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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."
Everyone driven away?
-={ Security does not exist - give up }=-
sitting on the porch yelling and shaking a cane?
Isn't this just going to make the kids as deaf as the adults?
-={ Security does not exist - give up }=-
Yet another way for parents to avoid spending time with their kids. Seriously why the heck would anyone come up with this sort of thing? As someone who works with teenagers a lot already, I have to say I'm a bit annoyed. Tons of the kids I work with through our church have parents who I swear can't be bothered to give their kids the nurture and self respect they need. Instead they just buy them things. At least an iPod nano to an unloved kid makes the kid cool at school. This'll just drive them to try more medications designed for chemical imbalances that won't fix depression brought on by these sorts of situations.
We sell skateboards and paintball shit. We aren't in the mall.
1. Hide a few dozen of these in the mall shops
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
Teens have rights too, you can't discriminate on the basis of age.
We used to rebel in the 5th grade by blowing air through the small holes in our proctractors. Teacher nearing retirement had no clue. Sometimes the din was so loud that we couldn't hear teacher clearly...
In another article this would be called a "nonlethal weapon". Do we really want a world where people deploy such things to drive select non customers away? Legal or not I find the idea of such a system being used not only insulting but sad.
Because today's teenagers hate 60's music.
+++ATH0
The teen population today is growing up with the voices of "pop music". If they can survive that drivel and keep it on the Top 20, what chances does this gadget have?
What's the buzz?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Treat teens with about the same respect you reserve for a mosquito and wonder why they go around shooting each other, or killing themselves. Oh yeah it's the violence in video games and the availability of porn on the internet that causes this. Nothing to do with the increasing contempt modern society shows for both the very young and the very old.
Idiot.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This is EXACTLY what I pulled in my undergraduate 'Modern Electronics' class. When we used small speakers I could adjust the frequency to a positively epilepsy inducing sound (especially if you ran the speakers on square wave functions with slight frequency scanning) that caused most of my classmates considerable discomfort but my professor (a fan of loud and live rock shows) could hear nothing. The best part is that he was proud that he was "immune" even though it indicates the beginnings of hearing loss.
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
This will have no effect on the metal heads and punk fans who go to loud shows who also happen to be the people buying it want to drive away anyways.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
This reminds me of a guy I knew once who kept an opera CD in his far-too-tricked-out-for-an-old-man car stereo. Only he optimized his stereo for treble rather than bass.
Everytime a low-rider came next to his car at a stop light thumping away, he opened his windows and cranked some good ol' Italian opera out to screw with them. He told me he never could quite drown them out, but quite a few did turn down their stereos to try and figure out what the crazy old man next to them was doing...
Why is this country so anti-teenager? We got the "coveted marketing demographics" of late teen to young adult that the tv networks and pretty much a lot of companies go for. Yet as a group, teenagers sure are very ostracized, looked down, and picked on. I'm sure there are some bad seeds but for the vast majority, I'm sure there are good kids. You got all these anti-cruising laws, school crackdowns, and now this. Shouldn't we be cherishing and nuturing them instead? I'm sure the Army would like to use this device to get them shepherded to the nearest recuriting office.
In Toronto, we used to have a problem with teen gangs hanging around the Kennedy subway station. The solution to this? The TTC started playing classical music over the loudspeakers. Pow, the gangs were gone, plus it was actually quite nice for those of us that enjoy classical music.
The only thing to watch out for now would be gangs that listen to classical music. Care for a bit of Ludwig Van?
Just shoplift some earplugs.
Seriously, this shopkeeper exhibits a view of people that would make me very hesitant to be a customer at his store. He is saying, effectively, that "My interest in you is in your money and nothing else. If you spend money, I love you. If not, you're a creep and should not be in my sight." And, really, that is not the kind of person I'd like to be in any kind of relationship with, be it business of personal.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
1. U. Landström, "Noise and Fatigue in Working Environments," Environment International 16, 471476 (1990).
2. R. N. Slarve and D. L. Johnson, "Human Whole-Body Exposure to Infrasound," Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, 428431 (April 1975)
I'm unsure about the age significances though. Elder people tend to lose their hearing quite frequently. Maybe they can pick up other frequencies. Who knows maybe Grandpa did pick up Aliens' conversations.
MoFscker
I think this is a terrible idea for any number of reasons, one being that supposedly "inaudible" noises effect people subconsciously. Even if the people involved don't report hearing anything.
h tm
Relevant link with EEG results-
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.
