Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Face-Scanning Vending Machine Denies Children Access To Pudding

Posted by timothy on from the you-are-an-unfit-mother dept.

smitty777 writes "What do you do when you spend over a billion dollars on products targeted specifically for adults? Simple, just put a device on your pudding dispensing vending machines that scans faces, and denies the delicious food to the kiddies. The Minority Report-like device will apparently judge the age of the individual based on the space between their eyes and ears. If the criteria is not met, the vending machine will shut down and ask the individual to step away from the machine. There are some vending machine combos that this makes sense for, but seriously — pudding?"

5 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Smaller sized adults? by theNetImp · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So what about a person who has a growth problem and doesn't grow any bigger than the size of a 10yr old. This is a law suit waiting to happen.

  2. Easy hack. by blackicye · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Japanese Cigarette vending machines with facial recognition were pulled, when they discovered that holding up a scale photo or magazine picture would pass the age check.

  3. RTFA - It's about only selling to their demo. by Seumas · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As the article actually states, the reason they're using this technology isn't because of some pudding shortage or the contents of the pudding. It's just that Jell-O is marketing the pudding to adults and they only want to sell it to their demographic. I'm sure this will go over well in the future, when companies decide that they only want white people to buy their products or that they don't want their vending machines selling anything to gingers.

  4. Distance between the eyes does not change much by pfafrich · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A while back I did some work looking at how people faces change with age for a medicinal application. One quite surprising thing is how little the distance between the eyes actually change, quite young children will have the the same distance as adults. On the other hand noses keep growing throughout life.

    --
    There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
  5. This is a brilliant idea by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I suspect this is a test of the system. Put somerhing in their that kids want that is not true contraband like cigarettes. Kids will figure out how to defeat the security by, say wearing masks or holding up newsweek magazine covers. Maker of machine then improves software. The war continues till kids can't defeat it. Now you can load it with cigarettes and alcohol.

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.