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Combating Harassing Use of Mosquito Noise Device?
amicold asks: "For a while now my neighborhood has had to deal with an elderly neighbor who has displayed a slightly paranoid attitude towards myself and the fellow younger-adults of the neighborhood, believing us to be attempting to harass him in our day-to-day activities. Recently, he installed a Mosquito ultrasonic noise device as an apparent attempt to 'get back at us' for our harassment. As the Mosquito emits a sound that's well out of his hearing range, he can't hear it, while most of the rest of the neighborhood is under 40 and can; at which point it's causing everyone a great deal of discomfort. Unfortunately, because the police also can't hear it, we can't get the authorities to do anything about it, leaving us empty-handed in our attempts at getting some peace and quiet back. What can we do to either help the police realize how disturbing this device is, or counteract it so that it's no longer disturbing us? And is this the first of what may be a growing trend of civilians using high-tech discomfort weapons as a method of neighborhood warfare?"
Suggest http://www.eminent-tech.com/RWbrochure.htm
You could start by getting off his damn lawn.
Instead of "Ask Slashdot", shouldn't this be under "Ask Your Lawyer"?
My site
Take pictures of it. Print out the link you have in your post and any other documentation you can find on the thing. Ask a community service officer from the police to come out. She will probably be a she. She will probably be young, and since not carrying a gun, will not have spent a bunch of time on the firing range ruining her hearing. She will hear it, and since the docs clearly show it is designed to be annoying, she will be on your side. Probably. Maybe. You can try it and hope, anyway.
Plan B. You like Hendrix, right? With breakfast. Early. Turn it up to eleven.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Not that I'm condoning any particular course of action, but I just though it worth pointing out that if he can't hear it himself, he can't tell if it's still functioning. Just an observation.
Who needs the cops? Sue him. He'll take it down in seconds. You won't even have to go to court.
Then, all you need to do is be annoying enough that he moves to Florida. (Unless you already live in Florida, in which case you're screwed.)
Build a similar device to emit noise at a slightly different frequency. The result will be horrible sounds as the two waves interfere. The horrible sounds will seem to come from both your source and the original source. You may get the blame but at least the cops/etc will believe that an issue exists.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If you can't get a young police officer, kidnap a young police officer's young child and strap him to your neighbour's lawn. This will give the police someone to trust, and will also get you away from the house for a few years.
I have freaks! I did something right...
slice its power cord or something at 2AM in the morning
Dispite the redundancy in there, I think that's a great idea! If you keep complaining about the damned thing after you've disabled it, he won't even know it's broken.
Just egg his house. That will surely make him realize his immaturity and bring a swift end to his harassment.
Am I the only one that thinks this is a novel Slashvertizement?
How many of you thought "hmmmm. I could use this to really annoy xxx"?
And note that the link goes to a specifc supplier of such items. Not a generic link.... say a wiki. I mean, who really believes that some guy cannot get a cop under 40. Cannot figure out that he should talk to the police and explain more, or maybe go to see a lawyer... or maybe sneak into his neighbor's year with a baseball bat and a ski mask?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Several (disjointed) ideas sprang to mind:
1) Get a sound meter (dB meter, noise level meter, or whatever it's called where you are) and call the cops again. Show the meter to the officer.
2) Buy big speakers and send some noise his direction that he CAN hear. I recommend NES chiptunes.
3) Disconnect the device without his knowledge. He can't hear it, so he can't tell if it's working or not.
4) Kick the neighbor in the nuts. If he gets angry, kick him in the nuts again. If he threatens you, proceed to #5.
5) Shoot him. You didn't need the curmudgeonly bastard anyway. Take his stuff and tell his family he went on vacation to BFE. Be sure to dispose of his body properly - through a wood chipper, then burn the chunks. Invite other young neighbors over for BBQ. Display a big cookbook with a cover that says "To Serve Annoying Old Neighbors".
(And just for the humor impaired, options 4 and 5 are not serious. I am not the voice in your head telling you to assault or kill your neighbor. That voice is named Larry. I'm Matt.)
Two years ago, the building next to mine was being totally renovated (they gutted everything but the outside walls).
And they had that big honking alarm that would go off each time a cat or a bird would go inside the structure.