Severe to profound losses range from PTAs of 75 dB and greater. At this level, hearing aids provide limited benefit and consideration of cochlear implants is generally given. Statistics about Hearing Disorders, Ear Infections, and Deafness
MoFscker
When I was a kid I built a variable frequency tone generator. Once I got it up above the range I could hear, I could make my dog go batshit. Not as in running around yelping, but scratching and chewing himself with a passion. Turns out it was the fleas that were going batshit; against his white fur, I could clearly see them start jumping incessanctly when I hit that certain range.
So maybe his kids are just nasty.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
If only we could come up with a noise frequency to ATTRACT the elderly. Then we could lead a merry dance of baby boomers straight off a cliff into the ocean and watch them all drown :)
This is ridiculus. They talk about using something like this to drive away 'bad teens' who hang around their store. Did they ever stop to consider that not all teens are bad, and what if some young person is actually going to their store to buy something legitimately. They need to stop stereotyping and realize most teens arent like that. I'm 17 and I do nothing of the sort. They are not only driving away these occassional trouble makers but also some of their own customers...
Revenge is a dish best served at high frequencies.
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
At least, it seems like it to me.
;)
Back in the days of dos, pascal and c programming in a text based ide, I used to run high pitched noises out through the pc speaker. I believe I specified something between 21,000 and 24,000 hz - although I'm fairly sure that the speaker wasn't exactly tuned (although it did go a bit higher (27,000-ish hz), although only a few of us were able to hear it - we had the computer randomly play these high pitched tones and the monitor would change color about 5 seconds after the tone started, so it was sort of a double blind test)
Yeah, high school was tons of fun.
Anyways... Even though the old folks might not be able to hear it consciously, it still affects them. People become moody, short tempered, and in general, quite bitchy. I honestly can't say that it is due to the effects of the sound - or the effects of interacting with people who are able to consciously hear it, but - to me, at least - it doesn't really matter, because chances are that if you have teens hanging around your business, they probably spend money there and you're going to have to interact with them.
And as for whether this bothers teens immensely, I call bullshit. Most of the older TVs out there put out a high pitched noise and it isn't like teens don't spend a ton of time sitting in front of one. Of course, old people enjoy buying crap like this, so it isn't to say there isn't a market.
Also, the sensitivity seems to go away after being exposed to the sounds of gunfire (anecdotal evidence based on my experiences, so take with a grain of salt) and other loud noises, so gangbangers and punkheads probably won't be affected
And please, 75db? feh.
(feel free to use this as a perfect example of how to not write an argumentative essay btw)
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I mean irritating smell and irritating lighting dont stop people from going to bars do they?
They still come in, they just don't sit next to me.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
The French could really have used this technology a few weeks ago. It would have saved them thousands of cars going up in flames.
Muahaha...MUAHAHAHAHahhahaahahaa
Life is not for the lazy.
...are the ones who are doing the loitering, bothering customers, etc., as explained in the article. It's an "anti-loitering" device, not anti-teenager -- it's just that teenagers have more time to hang out and make a nuisance of themselves.
Teenagers don't want to be cherished and nurtured -- they want freedom without responsibility. (Generalization, not applicable for every teenager.)
if only the young can hear it, why do I think mothers with young children and babies will get peeved because it will wake up sleeping kids or provoke tantrums?
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.
It's easy enough for me to create a home made high pitched squeal. Just take the phone away from my teenage daughter. From what I have been able to ascertain, the telephone is permanently attached to her ear. Taking it away causes her physical pain which results in her emitting an extremely loud high pitched squeal.
I try not to do that anymore because the neighbors complain.
-- Will program for bandwidth
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.
Today: Miracle Hypersonic siren drives away teens and children. Tomorrow: Modern teens going deaf, lets blame iPods.
Some good classical music with maybe a little John Tesh thrown in for good measure. Just don't make me haul out the "big guns" and start playing some Celine Dion!
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
by experimenting on his children
I didn't considered *that* when I decided I shall have no children...
There you are, staring at me again.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Funniest thing I ever did was steal every telephone (minus no more than 10) on the second floor of my middle school on April Fools Day. The phones snapped into a bracket on the wall, so just unplug the cord and pull them out, and POW! you're in business. Sad thing, I walked around with them for two classes until someone asked me what the heck I was doing.
Hey, what are you doing?
Oh, nothing much. You?
Looks around Where's my telephone?
Gestures at stack of telephones Second one from the bottom.
Why did you take all the phones?
Why didn't you take the phones? I shouldn't be the one who has to.
