- due to jamming from an interfering signal on the same frequencies, or
- if someone installed a bogus cellsite emulator that would act as a honeypot for all the cellphones in a particular area, by broadcasting control-channel data at a high signal strength. The cellphones would then be blind to any traffic happening on the real network.
It is unlikely, though, that you could get an FCC license to do any of the above, and if you really want to kill all the cellular traffic, you need to do one of the above to both the 800 and 1900 MHz bands (in North America). It is probably easier to just ask people to be polite and shut the damn things off.
Less is more.
This is all assuming that you're actually working for a Fortune 50 company and you are who you say you are.
If I decode TV signals broadcasting through my own skull while standing on my lawn I will get sued by DirecTV and probably lose the case. You don't have jurisdiction over what you RECEIVE, so I doubt you have jurisdiction to transmit anything you want. I think it's real fucked up.
//Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
Manufacturers could be encouraged to build technology in phones which detects when the user is in a 'quiet-zone' (by a particularly encoded low-power radio signal). The owner could then have the option to pre-set the phone to be silent, or vibrate, or even just to ring as normal when in a quiet zone (meaning the user still has full control).
People are always whining and yammering on about their rights--but never a word about responsibilities.
I want one that does a different kind of Denial of Service attack: one that would simultaneously ring every cellular device in the vicinity until people turn their phones off. Call it a port scanner for cell phones.
I'd use one in the theater right before the show starts.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
LEAVE IT WITH THE HOUSE MANAGER AND/OR USHER, WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO GET YOU IF IT RINGS.
Exactly the same way that on-call doctors worked prior to the advent of pagers and cellphones; they let the hospital know "I will be at the theater from 9 to midnight" and if the call was for them, the house manager would (quietly) find them and tell them.
Sorry to shout, but isn't it bleedingly obvious?
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
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Pagers lack confirmation and retransmission. They also suffer from severe network service "backups" at peak usage without notifying the caller that the message may be delayed for hours.
Also with public phones being torn down in record numbers, there may be no phone for the doctor to use.
Bad idea.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
If you're a doctor with a 12 year old girl dying in the hospital, what in the world are you doing in the theater watching "Hellboy"?
I've had movies interrupted probably 20-30 times in the last year or 2 and it has NEVER been a doctor. Nor has the conversation EVER been important on the scale that everyone talks about in these discussions. Over half of the conversations have started something like this,
"Oh, nothing much, just watching a movie.".
"Yeah, we can bring the beer."
"No, it's no big deal. Some a**hole is telling me to get off the phone, so I'll have to call you later."
Most doctors carry pagers as their notification devices for medical emergencies. It allows them to be notified, but not have to drop what they're doing to know what's going on. Same with on-call ambulance drivers, firemen, etc. In almost every single emergency profession, all they really look for is notification that they need to get to the hospital/ambulance shed/firehouse immediately. They don't need to have an actual conversation.
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A professional who is on call should be responsible enough to avoid places where he is not allowed to use his phone.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I know people abuse them and annoy but this is stupid. My wife is due to have our second child in 3 days. I NEED to have my cell work (vibrate) wherever I am.
Also my wife and I would like to go to that fancy resturant too. But with an infant at home with a babysitter, I would appreciate you NOT blocking my cell phone in case of emergency.
You should not control rude people by punishing all!!
Isn't the flashing "No Service" light on your phone a good enough indicator that the thing isn't going to be working?
I mean, it's not implicit that a cell phone is going to work anywhere at all, anyway. They are completely unreliable unreliable communication mediums, no matter what Verizon says.
If one is really stupid to have someone's life depend on their bloody cellphone, they'd better be diligent enough to notice when there's no service. And if they think they're too busy to notice, then their phone calls are plainly not very important to them.
Why do we need more signs to limit people's liability for other people's inattentiveness? Isn't the signal-to-noise ratio bad enough yet?
Kid-proof tablet..
I carry a fire pager for Search & Rescue in my county. We are on call 24/7/365. There is no other agency in the county to perform search and rescue/recovery of lost poeple, so it is important to get my pages. This is also not a normal pager, it is louder than you can imagine and scares the shit out of anyone nearby when it goes off (including me). Think: high pitched rail road crossing alarm on your belt. The thing is, I have adapted ways to quite the pager when I am in public places to lessen its exposure. Doctors and other such people that are always on call also do this. When you are used to being paged at the worst possible times you get used to trying to minimize its effect on people around you. You only notice and get annoyed by the people that answer and talk loudly to their friends about the party they are going to later. Overall - Jamming signals is a bad idea. We should teach people to not be morons instead. But then I guess my Search & Rescue gig wouldn't be required anymore either.