Of course, it went off at 2 in the morning many times.
After a few weeks, we got to get pretty pissed at it, so I started to grab a pair of cutters, and enter the place despite it being barricaded (from the third floor, the balconies of the respective buildings are only 2 feet away). Then it's just a matter of finding the wire and snipping it.
Of course, they would fix it, until the next snip...
The last time I did it (at 3 in the morning), I was so pissed that I cut the wire in about 200 one inch long little sections. This must have drove the message home because that's the last time we heard the fucking alarm...
Here's the plan:
1. Spend the next 30-40 years breeding and training vicious attack dogs
2. Now you're over 40 and can hear it any more. (Plus, everyone loves dogs -- bonus.)
It's foolproof.
Why don't you try talking to the guy-- listen to him-- this simple act will make him more comfortable with you. Apologize to him. Buy him a gift. Show kindness.
Which is of more value to you-- an empty, hollow sense of victory that will bring you no satisfaction, even if it does occur, or peace?
"Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love." -Mahatma Gandhi
"Suppose someone, to annoy, Provokes you to do some evil act. Why allow anger to arise and thus Do exactly as he wants you to do? If you get angry Then maybe he will suffer, maybe not. But by feeling anger yourself You certainly do suffer." "For in this world, Hatred is never appeased by more hatred; It is love that conquers hatred. This is an eternal law." -The Buddha
That sound is only 15 KHz, and the mp3 has 48Khz sampling rate. And the buzzer in the mobile is perfectly able to reproduce high frequencies, it's the low freqs that cannot be reproduced.
...they don't know his email address.
Unless you can EXACTLY duplicate the signal - which you can't - and transmit its inverse from EXACTLY the same point - which you can't - noise cancelling over an area will not work. It works in headphones because the area covered is much smaller than the sound wavelength - that is not so here.
= 63 in a small room, where there will be lots of echoes. I'm 60 but I can hear it if I turn the volume up, a high pitched warble that changes in a very disconcerting way when I move my head. (Not everyone over 25 is deaf!)
Imagine throwing two stones into a quiet pond. The two expanding waves will intersect and cancel at some points - but half a wavelength further on they will be in phase and so double. So it will be with the sound - varying from silent to twice as loud depending where you are. As the wavelength will be small, moving your head will be very uncomfortable! You can try the effect if you play the clean MP3 sample you'll find at http://www.star94.com/shows/index.cfm?show=cr&cid
Meanwhile - IGNORE the idiots here suggesting various illegal measures. Those WILL get the police involved, but not in the way you want. However, if you could get the authorities to recognise the problem (get the neighbours to all complain to your local councillor as well as the police), you may be able to persuade them to take out an ASBO against the offender preventing him from continuing the nuisance. (For our US friends, an ASBO is an "Anti-Social Behaviour Order", and ignoring it becomes a criminal offence).
I think that is a good idea... but if I were you, I would ask a friend (who the elderly gentelman in question has never met) to go and ask. He/she should simply pretend/imply that they live "nearby"... the fact that the man has never met this person will make him think twice. He's probably not evil at the core, and he's only trying to get back at certain people. If he suddenly realizes that he's annoying others, he will probably stop.
This new friend could be someone a bit older than all of you, in which case he may sympathize with them more and stop this particular annoying behavior.
Alternately, you might get a friendly and attractive female to go and do the asking. It's amazing how frequently that can resolve a situation with a grumpy old man. I've seen it work more than once.
Only if you have the attitude that "If perfection can not be achieved we shouldn't bother striving for it." Another wrong only leads us further away from a peaceful society towards the vigilante style societies of our past. By your model if I consider what your posting as "wrong," I have the right to seek vengence to "right" it. Only by treating others how we WISH to be treated, and not by how they treat us first, is our society going to advance. Will we ever achieve 100% of people doing it? No, but that doesn't mean that it's a dumb thing to do.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
If he can't hear it, I think the easy fix is to wait until he is gone, then replace the batteries with dead ones, snip the power cord someplace where it won't be immediately obvious, or disable the device in some other way. Since he can't hear it, he'll just assume that it's working and no escalation is necessary.
'the Internet is right.'