So you're screaming at your computer and banging on the keyboard, and while you're glad that only the cat can hear you, you also wish that someone somewhere, probably in Seattle, could fully appreciate the depth of your rage. Now they can! The Tantrum Monitor uses your computer devices to detect and measure temper tantrums and send the information to a server. The server aggregates tantrum metrics to derive truly meaningful assessments of hardware and software value and quality.
The Monitor client (installed on your own system) would have to hook into the OS and know which application you were using at the time so that input could be correlated correctly.
Possible input devices are: microphone (measuring volume at the very least; also, speech recognition to identify curses); webcam (with facial-expression recognition software); piezo-electric keyboard as proposed by [scooter64] (measuring finger pressure and enraged banging; oh, tell me more about the enraged banging, hot stuff).
User interface allows you to activate/deactivate input devices so that, for example, you can turn off the webcam when you're surfing nude.
Metrics would be created by the client & encrypted before transmission to the server, so the user knows that their privacy is protected. I'm not sure how much CPU/memory would be required to perform the speech/face recognition on the client side. Minimum system configuration would be on the high side--1 Ghz & 512 MB?
Feedback analysts would have to take into account the fact that metrics would come entirely from a self-selected population. And unfortunately, the Monitor would not be able to detect reactions to the failure of the OS (or Monitor software) itself.-- luxlucet, Jan 14 2005 Good idea. Why not just use the sensors market-researchers use for product test?-- millionthMonkeyTyping, Jan 14 2005 I truly fear that this would play out as:
"That @#%$! tantrum monitor is crashing, hogging my bandwidth, not compatible with my new applications, and since it's hung, it's not even transmitting my tantrum to the server!!!!"
Complexity is the root cause of most problems & frustrations with the computer. This would only add to the complexity.
The computer will not feel your pain, and Seattle truly does not care.-- sophocles, Jan 14 2005 Alternative, monitor the sales figures for the Macrohard.-- wagster, Jan 14 2005 random, halfbakery