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GPS Wristwatch for Kids
1010011010 writes "A company called 'Wherify Wireless' has created a $400 watch with a built-in pager, GPS unit and wireless data connectivity. It's targeted at families with kids. According to their website, 'Wherify's GPS Personal Locator helps keep loved ones safe by combining Wherify's patented technology with the U.S. Department of Defense's multi-billion dollar Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites plus the largest 100% digital, nationwide PCS wireless network.' It includes a pager, clock, two-button '911' calling (parent can disable this), and remote-control keyfob (to lock and unlock it) for the parents. It is apparently water- and kid-resistant, and can be locked onto the wrist so that it cannot be removed (easily). $400 plus $35 a month... that's a lot more money than those stretchy wrist-leashes I see at the mall." There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin.
waterresistant I can believe.. now kid resistant.. THAT I gotta see..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I don't think that the locking is intended to stop the child removing the beacon; rather, I think the idea is to ensure that any abductor would not be able to remove it.
e d-by-a-paedophile market, I'd say that the locking makes perfect sense.
Given that most of the market for such gadgets comes from the oh-no-my-child-is-going-to-be-abducted-and-tortur
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
What is wrong with this? There is absolutely nothing more important to a parent than the safety of their child. Of course you're not going to tag your child with it 24/7 but if you're going to say Disneyland, or the beach or some other large public venue, it would be an excellent idea to place this on your child.
Would you want to lose your child because you were too busy being a conspiracy theorist and trying to think up reasons as to why tagging your child is morally wrong? No.. I didn't think so.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
*fiddle fiddle* Hello, you have now reached 911.
Now you can have peace of mind 24 hours a day while your child is the high tech envy of the neighborhood!
"Moooom, I want a GPS receiver watch! My old watch isn't even synchronized by atomic clocks! Everyone at school has one."
After you get a kid to accept he's got a tracking device permanently locked to his arm, do you lock him in a glass ball in the basement bombshelter?
Btw, could this work the other way around? Could perverts search for kids that are too far into the woods?
Sure, I've got no problems strapping it to a little kid at the beach (though, frankly, it's hardly necessary - child abduction by strangers is *very* rare). Its use with older children, though, concerns me greatly.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'm always losing my watch, so this would be fantastic.. All I need now is one for my keys.
The first kidnapping case where this works successfully is going to be the last one, too, because nobody will fall for it ever again.
Parent: "If you don't behave, we're going to turn off your GPS locator, and then someone bad will kidnap you...!"
Nothing like new technology to bring a whole new angle to the "we're gonna leave you at the mall" routine.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
Although the odds are slim of a kidnapped kid actually wearing one of these, but it could work much like the "Lojack" system we use todays in cars. The "locked" watch may look a bit odd but the technology has a great deal of potential. We could even imbed the devices into all us citizens at an early age and give them a unique number to track.. er, nevermind
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I hope that there also will be a way to let this watch create a logfile of the GPS info. Then I could really use this watch myself for finding out where I was and what I was doing the previous night when I had too much to drink (again). No more 'O my God, where have I been'. Great!
In the UK recently, a controversial idea was made of electronically tagging young offenders.
Looking at the specs for this device, it doesn't actually seem to be much different, except that your child would have of course never gone on trial to wear the damn thing.
I would say that if you feel your child has to wear one of these awful devices, then you've probably failed as a parent already. I actually felt pretty sad when I saw the company website for this device. It's basically a tracing device and I'd like to think that I trusted my children a little more than that.
I think that some of the basic reasons for this device are based around paranoia... "Where is your child now ?"
Take care everyone, and have an excellent easter...
M.
# ping johnny
PING 12.21.87.193 (12.21.87.193) from 12.21.87.194 : 56(84) bytes of data.
From 12.21.87.194: Destination Host Unreachable
From 12.21.87.194: Destination Host Unreachable
From 12.21.87.194: Destination Host Unreachable
Uh oh..
Take life easy: one bit at a time.
"There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin."
If youve ever lost a child you wouldnt even think about saying that, infact, at the time youd probably give an arm and a lag to have had one of these on your kid.
This will be great. Now in stats where minors are not allowed to carry pagers the schools can call up the parents and ask that they remove little johnie's pager. This is another example of where tech is moving faster than shools and laws.
Ascii artist &
That was hilariously sick!
don't you watch those scary movies on TV?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I think this is a really marvelous idea. Please don't mod me down as flamebait here, I've heard of some AWFUL things happening to kidnapped children. Out here in SoCal we had thousands and thousands of posters with Danielle Van Damme's picture on it until she was found, dead, and burned, in the boonies. I think the /. eds are too rabid about this with the constant slippery-slope arguments about how the government's going to mandate this on all citizens to enforce the dictatorship. Please. I think this company has a great idea, and if they can get the price down to something reasonable I think it would be great.
And while you're in the rabid dog civil rights mood, think about this. Danielle had every one of her civil rights taken by the creep who murdered her. On your guys' level, she did have all her privacy taken away by all the posters posted looking for her. This wristwatch idea could have _SAVED HER LIFE_. And in fact, _PROTECTED HER PRICACY_. This wristwatch is heavy on the scales of civil rights compared to some paranoid concerns. Accept it for what it is, don't bash it for something it's not.
can be locked onto the wrist so that it cannot be removed (easily).
Hmmm.. This is only one step away from microscopic tracking chips implanted under the skin at birth, ala Demolition Man...
=-Jippy
As a parent of young kids, I think this is an excellent idea. Here in the UK, we had the horrific case of 3 year old Jamie Bulger a few years ago who was snatched from a shopping centre by a couple of bored fourteen year olds and tied to a railway track "for fun".
This device could well have prevented that.
It's a bit expensive, but a brilliant idea
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
From their FAQ:
Will it work indoors?
Yes. The Personal Location System incorporates enhanced GPS technology, which enables it to obtain location information indoors as well as outdoors.
Either I've missed out on some pretty impressive new developments with GPS, or this company are talking out of their a***. My experience with the GPS device I bought less than 6 months ago is that the only time it works indoors is when you happen to be leaning out the window and there aren't any tall buildings across the street.
I think that a number of posters are right - most parents are far too overprotective, at most ages. This is a great improvement on a leash as it allows children to have that experience of exploration without parental direction, yet still gives the parent reassurance.
And, just like a leash, it's inappropriate in most cases involving an older child.
Cheers,
Martin
(Father to Morgan, six months)
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
you can rig it to explode if the kid tries to take it off, or gets outside a certain distance from you... just be careful to disable it the next time you go on a business trip! *grin*
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
beep! It's 10pm, do you know where your children are?
Yes, with 1m resolution..
-Where were you last night, Cindy ?
./'s: when you were teens, did you have boy/girlfriends that you didn't want your parents to know ? How would you feel if your parents knew exactly where you are ? I'd feel suffocated.
-I slept at Linda's. mom.
-Don't lie to we saw everything on GPS PERSONAL LOCATOR (TM).
-Ok, I saw Steve again.
-I told you to get rid of that dweeb. We don't like him.
Now the parents are going to know every step of their kids. While it can be good for pre-teens, it can be a hassle to teens.
A question for the other
You'll always end up with one person who says 'Well *ACTUALLY* it happened to me, so my opinion is clearly right, your opinion is clearly wrong, and you're not allowed to argue against me because bad things happened to me'
I've had many debates on such subjects, and in the case of a debate on rape (whether a particular case could really be called rape - I forget exactly) a girl made some poor, reflexive comments, I shot her down, and she said 'Well *ACTUALLY* I've been raped!' As if that's supposed to make a fucking difference. From then on of course, half the people pussy-footed around her, and criticised me for continuing to shoot her down.
Please don't do the same shit here, I am notorious IRL for having zero sympathy when people use misfortune to make a point
IHBT?
Well, that's better than my old watch with WIRED connectivity!
I've lost count of the times when a young/senior person in the family went missing and we'd have to form a search party. I remember quite clearly thinking 'Can't wait for the day i can put a transponder on them' and here it is.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
This wristwatch is much more practical for this use.
Absolutely classic! Keep up the good work!
I dont think this was designed for or would be used for tagging teenagers.
Give them a mobile phone or something.
The humiliation of wearing a "parent tag" during your self-concious years would be worthy of suicide!
I think they will come in handy when trying to find one's self. This may cut down on those pesky time-consuming journeys of self discovery.
I'm currently out trying to find myself. If I should get back before I return, please keep me here.
KM
I know I am not even able to understand how society will evolve in the next years. I have difficulties to fully understand in details the behavior of people 10 years younger than me, so I am sure that I will have difficulties with my childrens.
:)
Which, let me state it, is a good thing. A parent MUST not understand totally his/her childrens. There must be some mis-understanding in families, because otherwise the kid will grow up without enough moral strength to fight against the world, or just survive into it.
Now, I think that a great part of being a children is doing something forbidden. When you do something that's forbidden, being it wathing pr0n or sneaking into a girl house or go explore an abandoned house, you feel like you're adult. Later you realize the dangers you have risked, and at that point you have grown up a little bit.
IMHO growing up is reaching an equilibrium between what you CAN do and what you CANNOT do, and what you SHOULD do.
As you grow more, you start understanding the reasons that pushed your parents to act like they did, and by now you'll probably be a parent yourself.
I'm making it a LOT more simple than it is, bare with me - there's no "Kid How-To" out there, and those who are available are wrong because there cannot be a Kid How-To, except in dictatorships (but I digress).
So, back into topic: if a kid is afraid of doing something because he KNOWS his parents knows where he is (and probably will know what he's doing..with the next generation of such watches) his maturity will suffer. He will never become an adult capable of making reasonable decisions; he has grown up with 'someone else' making decisions for him and HE COULD NOT EVEN HAVE A CHANCE to disobey, and be proven right.
Such watches will endanger the grown up of such kids. Another point in favor of kids could be their popularity in schools.. think about people making fun of you because your parents don't trust you.. and forced you to have a gps watch.. enough here).
Sure they/we will get used to it. Sure next generations will get used to it and either
1. develop new ways to avoid such system (as right now fake ID cards are)
2. suffer from it and become morons that are used to to what is told them to do, being it from parents or government
So we will all become either criminals or perfect citizens. Cool. Now I understand the leading trend in society! (I'm joking here, this is a provocative sentence. That said just to avoid those of you that love not understanding sentences and waste time for a 'fun' phrase writing paragraphs trying to prove wrong a sentence that was ironic at the beginning).
Just thought about it.
Oh well of course I'm not even thinking about raising a children in the US. But that's another topic. Anyone would like to go colonize Mars with me and raise kids there?
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Is there a managers model?
I want to know if my manager is around or not...
It should be able to give electonic shocks too *grinn*
42 + 1 = 42
It seems that this device is difficult to remove from wrist, which is obiviously a danger itself. It isn't a great danger, but I'd like to see this unit to break loose when twisted before the bones break.
Michael:
You state that "...there are so many things wrong with this...". I would like to ask you to please clarify this for us.
Here in Michigan, we - the parents, are generally responsible for the actions of our children. In fact, it is not totally unusual for the legal system to hold parents accountable and even culpable for our childrens actions. There have been well publisized reports of parents being made to serve jail time because their kids (repeatedly) skipped school. If my son is in a position to cause me to have to go to jail, I indeed have a right, let alone an obligation to know about it.
If you still see this device as "wrong", then you are obviously not a parent. Please come back when you are qualified to give an opinion on this.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
I don't know the exact link (there was an article on /. something like a year ago...) but there's another company building on a chip that's IMPLANTED into your child/dog/grandma with a satellite finder system. From what I remeber it was a passive system (like explorers use to track animal movement) but this implantment idea really scared me. I had thought we weren't in for this kind of stuff until 20 years from now.
Keeping that in mind this watch solution is a 'better' thing (as in 'not quite that crazy').
