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Using Cellphones to Track Your Kids
David Pogue at the New York Times wrote this week about a new, novel use for cellphones: tracking your children. Several new ventures, including ones from names like Disney, Verizon, and Sprint, will offer web-accessible locating services by pinpointing the G.P.S. signal in their commercial devices. There's also some discussion of child-specific services, like the 'Whereifone', which is more 'Star Trek communicator' than actual cell. From the article: "To pinpoint the phone's location, you call up the Web site, enter your password, click 'locate,' and presto: an icon appears on a map -- either a street map or actual satellite photo. In the photo view, you can zoom in enough to see individual buildings. These are existing satellite photos --you won't actually see your child standing there -- but this feature is still creepy and awesome. You can even watch 'bread crumbs' appear on the map as the phone moves around (cost: one talk-time minute apiece). That could be helpful if you're trying to assist someone lost on the road, or in the kinds of emergencies encountered primarily in your nightmares."
Boost Mobile has built in GPS systems in their current phones, and even have a game where you seek and locate friends with the same setup.
Now depending on the age of the kids, the whole "YRO" aspect is kinda dubious. Considering we live in an age where kids under 14 have cellular phones, is it really so wrong for parents to want to know where they are, and for that matter, is it really an issue of "rights"? Sure, if it's being used for tracking adults, then yes, it is. But not in keeping track of kids (as opposed to what, implanting chips/RFID chips in them? At the least, this is the least intrusive).
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I don't see how GPS would work even as well as the cellphone signal itself. GPS cannot blast through buildings like that cell tower 300m away can, so it doesn't work indoors. It probably won't even work from inside your pocket. From my experience it won't work if the unit is turned upside-down. It also consumes fairly substantial power.
Actually, AC: I rebuke the false dichotomy of Republican/Democrat. The false dichotomy of Republican/Democrat is for those "thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."*
No, I vote Nationalist.
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Thoreau, Walden, 1-E.