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Driving Away Teens With High Frequency Noise
ars writes "The New York Times is reporting on a device called the Mosquito invented by Howard Stapleton designed to drive teens away by emitting a high frequency noise at 75db. Apparently most older people can not hear the sounds, but teens can not stand it. Reports are that it works quite well, but some older people can hear it too. He found the prefect irritating sound by experimenting on his children."
By the way, a great role model for fathers everywhere:
"Okay honey, how much does this hurt?"
BZZZZT!!!!
"Ah, turn it off, turn it off!!"
"In a second honey. Daddy has to hurt you to show how much he loves you. Now, how about this?"
BZZZZT!!!
"AHHHHHH!"
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." - George Carlin
However, it hasn't yet been legally tested whether or not he can blast loud noises into the neighborhood. What if someone is standing on the sidewalk and is bothered by the noise? Public nuisance or not? Judge Judy will decide.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
I frequently whip out my tone generator in class and put it at high frequencies very loud. Gets hilarious when half the class is yelling about a noise and the teacher thinks they're crazy.
On another note, would those neat Bose active noise cancelling headphones remedy this problem? I know it's rather easy to build active noise cancelling headphones, and if this happened anywhere in my town I would make pairs of these for everyone just to spite them.
Also, I tend to have worse hearing than most of my peers due to the fact that I play drums rather extensivly. Would this stop me from hearing the sound?
-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds
Many forms of discrimination are illegal for government agencies and many/most public businesses and services. Private discrimination is a different matter. I could keep black people, hispanic people, white people, blind left-handed people, or people who voted for Bush off of my private property simply because I wanted to. The government couldn't do anything about it. On that note, I could keep teens out, as well. No matter the inventor's intended use, there are plenty of "non-infringing" uses for this device. Suggesting it's would be illegal because it discriminates against teens shows a gross misunderstanding of (American) law.
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
This just looks like an ultrasonic animal repeller to me. Here's an easy Google Search that shows how common they are. The thing is, anyone with decent hearing will hear these ultrasonic devices too -- and yes, they are extremeley irritating, to the point of being painful. My parents live way out in the country and use one to keep deer away from their garden, and another one to keep their neighbor's cats away from their parked cars. Having to suffer around 2 of those things any time I visit my folks, I can easily recognize the high-pitched agony-inducing devices now.
... it actually makes me feel slightly nauseous if I hang around in that entrance area too long.
And as a result, I suspect there is a powerful one in use at the Huntington metro station. It's cranked way up, frankly to the point that I worry about hearing damage when I walk through the protected area. I can hear the sound just inside the entrance, aimed right at the turnstyles (slightly stronger at the side near the fare card machines). In this case, I imagine they're using it to keep birds and squirrels out of the station. The station itself is in a surprisingly wooded area, nestled into the side of a small hill. I'm sure they found an ultrasonic animal repeller was the only thing that worked at keeping critters out of the station. It nearly keeps me out too
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
I belong to a club that's made up of mostly seniors, so I'm one of just a few people there under 40. A few years ago (I was 25 or 26 then) I was playing with one of our long-time members when I began hearing this really high-pitched whining noise, right on the high edge of my auditory range. Wasn't super loud, but definitely loud enough to notice if you could indeed hear it. After determining to my satisfaction that I wasn't crazy, I deduced the noise was coming from some definite source. I asked my opponent if she could hear it, and she said no but wondered if it was her hearing aid. She turned it down and sure enough, the noise went away! Apparently I was the only one who could hear it.
Two more occasions I heard the noise and immediately asked her to turn it down and it went away, so that pretty much confirmed the first time wasn't a fluke. I dunno exactly what was happening, but I figure the hearing aid was generating feedback when turned up too loud. After all they are just compact microphones and speakers.
I tell you, when I heard this noise and I couldn't figure out what it was, I started to get really agitated. The agitation was to the point that where if someone heard it for a sustained long time they could seriously go insane or even try to kill themselves. It was bad. The sense of relief I felt when the noise was turned off was quite profound.
So anyhow, I didn't RTFA but if they're talking about using this device on a long-term basis to keep teens away from somewhere, this is tantamount to torture. I think anybody considering using this for anything other than security in imminent danger (e.g. teens harassing you) deserves to lose the rest of their hearing too.
If a group of 45 year-olds start hanging around a storefront cursing, drinking, stealing, and deterring the attendance of honest paying customers, and the shop owner takes steps to deter the presence of those 45 year-olds, would you be claiming that the shop owner is anti-adult?
As bad as it may sound, Steven J. Levitt, author of the award-winning Freakonomics, said that the lowering crime rate is because of the legalization of abortion about 2 decades before. Teens that otherwise would have been neglected and possibly would turn to the streets were aborted instead, so syousef may actually be pretty correct.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
A cinema in my town had the same problem with large groups of teenagers loitering at the entrance. Once they started playing nice classical music (not even loudly) they all dissappeared. I guess it was no longer a "cool" place to hang out any more. I think the makers of this device should have tried their first option, at least it's less iritating to customers.
Thanks for the explanation, from somebody that has an acceptable level of hearing, this is quite interesting.
..., and choose which sound bands should be filtered, and which should be increased.
I do hope that at least once you have filtered out the people that do not like to "work" (have a meaningfull conversation) it leaves you with enough interesting people that you can meet at some quite place.
It also points to some interesting suggestion for hearing aid maker, since the level of computing power available is going up, I would guess that two improvements should be possible either now or soon.
1) compare the sounds that are comming in from both side of the head and boost up what is "similar" (i.e either in front or directly behind you)
and boost down the rest (what is not in your sphere of direct interest)
2) provide some level of environment profiling that enables you to "say" I'm at a disco, or at home, or
Would typical noise ordinance laws have any effect on the use of something like this? Also, alot of gas stations are located close to residental areas, and I could imagine the outcry from neighbors who have to listen to this all day/night.
Not to mention that alot of gas stations/fast food joints have a high % of teenagers working there.
This is being used over here in Germany in several cities. Apparently it not only keeps gangs away, but also drug dealers, bums and other folks who loiter around at train and subway stations.
I wonder if that says more about these people or about the music.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org