Early portable prototype
One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone. “She was using the word ‘like’ all the time,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.
Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission – and any others in a 30-foot, or 9-meter, radius.
“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moley! Deliverance.”
In evidence of the intensifying debate over the devices, CTIA, the main cellular phone industry association, asked the FCC on Friday to maintain the illegality of jamming and to continue to pursue violators.
Screw the CTIA. Regardless.
Screw the CTIA is right. They should give out jammers as party favors. Who gives a shit how much Verizon spends to “maintain its network”. The Columbian drug cartels spend a lot of money “maintaining their networks” too, but when the damage to society starts to overwhelm any balance (as is the case with the pandemic of cellphonitis), it’s time to clamp down. If our elected officials don’t have the balls to do anything, the it’s the Andrews of the world who are going to save us.
And those fucktards walking around with the bluetooth thing stuck in their ear should have the whole ear amputated on the spot. Those things are so Wal*Mart.
“… and to continue to pursue violators.”
Good luck with that!
So where do you find the $50 devices?
Illegal in the USA.
In summary, since the radio spectrum is ‘owned” by a private company (the cell carrier), denying the use of the spectrum is considered theft of private property (you are taking away something owned by someone else).
What we need is enforceable ‘cell phone free’ areas, where cell phone conversations are prohibited. Places like theaters, restaurants, etc, enforced similarly to a no-smoking law. You want to talk on the cellphone in places like that, go to the lobby. It has to have legal backing though for it to work.
Summary of law:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone-jammer5.htm
Where to find devices?
Well duh… eBay of course (Cellphone jammer)
I still don’t get it.
Shouldn’t setting the time back one hour make me travel back in time one hour, so I end up in the spot where I was an hour ago, making me reset the time again an hour later, going back again in tme, and so on, stuck in an infinite loop?
I still don’t get it.
Shouldn’t setting the time back one hour make me travel back in time one hour, so I end up in the spot where I was an hour ago, making me reset the time again an hour later, going back again in tme, and so on, stuck in an infinite loop?
I still don’t get it.
Shouldn’t setting the time back one hour make me travel back in time one hour, so I end up in the spot where I was an hour ago, making me reset the time again an hour later, going back again in tme, and so on, stuck in an infinite loop?
I still don’t get it.
Shouldn’t setting the time back one hour make me travel back in time one hour, so I end up in the spot where I was an hour ago, making me reset the time again an hour later, going back again in tme, and so on, stuck in an infinite loop?
#6 Oooops.. unintended consequence of the time warp.. wrong thread showed up on my browser when the time changed as I was typing…
Seriously, its a nicely balanced conflict of liberty.
Free to make a call, receive a call, or be left alone in silence?
While I personally don’t like it, seems to me “the public place” is always described as a loud and rowdy place – and how could it be any different without liberty suffering? Privacy and silence is for private places, not the public.
Your position on obnoxious cell phone use describes your position on liberty and your understanding and support of it. Kinda a “I’m a free speech absolutist” while you shut other people up type of thing.
@#8
Free speech is all fine but the point is that the certain amount of civility is needed for the society to function. Just, no one is pushing through the needed new technology manners. Not so long ago farting or going to bathroom in public was OK,… it is not anymore. Even more recently spitting around all the time was OK,… not anymore. We are trained to perceive it disgusting as society functions better that way. Time is ready to perceive people abusing the new technology in public in a same way as they just farted or spit in your face.
I was visiting UCSD the other day when a student aged young man entered one of the public restrooms and went about his business talking on the phone.
I was stunned, I am sure this is happening with greater frequency, but I had never been around a person that disgusting and rude before.
After I left one of the people followed me out said “For people like that caining should be legal in America.”