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Gee.. just one more step closer to barcoding people.. Kidproof? thats a barcode.. only 10 dollars a month and you have a network of phones that when in use by anybody will scan barcodes in the vicnity of the phone and will help triangulate barcoded inviduals for the location database? Lost your kid? no problem..
i spect the device can tell parents when their teenage sons are abusing themselves - vibration detection, administers electric shock (at parental discretion of course). oof.
more seriously - maybe there is a "protecting us from them" piece. let's not forget that we (the people who are not the parents of yr children) might like to know where they were when our houses were burgled, cars ripped and burnt etc. cos don't forget the little darlin's sometimes do that too. now i would not mind if a court mandated that little Sydney needs to be tracked and Sidney Senior is on point...
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction, but they eat more steak.
The system works by constantly sending back the child's location and they if they are looking for the child they can look at the saved and current co-ordinates and then search for the child.
But, as noted, if a child if moved indoors or down into a subway or into the back of a sealed metal van, then the co-ordinates will stop and the trail will be cold by the time the parents begin to search.
The only way this could be effective if it was hidden say on a necklace and the kidnapper did not know about it or ways to circumvent it. Any serious kidnappers know about this by now and check the kids arm for a matching watch. If they see one then they take steps to prevent it being effective.
Dan
I hope I'm not being stupid, but there seems to be a serious flaw to this system.
How do the parents go about the process of finding their lost child? I'd imagine the parents would call up the company requesting the geographical location of their child? But how do the parents (or the company) know their own geographical location? Directions are always relative to the start point (in this place the parents), so it seems to me that you're really going to need two sets of GPS systems.
When you add the variable of the child moving about, this is going to add extra problems. It may well be useful near your home, where the company can give you a street name, but what about when you're away from home?
> that I don't even know where to begin.
As mentioned in the comments there are some "practical" uses for this. And, as a disabled single father of a 5 year old son, I can definitely see some serious advantages in this product.
That being said, this device still makes me very uncomfortable. It worries me on many levels, too. I honestly can't decide if this would be a Good Thing<tm> or not.
There is one little niggle I have, too. It's $400 a pop and $35/mo for this. I can see people buying it for their young children and I can't shake the feeling that this is just exploiting the fears of parents to make a proffit.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
You are wrong in saying that this device is wrong. Wait until the first time your 6 year old happens to walk away in a crowded place like 6 Flags. I am a very vigilant parent...I try and be careful about my son's well being 24/7. But it sometimes isn't enough. He has walked off 2 times in 8 years. He didn't go far...and luckily I found him within minutes. But children sometimes are abducted within those few minutes. If I would have had access to this watch when he was younger...I would have bought two. One for him and a back-up. There is nothing more important that my kid's safety.
The only way that this would be of any use was if you didn't have to pay the 35$ a month. Cause that is like assuming that you constantly want to keep track of someone. Maybe if you shackeld this to your kid and then when tehy got lost, you enabled the shackle remotely from the main unit that's going to be doing the tracking. That way you don't have to pay 35$ a month but if your kid runs away or gets lost you can still find it.
At least my name's not Jerry.
Some sort of blood monitoring device could be added as well. If they take alcholol or any sort of drugs .... let mammay and daddy know. Put a smoke detector in it as well, make sure they aren't even near that bad tobacco.
Then the teen model could come with a heightened fermone / hormone detector - make sure they're not up to anything naughty on the first date ( although with most young men, this would be going of continuously ).
Maybe we could add in some of the face detection technology from yesterday - make it be able to filter pornography too....
Bad langauage alert would also be handy.....
Or we could just lock the kids in a room.
Hell I'd like one myself, but I won't be buying one.
This is a great step forwared in child safety, and I have also heard that this is also going to be used for alzheimer patients. The author of this heeds to re-evaluate his statement after he has looked into the innocent eyes of his own children.
Don't tell my girlfriend!! :-)
My leash is short enough as it is...
No sig to see here. Move along.
Here in Finland we give our kids a cell phone. If they need to call home, they call home. If the parents need to call their kids, they can call their kids.
A friend of mind, father of a teenager, has a deal with his kid. He provides the phone + pays the bills (you can set a limit to that as well), as long as the kid promises to answer the phone when his father calls. If not rightaway --nobody should be forcedly tied to the phone-- then within reasonable time.
Even a one-or-two-character SMS message will do;
. = yes
! = sure! or, look behind you! i'm already here
What's the use of this? Parents still have their eye's these day, right?
With my kids having this tingy I can have peace of mind 24 hours a day while your child is the high tech envy of the neighborhood!
Wrong twice, I still have to keep an eye on where my kid is, but on some GPS screen now. Does that help? Yeah, a bit, I'll now it when he/she gets far away. Does that stop them from climbing trees or running onto the street in front of a car? Nope. So no peace of mind unless I'm able to personally keep an eye on my kids (or except the fact that there will always be risks, think about it: the biggest cause of death is being born). Besides that, i'll still have to check the position of my child every minute and even then I'll be to late if something happens...
And no, the other kids will not envy my children because of Big Brother parents. (A always wander why this seems to be a very important argument to parents, at least there are big bucks earned just with this argument...)
- It is apparently water- and kid-resistant, and can be locked onto the wrist so that it cannot be removed (easily).
Parents forcing kids to wear security enforcing devices reminds me of governments forcing people to buy security enforcing computers.
I agree that kids must be protected, but taking away their freedom is not a good thing, IMO.
1. Keep track of employees
2. Keep track of your boyfriend(for gurls)
3. Keep track of multiple gurlfriends(this way you can tell if one is coming towards your place when you are with another one)
4. Keep track of your boss(just wait for the multicasting version & every employee will tracking software running on his/her machine)
5. Attach one to every cop car in your town(small towns) so you know how far the cops are from ya.
6. Lock it on your bag of weed so when yer friends misplace it you can find it easily
7th and best reason!
Attach it to the Senator from Disney so we can catch him meeting with church of velenti all the time(this one needs the 4+ hours of recordable media on it)(with content protection scheme so he can't erase it)
:)
GPS can tell you whose house he's staying in.
Even if you're away from home, you're likely to have some sort of map of the area.
Of course, you are right, if you have your opwn GPS navigator, especially a nice one with a map overlay, you can just plug in the reported coordinates of your kid as a waypoint and it'll provide you with directions to get there!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
..but given the fact that our 21 month old has a knack of disappearing if you take your eyes off him for a second, I'd use something like this in a heartbeat.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
That they haven't advertised these foremost for pet tags, most folks care more about their pets' safety than their kids...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin.
Like finding your young child who's wandered off in a shopping mall, or god-forbid been kidnapped?
Ok, I'm pretty much as tin-foil as you can get without actually being able to afford the tin-foil, and while I don't much fancy GPS, using it for something as beneficial as this even works for me.
Besides, what else is the illuminati gonna do with a constant track on my son, spy on him while he steals cookies??
I am BelDion's
does it also count down from 24 hours, so your kid always knows exactly how long he's got to get the President out of New York?
~Philly
A lot of folks are saying positive things about this because protects children against abduction.
This system offers a means for someone to totally track every movement of a child. While the parent is intended to receive the data, what prevents someone else from hijacking this data? Wouldn't it become easier than for a potential abductor to observe the habits of the child and choose a time when the band was known to be off?
Let's say that an abductor abducts a child with one of these things. What's to stop him from just wrapping something around the device to block the signal?!? It surely wouldn't be too difficult.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Seems to me that there's an awful lot of parenting advice from
non-parents. I said I never wanted kids, and now that I have one,
it does kind of piss me off when someone who has never been a parent
(babysitting and siblings don't count) offers us "the best way to [teach, discipline,
watch, etc.] my son. That being said (or whined!) I think these things are cool, even
though all safety and privacy is a dangerous illusion.
"Never pet a burning dog."
next step is to have everybody a transmitter implanted, so we can always be found, even if we don't want to be found...
Lucky us they actually put it on the market as the device it is.
Imagine if they sold that piece of 'spyware' under the name 'ordinary watch'...
a boss being able to say to his/her employee " why are you late, I saw you gettin' up at 07:00 and at 08:00 you were still at home..."
maybe me just being too paranoid, but hey, being paranoid doesn't mean nobody is following you.
have a nice day
r.
(oh, they forgot to put 10 gram of semtex in the watch ! comes in bloody handy if your kid decides to trash some lifes at school with daddy's semi-automatic rifle...)
electrical shocks to prevent tampering or wandering into 'undesired' areas?
-
I really think people are missing a whole aspect here - this product is another thing - an affordable and legal tracking device. Anyone could attach this anywhere on your car, or sneak it into any transport vehicle or large storage unit to track that item wherever it goes on the planet. A criminal with any know-how or guidance could attach this to your car to know exactly when you are on your way home from work, or anything.
These kinds of devices are normally illegal aren't they? I don't see how the fact that its packaged as a watch makes it different. All I see is a cheap way that people can track eachother's movements in a variety of circumstances.
Your signatures belong to me.
I can't help but think about Benjamin Franklin. He is reputed to have said, "They who give up essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security."
Now, here we are.
*sigh*
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
I think it is a pretty good idea. I'm as much in favor of personal privacy as anyone, but to argue that a little kid deserves that privacy is like arguing that a little kid deserves to decide what to eat for dinner or what time to come home in the evening. I've seen the momentary panic in a parent's face when a kid wanders off for a few seconds - and it happens even to the best parents, don't kid yourself. Also, it doesn't appear to be some kind of titanium shackle that will force an abductor to cut off a limb. It's plastic for crying out loud. I think the lock is to make sure your kid doesn't lose it. I guess the most important thing to remember is that it's optional...if you think it invades your kid's privacy then don't buy one - but don't catch yourself digging thru your teenager's underwear drawer when you think you smell pot on their coat or you'll be one hell of a hypocrite.
So, all that happens now, is that the kid *does* get abducted, and one of three things happens:
....
1. The abductor is an idiot and doesn't discover the 'watch'
2. The abductor manages to defeat the lock.
3. The abductor removes the kids hand *and* watch.
Either way, a determined abductor is not going to be concerned
gus
.. if only.
Devices like these are all well and good in individual cicumstances, but the reality is that most families are going to neither *want* nor *need* them. Unfortunately, many more will *want* (at least on the parents side) than *need*. This is just another step in the acclerating move towards technological interference in preference over human ability.
When parents start getting afraid for their kids and start foisting all manner of ridiculous gadgets upon them, they are reducing the learning potential of the child. Children will cease to learn that, if they run away from their mothers or go wandering through unknown territory they will get lost, but rather that they can just push a button and immense effort will be made to find them.
Personally, if I have kids I'm not going to swathe them in cotton wool and keep them on a leash - what's that going to do for them? Rather send them out, let them climb around on trees and scratch their arms and legs.
I broke an arm as a kid trying to jump from my roof to a nearby tree branch, and what did it teach me? Don't jump off trees. If I had been wearing Matel's-Fall-Cushioning-Vest (TM) I probably would have gone right back up and done it again (growing up to become a professional wrestler, but that's a different story)
Anyway, my point is that by replacing the trials of childhood with techno-gadgets we are decreasing the capability of our children to learn about self-reliance, which can have negative effects in the long run if/when these aids are ever lacking.
But hey, if you live in an area where there's lots of churches, buy one of the watches *grin*
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
I loved this quote from their website:
"Since the Personal Location Device collects data from satellites, it is a VERY accurate digital watch."
FINALLY! I was always worrying about the minute that my current watch lost every year!
Really though, I think this would be a good device if three things happened.
1) The battery life was increased (they say it currently needs to be recharged every 48 hours).
2) Any service cost came down considerably, 25-40 dollars a month is a bit steep.
3) None of the wacky parents who don't allow their kids to play with other children for fear they might catch some disease are allowed nowhere near this device.
