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Magazine Photos Fool Age-verification Cameras

Posted by timothy on from the porn-magazine-photos-doubly-so dept.

gregor-e writes "Japan has scheduled a full-scale rollout of visual age-verification on cigarette vending machines. Unfortunately for them, a Sankei Sports news reporter has determined that this system can be fooled by holding up a magazine photo of an adult."

5 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Cracking at its best by paratiritis · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Fool the system by giving it false information. The recognition program never gets a chance to work.

    BTW it is easy to fix this if the machine asks the people to move. This will work ... for about a week, until they start creating animations of old people that can move on command for EEEs or other such netbooks.

  2. Re:Complex systems, simple workaround by timothy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe as an parable, it's good, but the "space pen vs. the humble Russian pencil" has been widely debunked as an urban legend. Still an interesting pen!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  3. Re:And in related news by CaptainPatent · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Even better is if the machine was re-designed to detect magazines and other pictures of people and actually did dispense pictures of cigarettes.

    The machine could even keep their money, because I doubt a teen is going to report a cigarette machine took it!

    --
    Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
  4. The moral of the story by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Never send a computer to do a human's work.

  5. Re:Age-controlled vending machines have a place by smellotron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    habitually inhaling toxic smoke ... contrary to any living creature's survival instinct

    Whoops, you just made the assumption that survival instincts are based off of long-term cost/benefit ratio. On the contrary, most instincts (fight-or-flight, sexual attraction, whatnot) are based off of estimated short-term benefits. Hence why people continue to smoke...

    • it satisfies an immediate craving (if you're already addicted)
    • nicotine gives a nice little buzz
    • it is perceived to reduce stress

    Regardless of its truth and long-term effect, the "inhaling toxic smoke" argument borders on propoganda. It completely ignores one side of the argument.