Cellphone Jammer, Anyone?

>A cellphone jammer to silence your iPhone cellphone?
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/technology/04jammer.html?hp

This reminds me of a proposed standard that was going around, whereby
a location would install a transmitter that would instruct phones to
silence themselves, turn to vibrate, etc. It seemed like a pretty
good idea to me at the time, but I'ven't seen anything on it in a few
years..

Nick

This reminds me of one of my favorite devices, the TV-B-Gone. It's a small one-button infrared remote that fits on your keychain. The button, when pressed, transmits the "off" signals for 300 different models of television. I find it works on about 40%-50% of the annoying TVs I encounter in restaurants, bars and clubs.

As you can imagine, it has to be used judiciously and surreptitiously. Some people get remarkably violent when they can't watch their ball game. The man who sold it to me said he once used it in the locker room of his gym, and some frustrated football fans actually trashed the TV.

On Nov 16, 2007, at 9:01 AM, kupietz wrote:

> This reminds me of one of my favorite devices, the TV-B-Gone. It's a
> small one-button infrared remote that fits on your keychain. The
> button, when pressed, transmits the "off" signals for 300 different
> models of television.
>
> As you can imagine, it has to be used judiciously and
> surreptitiously. Some people get remarkably violent when they can't
> watch their ball game.

I would never use a TV-B-Gone just because I personally find some TV
annoying. In bars and gyms, people actually watch the TV and want it
on. However, I can imagine it being very useful in an airport where
they have hundreds of TVs tuned to the special airport edition of CNN.
No one wants to listen to those commentators yammer away, and would be
happy for a bit of piece and quiet. People go to bars to watch the
game on TV. People watch TV at the gym while they exercise to help
pass the time. No one goes to the airport to watch a bunch of perky
talking heads on CNN.

David Weintraub

On Sat, 17 Nov 2007, David Weintraub wrote:

> People go to bars to watch the game on TV. People watch TV at the gym
> while they exercise to help pass the time. No one goes to the airport
> to watch a bunch of perky talking heads on CNN.

Funny, I go to bars & restaraunts to talk to friends & family, not watch
television, and I don't mind catching up on news while waiting for a
plane.

I used to have a Sony Clie PDA that had universal remote abilities, and
I'd happily use it to turn off the damn TV at restaraunts so that we
could have a proper conversation. (Or put on Teletubbies or Barney etc,
to spark maybe a different sort of conversation... :-)

Too bad it stopped working, that was awfully handy. Oh well.


--
Chris Devers