As it is, I think that the people who will use this device first are ALL going be the wacky parents who are so overprotective that their children become crazies themselves. That is sad. If normal parents used it to monitor their small children at public places, then it could be useful. But right now the monthly fee would be too much (for me as a parent) for a device that I would just use once or twice a month.
--David
the 'electronic chain' (for lack of the correct term) system the local (swedish) police use to keep track of 'light' offenders.
That is, if someone comitts a not-so-serious crime, they're offered the opportunity to have one of these monitor their location at all times (and being restricted to one's house most the day) or going to jail.
mewonders if some inspiration came from the above.
.
-
People bitch that parents should be responsible for their kids when TV, movies, and music are censored. Then they bitch about new ways to help parents protect and watch their kids. And when kids do something wrong, as in Columbine, people bitch that the parents should have done something.
...and five or ten or twenty years from now they'll be able to implant one of these into your skull at birth. Just think! You'll never have to worry about being "lost" again!
... other purposes ... scare the hell out of anyone else?
Does the thought of this technology being used for
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
My original post was going to be too long and disorganized so I cut it down to the finer points:
Its as simple as this, I wouldn't want one of these, and thus I wouldn't want my kid to have to have one. Defying the rules is part of human nature, and if you never do it you won't have any boundaries. You have to let your children make their own choices between right and wrong now, or they will be unable to when its most important. Foster their growth, protect them, and catch them smoking those cigarettes in the woods. Just don't sink to the level where you force a constant monitoring device onto them, its wrong to put them in that situation. As for the future, what happens when these come with audio and video? All these devices will accomplish is breeding children who are unable to cope with reality or socialize with their peers.
Having raised 2 kids of my own, I understand the paranoia that parents can go through. When they were about 3, they managed to let themselves out of the apartment (kids can be very resourceful). Of course we imagined the worst. A gadget like this would have helped us find them and eased our minds. Given the price, we would never have been able to afford it though. Living in the real world the worst wasn't what happened of course. We found them exploring the stair well a few floors up on the far side of the building. I see technology used for things like this (Young kids) as a non-issue. If you can afford it, and it gives you some piece of mind, then nothing is lost, and it sure a lot better than registering you kids fingerprints with police.
911 seems a bad idea.... bad memories..
why don't you call somebody else ?
"There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin. "
I to would have shared this sentiment long ago when I was a young green haired maniac and my not yet wife was a bald headed beauty when we pan handled outside of the local stores for drug money I would have agreed.
But after years of marriage and of growing into the role of a father who is willing to buck his wild ways to give my children the life they deserve I kind of think it's a good idea.
It could be bad. But it sure would help ease the mind when your children are out playing all day saturday and your best guess is that they are within a 10 mile radius...
A lot of people have already made comments about locking these devices to children. I really don't think the purpose of the lock is to prevent the kids from removing it, but from someone else from. Two reasons for this. First, if you look at their web page, you can see that there is an automatic lock button on the watch. They obviously wouldn't include that on the watch if it was supposed to prevent the kids from taking it off. Any kid could easily take the watch off anyway. Despite what the page says its not exactly that rugged.
What the lock is really designed to prevent is abductions. If someone kidnapps a kid who has one of these, they probably wouldn't notice the watch at first, like if they just asked the kid to get into their car. If they took the kid their house or whereever, then it doesn't really matter what they do with the watch. They could cut the watch off with a saw, or tin snips or something. Probably the watch has an alarm mechanism that activates if it is removed, but even if someone disables that, the watch has still sent the coordinates already. The last coordinates can offer an extremely good clue as to who kidnapped them, even if the kidnapper moves them somewhere else.
My wife works in mobile phone company.
I have a mobile phone, i call this thing "umbilical cord" because we are in contact anytime. If she want to know where i am without calling me, she looks in her company computer and knows exactly wich relay communicates with my mobile phone..
It's not GPS but cheaper with the same efficiency.
So, is there an ankle version yet?
I wonder if they wander too far away if their wrists will explode.
I'm a flaming geek, and as such I want to buy the sexiest GPS-capable wristwatch on the market.
Any brand/model springs to mind, anyone?
Quickly browsing through the messages you can easily see two different two different classes of people. Those with children and those without. The one side needs to seriously think about growing up and facing reality. Why is it that there is a different missing kid on the side of the milk carton every day? Because that is how many kids disapear. You can cry all you want about how it will ruin some kids life because his/her parents will always know where they are. Last time I checked, that's what parents were suppose to do. I can't even begin to count the number of times having nosey parents kept me from doing something stupid or going someplace I shouldn't. As for little kids, they are going to do it anyways, so at least now you have to option to locate them if a sweep through the park doesn't find them.
Grow up slashdotters, a lot of you sound like you should be wearing one of these right now.
now pedifiles and perverts with some technological know-how can scan where their victoms are so its not hard to find them alone! trust your children to technology! eric.
adventure-today.com
He's already ordered ones with built in spycams for you and your co-workers. ...plans to use security as an excuse.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
There's a HUGE problem with this device that the creators obviously didnt put any research or thought into....
GPS does not work inside or in a metal car. so unless little johhny is kept outside and long enough with the GPS antenna in the unit pointing skyward for 2 minutes while the GPS reciever get's a lock it is 100% worthless.
The idea is great, and as a parent I would love for one of these things (actually a two way pair!) for places like cedar point,disney,the Cape, the beach, the park etc... anything that will allow me to give my 10 yuear old some freedom that I enjoyed in the 70's that you cannot do now because the ratio of sickos/idiots to normal has over tripled (and we are more socially accepting of the sickos now too... Mr, dan is just exercizing his freedom to do ritualistic killings of children, how dare we opress his beliefs!)
but gps sucks giant potatoes anywhere that is not a clear open sky with high quality equipment... and I highly doubt they use a 12 channel GPS reciever with a high gain antenna and top quality reciever section.. (which cost me $1200.00 for my boat) in a $400.00 RETAIL device.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
1,214 kidnapping cases in the U.S. in 1997.
And over 14,000,000 crimes total.
In that case, to prevent removal, maybe the kid should shove it up his/her nose.
...that so many posts here are paranoiacs insisting that using this thing will make kids paranoid.
Bill Keane, the writer/artist of Family Circus simply wants all of our children to wear these watches so that he can hack in, use a specially modified tracking program that follows the path of your children with a dotted line and then use that dotted line in his next "what did Billy do on his way home from school" strip. Boycott this device...the pseudo-hilarity must end.
I don't understand what Michael thinks is wrong with this (other than the astronomical pricetag).
Using GPS to protect your children is a great idea. If your child is abducted, having a GPS on them would make it more likely that they can be located before anything happens, and makes it easier to prosecute the abductor. As a father, I can imagine the anguish parents whose children have been abducted must go through. It must be absolutely horrible to not know what happened to your child. Even in the worst case scenario where something bad does happen to the child, this technology would at least give the parents some small comfort by locating them quickly, instead of putting them through days, months, or years of anguish and worry.
Some people may argue that this is an invasion of privacy, but I don't see it that way. Does a 6 year old really have a right to go anywhere she wants without her parents knowing about it? Absolutely not. Certainly older kids (say teenagers) should be given a certain amount of privacy, but kids of that age could probably easily disable or cut off a GPS wristwatch. So, I really see no problem with this technology at all. Except that subscription price. Ouch.
I saw a story on the local news about this product and it does work indoors. They have their own PCS network that works with the GPS to track the location even without a clear view of the sky. If you dig into the web site far enough the information is there as well.
This thing is actually a 2-way device like a cell phone. We all know it doesn't take GPS to find the location of a transmitter. If your phone will work there, this thing can be located.
GPS receivers CAN (in theory) work indoors, despite what the usual handsets do.
> The Personal Location System incorporates
> enhanced GPS technology, which enables it to
> obtain location information indoors as well as
> outdoors.
(from the FAQ)
Having worked in the GPS handset industry previously I can tell you there are three methods to achieve this:
a) Receivers are getting better - more effective, steeper-edged filters and lower noise mixers means better SNR, so that you can pick up a weaker GPS signal. This is the usual claim of 'enhanced GPS' from Snaptrack etc. and I'm doubtful this has been employed.
b) If you let it be known to the receiver that you are remaining in the same place for a while then it will just increase the 'integration time'. Essentially the GPS signal received repeats every millisecond and you pick out the signal from the back ground noise by averaging chunks of 1ms. The longer you do the averaging, the more you lose the noise. This relies on the signal not changing (you must be stationery of the order of a couple of centimetres). But the theory goes that if you stay still for a few minutes, you can pick out them signals from inside a normal office building. I've never seen it done, but is certainly feasible. Maybe these guys have done it.
c) Cell phone location systems are widely available (e.g. Cambridge Positioning Systems) but only work in areas of high population (lots of base stations to triangulate from). Luckily this is exactly complementary to GPS which tends to work best away from buildings. Maybe cell phone location is also used here - but then they would have probably claimed that since it would be pretty novel.
When I was 15 I got my first set of bolt cutters, don't talk to me about "kid proof" unless you've got 1/2 inch of steel or the likes backing you up, I could break most ANYTHING when I was a kid, no problem even without the bolt cutters. Hell, I even had a set of handcuffs that didn't work quite right I broke off a kiddie's arm (really long story, best not asked about) Bolt cutters took it off with little trouble, I doubt this will be anywhere near as good as handcuffs either. All in all I'd say no substitute for parents.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
IT IS NOT GOING TO GIVE YOU A GPS LOCK.
no way in hell no how, I dont care what they try with it.
if it relies on gps in any form it will fail easily. plus.... wrap the "watch" or even arm in tinfoil and call it done.
If these things catch on, how long before we start to see a company marketing a cheaper version that doesn't have all of the same functionality as the real watch, but looks exactly the same and includes a sticker that says, "this watch monitored by ChildWatchGroup".... you know, as a deterrent.
Its the same theory as putting security system signs in your front yard, it makes it more likely that a burglar will go somewhere else.
::Remove tounge from cheek::
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
My concern is the reliance on the PCS network. While the claim 'nation-wide' and all, it really isn't and probably won't be any time soon (too expensive). Does the PCS reliance mean you can only track the watch while it is along some major US highway? What happens when the wearer wanders off into some non-PCS-covered wilderness?
When will someone come up with a chip I can implant in junior's head that will do all this stuff?
/sarcasm
An excellent rule of thumb for determining how likely something is to happen to you, is the media coverage.
If there's wall-to-wall coverage of a tragic event happening to a single person, and everyone in the state knows the person's name and the names of their five nearest relatives, there is little or no risk of it happening to you or anyone you know. For example, Danielle's tragic case. (one in tens of millions).
If a tragic event happens which gets a regular slot on the news, and the victims are not named, then there is a slight risk of it happening. Examples include car accidents, tornadoes, drug overdose and terrorism in Israel. (one in a few hundred thousand)
If something tragic happens so often that to announce it on the news would be completely redundant, and we are left with overwhelming numbers that cannot be comprehended, or if everyone knows it is happening but is uncomfortable talking about it, then it is something to be deeply worried about. Examples include heart disease, tobacco, cancer, alcohol abuse. (one in ten).
In short, I hope I have presented a good argument in favour of being worried about personal consequences of a tragic event in inverse proportion to the amount of media coverage.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
I want one for my wife! God knows where she ends up and it's a bear trying to tack her down. Now if only it worked internationally.
Unless youre an uncaring asshole then what's the point either way. Just ask John Walsh (America's Most Wanted). Protecting your children from threat should be your #1 priority. If this makes you feel more secure then more power to you. BTW times change. There are more crimes against children that are *reported*. This isn't to say actual crime against children has increased it is just more publicized. However, awareness of more crime and the actual numbers can be more scary for a parent.
