wtf...are teens dogs

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/23/teen.be.gone.ap/index.html

Quote :

"Conflict follows device that drives away teen loiterers * Story Highlights * High-frequency noise is similar to buzzing mosquito or nails on chalkboard * It's audible only by those who still have sensitive cells on inner ears * $1,500 device challenged overseas and in American towns * Many adults laud Mosquito for its success in targeting loiterers NEW YORK (AP) -- A wall-mounted gadget designed to drive away loiterers with a shrill, piercing noise audible only to teens and young adults is infuriating civil liberties groups and tormenting young people after being introduced into the United States. Almost 1,000 units of the device, called the Mosquito, have been sold in the United States and Canada after the product debuted last year, according to Daniel Santell, the North America importer of the device sold under the company name Kids Be Gone. The high-frequency sound has been likened to fingernails dragged across a chalkboard or a pesky mosquito buzzing in your ear. It can be heard by most people in their teens and early 20s who still have sensitive hair cells in their inner ears. Whether you can hear the noise depends on how much your hearing has deteriorated: How loud you blast your iPod, for example, could affect your ability to detect it. "It's horrible, loud and irritating," said Eddie Holder, 15, who sprinted from his apartment for school one morning covering one ear with his hand to block out the noise. The device was installed outside the building to drive away loiterers. "I have to hurry out of the building because it's so annoying. It's this screeching sound that you have to get away from or it will drive you crazy." The device has roiled civil liberties groups in countries where it's in use, including England, Australia and Scotland. England's government-appointed Children's Commission proposed a ban. That group describes it as a weapon that infringes on the basic rights of young people and claims that it could have unknown long-term health effects. The $1,500 device has also been challenged in some American cities and towns that have proposed installing it, with some criticizing the tactic as needlessly cruel. Santell said the noise can be heard by animals and babies but is bothersome only to children older than 12 and becomes unbearable after several minutes, making it a perfect teen-repellent. The same sound is used as a cell phone ring tone by deaf adults and is a popular download on the Internet. The town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, banned the device last year after a movie theater owner installed one. "There was an outcry, and people didn't like the idea of torturing kids' ears like that," said Ronald Dlugosz, a town official. "People here don't tolerate that kind of stuff." Milford, Connecticut, faced similar resistance when the city announced plans to install the Mosquito in a park. It increased police patrols instead. Elsewhere, there have been few or no complaints. A mall in Maryland announced plans to introduce the buzz to disperse skateboarders, and officials and police said they haven't had any outcry. A school district in Columbia, South Carolina, recently installed one on the grille of a school vehicle and another in a parking lot where students gather after high school games, with no complaints. "We'd have crowds gather in parking lots, and there'd be the usual trash talk, then you'd have fights," said Rick McGee, the school district's emergency services manager. "Now, there's no confrontation at all; they just get aggravated and leave within a few minutes." Santell, the device's marketer, said most of the company's inquiries are from major corporations and government agencies looking for a way to protect private property. Overseas, complaints arose when the device was projected into public spaces, like sidewalks. Santell said it does not violate any noise ordinances but added that the company will soon be selling the same product with a higher "power," or decibel output, that will be sold only to government agencies. Carmen Ramirez, superintendent of the New York apartment building where Eddie Holder lives, described it as "a miracle." "We used to have young men here all of the time, bothering people in the building and doing illegal things," said Ramirez, 50. "As soon as we put it up, they were gone, and they haven't been back. If they return, we'll just put up more." A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union said the organization does not have a position on the issue. But James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Boston's Northeastern University, said that putting crowd-monitoring devices in the hands of private businesses and citizens is "dangerous." "There is a significant problem with giving people a tool like this and empowering the public to take over the tasks of law enforcement," Fox said. "It can certainly be used in a way that's inappropriate, and without a doubt, it will be." Nobody at Holder's apartment building could say where the loitering kids had gone after the Mosquito was installed. "I just deal with it, but I can't be around here for too long," Holder said. "If I am going to stand around somewhere, it won't be here.""

