Now, that’s a sound suppressor!
this appealing firearm jams the vocal output of the unwanted up to a distance of 100 feet.
The technology behind it is deafeningly simple. The gun listens in with a directional microphone and plays it back to them with a 0.2 second delay. This creates an environment in which one is simply unable to speak. The technical term for this is Delayed Auditory Feedback.
Soon to be a hit with parents every where!
March 2nd, 2012 at 12:16 pm
I saw no gun at the link, just a speaker with some electronics attached. Will Brady or VPC or Bloomberg have anything to say about this assault speaker, and will Ms. Peterson’s head explode at the thought that she might have to listen to herself?
March 2nd, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story about the “Fenton Silencer”, which was a microphone/speaker combination which would put out sound wave in the exact opposite wave-phase as the original source, cancelling the noise. He wrote it as a humorous story.
What’s funny is that this is how “sound-cancelling” headphone sets actually work…
March 2nd, 2012 at 12:38 pm
Does it work on in-laws?
March 2nd, 2012 at 1:43 pm
…or the stereo of the car next to you at the light?
March 2nd, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Silly piece of useless crap.
Plug own ears with fingers. Continue ranting.
March 3rd, 2012 at 1:57 am
I’m sure that none of these will ever show up backstage at any dearleader’s town hall meetings…
March 3rd, 2012 at 2:01 am
@Blackwing1: Actually it’s not an active cancellation suppressor. It takes advantage of the fact that it’s very difficult for people to keep talking when they can hear their own voice delayed about 250ms.
There was a demonstration of this effect I tried out somewhere years ago (Portland Science Museum?) using a telephone handset in a booth, and I couldn’t manage to get more than a couple of words out successfully.
I think it would be easy to defeat with ear plugs, and I would much rather see an active-cancellation hush-gun because that doesn’t rely on human physiological effects to work.
Heckler-Be-Gone.