"Wherify's GPS Personal Locator helps keep loved ones safe"
OK, so how exactly do they back this claim up? It does nothing to PREVENT something from happening to the wearer. Just another after-the-fact tool to help find the (hopefully alive) body and build a case against the criminal. Like unwatched security cameras.
Not that I don't see uses for it, but the marketing is WAY off. This thing would be great for people like hikers in remote regions, or skiers and the like. It'd be much more helpful in locating those who are simply LOST, perhaps victims of accidental injury or foul weather, than as an anti-crime device.
Here's my 2 cents -- while I agree with the privacy advocates that there limits (at some point kid's old enough to take care of himself, deserving of privacy, etc), I also think that for younger kids this device is very useful. When I was two, I followed my grandfather's beagle into the woods when he turned his back for a second. I was gone all afternoon, and luckily was found before dark.
I now live on the same property. It backs up to a huge state forest and mountains, and I hope my son (coming up on his first birthday now) will someday enjoy the same hiking, exploring, climbing and wandering that I did growing up (/. will be for rainy days!). A device like this would make me feel a LOT more secure about letting him ramble solo. Looking back, I did a lot of stupid things when I was 8 or 10, playing soldiers and running & jumping from rock to rock, climbing too high by myself in trees, not watching out for snakes on sunny rocks, etc. It's easy for a kid to get hurt and immobilized, and when you're talking about a couple thousand acres, finding them is not easy. Hell, this is exactly the kind of device that serious climbers, hikers and backpackers wear on purpose for exactly that reason - they want to be found if they're injured!
I want my kid to grow up competent and able to handle himself outdoors, and to feel that I trust him to go out exploring on his own (at an appropriate age), but at the same time, if you can ameliorate some of the risk through technology, why not? It's not like this device is going to be permanently implanted; at some point, they'll outgrow it.
My wife and I are expecting our first child in about three months. It'll be a couple of years before we have to worry about the wandering problem, but I, for one, am willing to give this product a long, serious look when that time comes. In fact, I had talked (half-jokingly) with a friend of mine about building something similar a few years ago.
Why am I interested? It's not that I need to know where he'll be 24/7. It's not because I want to track him as a teenager. It's because children disappear just often enough that it's something I'll worry about in the back of my mind until the day he leaves for college. And a device like this is something that might help prevent that from happening. I really see it as something where, if I used it, it would be during the toddler years - when he could wander off on his own in a flash without thinking twice about it. I'm more worried about his getting lost than I am about someone snatching him, and the odds are much better that he'll get harmlessly lost. But it's still a nice way to let child's first watch increase his mom and dad's comfort level.
Start putting them in adult watches, and then I'll worry about privacy issues. When my child is old enough to be aware of privacy, it's time to give him a regular watch.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
If you had read the original article, you would have noticed that the device has PCS connectivity so it can call out and let its information be known.
How long before the US government starts bitching about these like they bitched about the Euro-GPS system because its a "national security risk" lol. :(
'Oh no, a terrorist strapped it to a bomb loaded on a plane and blew it up when it reached the target...' oh god, now i'm just trolling, and trying to start a flame about the US government.. mod me down please...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
to another kid for a Mickey Mouse watch...
And I'm sure the kids will quickly learn that a sufficiently strong magnetic field or electric shock will permanently addle the electronics of this thing. When I was young, I had a magnet capable of picking up a man hole cover (We tried it once.) You can create a static charge capable of frying any electronics I personally have run across with the zapper from one of those static-electric cigarette lighters.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Why not use something like this for someone just out of the slammer and on parole. No Fuss no Muss. Wonder if it could be *implanted*!
$35/month seems cheaper than the $25 retrieval fee the pound charges if she runs away more than twice a month. Waterproof, too. Just the ticket for an active canine.
...psychopathology, do you? Since most abusers don't choose their victims at random (more than 90 percent of victims know their attackers), this logic is badly flawed and is a good reason why this device is a bad idea, since it fosters a false sense of security.
Virg
i don't see this as invasive. it's not as though it's an implant or something. and frankly, when i go hiking with my adult friends, we use various methods to keep track of each other. there is another principle on /. that we hold to be true: the technology isn't the problem -- bad application of it is.
personally, i wouldn't have minded my parents being able to know where i was, not at 5 or 15 or 25. but then, i had an amazing amount of autonomy, too. let's all remember that a 15 year old can't be 'locked' into a watch or anything else and give them some credit, even if their parents dont deserve any.
This technology would be great for the people who have Alzheimers and other related illnesses, where they wander off.
I would think that large amusement parks (i.e. Disney World) would be the best initial target. Similar to the two-way radios some offer now. For parents with large families it would be more of a piece-of-mind thing than anything else.
Of course, the small children I know would probably start screaming 5 seconds after they realize that you put something strange on them they can't take off. Lots of kids have a real problem with stuff like that because on a hot summer day it will bother them.
Haven't read the article, but unless you are afraid of your kid being lost, wandering outdoors with no trees or buildings obscuring the line-of-sight necessary to track the satellites, I can't see this working.
If the kid is indoors, inside a car, or in dense foilage, the tracking device won't work.
You could solve this by applying a large antenna, but that would make it non-tamper-proof, since someone could just wreck the antenna.
It's 500 dollars though... has a bunch of really cool features for the uber GPS geek. (:
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
There have been a few movies which referenced wrist devices that relayed information back to loved ones - though I can't remember the titles of them at the moment . . .
:D
Our youth is the most discriminated demographic around the world and the free democracies are not excluded. It's logically held under the basic premise that children aren't experienced enough to live their lives wisely, make coherent decisions, or defend themselves until their bodies and minds have fully developed.
Maybe some good could come out of a device *like* this. Of course parents want to track young ones, but like a security blanket (Woobie?) some kids would love to know where their parents are, or if they're even alive (dare I breach the spooky thread). Make it passive so a kid who wants privacy can shut it off completely or partially. Add some telemetry so we can all have something to worry about if a loved one's heart rate suddenly sputters.
Most of all, give it a silk lining so it can replace all the torn up beaten down overused woobies in the world today
preferably implanted into guys who are released or "escape" ..scurry into caves and then the signal is sent to explode the implant and the dump too. woo!
You know what would have done a lot more to prevent that situation than a GPS wristwatch? A little parental involvement.
Unless those teenagers ripped the child from the parent's kung-fu grip, there was negligence on the part of the parent. Anyone who leaves a three year old unattended in a shopping center is shirking their parental duties. Not only are you exposing your child to danger, but you are exposing the store and your fellow shoppers to your child's uncontrolled behavior.
While we're on the topic of parental involvement, let's take a look at the parents of the teenage abductors. Failure to properly raise a child, to the point where the child has no concept that abduction and torture are morally wrong, constitutes gross parental negligence.
No amount of technology is going to correct bad parenting. In fact, it will probably just make it worse.
The best way to protect your child or yourself is to give them a de-activated cell-phone.
Go out and but a cell-phone (can be damn cheap) and use it for the first month or whatever they require. After that, cancel the service. Far too few people realize that even an unserviced cell-phone MUST be able to call 911. Older cellphones might be difficult to locate, but newer ones come with GPS with the very intent that emergency personell may locate the origin of the emergency call.
Now, that may not be an option for extremely young children, but after they can talk, the first thing every kid has hammered into his head is how to call 911.
So, you have a much less potentially intrusive option, which just happens to not cost you anything per month.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
A post on /. that actually uses lose correctly instead of loose. Simply amazing.
They did not intend to do reasearch. This is a sell for the paranoic-pshychotic market. Any sane person will ask himself the question "does this really work".
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
So, why can't the abductor (who is overwhelmingly a non-custodial parent, other relative, or boyfriend/girlfriend[*]) just cut the thing off with a pair
of snippers?
Even if it's the classic melodrama of seedy pervert hanging around the mall looking for the random abductee, it's a case of 1) find person; 2) grab person; 3) snip off watch; 4) toss in garbage.
Meanwhile the idiotic parents, completely self-absorbed in their deluded state of irresponsibility, just think that Johnnie is taking an awfully long time at Sbarro's...
[*] in this situation the kidnapped has run away or eloped, and the parents attempt to stop it from happening by filing charges of kidnapping on the other party.
You can actually map out where your kid went during the day and plot it out on a map on mapquest type service. Gee can't wait to see what my little daughter has been doing while she says she is at school(jk), wait don't these things sound awfully close to what they put on prisoners ankles when they are under house arrest?????? SCARY!!!!!!
...most missing kids haven't actually been abducted, they're just lost -- wandered away at the mall, followed the wrong adult, etc., and are scared shitless that they can't find their parents. As the other comments in this thread point out, like most technologies this has upsides and downsides, depending on whether the parents are morons or not.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Order two watches and get a free membership to the Hitler Youth, er Americore.
If there server is ever compromised it would be the ultimate tool for someone looking to abduct a child. For someone in the know, I don't think the 'locked wristband' would put up much resistance to a pair of wire cutters.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
I don't see any way that this device could be construed as the enactment of an irrational law.
I don't see any feature of the device that would limit it to use on children by parents, either. It would seem to be that any kid w/ $400 & $35/mo. could just as easily use this to track their wayward parent. Earl could use it to track his gal.
Until you have a government agency using it there isn't an issue of law. Unless you're proposing legislation to prohibit employers from compelling employees to carry this type of pager - I guess there would be no reason to make those lockable... we'll just fire you if you take it off. Trucking companies already put tracking devices in the trucks, putting a tracking device in a pager doesn't seem to be much different, just lighter (of course the Qualcomm unit has a little terminal and provides two-way communication).
I think it's a novel device. I am also quite annoyed by childless "parent consultants" with advice on what parents aught to do, think or feel and an unwillingness to implement what they propose.
As to Kevin's upbringing: I intend to, and have, implemented a better methodology of child rearing than my parents did. This is easily quantifiable by the achievements of my progeny compared to my humble accomplishments.
Amen. I don't give a shit if you're 16 or 61, if you live in MY house you live by MY rules. If you pay me rent SOME of the rules are negotiable. That's why its MY house and not YOUR house.
Now Im not saying the tech isn't possible, or that you will not see devices like this in the future, along with the moral and social implecations of such technology blah blah blah.
Rather that it sounds close enough to that scam to insure that one should run to the hills as fast as you can. Just as you would if they were trying to sell you broadband over powerlines or tiled LCD screens.
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
Since parental control is a very good idea, I'd like to suggest the following technical enhancements:
- Automated real-time monitoring for presence of controlled substances in bloodstream. Avoid the work of having to snip hair samples and send them off for analysis after the fact!
- Embedded microphone to transmit nearby sounds. Say your teenage daughter says she is going to a church youth group meeting, and then is really heading off to a drug-soaked rave. Find out quick!
- Embedded audio output device to permit insertion of parental comments remotely. Say your daughter's sleezy boyfriend is trying to proposition her. You can immediately warn him "get your paws off my daughter or I will personally beat the crap out of you".
- A "filter list" of the GPS coordinates of forbidden locations, with a tie in to a pain inducing wrist mechanism. Train that wayward 16 year old never to visit that sleezy boyfriend's place again! As with Web filters, companies can sell you lists of the latest forbidden locations. Keep you kids away from known satanic haunts!
- Image recognition technology, to instantly detect the presence of a nearby pitbull and repel the pitbull by playing Patti Smith songs (it is a known scientific fact that pit bulls can't stand Patti Smith)
This may sound draconial and even ridiculous, but nothing is too far fetched to protect even one child from these horrific fates! And if you disagree with this, every parent whose child was attacked by a pitbull will show up at your doorstep and personally beat the crap out of you!
when i have kids they will be wearing this or something like this, when they get older i wont lock it on their arm but they still can use it or carry it around if they want the security
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Given that most of the market for such gadgets comes from the oh-no-my-child-is-going-to-be-abducted-and-torture d-by-a-paedophile market, I'd say that the locking makes perfect sense.
