UCSD Students Tracking Their Friends' Locations

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..."

Comments

ummm...

[Xaoswolf]

"Maybe students aren't out of the closet and don't want people to know they're going to the Gay & Lesbian Resource Center. Maybe you're cheating on your girlfriend and you don't want her to know you're in somebody else's dorm room. It's creepy Big Brother."

Gee, instead of leaving this tracking device in my desk, I'll take it with me when I decide to do something wrong.

If you wind up getting caught because you have one of these on you, then its you're own fault. Unless it's actually wired to you, then just leave it at home. This isn't big brother stuff, more like his little cousin's.

Re:ummm...

[dryueh]

Gee, instead of leaving this tracking device in my desk, I'll take it with me when I decide to do something wrong.

Of course, nothing would stop me from taking my free tracking device, planting it in my friend's backpack, and seeing if they really are going out to that gay-club...or to my girlfriend's dormroom, or whatever.

You don't need to let anyone track your device if you don't want them to, but now everyone has immediate access to a moblie, and plantable, tracking device.

..ah.. I yearn for the yesteryears of SpyTech

Pretty pointless

[Sanity]

The official goal of the PDA project is to test whether location trackers will encourage students to find each other more easily on a sprawling and rapidly growing campus.

That is the dumbest justification I have ever heard. Cell phones are infinitely cheaper (at retail price), many many students have them, and allow you to phone the friend you want to find - they can then, if they want to, not only tell you where they are, but tell you what their movement plans are.

There is nothing technically innovative about triangulating a radio signal, and as compared to cell-phones, it is a terrible way to try to meet up with friends.

Basically, the most valuable thing about this is as a publicity tool for HP and UCSD.

15-year-old at the University?

[AndrewCox]

A 15-year-old student at the University? Man, it kills me to hear stuff like that. That poor kid probably thinks he's tough stuff now, but I'm betting he'll regret his lack of a social life later on. There are more important things in life than advancing quickly.

There are probably tons of people here that could've skipped grades at a time, but wouldn't you at least want to be in your sexual prime when you went to college?

Somebody needs to watch American Beauty again - you gotta stop and smell the roses.

Re:35-year-olds

[LinuxHam]

No, he knew what he was saying. When parents see what their teenagers are doing with tech, they often say, "Cool! Can I do that with mine?" They take it to work, show a couple of coworkers, and voila, it catches on with the 35 year olds. Think about how long MP3's were popular in universities before they clogged up corporate servers.