...and all I had to do was put them back! Which took the rest of the hour.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Call it anti-boorishness, anti-hypocrisy, anti-jerk. But until kids get sneered at for saying "Yes, sir" and helping old ladies across the street, don't call this country anti-teenager.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Not that we abused this or anything...
I'm actually a balding ol' fart but I loathe the very thought of ever fuckin' mellowing out.
I'm angrier now than I ever was but its a cold and calculating anger. Its the steely edge of the knife.
I have outgrown the fugues and tirades of youth, when I'd wax elequent with rage and make the most grandeloquent speeches any man could ever regret, if he could regret anything, but I don't.
John Tesh can swallow and kiss my lil' pink ass after I take a dump right in his fuckin' gob.
Me mellow?
Like A-fuckin'-lexis Sayles...
I'm driven and driven to drink by "mellow people." I'm a man with a mission, touched with a little madness, or is it genius that pushes, prods and make me reach beyond myself?
I HATE having become a cripple. Fuck.
I used to be a dancer.
I used to be a musician.
I used to be the guy a mother warned her daughter about.
I used to be the guy a daughter didn't tell her mother about.
And I HATE fuckin' growing old.
So I'M NOT FUCKIN' DOING IT.
(A little catharsis is good every now and then.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I'm in my mid-40s and still hear that 16kHz whine from many TVs and monitors when the PC's turned off. I learned to protect my hearing when I was in the (Royal Australian) Air Force. While the young d00ds were being macho and enduring the loud noises as jets flew overhead, the brass who'd been around awhile had no qualms about wearing earplugs or putting their fingers in their ears as appropriate. My fellow (then) teenagers probably ended up cool, but deaf.
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.
Here I was hoping that that they'd found a way to drive off prefects of various kinds. Not that I dislike the one we have around here, but sometimes it could be useful.
This signature is not in the public domain.
That's why laws keep getting passed that restrict teenagers. How are we going to keep convincing each other that teenagers are evil if they don't commit crimes. So, we work towards creating a society that puts 18 year olds out on the street with never having held a job, no drivers license, never having had sex, and no experience with keeping things like drinking in moderation. Add on to that laws that prevent parents from teaching kids that there are reprecussions for your actions, and you just might turn this decline in youth crime around.
Just remember these are the people that will decide if the plug should be pulled. Needlessly making enemies of them is not a good idea.
Get yourself a frigging dictionary (or go dict.leo.org ) and look up "Geiz". It has lots of translations, but none of them is "greed". Closest one is probably "stinginess".
"Greed" refers to "want to have a lot of (usually money)", while "Geiz" implies "not wanting to spend a lot of (usually money)".
You can actually calculate what the audible frequency is of a TV.
For NTSC in North America:
For PAL in the UK:
And yes, the sound drives me crazy, too. I'm 30 and an audio engineer. And I'm the only one in my household who can hear the damn TVs whining. :-)
Jory
I would suggest "thrift" as an alternate rendering which is to aoid unneccessary spending and taking care of what has been bought.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Its an amazing coincidence.. the high pitch noises irritate and drive away teens, and low frequency resonating bass noises irritate and drive away old people too ;)
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
"He found the prefect irritating sound by experimenting on his children."
:p
I saw the same effect at a local mcDonalds a few years back in downtown Seattle. They started to play country music on the outside speakers and you wouldn't believe how fast some of the seedier teen traffic cleared out... To across the street, but hey, it worked
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The high pitched sound is impossible to track and very annoying :)
d /boxes/pandora.html
Plans to build one:
http://www.linuxsavvy.com/staff/jgotts/undergroun
So as long as this device passes a health safety muster it is OK to use it to broadcast that annoying sound 24 hours a day 365 days a year. In addition property owners or agents acting on behalf of the property owner are free to turn it up (with in the limits of health safety) and direct it at whom ever they want.
If you don't want to be treated like a hooligan don't appear as one and don't treat private property as either yours or as public property. You have no real need or right to treat a business's private property as a bus stop. It's really that simple...
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Geil has a few translations, too, if yaknowwhattamean...
Does anybody else think this sounds exactly like a Far Side concept?
(Man in labcoat stands on front porch next to a goofy-looking contraption as a couple of slackers with cigarettes run away covering their ears) Responding to the outcry of the neighborhood, Dr. Norman Finkhouser worked by night for months to perfect his invention: the Teen-B-Gone 5000.
Oh you're *obviously* new here...
The perfect gift foy your favorite teen: linky
Thrift?
qntm.org