4/23/2008 8:31:35 PM

i swear i remembering reading about something similar that allowed kids to communicate during class and the teachers couldn't hear it

4/23/2008 8:35:22 PM

i remember reading about this like a year ago.

4/23/2008 8:44:07 PM

yeah why are they reporting this as new

4/23/2008 8:49:21 PM

^^^yea, cell ring tones above the adult audible range. Text in class without being noticed.

4/23/2008 8:54:31 PM

just play opera or polka or *****a

4/23/2008 8:54:55 PM

Haha, I'll show them, my ears are already fucked. amirite?

4/23/2008 9:43:29 PM

i use this ringtone all the time

its amazing really, amazing who can and cannot hear it

4/23/2008 9:48:34 PM

Some dude came into the bookstore with that noise as a ringtone once.

Man that pissed off like half the people in the store, lol. Horrid noise.

4/23/2008 9:58:16 PM

link to a sample of the noise?

4/23/2008 10:41:15 PM

Quote :

"a sample of the noise?"

*Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep*

[Edited on April 23, 2008 at 10:44 PM. Reason : ...]

4/23/2008 10:43:44 PM

Is that the sound a gay answering machine makes?

4/23/2008 10:44:35 PM

http://www.jetcityorange.com/mosquito-ringtone/mosquito-ringtone.mp3

4/23/2008 10:50:17 PM

yeah i read about this happening in England a year or 2 ago. I still have the files on my computer. They're annoying and give you a headache. It's just 18khz to 20khz.

^yeah who all can hear that? Gives me a headache.

[Edited on April 23, 2008 at 10:50 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2008 10:50:20 PM

The tajma teeter (harris teeter near southpark mall) has one. I won't go there. I still hear these at a painfull headache inducing volume. Most fucked up part is that the 3 people I was w/ were younger than I, and had no clue what I was talking about. They thought I was nuts for rushing them.

4/23/2008 10:52:09 PM

^yeah i noticed that too. Although i don't really think it's a teen-repellant because they've had that there for years. It's either some faulty machine or something to keep birds away. There's no way they'd put something in southpark that would hurt kids ears.

4/23/2008 10:54:32 PM

http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/

use good speakers...

4/23/2008 10:55:30 PM

You can't hear it at southpark, and that specific strip (across the street) is more adult driven (jos a bank, paul simon, flagship grocery for soccer moms.

4/23/2008 10:55:57 PM

yeah i didn't mean in southpark, i meant in morcroft w/ the borders. We asked them about that in highschool. They said it wasn't a teen-repellent but didn't know what it was. I'm guessing it's for the birds or something or faulty wiring. Kinda like when you hear the power lines out of sync.

One of my friends lives right across the street in that gated community and they used to complain about it too.

4/23/2008 10:58:14 PM

God damn, I hear every one of those and I"m 25.

[Edited on April 23, 2008 at 10:59 PM. Reason : ^that just makes it even more fucked up, if that's so]

[Edited on April 23, 2008 at 11:00 PM. Reason : ]

4/23/2008 10:58:23 PM

if anyone can hear that from outside the property its placed on, they should take the owner to jail and charge him the same fines youd get for a noise ordinance violation

kinda funny though

4/23/2008 10:58:29 PM

ha i couldnt hear it at first, then i plugged it into my the speakers that my home audio uses. shits wild

4/23/2008 11:01:07 PM

I can't hear anything past 15k

4/23/2008 11:13:24 PM

i have this on my phone and play it discreetly when i want to annoy people

4/23/2008 11:14:37 PM

imma put that shit on my lawn

4/23/2008 11:17:03 PM

Quote :

"if anyone can hear that from outside the property its placed on, they should take the owner to jail and charge him the same fines youd get for a noise ordinance violation"

What noise officer?

4/23/2008 11:17:45 PM

when i saw the title of this article on cnn, i thought it was about the bubb rubb whistles

4/23/2008 11:18:24 PM

reminds me of this thing my parents had installed in our house back when I was in 8th or 9th grade that made a horrible sound like that that was supposed to keep bugs away. I constantly complained about it giving me a headache and they couldn't hear a thing. They eventually got rid of it.