Yes, but look at the facts. Parents are SO worried about strangers abducting their kids, but it would appear that parents and other adults they are in regular contact with are a FAR greater threat to kids than strangers are.
I don't have any stats to quote yet, but most of the time you read about a court case involving sexual abuse or abduction, it is a parent or trusted adult who is the culprit. THAT is the real tragedy.
We warn kids about strangers, we want to "street-proof" our kids, but the most dangerous people are the ones they know.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Kids have no Rights UNTIL they are 18.... Unless the government wants to trial them for murder then... your an ADULT at 13!
God Bless Geroge W. Bush!
the Defender of Freedom!
Not that I think this would actually work, mind you.
sPh
Now they need to make the thing SNMP enabled..
KIDJACK- Used by the police, to locate your snotty-nosed kid in under 4 days.. Get your kid back with "KIDJACK!"
This thing is great if you are afraid of thieves
First they would have to cut of your hand and if that doesn't scare them you can track them down with the GPS system.
Too bad about the hand though!!
This right here is a perfect example of why so many good kids go bad. You can't rule your house with an iron fist .. that sort of extreme is just as likely to result in rebellion as giving them 'too much' privacy.
A parent-child relationship should be built on trust. Just like a husband-wife relationship. Do you think it's a great idea to invest in a bunch of technology to constantly check up on your wife to make sure she remains faithful?
When I was a kid, if my parents had imposed this sort of restriction on me, it would have sent the clear message that they don't trust me one damn bit. Maybe other people would become submissive to this sort of thing, but I'd be more of the type to reflexively trust my parents as little as they trusted me.
Sure, you should know what your kid(s) is/are up to, and of course you have the right as the owner of the house to know what is going on under your roof. But to enforce things in this fashion is asking for disaster just as much as being a lazy, uncaring parent. There is no peace of mind in extremes. Building a trusting family is the only answer.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Considering the amount child neglect and abuse, maybe the parents should be the ones with the beacon.
There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin.
Then you obviously don't have kids. I don't plan to micromanage my son's life, but I live in Florida, the child-snatching capitol of the US. (woo hoo!) He's 9 and I'd love to be able to afford to have this so I could just know he made it to and from school in one piece. I'd like to know if he's doing 75mph on I-95 south towards Miami at 3:25.
Sure, there are plenty of asshole parents who would hide one under their 17-year-old's bike seat and bitch at them for hanging out at the local 7-11, but there are far, far more parents who would use this for good. I predict this product will do very well even at it's high intro price, and will take off exponentially just like pagers and cell phones did. (Quick recap: Just 10 years ago, pagers for non-doctors were *just* starting to spread, and cellphones were huge, crappy, and $2500. 5 years later, every 17 year old had a pager, and phones were coming down to $100. Look around today...) Most parents would *love* to have one of these, and any parent who has had a child abducted would *kill* to go back in time and have one. Just ask John Walsh.
> GPS does not work inside or in a metal car.
> but gps sucks giant potatoes anywhere that is
> not a clear open sky with high quality equipment
That's funny...my $150 Earthmate works great in the car, and in the woods, and in the house...
> and as a parent I would love for one of these
> things (actually a two way pair!)
http://www.garmin.com/products/rino/
No monthly fee...uses FRS to beam positions back and forth.
My $100 Garmin eTrex works beautifully in my car. It also works in my backpack when I go running, or from the inside of my apartment or single-story office building.
I can see Disney, or Six flags, or any of a million theme parks renting these things out for $20 a day.
It's great, paren'ts won't lose their younger kids in the park (or anywhere for that matter), and can get a hold of their older kids for lunch and dinner, etc, And the park won't lose the watches.
Where's the downside?
Hmm... Do I smell a business opportunity?
To deactivate without removing, simply wrap watch in a small piece of lead foil while wearing. This should effectively shield both GPS reception and PCS transmission of your location. Heck, aluminum foil may be good enough by itself.
Dunno about it being a Casio, though.. I have had mixed experience with them in the past.
-f
"if you are living with the parent then your[sic] subject to their rules."
As soon as you phrase the relationship that way, you've converted it into a confrontation. It's not that what you say is false, but that resting on it does a huge disservice to everyone involved. As other posters have already stated, the child gets a clear message that they are expected to do "the wrong thing". Some of them will translate that into "I am a bad kid." It does a disservice to the parents because they have to be on guard at all times now that they've put it up. It also puts up a wall between, not around, the members of the family.
This is true of any relationship. Overprotective boyfriends and girlfriends scare healthy lovers off. Overdefensive companies (how many stables did you use?) frustrate and drive off their best employees. Churches, clubs, and governments are all the same. Relationships built on mutal respect are FAR stronger and more effective than those built on fear or force. The age and genetic relationship of the individuals involved is of minor importance in the analysis.
Any parent who straps a GPS locator on a child over 10 has probably already failed to build the trust which should come naturally from being trustworthy and ever-present.
[Disclaimer: My parents didn't watch me closely, but I ran away to live with my (then 28yo) sister when I was 16 anyway. I'm 28 and have no children of my own yet. My view is clearly biased.]
How about one for parents instead? It seems to me there are a lot more parents AWOL than there are kids. Kids/teens need to be able to go off with their friends and do stuff their parents don't know about. Didn't you? How else will they ever grow up if they don't get a chance to try things on their own? A good parent will instill some sense of right and wrong, some common sense, and some mutual trust and respect. About the only good thing I can see coming out of this is encouraging little minds to figure out ways to thwart/disable/remove the device.
Firstly, which swine stole my Handle?? Having waded through two pages of replies and waited for my account to register, I've had plenty of time to mull over what I wanted to put in this reply. There are many points that need to be addressed and many misconceptions that should also be corrected. I do apologise for the somewhat long and drawn out post, but my two pen'orth is a BIG tuppence. Firstly, from the technical perspective, after all that is the bent of Slashdot: 1.) GPS. Ha-ha-bloody-har. Any of you people go maountaineering, fell running, rockclimbing? The first people who will laugh at you when you suggest GPS for finding anything smaller than a building the size of a scyscraper are mountain rescue teams. Why? Because the whole point of GPS is that it works by grid reference, and uses a satellite in low-earth orbit to make that reference. With me so far? Well, guess what. The smallest unit of measurement that a GPS unit can reference is between 10 and one hundred metres, depending upon the surrounding clutter. One hundred metres!! That's the length of a soccer pitch. Go on. I challenge you, you find anything person-sized in up to 10,000 sqaure metres of clutter. You're a better man than I, and as part of my self defence training, I've had 8 years of situational awareness and observation training. From the aforementioned rescue team example, that area makes the use of GPS personal safety systems almost stupid. 2.) Based on point 1: The chances of you finding someone who has just 'wandered' away in this situation, especially indoors are at best, slim. Now you go out into the street. A nice, busy NY city street, with cars flying by in both directions. Any one of those cars could have your child in. It's not a pleasant thought, and even less pleasant when you realise that the signal would be very dilute, inside a moving FARADAY CAGE. 3.) This is NOT Enemy Of The State. Most of what you see in that movie, and I'm ashamed that the scientifically minded do not realise it, is many years hence. Indeed, tracking targets down to the nearest grid reference with that level of speed requires some serious power control hardware and software, and processing power. I saw a Physics professor take that film apart, using nothing more than first principles. It's nice to see that the researchers bothered doing the maths. At the time of release, the kind of power station required to facilitate all that ALU horsepower and telecomms was about the size of two forty foot trailers, side by side - that's just the powerpack. NASA aren't launching payloads anywhere near that big. 4.) There is no such thing as kid-proof. 5.) There is certainly no such thing as maniac-proof. 6.) And, as an aside, for the poster who brought Jamie Bulger's case into this - I agree, it was a horrific case. I'm not just saying this a reasearch student who reads the papers... I'm inquisitive by nature, and nowhere near as blasé or judgmental as many would like my tone of voice to suggest, but I make sure I know all I can find out before I get on my soapbox. The case was savage... The reason it was so huge and terrified parents all over the country was because nothing of its kind had happened before. That it was such a new thing was why so many were up in arms. Parents, mine included, and I was more than old enough to look after myself when this happened, were suddenly painfully aware that it wasn't just adults who were capable of hurting their children, but other children as well. The world wasn't that safe for their offspring in the first place, but now it was even less so. Which brings me around to the way humans think: 7.) There is no sensible reason for the way parents behave. The decisions you make, we all make when it comes to children, are not logical. We don't make them because we've weighed up the options, we make them because the last two million years has bred the majority of us to be terrified of losing the next generation, as they are necessary for the continuation of our species. Exactly the same reasons cause babies, who will put anything in their mouths to suddenly stop eating things as they become toddlers, finicky to the point of distraction. The very same foodstuff will be refused if served mashed instead of whole, or vice versa... That's a genetic thing - preservation of the child. In days gone, toddlers who could perambulate suddenly became clingy, and panicked if a recognised adult was not about. They wouldn't eat anything unless they hd tried it before - ensured it was safe. This all goes to show that humans as a species have come no further as animals... We've just got bigger, nicer houses and a better healthcare policy. We're still animals, partially ruled by instinct. That's why this debate has aroused so much scorn from the parents who've lashed out at those they've assumed have no children because of what they've said, and an equal volume of venom from the camp that preaches the use of logic. I have two brothers, both of whom I have helped bring up. I have no children of my own, but have had plenty of input in bringing up the children of friends and family. I haven't got the genetic parent-offspring bond, and I know that therefore I don't have the irrational response of parents to things even vaguely threatening to their children. I'm not knocking it. It's kept us here for millenia, and without it we wouldn't have got this far. I just hope that if and when I have kids, I step back to think, and let them have that space. Maybe I'm a bit better equipped to be that safety net for them, maybe not, some people are naturally alert, all the time... The last thing I want is for my kids to be scared to cross the street. I want to be able to trust their judgment when they make decisions for themselves. And, now the more unpleasant aspects. namely the society bent: 1.) I have serious ethical questions about a company that markets a glorified toy for a safety purpose, especially a device with the concerns already highlighted. What worries me further is that the use of these things, as pointed out by previous posters, is that their use may become commonplace. I don't mean overnight, but as soon as one parent in a school playground says to another "Oh, I went out and bought yada for my little Matthew," irrespective of the cost, or the fact that it'll only run for x number of hours without a recharge, or that little Matthew doesn't wear it all the time, soon all the children in the class will have one. They are expensive. Fragile, irrespective of what the idiot marketing department says. And most importantly, they are a worry to parents who don't have one for their child and can't afford one. Imagine the social stigma of NOT equipping your child with an expensive waste-of-time. The paranoia of a parent who doesn't have one for their child and the worry about not knowing where they are at all times. That's before you even consider that most parents won't know where their child is even with one of these technicolour b*st*rds on (pardon me). This kind of device lulls people into a false sense of security, whether or not they want to admit it, much like having an overdraft facility on you bank account does: "no, I won't go over." Garbage. 2.) Suppose you have one. You normally don't ask you child to wear it, except when in open places, such as the mall, or the seaside, etc. Okay; in school, they're with the teacher, at home they're with you, or a friend at a friend's parent's house. In those public places, they may become separated from you. But what if little Matthew forgot to put it on, or you forgot to put it on and set it to active? Just this once? Little Matthew's mommy, tearfully explaining to Police that she forgot, just this once. People are LAZY. It's what's kept us at the top of the evolutionary ladder. Unfortuately, sometimes it's also our undoing. 3.) Schools may not even allow your child to wear it, as it as a form of pager and telecomms tool. They are not liable for the child's possessions, so may insist, from the point of view of the school's area board, that the item is removed, if not for lessons, then certainly for PE, where the risk of damage is too great. Which brings us to... 4.) Theft. It WILL happen. After all, isn't one of the suggested applications of this ting, to prevent crimes? The manufacturer acknowledges that there are bad people out there. 5.) The previously raised spectre of Mr. Franklin's conjecture about liberty and security. He has a point. I worry about the mentality of the state, to allow those who wail to influence their decisions and white papers. We have too many laws already passed if only to sate parents who were invariably the cause of the problem, through negligence. Sarah Payne? If it wasn't her, then another poor child whose parents allowed them to go off somewhere. This isn't losing a child - this is telling them to make a journey, unsupervised, over some distance and past many strange people and houses. There is a difference, it is salient, and more often then not, deadly. 6.) Contiunuing from 5: What happens when those suits in charge decide that we've softened enough to tag us all? I have a 5 litre vat of industrial strength whoopass here for the first idiot who says, "But if we've done nothing wrong, we have nothing to hide." Hide from whom, dammit?? Positions of power attarct those who are morally repugnant and open to corruption. Absolute power doesn't corrupt absolutely, because those with sense realise the danger of power and shy from too much. Invariable, the dishonest try to come to power, because it is their natural element. Look at Congress. Or The Houses of Parliament. You only have to speak to a Lawyer / Solicitor / Barrister / Police Officer to realise that not all Police Officers or Federal / Government investigators are entirely honest either. It's why they took the job. Anyway. That's how I see it. Feel free to respond. I apologise for missing anyhthing, and for my tone in some parts, but this kind of subject arouses a certain degree of passion in, me if nothing more than because I worry about the state of mankind... Falanx, signing off.