#9. And there is something particularly grating about hearing one side of a telephone conversation, probably because we are conditioned to hear both sides and our brain “expects” to hear the replies. this becomes particularly acute when the cell-phone talker ramps up the volume of his speech.
this is one of the many reasons that headphones and an iPod or other PMP is an essential accessory to mass transit.
in most locations, don’t jam the cell phone gabber, tune her out. That being said, I think cell phone jammers should be legal for theaters and restaurants.
You know, everyone loves these devices until they are used by some Asshole to jam their signal in the middle of a conversation.
#10 Did it bother you while you were taking a wide stance and getting toilet paper off your shoe?
>>You know, everyone loves these devices until they are used
>>by some Asshole to jam their signal in the middle of a
>>conversation.
The only asshole in that equation would be the dickwad yammering away (probably on his bluetooth, so he’s shouting) in a public place. I take my cell phone conversations to a location where others are not subjected to 1/2 of my conversation.
I’ve been in several places lately (mostly libraries) where they have booths that you can go into, like payphones, but without the payphone. People are encouraged to make and receive their calls in one of those.
Anyone who is such of fucking boor as to yammer away about garbage (and those cell phone conversations you hear out in public are ALWAYS garbage) deserves to be blocked. For that 1-in-a-million time when the phone call is actually something important, go outside.
W00T – I totally Agree with Mister Mustard
This is similar to the TV BE GONE, the universal remote that sends the OFF signal in all TV languages. They have one that goes on a keychain.
Anyhow, the cell phone users I hate the most are those that have awful ringtones, instead of being Vibrate.
You just can´t trounce others people´s rights, just because you are feeling uncomfortable by their actions. People should use other, less invasive methods of persuasion, like giving them “the look” and-or going over to them and ask to be more amenable.
OTOH, sometimes I would like to have the power to shut some people down, not just at cellphones too.
The tool for the anonimous tools .
>>You just can´t trounce others people´s rights
I missed that one in the Bill of Rights. I don’t have the right to vomit or take a piss or pull my pud in public, and watching someone do that would be less punishing than listening to the interminable droning about nothing at all on those Goddamned bluetooth toys..
No one’s taking away your right to waste time yammering on your cell phone son. Just DON’T FUCKING EXPECT ME TO HAVE TO LISTEN TO IT.
I guess you have to expect to put up with it , for now, at Wal*Mart; the trailer trash is not well known for their etiquette. Most places though, I think we should be able to expect something a little classier.
Just to attempt another distinction—free speech rights go to the GOVERNMENT restricting speech, not your fellow citizens.
So, the rough and tumble public forum==open for the uncouth to speak loudly to everyone, or to one other on a cell phone vs the uncouth and agressive cell phone blasters? I guess if “the law” makes such blasting illegal, then not only are the blasters criminals, uncouth, agressive, and not tolerant of other people’s right to be left alone, they are self righteous about the whole thing as well?
In Japan, people are very tolerant of wierd/bad behaviors of others. They stay within themselves. Christian America is the opposite. Always interested in controlling what other people are doing. Amen.
#15. nothing quite like a perfectly decent bar with perfectly decent bar food totally ruined by having a TV always within your field of vision.
gotta get me one of those TV BE GONE thingys.
#16. Something I always wanted to do was join in their conversation. you know, pretend that I am the person on the other side of the conversation. After all, if they can chit-chat at max volume in earshot of me, why can’t I participate?
>>Just to attempt another distinction—free speech rights go to the
>>GOVERNMENT restricting speech, not your fellow citizens.
Boboli, I believe that what the authors of the First Amendment hand in mind when they wrote “Congress shall make no law ….abridging the freedom of speech” what they had in mind was the free interchange and expression of opinions, ideas, things with at least a modicum of substance.
Not just noise. Not yapping on a bluetooth device about your hemorrhoids. That’s every bit as offensive as those TVs they turn on in bars and restaurants. The difference is that the guy who turns the TV on OWNS THE BAR OR RESTAURANT.
The trailer trash bluetoothers don’t own the aisles at Wal*Mart, they don’t own the seats on the trains and planes, and the don’t own the bars and restaurants.
