What are USCF rules concerning cell phone disturbances ?

I have taught at Mediocre State U and Highly Selective Liberal Arts College. The top students are the same everywhere. The botton is higher when the college is highly selective. The laziness you are describing runs rampant everywhere that I've taught.

Intelligence doesnt equate to common sense.  As for the interwebz?  The 3 most common words searhed are: sex, free, and porn.  yes its more available, but that doesdnt mean people actually use that knowledge.  

The US has fallen farther and farther behind oither countries in math, science, etc.  But we do lead the world in flat screen tv's, social media, and the kardashians.  

Blindly staring at an electronic device doesnt mean youre intelligent.  

The modern day luddites would have there jobs sent to minimum wage thrid world countries.  Hows that for advanced technology?

Look up the definition of platitude.  Youll understand why it doesnt apply here.  

Critical thinking is out the window, because "there is an app for that"

Watch the movie Wall-E, and youll find out where we are headed.

There is no app for critical thinking. It's really the only skill that's not computerized now, but there's no reason not to be able to do simple tasks without technology.

Most tasks that actually accomplish work--outside of factory walls--are not computerized. Mechanized, sure, but with human operators.

You know that feeling you get when you're trying to remember someone's name, and you don't know it yet, but you know you're CLOSE to remembering it? That is something for which I don't know of an analogue in the computerized world.

Contrast that with the "yeah I know I knew their name at some point but nope not anymore".

While I agree that writing down the moves is no big deal for the purpose of scoring, having the games already in digital format has huge value - to feed it to a computer, to the chess.com crowd, to share it with an Australian friend, to keep a database searcheable by date / tournament / opponent / opening, etc.

I still think the drawback (easier cheating) is huge and hard to mitigate, but the advantages do exist, even beyond the "people nowadays are stupid and cannot write" rant.

That concern has been around for a while now.  I would be very surprised if no one has hacked or faked a Monroi deivce by now.  And it facilitates cheating even in its unaltered state.  See the quote from the discussion linked below.

"The downside of Monroi is that I heard it can be used to communicate 
ongoing game scores and moves to remote locations -- thereby solving 
the cheater's problem of how to send information about the 
current board position to a remote accomplice."

Sam Sloan, USCF Executive Board, 2007

http://www.avlerchess.com/chess-analysis/MonRoi_and_the_Problem_of_Cheaters_104967.html

"Discretion"

I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to enjoy many years of OTB tournament chess before it became tainted by technologically enhanced cheating (and ringing cell phones).  The worst that I had to endure in my experience (1980 - 2010) was theatrics (e.g., someone faking despair over a supposed blunder which was actually a trap), or some snot-nosed kid drumming on the table.  Even phones weren't a distraction until recently.

Now I am reluctant to enter any tournaments with high entry fees, even though I would love to compete in the World Open again.  I pity the youth of today who won't get to experience the innocent period that I enjoyed.  From now on, it will be always be an arms race between cheaters and tournament directors.  And as in the case of military, encryption, and computer virus wars, the aggressor ("having the white pieces", so to speak) will always have the advantage, being one step ahead.

The USCF isn't FIDE. Electronic devices in the playing hall are allowed and a phone ringing isn't an automatic forfeit (and most US tourneys are not FIDE rated).

The assumtion that cheating is rampant is going to do more harm to OTB chess then being accommodating to things that aren't cheating.

I have had one tourney where it was thought a person might be cheating and had nothing to do with a device in the room.

Martin , see my first post .  Don't you think something should be done in a case like I described ?  I felt like standing up after the TD was warning everyone to turn their phones off and telling them that they could safely ignore the warning and leave their phones on because nothing is ever done about ringing cell phones so why heed the warning at all ? 

If a TD is going to warn then they should follow through. I don't disagree with that.

The tournaments that i have attened, when the TD announces the "penalty" for a cell phone going off during a game.  The first offense is a 10 minute penalty.  Yea...that will show them.  During a crucial phase of the game, go ahead and cheat your way to victory as long as you have 11 minutes left.  

I'm not ever going to claim that cheating doesn't happen. I will say that the vast majority of OTB chess players are playing honestly, especially in local, low money tourneys.

In areas with a much larger chess scenes and tourneys that pull in a lot more players where prize funds are more substantial, the situation is likely different. If I had 60+ players attending my events, I would likely adopt a much more strict set of rules and penalties. I still think that the likelyhood of cheating is low.

The problem with a phone ringing is that it disturbs the entire playing hall. If someone were to suddenly start shouting for no apparent reason, I would expect that player to forfeit. Same with a phone.

The phone ringing isn't a sign of engine use, it's a sign that the person who owns the phone is incompetent to play tnmt chess.

I agree SmyslovFan's point that a ringing phone disturbs the entire tournament hall.  And his post is the most relevant one with regards to the original topic of the thread.  Many of the players would be in deep thought calculating lines.  Too be needlessly interrupted by a ringing phone could actually affect game results.  This should not be tolerated at all.

With regards to cheating: while it is wise to not over-react and become too alarmist, as Martin_Stahl pointed out, it seems reasonable that the motivation to cheat will be directly proportional to the size of the cash prizes, and also directly proportional to the ease of cheating.  The ease of cheating will only increase with time.  So while small local low-money tournaments will be less affected (and maybe easier for the TD to scrutinize), I personally will be henceforth reluctant to enter the larger big-money tournaments.

"Nerdy" or not, there are several books delving into the relationship between math and chess.  Just because many people don't know or use much math doesn't mean it isn't important and relevant to many fields.  And if "nerd" means being good at multiple technical subjects, then I'm glad I'm a nerd.

Diakonia who obsessed with cheating in this thread now has their account closed. In my experience those who obsess with cheating in Chess usually rationalize cheating themselves believing all their opponents do.

https://www.chess.com/member/diakonia

That account was not closed for fair play violations. That icon can mean that but it does not in many cases of older account closures and some back-end account closures that are not related to any violations.