...just go straight for subcutaneous implantation. Hey, it worked great on my cat.
Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
...cannot do now because the ratio of sickos/idiots to normal has over tripled...
I doubt that this ratio has ever changed. But I do believe that our paranoia about sickos/idiots has probably tripled since the 70's.
Perfect for kids.. and their fathers too :\
...instead of paying $400 for this huge wristwatch shaped GPS/CarAlarm/Toothbrush, just go buy a $25 one made out of solid plastic without any actual guts to it.. Not following me? Think about this.
(this only applys to the abduction scenario)
1. Weirdo perverts who steal children now know about this GPS/CarAlarm/Toothbrush wrist device.
2. Weirdo perverts who steal children will now to avoid kids wearing oversized wrist watches.
3. Weirdo perverts who steal children, don't know if the device your child is wearing has any actual functionality to it. (maybe put a blinking LED on it somewhere just for looks).
Someone better open a store that sells plastic giant fake wrist bands which only contain a locking mechanizm.
Klowner
Whack the kid over the head from behind; remove watch at leisure. [etc]
The website clearly says that interfering with the device automatically initiates a tracking of the last location of the device and informs the parents.
possible abuses, not by law enforcement, but by psychotic parents
Again, RTFM. The parents must specifically request for the child to be tracked--I don't think they're going to sit in front of their computer and on the phone, constantly requesting for child tracking. No doubt this is only used for stress situations, like an alarm company does--my 10 year old was supposed to walk to my neighbor's house, and is nowhere to be found, etc. I don't think any parent's going to be locking these Pikachu-looking devices on a 17 year old's wrist. And if they are, the kid definately has bigger problems to worry about than privacy.
Look, all doubters who love to flame based on Michael's half-baked criticism, just read the damn web pages for these stories before you go on an orgy of digital/children's rights protesting.
since 90% of abductions are done by parents, this tool will have very little effect.
Well, here is my 2 cents :
... would be great for tracking all those undesirable people that speed on the highway as well since gps units can calculate speed on-the-fly ...I for one, don't appreciate a fast chunk of my personal freedoms being remove for the benefit of a few people, no matter for noble the cause might be.
What I find truly scary about this watch is that if it were widely used it will raise an entire generation of people that find it perfectly "ok" to have an "authority figure" attach a locating device to them that they cant remove, hell while we're at it we might as well mandate them for adults as well, after all I watched the news last night and there was a 30 something' year old lady that disappeared as well, if we had a "wonderful government program" that had mandated that every citizen we forced to ware on of these *great* devices this tragedy could have been avoided
I truly am now fearful of the future, for it seems Orwell might have been right... he just missed 1984 by a few years...
so you keep it on your seat or on your center console? where it's shielded from the sky or do you keep it on the dash where it can see throught the windshield? It is silly to expect that the wearer will keep an arm sticking toward a window. and no gps on the planet can see through a metal car roof.
Um, no it doesn't. not in how this watch device will be placed in your car. place your gps on it's side on the car seat. it wont lock on.
and no kid is going to ride in the car with his arm placed on the dashboard pointing up... like your gps spends it's life in your car working.
Already everyone here has no clue how this device will not work. It wont work in a house or car because it will not be carefully placed in a window or right side up.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The kid who eats the most marbles dies!
How's the kid going to be able to unlock and take off the watch for gym class?
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
Obviously you don't have kids. If you have ever lost a child of your own you would know the absolute fear a parent goes through. I think this is a great idea for people who live in cities or go to packed malls a lot. It can help reduce worry and stifle the panic attack that comes when you turn around for 1 second and your child is gone. I think of it as Lo-jak for kids. I am sure you will see a lot more on this device the day it actually stops a kidnapping at the mall.
I am posting this anonymous because the court case is still going on. I had my child kidnapped, and NOT by a realitive, but by a known child molester released after his "debt to society" was paid, in other words he was considered "safe" and released from prison.
All you people who care so much about personal privacy and personal rights, where the hell were you when MY child was kidnapped and molested? This would have at lease HELPED to locate him before the asshole pedophile molested him. All you civil rights jerks that scream we cant violate the rights of molesters, cant allow the public to know when they are being released, know where they live sicken me.
You are against this now to, how nice. Please explain to me then, why MY RIGHTS as a citizen of the US are allowed to be violated, why useing this is SO BAD when it might have helped MY CHILD.
No one seems to have commented on the fact that when you are indoors, GPS doesn't work. Perhaps they'd still have something with their pager & 911 dialer, but if you were evil enough you could disable the GPS location on this wristwatch by simply placing the unit indoors, or covering it with something thick. I'm not suggesting this, just playing devil's advocate from a geocacher who has lost gps signals under even heavy tree cover.
The locator uses a website or an 800 number to find tagged people. One abuse I haven't seen anyone mention is:
What happens if abductors hack the website or phreak/social engineer the 800 number system and find where nearby potential victims are? They could track motion of kids from remote, then scope out their routine paths, and snatch them, driving along the same path until the watch can be removed...
> He sees the wristband and moves on to another potential victim.
That's a really comforting thought, but the facts do not agree with you. Firstly, most (over 90 percent of ) abductions are committed by someone the child knows. The whole idea of the dangerous pedophile trolling the playground for someone to snatch at random is dangerously inaccurate, and this device could very well lead to overcomplacency in a situation where the child can be in real danger.
So, in short, there is almost always a "complex premedicated reason to go for that particular child." (assuming, of course, that you mean "premeditated", not "premedicated").
Also, you're assuming that the only way to disable it is to remove it. How's this? Grab the kid, jump in the van, crush the device with a pair of pliers, pour on some water, and drive off. Now, how is this going to protect my child?
Virg
Well, I like to hike. And since I can't find too many people in this Los Angeles Metropolitan area to hide themselves for the full weekend somewehere in the woods (yes they exist about 1-2 hours driving from L.A), I have to go alone.
It would be the best to get one of these in case of emergency, for my rescue. Every year, we hear news of people getting hurt and gettting lost in the forests. This device would be a time and life saving.
Cellphones? Are you kidding? There ain't any phone provider has the coverage needed around here in L.A. This would be a good idea, provided that it works as advertised.
There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin.
Yeah, why spend your time adding information and opinions to the topic when you can spend it looking for more redundant writeups contributed by unpaid volunteers.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Okay, then fall back to my favorite. Crush it with a pair of pliers. You don't even need to remove it first. How strong a signal does pulverized silicon put out? And, can you initate repairs by remote?
So munch for that.
Virg
As for not getting the device off....hmm. There are creative ways to hack things off when someone needs to. In fact, I head a story on the radio about some company that made arm armor for Japanese couriers. Apparently there is too much traffic in Japan to drive armored cars around and pick up cash from businesses. So they send couriers. Then they have these ninja crooks that walk up behind them and hack the arm off with the case of money that is padlocked to their wrist clean off. Ouch.
Also, it reminds me of the recent case of a little girl here in San Diego, CA. Someone abducted her in the middle of the night. It was probably the closet pedophile neighbor who apparently took off to the desert in his RV the next morning. They might have found her in time if she had one of these on. I guess if it was also fireproof, they might have found her body a lot sooner too.
If just one of those watches saves a single human life, all of the money spent on them has been justified.
Nice emotional argument, btw, but just because other bad things happen isn't a reason to minimize this particular bad thing.
Or in this case, tin foil wristband...
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
As always, someone like you comes along and decided that because we don't agree with your assessment of the situation, we're (A) immature asses who need to open our eyes and see the Truth that is so obvious to you and (B) anyone who disagrees with this must not have kids because they can't see the aforementioned Truth that must be obvious to all.
You're a myopic nitwit, and here's why. Few people are arguing that abductions don't happen. The argument is that this device would be a very ineffective way to prevent abductions, and that the abuses are far riskier than the danger it's meant to prevent. The kids on the side of your milk carton are (more than 90 percent) taken by someone they know, like a non-custodial parent or other relative. In those cases, it's very likely that the abductor knows about the device, and since knowledge of the device eliminates its effectiveness (crushing it would prevent it from calling home, so don't tell me it'll call home even if it's tampered with), it's no hindrance. Also, from my point of view, this device can easily convince someone who doesn't understand its limitations that their child is safe when in fact he's not, so it could very well be endangering the child more by its presence than its absence. This is the real danger in these devices, not the lunatic-parent-tracking-the-kid's-every-move danger.
Perhaps you should realize that growing up entails understanding that you're not always right, and that those who disagree with you are not always wrong. But then, you'll learn that as you grow up, I suppose.
Virg
P.S. Yes, I do have children, and no, I don't intend to use this device unless I take them camping in the wilderness.
Folks
It might surprise a lot of you to discover that a big part of a parents job is to do things for their children's own good, even though the kid might not like it.
It may also surprise you to know that children can and do get lost or abducted every day. This tool helps prevent this. The government is not getting involved in the welfare of the child, and nobody is forcing the parent to exercise the option . Here in America freedom of choice is supposed to be sacro-sanct, and this tool merely provides the parent with an option . Michael can't begin to say what's wrong with this, because there is absolutely nothing wrong with it!
If the government starts suddenly mandating their use, then that is another thing entirely, and should be fodder for the privacy rights folks (such as myself) in a separate Slashdot article. This thing provides freedom of choice and can only be benificial. It's a very good thing, which would be readily apparent to those who actually stopped to think before they post
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
An old kids games, hide & seek is kind of ruined by this.
I was playing hide & seek about 35 years ago at my grandparents house. I was hiding in the walk-in closet, and fell asleep. My grandparents, parents, & silblings spent about two hours looking for me while I napped.
Today, the parents would have been on the phone with the police within 30 minutes. Had I been wearing such a device, my family would have been able to find a 7 yr old boy, and not worried about where I was.
To tell the truth, with respect to abduction, a perimiter alarm that goes off loudly if the kid leaves the transmitter base range (which the parent could carry with him) is probably a more useful deterent.
In related news I saw a story about a proposed European satellite network rival to GPS with accuracies of 1m - does anyone know what the current accuracy of GPS is at the moment?
Video Game cheats, hints a
glad I'm not your kid
and feature an explosive charge! Then we would be in business!
All that is missing is the feature where the kid gets a zap whenever he moves out of his allowed area.
Actually, GPS is probably accurate to within 1m currently. Remember when it first came out? Couldn't get you pinned down to within more than 500 feet, etc etc... Two years later, we can do it within 50, or less.. Do you really think they've replaced the GPS network?
