High Tech in the hands of idiots

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a good friend of mine, she's a bit older than me, has often complained about noises in her rooms that she couldn't make head of tail of. She often told her husband and others who she knows (including me) about it and asked them to stay for a while so they would hear it, too. Unfortunately the noises never occured while we were there or when her husband was at home. So I told her to record the sounds when she hears them. We bought a good device to accomplish that task and finally we had ''proof''. This was only after MONTHS. Meanwhile she had been to a psychiatrist and was even prescribed drugs! Now, the question that arised was of course: who or what's the origin? it turned out that it was her neighbors, more precisely their kids (well kids is a ''relative'' term in that case as they are around 15 years old). They had used a so-called parametric loudspeaker which they had acquired over the internet and wanted to ''test'' it on someone. With that device you can produce directed sound, ie only someone who is in a location where the device is directed at can hear the sounds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGyBwRi3nnU there are always good and bad sides to such ''high-tech'' applications. Usually the good sides outweigh the bad ones but if it can be abused by people in the way it is and has been to the detriment of my friend I think it should be illegal to freely sell such devices or at least its abuse should be fined with large sums. The suppliers even promote it by naming its use for pranks: quote: "A properly placed parametric array can be set up so that some individuals may not know where the sound is originating from. The possibilities for jokes can be left to the imagination and are beyond the scope of this website." source: http://www.soundlazer.com/?page_id=2945 in the end the neighbors agreed to settle the issue extrajudicially by paying 1000 Euros to the family of my friend. Otherwise they probably would have paid a lot more (considering the emotional stress and health problems that had been caused). what do you think about such devices? Should they be banned from the market, abuse being punished (keep in mind that in the above case my friend was fortunate that the parents of those kids had told us the truth - if they wouldn't have done that their kids would have probably gotten away with it) or allow its sale for the benefit of the economy? personally I think it's a cool device but it has a high potential for abuse and people can get seriously hurt or ill from it. So I'd go for a registered sale, ie each customer should be obliged to complete a form so it becomes easier to elucidate and pursue abuse.