I’m sure if Ozzyfrog were to tackle this issue, he would manage to output a lengthy and highly amusing blog post about their silliness and similarity to geese, but I don’t really have the time or skill to do so, so I’ll just keep it short and sweet:
Seriously, what’s with house alarms?
Many people around my neighbourhood have them installed. I’ve been living here for over a decade and haven’t heard of any burglaries in that time. You wouldn’t believe it if you heard the frequency of house alarms going off. Now, they don’t go off because somebody is actually breaking into the house to nick some stuff, it’s just because some silly twit who doesn’t deserve an oxygen quota has forgotten to turn it off when they walk into their house. Having set the alarm off, they then spend 10 minutes running around like a headless chicken wailing and rapidly gesticulating with their arms. Then they remember their alarm code and turn the damn thing off. Until then everyone within a 50km radius must endure the horrid screeching of their alarm. grumble grumble.
Now, if a house alarm went off because there genuinely was an intruder, I would consider the house alarm to be a useful tool. However, people have become so desensitised to the sound of an alarm that nobody actually cares anymore. Upon hearing a house alarm, my reaction is not “oh no, somebody’s burgling the neighbour’s house!”. It’s closer to “Gah, some idiot got it wrong again”. I wonder if any security specialist has ever heard the tale “The boy who cried wolf”. There’s an important lesson they could learn in there.
My thoughts exactly
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Comment by Tamasys — February 27, 2010 @ 6:02 pm