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Facial Recognition Vending Machine Debuts
Peter Hanami writes "Yesterday in Japan, a facial recognition vending machine went on sale that can tell the age of the buyer based on a range of features including number of wrinkles, bone structure and how the skin sits on the face. It was developed as a way to stop minors from buying cigarettes from vending machines. In Japan, cigarette vending machines are a common feature on the street and presently few safeguards exist to stop younger users from purchasing them. This new machine is seen as a positive step to reduce under age smoking. If the machine doesnt deem the buyer to be of suitable age, 20 years old, the buyer must provide further identification such as a drivers licence."
And of course, what about people who look older than they actually are? I had a friend in high school who liked he was almost thirty before he even turned twenty.
If it's that good, why don't they just require standard government ID and use the face recognizer to determine if the buyer is the person on the ID and let the ID provide the age?
http://www.amazon.com/Gag-Works-FAKE-MUSTACHE-WAY/dp/B0006GK08K
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think they should just dispense condoms for free for whoever wants them in the pubs and clubs. The kind of people who hook up in these places are the ones we don't want reproducing
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
How did an obviously racist comment get modded +3 informative? Funny, maybe, but informative?
I've had enough smokers stand upwind, throw cigarette butts everywhere, walk around stinking like a smokestack, etc., that I just don't care if smokers are inconvenienced once in a while too.
http://outcampaign.org/
It is not racist for someone to be unable to visually determine some else's age. Neither is it racist for someone to be unable to tell two people apart (eh, "all asians look the same to me"). If he was blind and he said, "all asians, blacks, and whites look the same to me", would that be an issue? No, it would be the truth, because to a blind person, they do look the same. Someone with an untrained eye is nearly as incapable as a blind person at facial pattern recognition.
The whole "you're being racist" thing itself is racism, making an assumption that the other person might be racist just because the other person isn't of your race, is racist. If the parent post was asian, but adopted by a white family without contact with other asians, and said, "I cannot tell two asians apart", would it still be racist?
Facial pattern recognition is a learned ability, and each race has a unique set of facial patterns. You cannot expect someone that has had minimal contact with people outside their own race to be able to detect these differences.
I think the only reason that people get offended because they hear someone say, "<race> all look alike" is because people dislike being grouped by their race, even if there is no ill-will meant. If you're going to be upset by this, you shouldn't stop there. Tell doctors to stop testing black people for Sickle Cell Anemia, because it is racist for them to think that the decease could possibly be more prevalent in those with a particular heritage or skin color -- after all, "race is only skin deep", right? Oh, thats right, those people would rather be healthy than complain that they're being singled out for screenings based on their race.
The truth is that different races have different physical attributes which can cause certain challenges for those not intimately familiar with those differences; be it facial recognition to recognize someone's age or sex, or be it differences that affect a medical practitioner's ability to save a life.