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Hi Tech, Wireless Help for Climbers

Posted by michael on from the rather-have-more-pitons dept.

Mark Baard writes "Alpinists may soon be using wearable sensors and tricorder-like medical scanners to bail out their buried comrades. Computer scientists Bernt Schiele and Florian Michahelles, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, are designing A-Life, a portable device that transmits and receives avalanche victims' vital signs through snow, up to 80 meters away."

2 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Personal Locators by MegaFur · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Devices that give away your present position:
    Are they
    a) great because they let people find you when you're buried under gobs of snow, or
    b) evil 'cause The System can use it to track you and make sure you're not doing something "subversive"
    ?

    The answer, of course, is: c) both a and b.

    Does anyone have a *good* way to get all of (a) (generalized that is, not just snow) without any of (b)?
    (No, no, not a stupid law; I said a *good* way.)

    --
    Furry cows moo and decompress.
  2. Software making life and death decisions? by tgrotvedt · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The article says that the software may or may not decide who to save in what order.

    If I was a developer, I wouldn't touch a decision-making feature with a 20 foot pole. Even with Microsoft's (for example) legal team. Imagine the lawsuits! There would be people saying the computer made the wrong decision, and even worse, there could be bugs which make fatal mistakes.

    Somehow if a loved one is dead, I really wouldn't want to hear "Well, there's a patch for that now..."

    --
    What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)