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Thread: The Mosquito

  1. #1

    Default The Mosquito

    In that old battle of the wills between young people and their keepers, the young have found a new weapon that could change the balance of power on the cellphone front: a ring tone that many adults cannot hear.

    In settings where cellphone use is forbidden — in class, for example — it is perfect for signaling the arrival of a text message without being detected by an elder of the species.

    "When I heard about it I didn't believe it at first," said Donna Lewis, a technology teacher at the Trinity School in Manhattan. "But one of the kids gave me a copy, and I sent it to a colleague. She played it for her first graders. All of them could hear it, and neither she nor I could."

    The technology, which relies on the fact that most adults gradually lose the ability to hear high-pitched sounds, was developed in Britain but has only recently spread to America — by Internet, of course.

    The cellphone ring tone is an offshoot of an invention called the Mosquito, developed last year by a Welsh security company to annoy teenagers and gratify adults, not the other way around.

    It was marketed as an ultrasonic teenager repellent, an ear-splitting 17-kilohertz buzzer designed to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected.

    The principle behind it is a biological reality that hearing experts refer to as presbycusis, or aging ear.

    While most human communication takes place in a frequency range between 200 and 8,000 hertz (a hertz being the scientific unit of frequency equal to one cycle per second), most adults' ability to hear frequencies higher than that begins to deteriorate in early middle age.

    But in a bit of techno-jujitsu, someone — a person unknown at this time, but probably not someone with presbycusis — realized that the Mosquito, which uses this common adult abnormality to adults' advantage, could be turned against them. The Mosquito noise was reinvented as a ring tone!

    Listen (?) to it here



    Compound Security, the company behind the Mosquito has decided to start selling a ring tone of their own. It is called Mosquitotone, and it is now advertised as "the authentic Mosquito ring tone".

    New York Times
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  2. #2
    Creator & Administrator Kev's Avatar
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Scousemouse
    Nope, cannot hear a thing.
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  3. #3

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    Gawd, I feel old!
    Ermine tastes much the same as sackcloth when there's nothing left to eat.

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    Senior Member Howie's Avatar
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    Default

    Can't hear it but can see it on the Audio Analyzer.

  5. #5
    Creator & Administrator Kev's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Howie
    Can't hear it but can see it on the Audio Analyzer.
    Its amazing
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  6. #6
    Senior Member SteH's Avatar
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    Default Call to ban dispersal device

    My local paper shop has one of these, great it is. Whereas you had to barge through small groups of hoodies on the door they are nowhere to be seen because if anybody starts hanging about outside he simply switches the device on and they do one. But now these campagners come along (no doubt someone who doesnt live in an area affected by youth disorder) calling for their bans.

    http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/...name_page.html

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    Creator & Administrator Kev's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SteH View Post
    My local paper shop has one of these, great it is. Whereas you had to barge through small groups of hoodies on the door they are nowhere to be seen because if anybody starts hanging about outside he simply switches the device on and they do one. But now these campagners come along (no doubt someone who doesnt live in an area affected by youth disorder) calling for their bans.

    http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/...name_page.html
    These doo-gooders need locking up, they have contributed significantly to the downfall in our society.
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  8. #8
    Senior Member julieoapw's Avatar
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    Totally agree - there's always some bleeding heart bleeting on about liberty who never has to live in the misery that some old folk do. What about their rights?!

  9. #9
    Senior Member skgogosfan's Avatar
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    The Government or local councils should give these devices out for free to any business wanting them-they're a great concept!

    Dave.

  10. #10
    PhilipG
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    Why don't we shoot all children at birth if they're going to grow up to hang about in groups, and annoy us?
    We don't because they don't.

    I don't agree with anything that affects ALL young people in the way these things do.

    If we had a device that did this to dogs, the country would be up in arms.
    Thank God, it looks like common sense is going to win in this case.

  11. #11
    Re-member Ged's Avatar
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    The thing is though Philip, it doesn't affect ALL kids as the vast majority of them are where they should/could be - at home, at sports centres, the baths, karate or boxing club, at football practice, in their mates house etc etc take your pick.

    Bored and idle kids hanging around offies (why offies - the alcohol link maybe) will make their own pleasures and that usually involves anti social and illegal behaviour like setting post boxes on fire, damaging phone boxes or bus shelters, hoax emergency calls, stoning buses - we've all seen the aftermath.

    It's no great mystery that if you were the lone cashier at one of these shops, you would feel uneasy at faceless hoodies which must be intimidating even if they are up to nothing. It used to be called loitering with intent, moving them on is nothing more than we used to get in the 1970s on the rare occassion we'd stop in one place for more than 10 minutes.
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  12. #12
    PhilipG
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    I know there's a problem.
    It's not new, either.
    But this is not the answer.
    Don't good children pop to the shops 'on messages'?

    What if this device afffected everybody, no matter what their age?

    Personally, I prefer dogs to children, but in this case, this 'torture' is wrong.

    This device is going to cause even more problems than it solves.
    Are the young people who it affects going to just turn round and walk away?
    Not if they're half as 'bad' as we are led to believe.

  13. #13
    Senior Member shoney's Avatar
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    wow you guys have big problems there, we don't get anything like this whatsoever, what are you doing wrong?

  14. #14
    Senior Member lottie's Avatar
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    i think these deterents are a great idea, but give the shop a switch as SteH says his shopkeeper has, that way it can be controlled. Although i know shops who actually allow these 'lovely children' access into the shop to roll joints etc. I stopped using these shops because of it.
    Life is what you make it

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    Re-member Ged's Avatar
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    Good children popping into shops, buying something and then getting off home or to any of those lists of 'nice' things I mentioned wouldn't be targetted with this device though would they?


    The problem is greed Shoney.

    Ever since off licences sprung up on every corner and supermarkets were allowed to sell ale 24/7 and nightclubs open till 6am - there is a get drunk as quick as possible culture and a feeling that kids haven't enjoyed a night out unless they're paralitic and doing something outrageous. Even the ladettes and hen nights you see on programmes such as boozy Britain with flashers and teenages spewing up all over the place and comatose on the ground with their pants around their ankles. You only have to drive through town in the early hours of the weekend like I do to pick my girls up to see what's going on, to say it isn't is saying my eyes are playing up and to fudge the issue.
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