Japanese City Tags Elderly Dementia Sufferers With Barcodes (japantimes.co.jp) 115
"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."
Wut? (Score:2)
>The adhesive QR-coded seals for nails
Wut?
Re:Wut? (Score:4, Funny)
>The adhesive QR-coded seals for nails
Wut?
THE ADHESIVE QR-CODED SEALS FOR NAILS
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>The adhesive QR-coded seals for nails
Wut?
THE ADHESIVE QR-CODED SEALS FOR NAILS
So the seals are in favor of nails, provided they are the seals that have been marked with a QR code? This is why we should never trust marine creatures.
'seal' is the Japanese word for 'sticker' (Score:4, Informative)
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Are they not tasty enough to eat?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. [theguardian.com]
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Won't be allowed in America (Score:3)
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Oh don't worry, with the likes of Bannon around, the very best ideas in ethnic purification willing explored.
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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.
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This needs to be paired with something on clothes like a yellow star or badge or such
Nowadays it'd be a yellow crescent.
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or, perhaps a few pieces of FLAIR??
Re:Won't be allowed in America (Score:5, Funny)
"And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand...."
An obvious way to avoid this end-of-days prophecy would be to put these barcodes on the left hand.
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"And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand...."
An obvious way to avoid this end-of-days prophecy would be to put these barcodes on the left hand.
Hasn't excluding everyone but dementia patients kinda blown that prophecy already?
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Re:Won't be allowed in America (Score:5, Interesting)
Somehow I'd knew it'd come to this.
This type of article is exactly what you'd expect from The Drudge Report, and /. seems to be a bit late with the news (it was on Drudge last week).
Quite simply:
Japan does not have the same cultural baggage about this you'd find in the west. There's no huge population that had the whole Bible and "Mark of the Beast" drummed into their heads. There's no conspiracy theorists. No persecution of Jews - even though they were an ally of Nazi Germany.
In WWII, for all the things the Japanese did during the war, they did not share the Nazi's attitude towards Jews. Chiune Sugihara saved many European Jews during the war by giving them visas allowing them to escape Europe via Siberia. The government and the military pretty much ignored the orders to round up and exterminate Jews coming from Germany, with the one exception of a ghetto being built in Shanghai. The Japanese did not run any extermination campaigns and pretty much left Jews in their sphere of influence alone during the war.
Because of this, the marking of individuals does not carry the same knee-jerk gut reaction there as it would here, and people in Japan would liken it to how Americans see the commonplace medical alert bracelets.
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s/Jews/Chinese/g
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Japan does not have the same cultural baggage about this you'd find in the west. There's no huge population that had the whole Bible and "Mark of the Beast" drummed into their heads. There's no conspiracy theorists. No persecution of Jews - even though they were an ally of Nazi Germany.
Japan has conspiracy theorists as much as America has if not more. Here [sirabee.com] is a poll from 2014 asking Japanese whether there is a conspiracy of shadowy organization controlling the world in secret, and 60% answered yes. As for Japanese positive attitude toward Jews during WWII, that was a result of Jews bankrolling Japan during Russo-Japanese War. Jews hated Russia for anti-Jewish pogroms and helped Japan and in turn Japan helped Jews during WWII. Of course that was then, now there is a rampant conspiracy theo
Compulsory barcoding isn't the American Way (Score:4, Insightful)
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 !
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"And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand...."
Simple fix: Put it on the left hand.
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Already is, most just don't realize it.
It's called a SmartPhone that folks can't ever seem to put down.
Why force a mark on someone when they're willing to buy one ?
why not biometrics? (Score:2)
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Because this can be done with a smartphone, I'd guess? A QR-code-based system can be implemented with nothing but typical smartphone hardware everyone already has. Also, from what I gather, the system itself isn't new, and already types of QR wearables are available, like bracelets. I think it's just the "QR-codes on the nails" that's new.
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Fingerprint readers aren't exactly unknown on smartphones.
My understanding is that you can't use a smartphone as a general-purpose fingerprint reader, as the hardware and software are designed to be used exclusively for authentication.
Wouldn't it be easier to chip them (Score:3)
Wouldn't it be easier to chip them, like you do for cats, dogs & marmosets?
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A phone and an app?
You comment suggests that either you have a phone that does not do NFC or you have a phone that does have NFC but the manufacture thinks the only use for NFC is for payments and won't let anyone else use the NFC feature of the phone but themselves.
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Yes replace a system readable by everyone with a system readable by some.
Do you have an app for you phone that reads NFC tags? Everyone in Japan has a barcode reader already.
--atation (Score:3)
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.
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They should be incentivisificationed to stop it.
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"Disorientation" is the actual medical terminology for a state of mental confusion as to time, place, or identity. "Disoriented" has a much more broad and generic usage.
