Mobile tracking experiment

[Fnaar]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7433128.stm

Mobiles of 100,000 peeps tracked to observe movement patters... one finding... : "The study concludes that humans are creatures of habit, mostly visiting the same few spots time and time again. "
er... work? home? sandwich shop? sheesh!

 

[alecstilleyedye]

from the "no shoot sherlock" school of research…

 

[yenrod]

>Most people also move less than 10km on a regular basis

Not so with me !

That means that the lazy fat bastards, the petrol driven' are polluting the environment..in a space of 10sq km all over the planet for each and every cardriver !

Give me a gun now

THATS CALLED ACTION NOT SOME PUSSY FOOTING INFORMATION>

 

[Night Train]

I don't like the idea of being tracked especially as the tracking could be much more precise with triangulation of the towers. The government are already allowing all and sundry to monitor phone calls and emails for almost any minor reason.

For example, Nokia have put forward an idea to attach sensors to phones that could report back on air quality. The project would allow a large location-specific database to be built very quickly.

So we would have a load of data on what purfume a woman carries in her handbag and what men's jeans pockets smell of!

 

[bonj2]

er... I don't think it's like 'work', 'sandwich shop', i.e. the same LARGE places, but for instance that some people always used a certain bit of pavement, others always followed a certain line round a corner , etc.

 

[longers]

I'd go for it for a couple of weeks - and really try and bugger up their statistics

 

[tdr1nka]

S'funny but when Tfl brought in the pre-pay 'Oystercard' for travel in the capital I realised that there would be great scope for tracking as the smart chip stores all of your travel details.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

>Most people also move less than 10km on a regular basis

Not so with me !

That means that the lazy fat bastards, the petrol driven' are polluting the environment..in a space of 10sq km all over the planet for each and every cardriver !

Give me a gun now

THATS CALLED ACTION NOT SOME PUSSY FOOTING INFORMATION>

Steady on Yenners. We can't all be as great as you.

 

[yenrod]

Steady on Yenners. We can't all be as great as you.

Rhythm, so much, is made of so little nowadays !

 

[simonali]

I take it that these 100,000 people gave their permission to be tracked, did they?

 

[Fnaar]

er... I don't think it's like 'work', 'sandwich shop', i.e. the same LARGE places, but for instance that some people always used a certain bit of pavement, others always followed a certain line round a corner , etc.

I'm not sure... (and can't be @rsed to read the thing again ) but for example my mobile
has a "where am I?" feature (presumably for drunks) which uses towers to tell you where you are, but only within 1.7km accuracy. Which is sh!te... I mean you could be wandering on a beach, at night, in the rain, trousers round your ankles, stumbling along and spilling your cider, you wonder where the hell you are and it tells you you're in the blimmin' railway station.... fat lot of use that is.

 

[Fnaar]

I take it that these 100,000 people gave their permission to be tracked, did they?

from the article:

The new work tracked 100,000 individuals selected randomly from a sample of more than six million phone users in a European country.

Each time a participant made or received a call or text message, the location of the mobile base station relaying the data was recorded.

The researchers said they were "not at liberty" to disclose where the information had been collected and said steps had been taken to guarantee the participants' anonymity