Sometimes, and it is pretty rare, a news headline pops up on my Google page that literally forces me to stop doing everything I’m meant to be getting on with and read it. The crying baby sumos managed to stop me studying Kanji for an hour, as did the pen-spinning championships. Usually when this happens the story is quite good, and often I can turn it into an article here on JID.

This one was no exception. According to the BBC;

A Japanese company is developing a vending machine that counts wrinkles and skin sags to check a smoker’s age.

It plans to use face recognition technology to prevent anyone under the legal age of 20 buying cigarettes.

That’s right! Whilst I’m not a smoker I do pity my poor friends who, when they run out of cigarettes and need to buy some more, need to spend a few minutes standing in front of a vending machine trying to look old. The problem is pretty rife in Japan, a lot of school kids do smoke, but there must be a more logical solution. Oh, hang on… this was in the same article;

Purchasers who failed a digital camera “age test” would need to show the machine an ID card to establish they were legally allowed to smoke.

So hang on. You have to do the digital camera thing first, and if that fails then go on to insert a card into the machine? Am I the only one who sees the logical flaw here? I’m not exactly the most devious person (believe it or not…) but if I were 16 and wanted a smoke I’d probably get someone who looked older than me to stand in front of the camera. Something tells me it’s a lot easier to trick the camera than the card reader.

The company says the system gets it right in nine out of ten cases. The remaining 10% would be sent to a “grey zone for baby-faced adults” where they would be asked to insert their driving licence or identification card.

“Get your smokes here! Anyone over 20 welcome! Unless you look quite young, in which case welcome to what we professionals call the baby-faced adults grey zone”. Doesn’t really have much of a ring to it. I say people who fail the test should be sent to a government building, where they have their face rubbed with sandpaper until they look older. Problem solved!

There is one glaring omission on the part of the developers. You see, whilst it may work 9 times out of 10 at spotting that people are old enough, what about children who look older than they are? I can see kids walking around Tokyo with clothing pegs all over their faces trying to make wrinkles. Plus, you know who else would be able to get away with underage smoking?

This guy would have no problems fooling these machines! (Unless there’s a “No smoking for people with tiny eyes” rule in action!)

So I’m sorry guys, but it doesn’t look like these new machines are the way forward. Too many old looking kids and rhinos smoking in the streets. Keep trying, though! How about a vending machine that smokes for you? All the enjoyment, none of the side effects!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 5:37 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.