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France to Allow Cell Phone Jamming
ZuperDee writes "According to this article, the French industry minister has approved a decision to allow cinemas, concert halls and theaters to install cell phone jammers, on the condition that emergency calls can still get through."
I think thats the icing on the cake.
Being able to say "Yer sure" and not mean it all in the same breath.
Those wanting to block calls sort of get their way, and those who don't want it blocking get to smile as well.
I think this is the best all round decision.
liqbase
Eat it connectivity junkies! The rebellion has begun!
Seriously though... who REALLY needs to be contacted IMMEDIATELY 24-7? I would suggest that if you are really that important, you might want to skip the movie and stay in the Oval Office doing your job.
And if a friend or relative is dead or dying, well, if it takes until the end of the movie for you to find out, they'll be just as dead after as they were during. Plus you will have had an extra 2 hours of Matt Damon (or Gerard Depardieu?) induced happiness before the terrible news reaches you.
Basically anything that reduces our addiction to instant satisfaction of our every wish is ok with me. We don't NEED to be hooked up to a communication network all the time. They should also install these things in:
- university lecture theatres
- conferences
- crowded public transport
- you could have one in your house to turn on during mealtimes and other gatherings to encourage actual social interaction with people who are physically present
Read Pynchon.
how everybody was able to survive 10 years ago, when NOBODY had a cell phone in the cinema or on a concert...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I would personally be quite pissed that just to watch a movie, I would be out of touch for three hours. Not a good idea.
And I would be quite pissed if you took a phone call while I was trying to watch the movie. Your attitude is so frigging self-important. If you cannot be out of touch for 3 hours while you watch a movie, stay at home!
I swear, you see all of these posts that claim, "I must be reachable at all times", I call bullshit. You know what I hear when someone takes a call in a movie theater? I'll give you a hint, 100% of the time it is banal blather. Grow up.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I can tolerate a mobile phone going off in a movie theater, but I shall bring down fiery justice on those who leave their bloody phones on during a live performance. There has to be intervention when people don't have the decency to turn off their damned phones during a classical performance, an opera, or a play. It's not only rude to the audience, but it's also insulting to the performers.
-- n
That is what I like about this new law. It doesn't force anyone to do anything. It does allow movie theaters to implement something, and the public will decide if they prefer going to a theater that allow cells or not.
And while it might or might not irritate you in a movie theater, think about a real theater, a classical concert or any other public performance where live artists are playing.
In any way, this will have a very democratic implementation: If people rush into these "early adopters" theaters that jam cells, more and more will adopt the system, and the mass will be pleased.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
It wasn't that long ago, you know. Did parents never take a night off with a trusted babysitter at home? If you want to, you can call home yourself once or twice to check on things - just not in the middle of the movie!
People who *really* need to be contacted (doctors on call, for example) had pagers; and a blocking system based on a mini-cell station could be configured to allow such urgent calls/text messages through.
And you are quite wrong about the annoyance value of mobile phone conversations - a study has found them to be dramatically more annoying than face-to-face conversations, probably due to the one-way nature.
A good point - but, you've completely forgotten a few things:
- Hardware manufacturers design products 1-2 years in advance. Therefore for the implementation of an RFID chip, you're looking at at least a year.
- A protocol would need to be devised that all the manufacturers agree on (both handsets and the systems that will trigger them)
- People would need to purchase these phones. Typically they'd be on high tier phones first. A phones lifetime is approximately 18 months before they are on low tier (ie. your pay-as-you-go mass market) where adopotion is the greatest.
- You'd need all the phones to adopt this before it would work. The first WAP phone I saw was in 1996 (and i'm pretty sure that they were around before then) and only now is it commonplace enough for companies to sell content through it. That is a lead time of 8 years.
So in short, it's a great idea, but you're looking at 8 years+ before its going to be installed on enough handsets to actually work in the cinema. What is the point of blocking 20% of the handsets, when its one of the other 80% that ring?Alternativily you could implement signal blocking today which will work on every phone the moment it is turned on.
Sometimes the best ideas aren't the most practical to implement.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
It's not the people blaming you for being anti-social that are idiots.
Switch your phone off in the theatre. If you think you are too necessary to someone elses life to be uncontactable for the length of a movie, get a DVD player and stay at home.
Here's something you won't read too often on
#1 pet-peve on a date, just short of picking your nose, is picking up a cell phone.
I take my phone with me, and it goes OFF the second I am within talking distance of my date. If it goes back on again, that means I'm more concerned about a random friend asking me (for the 50th time) what sites are best for downloading mp3s, than I am in the flow of our conversation.