Next time take a half second to research shit before you make yourself look like an idiot trying to be "edgy."
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A permanent solution might be a tattoo (Score:3)
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.
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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.
I hear IBM has experience with that.
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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.
I hear IBM has experience with that.
Ohhhhh, Burn!
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Ohhhhh, Burn!
Please keep Samsung out of this.
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Please keep Samsung out of this.
It's exhausting trying to keep it all straight.
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Tragic results? If you're that far gone and could do it over, you'd probably pull the trigger or jump in front of a subway or overdose on whatever you can get your hands on before then.
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Their "parents" are no longer there. The person they were is gone. That's one reason it's important to let everyone know that in the event of something that causes you to not recognize people, not know what you're doing, etc, that they authorize the withdrawal of all support, including hydration and food, and only allow pain medication. It's euthanasia by the back door, and perfectly legal, because it is the patients' wishes that must be respected. Treating a patient who has refused care is assault.
That's
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In actual practice. They are often there, but only for a random hour or two, now and then. Which is much worse than the scenario you present.
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All the more reason to have the discussion about euthanasia and advanced medical directives for the withdrawal of all treatment (including feeding tubes, etc) except pain killers where euthanasia isn't yet available.
Be careful - it's not illegal to commit suicide (kind of hard to punish someone who succeeds) - but it is still illegal to counsel someone to commit suicide. As long as you are not urging them to do so, just describing scenarios as to the mechanics without giving encouragement as to them actual
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Unless the old folks were morons, you shouldn't have to say a word. It's pretty presumptive.
If you are wise you will have a trusted non-family member that you have put in charge of such arrangements. It's too much to put on a kid, put it on a younger friend (with their shit together, who is not it the will in any way).
Unless you want your heirs to spend the rest of their lives fighting, trustees should also not be heirs or related to heirs. If you want to give the trustee something/pay them, do it whil
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We're talking here about arranging to die when your quality of life is too low. The law requires that if you refuse treatment, your wishes be obeyed even over immediate family. Carrying around a signed and witnessed Do Not Resuscitate order on your person is one way to assure your wishes are met without putting any decision-making stress on the family.
Here we have universal health care, so you can include such advanced medical directives with the database attached to your health card number, so anyone ac
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An adhesive bar code or QR-code on fingernails sound about as permanent as a Post It note on a cloth sleeve.
They aren't permanent, but they can sit on the fingernail for a fair time. Many people wear artificial fingernails that glue on and last a good while.
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.
That's part of what this system does. And yes, there's always people wandering off around here.
How noble (Score:4, Funny)
"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...
Old innovation (Score:2, Interesting)
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 th
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Caring for old people with dementia is rather different than tracking minorities and gays for eventual elimination.
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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.
Yeah - so what? We have people today that claim that social security numbers are the biblical Mark of the Beast" http://themarkofthebeast.com/4... [themarkofthebeast.com]
I wonder if there is the smallest possibility of a difference between what the Nasties did, and IBM's collusion with them, and a temporary barcode that is helpful for finding people with dementia after they wander off? Sort of like the difference between getting a person back into safety and comfort, and gassing them removing their valuables, and tossing them i
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You know what else the Nazis did? They built roads! And cheap cars!
Clearly, roads and cheap cars are Nazi.
I hear some of them even ate food. We should investigate, and if that turns out to be true we should ban that abhorrent practice too.
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To wit! the Beetle, arguably the most iconic car of all times is a Nazi invention.
They did many things that are absolutely horrible, and I even will concede the slippery slope of using good data that was "badly" gathered (I really don't know a harsh enough word to go in that space, so badly it is)...
But there are some things they did, some ideas they had, that can be made to do good for people. Use it.
Tagging the vulnerable that cannot help themselves in case they get lost or wander is a wonderful applicat
40% of population elderly? (Score:2)
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.
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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.
Japan tried to transition to Western courtship rituals, but didn't remove the cultural impediments, like the severe social emberassment Japanese men suffer when they're denied after approaching a woman. Since it doesn't look like they're going to be able to shed that, they're going to have to go back to what worked for them: arranged marriages. We'll see if they figure it out in time.
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Protip: Wake up early and put your priorities into action.
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"Since Mr Abe took office in late 2012, the number of irregular workers—often earning less than half the pay of their full-time counterparts with permanent employment contracts—has jumped by over 1.5m. Casual and part-time employees number nearly 20m, almost 40% of the Japanese workforce."
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They should all get busy first thing and leave their employers to deal with their exhaustion. 'Sorry boss, too tired. Fucked the wife three times this morning. Got up at 2am to get started.'
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its time (Score:2)
Meanwhile in Germany... (Score:1)
Hmmmm.... (Score:2)
Just a new development (Score:1)
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 gu