QR Codes For Memorials 127
mikejuk writes "Companies in America, Denmark and the UK are adding QR codes to gravestones that can be used to view online memorials via smartphones. The idea is that these living headstones can include photographs, videos and memories of the dead person from family and friends. Genealogists and historians have always found graveyards a useful resource. If the QR idea takes hold memorials will be able to tell much more to future generations."
EEEEEEE (Score:5, Insightful)
If the QR idea takes hold memorials will be able to tell much more to future generations
Yes, put obsolete technology there. Why not just put floppies?
You don't need QR codes for that information anymore. Everything is saved anyway. You could just put the persons social security number there and all that information and much more would still be available.
Companies don't live forever. (Score:2, Insightful)
If the QR idea takes hold memorials will be able to tell much more to future generations
Or not, if these companies go out of business, which is extremely likely to happen in the next few decades or centuries.
If you want to add additional data, encode it somehow and engrave it on the stone itself. And put an additional tablet in each graveyard explaining the encoding.
Future generations? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the QR idea takes hold memorials will be able to tell much more to future generations.
Uh huh. How many future generations? For how long are QR codes going to be a popular format, and for how long are these companies going to be around?
+5 Monday Morning (Score:2, Insightful)
Looks like I chose the wrong week to try and avoid stupidity.
This is the stupidest idea I've heard since Friday. I must be reading Slashdot again.
Re:EEEEEEE (Score:5, Insightful)
The QR codes would only work as advertised if the "cloud" part of the system is still intact. Otherwise you'd have just some fancy hieroglyphics for future archaelogists to decipher. If this is the case, why not just carve out the human readable URL of the poor dude's FB/Twitter/G+ page.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Future generations? (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, how long are QR codes on a tombstone going to be readable?
When I visited England, I visited several churches and graveyards. Some of them were barely legible, after sitting out in the rain (and acid rain) for centuries. I know QR codes have a lot of error correction on them, but are they going to be readable after 1cm of stone has eroded away?