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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.'"
Two problems:
1: The tone is compressed with mp3. 25kHz isnt supposed to be even representable with that format. MP3 drops frequencies at 16kHz and above, right?
2: You cant properly represent a 25kHz tone with 44.1kHz sampling without distrotion. For all we know the real tone may sound like Mozart.
"What ever happened to just posting signs and asking people to leave and finally contacting the police if there was still a problem."
That's essentially the problem. I've been watching the coverage of this device in recent news with interest, and initially I was pretty furious that some politically correct hand-wringer was once again poking their nose in, but I must confess that there are always two sides to the story and I'm beginning to see that the device really does need some serious improvements and/or regulation or, ideally, the root problem being dealt with and the device being made unnecessary. And that's the real issue that this device is highlighting, to my mind - that there is a problem with the behaviour of certain groups of kids that we need to deal with.
A typical example is just down the road from my house. There's a small shop, video rental place, takeaway, and a pub in a small patch surrounded by houses. During the day, it's fine. At night, it's a disaster area.
The kids who gather there are an effing nuisance, they insist on playing football right in front of the cars trying to use the car park, they harrass people and treat adults there like crap, they've smashed the windows of the shops dozens of times, they throw rubbish everywhere... The list goes on and on, they're just out of control and their parents are nowhere to be seen. Nobody dares deal with it because if they do, *they* will be the ones who get punished for taking the law into their own hands, or they'll be on the receiving end of reprisals.
The police response is this: Several yellow signs have been put up on the lamp posts that have bizarre txt-speak drivel on them. A typical example is "If ur bad we'll tell ur olds."
And that's it.
You never, ever see the police turn up. They do *nothing*. The parents of the kids do *nothing*. For the reasons listed above, everyone else does *nothing*. The kids, meanwhile, go mental. It's a total failure of control.
I have no objection to kids playing anywhere they like.
But how do you justify the broken windows and the chronic litter?
I live in a neighborhood with similar issues, and I'll be DAMNED if I will try to understand what is happening from their side. There is NO acceptable reason for trashing a bus shelter or a DLR shelter. There is NO good reason to dump rubbish bins in the street. There is NO acceptable reason for urinating on the stairs to the train platforms.
When they decide to become part of society, I'll treat them like they deserve to be. While they're playing at Lord of the Flies, I'll treat them like the animals they are.
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.
No one has a problem with constructive activities or even people hanging out, but that's not what they do anymore, because people don't stop them, give an inch and they take a mile. Smashed cars, smashed windows, stabbings, gang wars, old women/men being battered to death, the list goes on.
Biomech
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.
where I can get one of these for my lawn?
I think the problem ultimately lies in society itself, as the rich/poor divide gets wider kids on the lower end have less and less hope. While hope cant be forced on people, something has to be done about hope! Attacking them with devices like this and stop and search just reinforces the divide. The lib-dem candidate for london mayor said "we need effective policing" (he was a police oficer for 31 years so waether or not hed be a good mayor he does know exactly what hes talking about (btw he was policing the brixton riots in 81)) not blanket police suppression, thats failed in the past and is going to fail now too.
btw im 20 and live in hoxton london, which isnt a 'safe' area but these things couldnt be further from the solution.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
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.