I am one of the people who actually has his phone set to vibrate mode nearly all of the time but this type of "you can't use your own phone" attitude really pisses me off.
If such a practice of blocking signals ever became legal and prevelant in the US I would go to such places and manually activate my ringers then pretend to carry on a conversation ANYWAY and encourage others to do the same until the nonsense was repealed.
Cell phones are a fact of modern life. Mature, grow up and deal.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
And you can't get your babysitter to call the restaurant?
How did your parents ever survive without a cell phone?
The fact is that you don't NEED the phone to work everywhere, you just WANT it to. There's a big difference.
I'd expect someone with that degree of importance to have a phone with a functional vibrate setting. They get a call, they can see who it is by caller id, and if it's important step outside the auditorium to take it. If not, they hit the mute button, it stops vibrating, and they continue watching the movie. No harm, no foul, no inconvenience. It does require them to set the phone to vibrate (if they don't leave it on that all the time), but that's already asked by theaters of everyone.
Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
I'd like to think I'm a responsibile cell phone user. In theatres, the first thing I do is either switch it off, or to vibrate only. If a call comes in for me in a public place, I step outside into an uncrowded area, or I let voice mail catch the call.
Unfortunately, in the U.S. today, the concept of personal responsibility has been killed. It's gone. It's pushing up posies. This is the same argument used by the gun control fanatic types: "An average person isn't smart enough to own a gun. So, instead of making them take responsibility for their actions, we'll just make it illegal to own guns."
So, here, instead of politely tasing (using a Taser) on rude individuals who insist on using cell phones rudely, we have people that want to make cell phone use impossible, thus taking away the ability of people who truly do need them from being able to be in those areas.
You don't need to have a cell phone to be rude and insensitive: Miss Manners existed well before the cell phone was invented.
Ahhhh... I love the smell of my karma burning in the afternoon.. It's the smell of victory.
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
That's right. It's not like the human female has evolved over thousands of years to easily squeeze out a pup or two without much intervention.
If you were her doctor/ob/gyn in addition to being her husband, I'd appreciate your point. If you're *that* concerned about the delivery -- and if you're not the doc, there's not much you'd be able to do anyway -- then take some time off and hang with your wife until the big event comes around.
And while not trying to not sound like one of those raving loons on alt.support.childfree (or whetever it's called), you have no rights or expectations to a social life should you choose to procreate. I know -- I'm a father of two. When I left my kids with the sitter/evening daycare, I would give them my cell number, but I never left it on. If the situation was *that* dire, I'd hope they'd call the hospital/police/etc rather than me. And it it's not that dire, they can handle the kids 'till I pick them up.
Sheesh -- you'd think childbearing and parenting were rare events, fraught with peril, if parents in this thread were actually taken seriously. Kids (and expectant mothers, for that matter) just aren't that fragile.
Man, these cell phone jammer articles sure do get people all riled up. How did we *ever* survive life before the 90's when every 12-year-old and her dog didn't have cell phone. Those were dark days indeed. :) Lighten up, folks. You can manage w/o your precious portable phones.
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People on call for life and death situations should probably not be going to the theatre. Having to work your way through a crowd may mean a fatal delay in reaching the person who needs your life or death service.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
What privacy issues? The usher answers the phone "theater for john doe, would you like to leave a message or should I get him?" (Or something to that effect) Sure it is a private call, but that doesn't mean the phone answerer needs to be told anything more than "This is an urgent matter than needs his attention now". In any case all the people around the doctor will hear a lot of private information if he answers, while the usher can be assumed to be a little more discrete, if only cause it is just one person. (Who also has made it clear he isn't the doctor)
I don't go to movies, but every theater I've been to (with real actors), they informed us that there were usher willing to hold your phone and answer it for you.
Huh? Of course I don't HAVE to be there. This is my second child and forgive me for wanting to be there. Excuse me if i'm driving to work and would like to know I need to turn around and go back.
I NEVER implied that my wife or kid are fragile. But gosh, there are a few really important events in our family and I'd like to be there. I pitty for not feeling the same.
I want you, right now to remove your television, computer, oven, toaster, electric shaver etc.. from your house. I mean, how did you ever survive with out them.
I never claimed to be unable to manage but please explain to me how a small vibrating piece of plastic in my pocket hurts YOU?
I am not leaving my $450 pager with anyone. And this is not a normal pager, after sounding the alarm from hell it plays the dispatch to where I need to go. I am not going to rely on some usher to remember if it was a dynamic water rescue on a river or a technical water rescue from a strainer in a creek. Sometimes people actually need to be able to get a message anytime anywhere.
