>Isn't there some sort of low-range 'supression signal' somebody could cook
> up?
Yes, but such things are FCC-illegal in the US. Transmitter devices have to
be type-approved. I expect that there are similar regulatory hurdles
elsewhere. Heck, maybe you could get this application approved,
it would not be hard to prove that people have been killed by cell-addicted
drivers.
Even if approved, or you don't care about approval, jamming a cellphone
that's inside a vehicle from inside your vehicle is going to require a
radiated power that is probably unnacceptable because it would disrupt
communications of people that you drive past. The FCC is really down on
disrupting authorized use.
This would get a lot easier if the manufacturers would add a feature for
detecting unacceptable use zones.
There's also the big-brother issue Jammers can't distinguish between drivers
and passengers--and passenger use should be unobjectionable.
I can work up more enthusiasm for the case of performances and eateries, but
even there, jamming is intrusive and disruptive of desirable things like
doctors and police officers being on-call, not to mention the silent internet
access of my web tablet. When I can get decent wireless connectivity I'm
going to switch my steady date from a book to a laptop.
I'm not really RF-savvy. How fine does a mesh have to be in order to
passively get a Faraday-cage effect for a given frequency? Better than
quarter-wavelength? A fancy restaurant could do that as part of a
remodeling, but this still cuts-off the doctors and cops and so on. Maybe a
big sign on the front door would be enough to notify them.
Eirikur
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:15:10 PDT