Is there anything more uncomfortable than to be mid-stride in conversation, and having that blasted ring interupt. So now she's giving driving directions to a friend and your picking at your food. (or your nose, as at this point it's a lost cause)
So help me, if that phone rings it better be your family priest/rabbi/immam telling you that your mother/brother/father/sister/dog is dieing.
Now that I think about it, I don't want a portable jammer with me on a date. I want to know as soon as possible that the womman is a classless waste of my time.
Here's a better idea though. Let's install electroshock devices on cell phones, that are like that video game James Bond (Sean Connery) played in "Never Say Never Again". When you start talking it's all good, but as time passes the voltage/pain goes up. If the conversation isn't worth having you hang up before you have to feel the pain of everyone else sitting near you.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
there were days without cell phones.. and parents went to the theatre anyway ....
And while it might or might not irritate you in a movie theater, think about a real theater, a classical concert or any other public performance where live artists are playing.
I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it is to have my lectures interrupted by students' cell phones ringing. One student didn't even bother to turn off her cell phone during her oral exam, as we found out when it rang midway through the examination.
I would certainly welcome a cell phone blocker in my class rooms.
Yep, and in another reply here somewhere I mentioned that parents/business people/relatives left phone numbers with others as to where they'd be during the day and evening. It was common to have 4 or 5+ phone numbers on the refrigerator outlining the course of a night's outing (friend's house, restaurant, theater, nightclub). Each of these places knew that someone might call. On arriving to a friend's house, you'd say, "I left your number with the sitter, hope that's okay." Restaurants, theaters, and nightclubs had PA systems or wait-staff and ushers to ask among their patrons looking for recipients of emergency calls. Believe me, "emergencies" are not a creation of the new millennium or the now/me generation. They have been around awhile and people (especially parents) have always pre-arranged someway to be contacted.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
This is exactly comparable to the current fuss about P2P software. Mobile phones have perfectly legitimate and non-infringing uses. (SMS messages, for example. Genuine life-or-death emergencies. Incoming calls where the user doesn't speak, or leaves the cinema before speaking.) Jamming prevents all those, whilst still allowing all the antisocial behaviour people have the rudeness to pull off!
A jammer is just a tool for management too cowardly to enforce a proper nuisance policy.
And of course, this is the thin end of the wedge. If jammers become accepted in cinemas, theatres and churches, they may well spread to restaurants, galleries, museums, shops, cafés, pubs, stations, workplaces...
What's worse is that in this case there is a possible technological measure that would do pretty much what people want. Instead of jamming the phones, how about a short-range transmitter which told the phones to go into 'silent mode', turning off the ringtone, and maybe the microphone, whilst still allowing vibrating alerts, text messages, and maybe incoming calls. It's a bit more technology than phones currently have, but it can't be too hard to implement.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
It's the responsibility of a surgeon to remain contactable when on-call. This means not having the phone turned off, and not spending time in places where there is no reception (e.g. the cinema with a sign saying "no phone reception here").
Of course, if the cinema doesn't have very obvious warnings, there could be trouble.
They better damn well inform me in big letters on the back of my ticket that my cell phone is jammed. I've taken my phone into theaters (on vibrate), and I've had to leave in the middle of shows because I've gotten a call or SMS, but that's something I'm prepared to do, and plenty of people used to have pagers and also had to leave in the middle of the show, so it's nothing new.
Why should I be penalized just because some retard either can't figure out how to turn his phone to vibrate or thinks everyone should hear Mozart's "Ode to the Piezoeletric Buzzer"?
In fact, I'm confused. Everyone gets all up in arms when some big mean company tries to restrict 802.11b, or blocks local hotspots by installing their own for-pay system, or whatever, but when the *movie theaters* (I thought we hated big media and the MPAA?) start jamming cell phone tranmissions (which are more useful than 802.11b to the average user), it's suddenly a great idea? I don't get it.
People with ringtones on in theaters is a social problem. Social problems cannot be solved by technical means. Even if you jam cellphones, they're still going to be talking loudly, or having some kid playing his gameboy, or crying, or throwing popcorn, or whatever. It won't solve anything. What they should do is take the money they were going to use for this, hire a couple of bouncers, and if your cell phone rings, you are asked to leave and you get your money back (or maybe a gift card, to prevent people from getting calls in the last frame of the movie and then getting money back), as per the back of your ticket. End of story.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
if that's the case, please rent your movies instead. Your conditions are obviously not satisfactory enough to attend a public showing of a film.