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UCSD Students Tracking Their Friends' Locations

Posted by timothy on from the after-my-own-heart dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The location-tracking software, developed by a 15-year-old student at the university, draws upon triangulation technology. The PDAs figure out their locations by comparing the strength levels of signals traveling from the devices to various Wi-Fi antennas. No GPS Required. Article from Salon here..."

6 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. cool! by mike77 · · Score: 5, Funny
    It'll make playing that "assasin" game all the much more fun!

    Nothing is better than sneaking up behind your friends and shooting them w/ non lethal devices!

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    --Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time

  2. Should be... by da3dAlus · · Score: 5, Funny

    from the marco!-...-polo! department?

    --

    Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
  3. Easier in the UK by MartinG · · Score: 5, Funny

    No need to mess around with all that. With the new legislation you can just ask one of your mates that works at one of hundreds of pseude-randomly chosen places to hand over the phone location records that he suddenly has access to.

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    -- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz .@adgimnoprstu
  4. This guy must be new... by bravehamster · · Score: 4, Funny
    "The approach we've taken is to put control into the hands of the user and explain to them what it means. The students at this university are very bright, and we expect them to all be able to understand the things we say to them."


    Such starry-eyed naivete and optimism baffles me. Surely no one actually expects college-aged persons to think for themselves?

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    ---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
  5. 35-year-olds by ceswiedler · · Score: 5, Funny

    "What 18- or 20-year-olds will do with these PDAs today is what 35-year-olds will be doing with them tomorrow."

    Don't you mean, "what 35-year-olds will be doing with them in 15 to 17 years?"

  6. Not your REAL location. by roman_mir · · Score: 4, Funny

    Idea for a campus business (imagine this being an ad printed on a blue/yellow paper with bold white/black letters):
    "Tired of being constantly tracked by your girlfriend? Need a getaway? You can buy our unique services for as low as 19.99 a month. For this amount of money one of our operatives will carry your PDA with him/her from 9AM till 6PM. For an additional .50cents an hour we will move your PDA from place to place within the campus premises until midnight."

    I should write a full business plan, name it something like "Nano/Security" present it to some investors and spend the rest of my days in Bahamas!

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    You can't handle the truth.