disappointing... i thought it jammed them down their throats

[rone]

"Can you hear me now?"  Unsuspecting cellphone users may find themselves saying that more often now that cellphone jammers — illegal gizmos that interfere with signals and cut off reception — are selling like hotcakes on the streets of New York.

Comments

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

Why do people find it so socially acceptable to prevent other people from communicating? Who the hell are you to decide whether or not my cell phone call is important or not? Maybe somebody is discussing restaurant choices, but can you tell just by looking that there is nobody else within range of your jammer who is waiting to find out if his mother-in-law has cancer or not? (Just to pull out a not very random example.)

I had some guy on a newsgroup the other day say that if he saw somebody with a cell phone on a cruise ship that he'd throw the phone over the side. I told him that if he did that to me, his teeth would be joining it pretty smartly, and he'd better be ready to pay my costs to have a replacement cell phone helicoptered out to the ship within a few hours. If I wasn't reachable by work, I wouldn't be allowed to take any vacation at all.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

The thing I find puzzling is people getting upset over cell phones used on places like buses, or trains. It's not like there's a presumption that that space is going to be peaceful and quiet or that people aren't going to be making noise. Hell, if the train is exactly the place where a cell comes in most handy -- when there's absolutely no communication alternative!

I can sympathize more with wanting to jam the cell signals in places like movie theaters, auditoriums or churches, where you have a reasonable expectation that people are going to shut the hell up. Even there I'm not happy about the idea of jamming cell signals altogether. It punishes the responsible and the arrogant alike.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

The problem is when your conversation is so loud that you share it with half the train car. And then it turns into a protracted chat.

A loud conversation between people on the train is pretty annoying, too, but i think that the cell phone one is perceived worse because you're catching only half the conversation and it throws your brain off.

I try to keep all of my phone conversations short and quiet, land-line or mobile, no matter where i am.

And, no, i'm not endorsing the jammers. It's more of a "death to civility" sort of thing; annoying cell phone yappers lead to radio-frequency vandals.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Yah, I find the cell conversations more distracting too, probably for the reason that you mention.

At O'Naturals (http://www.onaturals.com/) in Acton (http://www.local-i.com/bostonrestaurants/restaurant/onaturals/) a couple of nights ago, I kept being distracted by one of the parents standing around the kids' play area, clearly to keep an eye on his kids, and who kept up a long conversation. I kept thinking that he was talking to his spouse, except it seemed like the rest of his family was seated blocks and blocks away from him. He wasn't shouting or carrying on a lot, actually talking in a very quiet tone of voice -- but it was distracting because there obviously wasn't anyone else there! It was probably a good 20 minutes before I saw the wireless earbud in his other ear and understood what was going on.

[vspope.livejournal.com]

The problem is when your conversation is so loud that you share it with half the train car. And then it turns into a protracted chat.

Or half of any other public place in which the user is oblivious to how loud they're talking.

I usually respond by joining in the user's conversation myself, chiming in on everything the person with the phone says. If they get annoyed and complain, that's too bad; I'M not the one who brought a private conversation into a public forum.

If they're quiet, I could care less if they're talking; THAT's civility on both sides. But if someone's going to bray like a donkey ahead of me in the supermarket line, why should I be the only one who's annoyed?

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

When I was unemployed, I worked as House Manager for a small theatre company. We had at least one patron *answer her phone* in the middle of a live show. This was in a 99 seat theater.

[vspope.livejournal.com]

Goddamn. ME WANT ONE.

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

If I read the article correctly there are maybe a couple of hundred that have been sold in New York City; it's hard to say how many stayed in town and how many went elsewhere. I wouldn't expect two or three hundred jammers to make much of an impact in a place the size of New York City unless they're very powerful.