As to the people who say its cool to use as a ringtone so you can get texts in class without the teacher knowing.... did phones stop coming with the vibrate setting?

4/23/2008 11:22:34 PM

you can hear vibrating phones VERY well. I'm in some stadium like classrooms in dabney and can hear a vibrating one go off from the top row.

4/23/2008 11:27:33 PM

vibrate is loud as hell, especially in a quiet room

[Edited on April 23, 2008 at 11:34 PM. Reason : I can hear 17.4 kHz, but not 18]

4/23/2008 11:30:40 PM

hmmm, I was at church the other day and my phone was on vibrate and went off 3 different times. I never heard it. Come to think of it, I never hear it while on vibrate unless its touching something else and vibrates against that

4/24/2008 5:33:36 PM

hell i heard one of those repellers the other day 0 the guy who turned it on jaw me a jawdrop when i just sat there staring at my DS for another 2 hours before i left... he thought i couldnt hear it... i just said i didnt care

4/24/2008 5:39:37 PM

I'm 28 and I could hear all of those.

4/24/2008 5:46:32 PM

I can hear every tone on that page loud and clear and im 27. Guess listening to my music jacked up with the whole car shaking didnt hurt my hearing afterall.

4/24/2008 5:49:05 PM

that's all sorts of fucked up


I guess if the kids knew what they were doing, and the city had a noise ordinance, they could prevent these things from being used....

4/24/2008 5:49:12 PM

the picture at the top of the page... at a glance it looks like these things are arab repellers

4/24/2008 5:52:10 PM

i'm 26 and I can hear up through 18KHz with my headphones on, higher than that I only hear the soundcard click on and off, on my laptop speakers I can only hear through 17.4KHz

4/24/2008 5:53:33 PM

yea, i read something about the phones where the teachers couldn't hear it...i think it was called vibrate alert? I could be wrong though.

4/24/2008 5:56:15 PM

That wouldn't last one week at any of the spots I hung out at as a kid. Dem Rocky Mount boys get wild when they get angry.

4/24/2008 5:57:40 PM

i can't hear any of the tones below 18khz and i take care of my ears.



[Edited on April 24, 2008 at 6:44 PM. Reason : ok i can't hear it but it hurts my ears.]

4/24/2008 6:43:33 PM

you take care of your ears?

douchebag.

i guess i take care of mine, too. i dont stick pencils up there

4/24/2008 6:50:37 PM

I can hear all of those, the 21 and 22 are the most annoying

4/24/2008 6:57:06 PM

i can barely hear the 17.4

4/24/2008 7:05:31 PM

I can kindof hear 17, but not really. After over a decade of drumming I was expecting them to be notably worse than that to be honest.

4/24/2008 7:14:21 PM

I've tried hearing this from some kid's cell phone in high school... everyone around him was acting like their ears were in pain, I didn't hear shit. I could tell that there was some sort of sound there when I put my ear close to it, but it was more like an absence of noise than an actual noise.

Same thing happened with the audio clip posted in this thread.


Well, holy damn I've fucked my ears up. I can BARELY hear the 16khz tone with my computer at normal volume for listening to music. Even then it wouldn't bother me too much.

I certainly wouldn't notice the 17khz or above if played near a store or something.

[Edited on April 25, 2008 at 12:14 AM. Reason : khz audio samples]

4/25/2008 12:10:37 AM

this is kinda messed up

4/25/2008 12:21:37 AM

I'm OLD!!!

http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/

the youngest one I can hear is "49 and younger" I don't listen to loud music or anything either!!!

4/25/2008 1:14:31 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccgXjA2BLEY

4/25/2008 1:30:59 AM

i can hear "39 and younger" but that's it

it was that fucking super six reverb i used to have, i know it

4/25/2008 2:24:05 AM

haha, stupid teenagers with their good hearing, GTFO!!

4/25/2008 8:12:21 AM