My theory (and no, it's not conspiracy, it's simple logic) is that the military uses scrambling on the signal that can be taken off by a military device. The scrambling doesn't destroy the signal entirely, simply makes it less accurate. Over the years they've made it less dense, so that's why we have GPS systems that can pinpoint to 50ft or less.
It's not a conspiracy, it's simply smart. You launch a system that can give people the ability to know where they are, you want your troops to have the upper hand with that first.
Ohh, I just released that I have to use this chance to plug finnish quality and the excellent Benefon Esc GSM GPS combination.
Yes but it's only that accurate currently if you can compare the position you are in now with one known very accurately - however the specifics of how to do this I've forgotten. As to the deliberate error introduced - yes I know about it and why its there. No I don't think they've replaced the GPS network - and I don't think it's a conspiracy! lol
Video Game cheats, hints a
And as Dennis Miller says, "the human herd has always found a way to thin itself". Parents that are overprotective used to produce children that couldn't survive on their own, who subsequently [fell from cliffs|abducted by local pervert|abducted by local lion|didn't realize that passing out was natures way of saying 'stop drinking'] and didn't reproduce.
Devices such as these reduce selection pressure on humans and as such are a bad long term thing.
--Rob
The Running Man
It's the way of children and teenagers to protect themselves by being tougher than the next guy. In the adult world however, the only place that this will do you any good is in prison. Grownups instead use the power of the state and society, because that power is much much greater than any individual ever could be, and it is used in a way that is civilized, orderly and (usually)fair.
:)
A device like this where the GPS function would be activated if and only if the user requests assistance puts the power of the state at your fingertips, and would be a great tool for those who need such close protection. It would be like having a police officer within earshot when you scream for help.
Of course, there is the potential for abuse. How would we know that the GPS is not on *all* the time? Because people are smart occasionally, and should someone find out that these devices are being abused, there'd be hell to pay for the state, believe me!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
It should be setup so that the parent has a watch also, and if the little rugrat travels more than 15 feet from the parent it shocks both the parent and the kid... *lol*
ZzZZZZzzzzzZZZZZzAPP!
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Think about this.. The CIA, undercover as a journalist, presents an enemy, we'll say Osama, a nice gold watch. They then can track where he goes and in fact target a cruise missile at the GPS signal. Nice huh?
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Well, the entirety of /., I swear, will immediately start yelling at you if you sound at all like you're saying there's a conspiracy...
:)
Either that or agree with you. Which is scarier, I don't know.
Once the pager industry gets onto this, it should cost about $99 plus $5 per month. The proposed pricing is about 5x too high.
This is not conspiracy, it's out in the open. GPS had (and has) a feature called "Selective Availability". This made the satellites behave as if their clocks were more unstable thant they were and their orbits not known quite so precisely as they are. For most of the time the GPS was active until May 2000, this was turned on at 50m resolution. The military receivers could remove this. Use of Selective Availability was discontinued in May 2000. The GPS satellites also provide a separate signal than the civilian (or C/A, for coarse/acquisition) signal. This signal is higher resolution than the normal GPS signal, is provided on two frequencies to help correct for atmospheric properties, and is encrypted.
This is a great service, as it will help acclimatize children to being tracked and having things locked onto them. By the time they grow up, they will either be in prison or guarding the other 90% of us who are in prison. Either way, they will need to be tracked for their own safety..
The standard version of ping uses ICMP echo requests.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc792.html
</nitpick>
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It was called SA. The Gvmt turned SA off a couple of years ago - there was even a story about it here. But even without SA, the GPS signal isn't good enough to get better than about 5-10m. Enter differential GPS. These are an additional set of sattelites that know their position exactly. They monitor the GPS network and then send out separate corrections to the GPS signals. This allows for much greater vertical accuracy, and gives a 1-5m accuracy.
Cheers!
...from a few years ago represented themselves as trying to develop this technology, although the article seemed to imply that the real purpose of the enterprise was to skin the investors. I presume this wasn't Whereify, because this sounds reassuringly on the up-and-up. Anybody remember that article?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
But the implementation is a little lacking... Just from thinking back to being a kid myself, the child wearing the watch has a whole lot more use for his location then the parent. (who has to be at a computer... the 1-800 service is of dubious use if the parent doesn't know their own coordinates).
If you gave the kid a GPS watch that they could use to figure out range and direction to, say, their home, their parents (also wearing these things), or preprogrammed "waypoints", they could find their own way back, and the adults don't have to worry about the kid wandering off and getting lost.
Get rid of the useless big-brother function and only have it broadcast the location when the panic button is hit, and you won't have to make it so that the kid can't take it off (that'll be the day)
If they weren't so butt-ugly and oversized, i'd probably want one myself, for that matter... are there GPS watches for adults out there?
--
Benjamin Coates
I'd like to see it also monitor and transmit the pulse rate of my teen-aged daughter. It's already on the wrist so it's an easy modification. And if she is baby sitting and her pulse rate goes through the roof (presumably because the make-out session has started), I can quickly arrive with my low-tech boy-friend removal device (read: shotgun). Much like the chastity belt from Scary Movie!
We have to think of the children. Won't someone please think of the children?!!!!
I could see this as a useful alternative to grounding kids who keep hanging out with other kids that they get into trouble with. But it should be the kid's choice. Especially with the ugly factor on it....
Every useful function this thing has for the average parent-child is fully served by a cell phone. If the cell phone isn't working out, there is a serious fundamental problem in the relationship that is going to leave this device as a demolished piece of trash within the week.
It has much more serious merits for special needs kids and mental disease patients. Paying $35/money to make sure your kid never experiences getting lost at the mall is just going to backfire and leave them with a false sense of security growing up.
BTW, this is the exact same technology used to let prisoners live confined to their home. It's just less securely attached, and has 911 added.
GPS does not work inside or in a metal car.
You've obviously never used a handheld GPS. My Garmin eTrex works fine in my metal car. It works fine in my house, even in the center of my house away from the windows it still gets a decent lock on the satellites. Now, when I put it in my pocket and hopped in the car, it lost it's link, but I can leave it on the seat or even on the floor of the car and it stays up just fine.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Car: yes
Upside down in car: yes
Center of office building: no
Edge of office building: yes
I also frequently take it in a backpack on long runs through the in the national forest here, and it works fine there, too.
The Garmin eTrex units do not have an external antenna. You make a good point about the antenna, though-- whatever internal patch antenna they are using is probably larger than the wristwatch model. But don't forget that that device can use the PCS network for positioning also.
I highly doubt they have anything less than 12 channels. This is standard in the smallest GPS receiver chips today. GPS receiver integration improves all the time, and the $1200 you paid is mainly for systems design and integration, plus service and support. The actual core of the GPS receiver is a small $25 component.
Maybe if you're worried a parent would use this on teenagers, but in that case I doubt the teen would have too much trouble removing it.
What's wrong with it? As a parent, this would take a huge load off my mind. Not that it would absolve me of the responsibility to keep an eye on my child; but if my daughter were lost or kidnapped, you'd better believe I'd be glad to have one of these on her!
I don't think it is either intended or practical as a "Big Brother" device, if that's what you're worried about. I think it's incredibly practical as a safety device.
Amazing. Only if I could moderate...
I have a motion-detecting laptop lock that will blast 70dB if the lock wire is cut. (Once it went off and I forgot the code, and some moron suggested cutting the lock, like that was going to silence the alarm.)
How is it not obvious to people that products such as these do not get dime one of VC funding without first addressing concerns like these?
what's wrong is the fact that there isn't an implantable version ... yet...
I'm interested by the fact that folks who often say they think technology should be unfettered suddenly have different ideas when a really useful technology application like this comes around. I suppose you wouldn't want one of these put on you? Don't want mom to find you, huh?
I want an upgraded model where both parent _and_ child can locate each other. When they have that, ( in a few years when my kid is old enough to make use of one ), then I'll buy.
Although an implant with an iris-display and neural interface would be ideal, of course...
I have a Garmin eTrex Vista which is a 12 channel device. It probably costs about $300 in the US. It works in a car just about, but not indoors. The basic Garmin eTrex only costs about $100 and the GPS part of it is essentially the same (you pay the extra for the mapping software and electronic compass).
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Of course, this wouldn't be very good for people who like to use the answering machine for screening calls: "Hello, John Smith isn't in right now. He's six feet away from the phone. At the tone..." Hmm... Maybe an access code for this feature would be a good idea! (As well as a Lie option.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I think that if someone ELSE wants to shell out $400 clams to TRY and protect their kids, let them go for it. What if a child was recovered using this locator? Would you say to the parents, "Fucking morons. It would NEVER happen. And I had to shoulder your burden"
YOU have to "shoulder the burden of child paranioa?" Yeah, that's right. YOU. Welcome to America, bud. If you don't like it, don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
I speak from experience. My son took off at Fiest a Texas in San Antonio, TX without anyone seeing him to ride a roller-coaster we thought he was afraid of. We spent a frantic twenty minutes looking for him while he waited in line and rode the coaster. The bracelet again, potentially would have told us where he was.
The two most common things in the Universe are dark matter and stupidity.
I don't get along with self-reliant people. They don't buy my excuses and I can't manipulate them.
Well as the only replies so far to this have been you - I think it's unlikely that anyone did think it was one.
Video Game cheats, hints a
It reminds me of somebody I saw with her son in a leash at an Event in Tempe, Arizona. That should be illegal!
This technology should be used on convicted child molesters and not on children.
You have a very good point. In some cases they might allow a parent to more loosely supervise their children. Kids maybe don't have to be watched as intensely, or kept physically restrained. In some cases, the child will have more freedom than if they were locked up indoors.
I'd get one, and give my loved ones access to the information it provides. This makes a great way for them to find me if I got in a car accident, or to give me directions home if I'm just plain lost.
It's been said before, but the more vocal slashdotters have a nasty tendancy to assume anything that can give out information about them is bad. I say it's not a problem as long as you can control where that information goes.
I suggest you simply read the service contract carefully to see that only people you authorize can have access to the information.
What's this Submit thingy do?
not for kids, but for people with Alzheimer's or similar problems. These could be a godsend for caregivers; it would be nice to never again read one of those "person wandered away and his body was found a month later" stories.
"Music my rampart, and my only one." -- Millay
perhapse one could nail together a few layers of 4'x8' sheets of OSB (For those who don't know, OSB is a common wood material for making house flooring.), put it on top of the laptop, and drive over it.
That'll focus the weight of the entire car on the laptop, not just the weight under one tire.
What's this Submit thingy do?
What I wonder about is the battery life. It's running a pager and GPS locator, oh and a watch 7/24 off of a .. watch battery? What's the battery life? (Or did they forget to mention the battery backpack?)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Not quite useless, that is.
It still continues transmitting, which provides evidence of where it was when it was discarded. This can have an effect in trials where proximity to the crime is important.
If the b*st*rd decides to discard it after traveling a distance, then there's still the possibility that someone will notice that Jonny moving down the freeway at freeway speeds.
Of course, if the (can't think of a foul enough word) is relatively intelligent, he'll think to wrap it in tin foil or some other RF shielding.
What's this Submit thingy do?
Actually this is misleading. _All_ GPS satellites know their position (rather time) exactly - that's how they work. GPS is made more accurate using ground-based transmitters as well as the satellites.
Petition your senators/MPs/country-specific-name-here NOW to make this law. We need to know where everybody is at any moment in time; it is the ONLY way to combat crime, paedophilia, starvation and world debt. Only by implementing a law to make it illegal to attempt to hide your location from the state can we improve society in this day and age.
Now get the idea why kids may, just maybe, resent this?
Okay--let's get all the usual comments out of the way. This is a bad idea, it is the embodiment of Big Brother, it shows how silly and paranoid parents are, it is a crutch to let bad parents ignore their children, yadda yadda yadda....