So they can STFU, or take their “conversations” someplace where I’m not exposed to it. Or get ready for the jammers. Just jamming the stupid fucking ring tones would be half the battle.
21==Mustard, yes, I see your point, and can even go along with it. I am thinking of unknown blaster use and people cannot RECEIVE incoming calls alerting them of important information. Could all be balanced==people using cell phones should where bee keeping helmets they could drop over their faces making their calls private???? That would work for me on many levels.
A friend called me on his cell phone from his car. I told him to call me when he was parked and not endangering other people. Took him a month or so to get over that.
Save the movie industry, legalize jammers in movie theaters!!!
23–Yes, jammers should be allowed in all venues with notice. Cant believe the law does not allow for that?? Afterall, the local business has a legitimate interest. So==private blasting–no. Publicly noticed blasting/jamming==yes.
It’s the difference between being in public or being in private. Out and about in the public places you must expect, and deal with, a certain amount of behavior which you consider boorish, or inappropriate, or just damned foolishness. Especially in places where people of all ages mix, and the older set looks down on the youngsters for behavioral patterns that they themselves indulged in as youths.
>>people cannot RECEIVE incoming calls alerting them of
>>important information.
Bobster, I’d be darned interested to see some statistics on how many of those phone calls qualify as “important”. My informal survey indicates that it’s somewhere right around 0.0%. Most of them are more along the lines of “Omigawd, like, I am so shur!”, or the “adult” (using the term loosley) equivalent.
I would go for the bee-keeper’s helmet solution, or the sound-attenuating booth solution, or the jammer solution. Any solution would be an improvement over what we have now.
Actually, we seemed to get along just fine WITHOUT all that “important information” not all that long ago. Other than a few stranded old ladies with a flat tire on a country road (who probably won’t get cell phone service out there anyway), it’s not all that clear to me how the ubiquity of cell phones had improved our quality of life much.
The way I see it, if you’re really expecting an IMPORTANT phone call with IMPORTANT information, don’t go to the fucking symphony, or the matinée, or to Church, or to a restaurant until AFTER you have gotten the important information. In the alternative, step outside and check your voice mail.
So I am in the restroom the other day, and there is a real estate agent on the shitter trying to close a deal from his cell phone. The urinal had one of the loudest flushing sounds I have ever heard. I think I flushed five or six times. Coughed loudly, farted, then used the hand drier 3 or 4 times.
>>Out and about in the public places you must expect, and deal with,
>>a certain amount of behavior which you consider boorish,
>>or inappropriate, or just damned foolishness.
Some, but not all. Would you be OK with me taking a piss front of you in a park where you were having a picnic with your family? Sitting next to you on an airplane and intentionally farting for the whole flight? Playing “Dixie” by making burping sounds at the table next to yours in a 5-star restaurant or at the movies?
That’s about the same level of class exhibited by the typical Bluetooth Boor. At least taking a piss serves a purpose, unlike most of the public cell phone calls one hears “out and about”.
>>and there is a real estate agent on the shitter trying to
>>close a deal from his cell phone.
That’s about par for the course.
You should have yelled “HEY, KEEP YOUR WIDE STANCE IN YOUR OWN STALL, YOU REAL-ESTATE HOMO!!”.
What the hell is wrong with you people? That is both stupid of the man AND dangerous. Did you think perhaps that maybe that device could disable any and ALL cellphones in the area, thus if there is an emergency NO ONE can call for help? Not to mention what it might do to any equipment on the train/bus itself, or perhaps any emergency equipment nearby. Utter stupidity. I -used- to think better of this crowd but now I know you’re idiots.
Oh yes, but it is so much better that people be silent. Bull crap. Live with it or move someplace else. Public civility goes BOTH ways, and it is much more civil to be polite and ignore the dufus screaming on her phone than to be a jackass AND cause more trouble than solving it.