Is whatever you have to say really more important than the safety of other road users?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This is the first argument that I've heard that makes me think that maybe blocking all cell phones in restaurants and theaters might not be such a good idea. I agree with you that responsible/thoughtful cell users should not be penalized just because some self-absorbed folks have to have their bizarre ring-tone and conversations disturb my dining.
How about this: What if that fancy restaurant posted a sign, saying "We reserve the right to block cell phone use - Your cell may not operate within the confines of this establishment". Lord knows, if two restaurants were side-by-side, I'd choose the one least used by cell phones. And then that would mean it was everybody's choice whether they were unable to use their cell phone or not.
Congratulations on the new little dude/dudette, by the way.
What about people like me who use their phone to wirelessly surf the web? Doesn't make any noise, but you're willing to stop me from surfing the web just because you don't want to hear others? Any establishment that blocks my internet will find themselves short one more customer. What's next, dumping buckets of water on each person as they enter so they don't smoke?
You are confusing "free speech" with noise pollution. The right of freedom of speech is a right to be able to speak your opinion or speak facts without government suppression. It concerns content, not the existence of noise coming out of your mouth.
If you were standing on my street at 3:00 AM having a "conversation" with your signifigant other at screaming level, would you expect NOT to be arrested for disturbing the peace?
And actually, freedom of speech does *not* include interfering with others. If I pass by a demonstration I might be annoyed, and that's fine: I can excercise my freedom of expression to ignore, make a gesture, or tell the protesters my opinion. But if someone lays a hand on me (battery) or blocks my path (restricting my freedom of movement/kidnapping), all bets are off.
I believe that most "protests" that are designed to interfere with others are the social equivalent of a temper tantrum: the public isn't paying attention, but some cause is so important that the protesters will MAKE everyone pay attention. Oh, protesters will grab my attention by chaining themselves across a bridge and screwing up traffic for 2 hours, but it will be negative attention, and their cause (aside from from the orgy of self congratulation at having "done something") won't benefit from it.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
There is nothing in the silent vibration of my cellphone that anyone around me will notice. If they notice me pull it out of my pocket and look at the screen, then it wasn't a very interesting show and you owe them their money back.
A few nights ago, someone a few rows up from me at the theater kept pulling their cell phone out to check something The light was so bright that it was distracting.
I have seen people who put their cell phones on "silent", then leave them out. Most cell phones flash the main lights when they ring, while not as bad as a ring-tone, it is still very distracting in a dark theater.
But all that said, I do think that people should be able to block cell phone calls in private businesses, as long as it is well posted that they are doing it. I can then take my business somewhere else if I don't like it.
If you're a doctor with a 12 year old girl dying in the hospital, what in the world are you doing in the theater watching "Hellboy"?
Well, presumably the girl wasn't dying when the doctor left the hospital.
I've had movies interrupted probably 20-30 times in the last year or 2 and it has NEVER been a doctor.
So does that mean doctors never receive emergency phonecalls at the movies, or that they keep their phones on vibrate, talk quietly, and leave the theater if have an important call without you ever knowing?
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
A handheld cellphone jammer like this would be fantastic for stalkers, serial killers, robbers and rapists.
I get so much amusement out of those evening local news segments when some woman gives birth in a car on the way to the hospital or on an elevator.
Whoop. Dee. Freakin. Doo.
It's not like the baby needs two nurses and a doctor (who arrives for the last 10 minutes and catches the kid), an IV drip, an EEG monitor, and a motorized hospital bed to make its way into the world. Yeah, sometimes they do, but statistics are in favor of an uneventful birth.
Common -- there are 6 billion of us alive right now. Then there's the billions before us. You tellin' me that human reproduction is truly a beag deal? Give me a break. Sure, seeing my son born was kinda neat. My wife thought the event sucked. :) But then again, she did the natural birth thing -- she didn't cop out like many women do and go epidural and/or C-section (when not necessary). But it was in no way a miraculous, life-shattering, earth-moving event. It was the result of nature in action. Nothing more.
Remember Howie Mandel? The head-under-the-surgical-glove comedian guy? The voice of the cartoon "Bobby's World"? Star of "St. Elsewhere"? Well, he had one of the most classic lines in one of his 80's comedy routines.
Paraphrased:
"So, my wife and I are expecting our first baby."
Cheers, hoots, and applause by the audience
(Mock surprise and confusion) "It's really no big deal -- all I did was fuck my wife."
A succinct (albeit, crude) point if there ever was one. Having a kid ain't no big deal. :-)
Now... raising a kid. That's a hell of a lot more work, and a lot more impressive if the kid turns out okay in the end. And my hat goes off to any parent who can do a good job of it in this crazy world of ours. That's something to celebrate about.
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