I've been waiting for something like this for years.
Daughter #3 is 10 years old--and she has Down syndrome. There are a lot of features about Down syndrome--two of them are stubbornness and a complete absence of fear. Which frequently means that Downs kids will wander off. Or, if they're stopped, they'll very carefully sneak off. And we live adjacent to an 1100-acre state park.
Yup--I should keep an eye on Daughter #3. And yes, technology is no substitute for an alert parent. Yes--we have a fence, and yes--we work hard to make sure she stays in the yard. And she does stay in the yard. Most of the time.
Except the time last year when she turned up in a neighbor's swimming pool. And the time the summer before when she turned up in a different neighbor's bathtub. If she's good and faithful and safe 99.3% of the time, that still means she wanders off 1 day per year. And if she wanders into the park, we'll have to call out the National Guard.
Literally
In fact, Annie is featured prominently in the park's emergency plan. There's a search-and-rescue group that trains in the park, and they routinely exercise their plans for finding a mentally-retarded child in dense woods. A GPS tracking device could (and let me emphasize could) be enormously helpful.
BUT...
There are a few problems. First, and probably hardest, you have to have the device on the child when he or she decides to wander off. "Locking" it on a wrist strikes me as a surefire way to pick a fight--or make a fortune selling replacements. All Annie has to do is wear that GPS unit into the bathtub--or her wading pool outside. Or she can find out if it works better with peanut butter (which she's stuffed into 2 CD-ROM drives) or popcorn. Then there is the problem of location: GPS is meant for open air use. Any GPS chipset includes logic to store the last "locked" position (when the unit had 4 or more satellites in view)--so finding her inside a house won't be an issue. But how to report it?
There are two competing telemetry providers using the cellular telephone spectrum, Aeris and Cellemetry. Both depend upon radio units having enough signal strength to set up a call (Cellemetry doesn't actually set up the call--it just validates a ficticious phone number). Despite all the cell tower construction, there are still lots of places in the U.S., to say nothing of elsewhere, that do not have coverage. If you're looking for a truck (which is what Aeris and Cellemetry are used for) you can wait for the unit to report in a few minutes when it finds coverage. But a system to track a child has to have a substantially higher level of reliability.
A doctor in South Carolina (can't find the link anymore--the company may have gone bust) tried to market this kind of concept before. He hid the GPS unit and the radio in a pair of sneakers--and he had a remarkable success with a buy with autism who was rescued while walking on railroad tracks in Chicago. Hiding a unit like this in sneakers is brilliant--but getting and keeping GPS lock was an issue, as was connecting to the back end over the cell system.
I wish this would work
But this is probably yet another almost, sorta, kinda, almost....
I'd love to write more--but Daughter #3 has appeared in her coat, with six cents in her hand and a page of coupons from Domino's Pizza. I think she wants supper....
its better then paying for a detective.
You have no idea how lucky you are that kidnapping is so rare in the U.S.
My wife's 30-year-old cousin was kidnapped two weeks ago in a small town in Veracruz, Mexico, most likely by a group connected with the federal police force. This is by no means a rare occurrence in Mexico (see this Google search for more info); it has become quite the cottage industry.
As such, police have a disincentive to investigate, and even when they do investigate, lack even the most primitive of the forensic methodology routinely displayed on C.S.I.. Kidnappings are rarely reported to the authorities and are even more rarely solved. Kidnappers collect the (significant) booty, either may or may not release the victim alive (amputation of digits, limbs or facial features is common, and executions are frequent), get off scot-free, and move on to their next mark.
This kind of product, if commercialized in a subtle way, and if backed up by the necessary infrastructure in Mexico, would be a huge step forward in putting a stop to this problem.
Amazingly, after five anguishing days my wife's cousin was able to escape unharmed from his kidnappers, and no money changed hands. But he is definitely in the minority in this country.
Wherify, if you're reading this, consider this an invitation to come and try out Mexico. Release an adult version of this product, and you could find a very large market niche and might help control this spiralling problem.
Nanoox...
It's a good idea. It could possibly be used as a parenting tool, especially if there was a logging feature. just plug it in and see where the kid has been. This isn't like to prove that the parents don't trust thier children, but rather to encourge the child to be honest.
:)
If you think children should have all the same rights to privacy and freedom that adults do, think again. Children are not always that qualified to make judgements, let the kids make thier own decision as often as possible. But it doesn't hurt to have a parent's eye over the kids should to perhaps nudge them in the right direction or offer help. I'm not saying use this as a tool to enforce a totalitarian system on your child, but as a monitoring aid it might be helpful.
The biggest flaws are:
1. if the child refused the wear it, then it won't work. (of course if they just take it off and toss it or hide it or won't put it on than some discplinary action could be taken or you simply could not bother with using such a tool and find another method more compatible with your child's personality).
2. I don't think a pedophile is going to be hinderd much by this. of course if it's smashed you might beable to deduce the location it was smashed. if it logged you could find the path the child took and use that to start an official investigation. So in this sense it might have value for the police, after the crime has already been committed.
I think if you just did something like they do with animals and people who bite thier nails. Just rub your child all over with something that tastes bad. That will keep the pedophiles away.
ps- and for all you who keep posting that pedophile fears are just a bunch of media hype. Perhaps you should ask some of your friends or relatives, it's almost certain that someone close to you has been molested at some time (or worse, multiple times). Of course almost all molestation cases are by someone well known. Rarely by that creepy guy that hangs out by the railroad tracks.
Will you people get real!
If I read one more post that tells me what I would do if I had a three-year-old I'm going to puke. If I had a kid I would do what a good parent should and watch him.
Kidnapping is a very rare crime. How about a watch with a button for 911 that the parent can't disable, which would be automaticlly called if the watch is removed....the kid can press it any time his parents are going to beat him. Now that would actually stop some crime.
First:
Children need to be watched until they're old enough to stay out of harms way. This thing won't prevent you kid from drowning or getting hit by a car, which is more likely than them getting kidnapped.
Second:
Besides....If you precious child does get kidnapped this may only be useful for finding his mutilated body in the woods. That rattled any false sense of security this thing might have given you didn't it?
Let's talk about uses for something like this that could actually help people, instead of emotionally scarring children. "Mommy why does that man have the same watch as me?" "He's did a bad thing, so now he's on parole and has to wear that watch." But I suppose it's better than putting a leash on your kid, as though he was an animal.
Now, I new to posting at slashdot, but did anyone else notice that that guy's name (1010011010) is almost 1337, he's just missing a 1 at the end.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
so dig this, I am at EDS doing that corporate slave thing and get dragged into an eval of the IBM Tempus Fugit advanced electronic messaging and collaboration project. dig this: you are scheduling a meeting. you arrive at the meeting. 6 out of 20 people arrive on time. you click on the meeting webpage. webpage determines estimated arrival time of attendees based upon their GPS location (its in the phone) with the assumption that they didn't forget about the meeting. You click on a pretty reminder button and a pleasant reminder in a calm and docile female voice is send to the tardy attendees. Perhaps their preference based profile will arrange for suitable transportation and re-schedule their flight, limo, cab, etc so that they can make it to your meeting and realize that you were too busy trying to figure out the new technology that you lost track of the purpose of the meeting and you and your colleagues get to sit around staring at each other wondering WTF you all are doing in the same room. But at least your corporate/government-funded GPS coordinates are the same. I can see it now... 14 interns/secretaries/admin assistants with 14 GPS quadruple-mode WAP-enabled cell phones sitting in an empty conference room talking about the lastest corporate gossip playing euchre. Where are your toddlers? If you cannot see them, you are in the wrong place. Period. Frank Garvin, Male Prostitute (70's SNL sketch with Dan Akroyd for the kids in da house)
3 month ago my girlfriend was murdered, maybe something like this could had prevent it or helped finding her faster, maybe even alive. Not knowing where someone is and maybe ending up with something horrible as a murder makes you think different about tracking tools. I support toys like this because it might helps saving lives, not just kids, it could be very useful but like every new technology there is the risk of abuse. A device like this could hold much more information too, like blood-type, known allergies and many other information for a emergency. I think we will see more toys like this coming, as attachment to you cell-phone, PAD's, Car's ...
Give it voice activation, and the ability to send and recieve to a database engine somewhere, like trafficmaster systems then ...It would be ideal for tourists/backpackers.
How do I get to the Europa Hotel
Walk 200 yards to your right, then take the underground to Piccadilly Circus, then ask again
Where can I score some good weed
Look for the sign saying Princes Graacht, slightly to your left, and walk a few hundred yards ...
You get the picture.
The potential for advertising is enormous...
Where can I get blank CD
PC World (end of the next street on your right) has a special offer on blank CDs right now
Dont forget I said it here first, specifically to make any patent on this impossible. If they have already filed for a patent on this, then it falls down because it is obvious to any suitably skilled person (ie ME), if they have not filed, then they cant cos its public knowledge.
And the same goes for MS's SQL based file system. I invented this over 15 years ago, and had the idea posted on a web site until last year, so they can't patent that.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Hi!
You mentioned in your reply to me that you'd like to have GPS/cellular tracking in your car. As it happens, there's a company that does precisely this (they're a client of mine):
The vehicle position is tracked anywhere in the U.S., giving you vehicle location (including reverse-geocoding, so you get the street, town, and state) at stated intervals. You can also "pulse" the vehicle (akin to sending a page) to ask it to report at other times. Most users use the "bread crumbs" feature to see where a vehicle has been over a given period of time. We've used the system to retrieve a couple of stolen cars so far, and it's also being used to track tractor-trailers, garbage trucks, and (in Sarasota, FL) school buses. It's a very cool project.
And--knowing as much about the technology as I do, its all the more frustrating that I can't hang a unit on Annie. I have--literally--the entire MapQuest database and mapping engine sitting here in my office, and I can't use it.
1.) "There are a lot of people talking about privacy issues. "
Very true, and I agree that privacy isn't the problem.
2.) "A lot of posters who don't have children really can't fathom the depth of emotion a parent feels for their child, and thus the lengths a parent is willing to go to in order to protect that child."
Agreed, and you have just touched on the big diverter in this argument. As I (and a number of others) argued, its effectiveness is what's at issue here, not its marketability. Plenty of people buy snake oil in whatever form it's offered, and I have no doubt that there are plenty of suckers out there willing to shell out money for this particular panacea. What bothers me is that this very marketability could be a hazard in itself, just like psychic surgeons who convince people to forgo necessary medical treatments in favor of their charlatanry.
3.) "I saw a lot of "Parents must be lazy, just watch your kid" type of posts. As a parent yourself I don't think I need to explain the shortcomings of this type of statement."
Again, I'm with you on this. See back to my answer to #2 above, though, and understand that my concern is that anything that convinces a parent that he can be less vigilant is dangerous.
4.) "A lot of folks talk about how easy it would be to defeat the device. Well, it's pretty darn easy to defeat a home alarm system too."
There's a functional difference, in that burglars often look for the easiest steal for the effort, as they're driven by the profit motive. This means that someone advertises they have an alarm system and the thief moves on to an easier mark, since one house is very much like another. Kidnappers, on the other hand, are driven either by target motive or psychology. That is, they will almost always want a particular child, for a variety of reasons (a non-custodial parent or relative will want that child only, a kidnapper for profit will choose a target for the grab, a pedophile will rarely pick a child at random but will target a particular child or group of children). Therefore, the deterrent force necessary to prevent the abduction needs to be far greater, and this device isn't going to be enough.
So, in conclusion, my take is that this device would be very handy for tracking a child where getting lost is a problem (my camping in the woods scenario), but is actually worse than nothing for protection from abduction because of the false sense of security that it fosters.
Virg
It was turned off. They reserved the right to turn it on again where and when "they" deemed it necessary. (i.e. times of conflict, war, etc.)