>From http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010103/tc/school_dc_1.html
"SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A Singapore school has made the mundane task of
ordering lunch more exciting by wiring up the canteen for cashless
payments, individual calorie counts and online ordering."
[...]
"All 550 students and staff at the year-old school were issued electronic
debit cards to pay for their meals --- and to track their attendance at
school."
"Ordering lunch is a matter of walking up to one of six touch screen
terminals, flashing the debit card and selecting items from a picture
menu."
"Students then head to the cafeteria to find their orders waiting at one
of the six stalls serving different dishes."
"Obese kids, a ballooning problem in the prosperous city state, will see a
skinnier menu with fatty foods such as chocolates conspicuously absent."
"The system takes orders up to one year in advance and tallies up calorie
intake over a period of time."
"Parents will be able to control what younger tots eat by ordering meals
via a Web site and paying online starting in March."
--This is so awful that words do not even begin to describe it. Is *this* what the planetary local net will be used for? Parents exercising absolute whimsy over the lives of their poor children? "Obese kids will see a skinnier menu..." How dare they? How *dare* they? I hope the first obese kid they try this on hacks their damn network and transfers every damn cent in the system to an account in the Cayman Islands.
-- -- -- -- -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:16 MDT