Slashdot Mirror
Japanese City Tags Elderly Dementia Sufferers With Barcodes (japantimes.co.jp)
"The Japanese city of Iruma has introduced scannable adhesive barcodes to tag fingernails of senior citizens with dementia who are prone to getting lost as a way to help concerned families find missing loved ones," writes HughPickens.com, citing this article from Japan Times:
The adhesive QR-coded seals for nails -- part of a free service launched last month and a first in the country -- measure just 1 cm (0.4 inches) in size. "Being able to attach the seals on nails is a great advantage," says a city worker. "There are already ID stickers for clothes or shoes but dementia patients are not always wearing those items." If an elderly person becomes disorientated, police will find the local city hall, its telephone number and the wearer's ID all embedded in the QR code. Japan is grappling with a rapidly aging population, with senior citizens expected to make up a whopping 40 percent of the population around 2060.
The article describes Japan as "a country where 4.8 million people aged 75 or older hold a license... Last month, police started offering discounts for noodles at local restaurants to elderly citizens who agreed to hand in their driving licenses."
The article describes Japan as "a country where 4.8 million people aged 75 or older hold a license... Last month, police started offering discounts for noodles at local restaurants to elderly citizens who agreed to hand in their driving licenses."
>The adhesive QR-coded seals for nails
Wut?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
"And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand...."
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
it's already there.. finger print / iris scan / DNA .. ask the old man to press his thumb impression and you can find who he is.
Not when the all look the same.
Keep the whitehouse white, vote Trump & Palin 2020.
Wouldn't it be easier to chip them, like you do for cats, dogs & marmosets?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Surely it should be "disoriented" or have I been misinformated? (From "orient" meaning the East, or to find the direction East).
Spurious word endings do not beautificate your language and should be omissionated.
An adhesive bar code or QR-code on fingernails sound about as permanent as a Post It note on a cloth sleeve. A tattoo on a wrist or other visible place would be pretty permanent but the data base connected to the tattoo must be kept up to date. Another less permanent device might be an end sealed plastic wrist band containing appropriate information including perhaps a readable chip or QR-code. Maybe even an identity chip placed under the skin like those for wayward pets.
There's still the problem of dementia patients wandering away from their residence. This seems to happen fairly frequently and sometimes with tragic results. Some kind of tracking of such folks would also be nice. These are often used in the residential settings of such people, but don't work when the the patient walks away.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Oh don't worry, with the likes of Bannon around, the very best ideas in ethnic purification willing explored.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This needs to be paired with something on clothes like a yellow star or badge or such
Nowadays it'd be a yellow crescent.
#DeleteChrome
If you need a QR code to identify a weak, vulnerable, old person you probably don't have enough low cunning to succeed as a petty criminal.
The risk probably isn't entirely nonexistent; but the risks of getting confused, wandering off, and being hard to identify are likely to be rather more serious for the cognitively impaired elderly.
"Last month, police started offering discounts for noodles at local restaurants to elderly citizens who agreed to hand in their driving licenses."
Yeah, they're banking on most of the elderly forgetting about the discount...
#DeleteChrome
Many of the early commentators are missing the point.
Barcode is the direct allusion to Nazi Germany innovation of using permanent tattooed numbers to account their inmates. By the way, they have used IBM computers, leading novel technology, to keep track of inmates.
At the same time Soviets did not use codes on the bodies of their prisoners in GULAG, because they had way more prisoners and all their efforts were directed toward building weapons for WW2, not dealing with computers.
Fun stuff. Who could have thought that the nazi ideas will be implemented, treated as novel and applied towards humans. The difference between permanent tatoo and a small finger nail sticker with strong adhesive is really tiny.
Dude, Japan is turning into a real live Children of Men.
With near zero immigration, and below replacement rate both rate, they are doomed.
Japan is going to have t have some serious cultural changes within the next 10-15 years, or the new lace will be a ghost town.
Perhaps in America, but this is Japan we're talking about. Their criminal enterprise is mostly related to vice crimes (gambling, prostitution, etc.) and would probably find preying on the elderly to be shameful. Their cultural differences and very homogeneous population means that certain types of crimes are among the lowest in the world in Japan. At the same time it also leads to disproportionate amounts (relative to other first-world countries) of other types of crime like human trafficking.
Right, but Trump is the antichrist already so he better to get to work on those four horsemen.
Every president since Carter has been the antichrist. Oops wait, he was apparently the antichrist too.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If you need a QR code to identify a weak, vulnerable, old person you probably don't have enough low cunning to succeed as a petty criminal.
Perhaps, but there's also a lot better chance that they won't be able to identify an assailant. Or be able to testify against them in court mentally or legally (not that I know how this would work in Japan).
The risk probably isn't entirely nonexistent; but the risks of getting confused, wandering off, and being hard to identify are likely to be rather more serious for the cognitively impaired elderly.
Agreed.
It has begun
or, perhaps a few pieces of FLAIR??
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
In the US we'd never do anything like that. We're Christians ! We have Morals !
Instead people will be told that, to better serve them and to keep medical costs down, all medicare recipients will be offered a chance to enroll in a programme that offers them expedited ambulance transport in case of accidents (they're easier to locate), emergency treatment in hospitals (because their medical data can be found more easily) plus waiver of the upcoming 1000$ a month service surcharge ... provided they consent to have an RFID chip implanted with their SSN.
Those who elect not to participate in the programme will not be eligible for expedited ambulance transport, will experience a light delay upon admission until their medical data has been found and their insurance status clarified, and will be asked to pay the service surcharge.
Net participation in the chipping program will therefore be 99%, of which 100% will be voluntary, you see?
That's how you do things !
"seal" is the Japanese word for "sticker" - it is a foreign loan word from English - it comes from the seal (sticker) that is usually found on an item you purchase. If you buy an item that comes in a box, it usually has a round adhesive sticker or similar that 'seals' the box, showing you it hasn't been opened before.
Someone finally turned up to pick up all of the Auschwitz IT junk. "Repurpose for the elderly" they said.
While this is in principle a nice idea, it also opens up rather nastier possibilities as data capture for identity theft. Who better for a potential attacker to skim data from that someone who may not know or understand they might be compromised?
It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
Their criminal enterprise is mostly related to vice crimes (gambling, prostitution, etc.) and would probably find preying on the elderly to be shameful.
Unless they're already dead, in which case it is totally acceptable.
Ezekiel 23:20
You mean pixelated? I'm not sure what it has to do with the elderly, though.
Ezekiel 23:20
Luckily, Japan is a country where personal crime is very very low, people actually go out of their way to help strangers in need, and the elderly are generally respected - even if they aren't firing on all cylinders.
This isn't new. We've put tags on our people for decades, I remember it back in the 1970s. Sometimes even a dog tag. One family I remember had a dog collar around his neck with a dog tag. They said this made it very obvious what was going on.
These people are a handful. If they can get out, they're off for the races! Happened to my father in law. We had to put locks on the door. When they are at this point, it usually isn't long.
Just a welcome technology update. Scan the fingernail, poof. Here's where the guy lives. Let's take him back.