Live data from Hacker News

Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

theiacp.org

61–70 of 108 posts

Re: Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

#61

I guess this is what goes as a "psychological hack". Definitely interesting to see how you can play the same tricks on people as you can on machines as long as you know enough about how they work internally. Interesting and scary I guess. We all know how big corp is going to be spending billions on this to manipulate us all.

    We all know how big corp is going to be spending billions on this to manipulate us all
That's more than a little hyperbolic. No matter how much money someone spends, while I'm sane I will not (cannot?) be manipulated to stand next to a fake bus stop.

Back on topic, my girlfriend works at a nursing home and she has often spoke to me about the residents being eager to go home, and just as in the article the residents often express their intent to find a bus stop. The approach my girlfriend takes is to tell them that the bus will arrive shortly, and they simply sit and wait in the home itself, waiting to be notified of the bus's arrival. Interestingly, some of the residents even think that the nursing home itself is a bus, and in that case they tell them that their stop is just around the corner, and they happily sit and wait to alight from the "bus".

To me, the scariest thing is that occurence of Alzheimers will likely increase as medicine further increases the lifespan of our bodies, but medicine is rarely successful in increasing the lifespan of our brains. And with that I sincerely hope that by the time any of us are that old, euthanasia is no longer a taboo and is a socially-accepted norm.

Re: Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

#62
post #49
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this only works in places where public transportation is effective and has been so for a long time.

Oh for God's sake! These are OLD people, they remember public transport (which also still exists in Europe). A fake cafe, a fake second hand bookshop, anything that will make them pause and get less agitated.

What made you upset? muyuu's point is that if public transportation wasn't an effective method of transportation when they were younger, the patients won't associate the sign with going home.

And I don't see how a fake cafe or bookshop will attract them? They want to go home, not drink coffee.

Re: Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

#65
post #37
post #27

I can't tell whether I find this crushingly sad or not. On the one hand, I cried like a baby at the end of the Notebook. On the other hand, this basically reminds me of what it's like dealing with my 2 year old daughter. Is it necessarily a tragedy that someone's mind dies before their body does? It's undoubtedly painful for those waching - but for what reason? I guess "potential" isn't tragic (ie. my daughter will e…

A story that turns that crushing sadness to 11 is Part Four (The Scholar's Tale) in Dan Simmons' "Hyperion", where a young woman catches a strange sickness that has her age backward - each morning when she wakes up she's physically two days younger and has lost one more day of her life memories. I think it's the saddest thing I've ever read.

See you later alligator...

Re: Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

#66
post #11

OT, but that is one hell of a hierarchical URL

They use DotNetNuke, a god awful CMS running on ASP.NET WebForms. Together with Umbraco, it's the most popular open source CMS in the Microsoft world. It's really sad.

You can access the page (internally called a "tab") by its "TabId", for instance: http://www.theiacp.org/tabid/1007/Default.aspx?id=1665

or, just by using query string parameters: http://www.theiacp.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1007&id=1665

DotNetNuke uses a system similar to Joomla (at least I think so) where a page is composed of instances of modules that are placed inside "panes", these panes in turn are defined by the theme a given page uses.

Alas, I guess they have a custom news module where an article can be accessed by supplying an id parameter in its query string.

http://www.theiacp.org/tabid/1007/Default.aspx?id=1660 will point to a different news article. It's technically still the same page however.

Re: Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

#68
post #11

OT, but that is one hell of a hierarchical URL

They use DotNetNuke, a god awful CMS running on ASP.NET WebForms. Together with Umbraco, it's the most popular open source CMS in the Microsoft world. It's really sad. You can access the page (internally called a "tab") by its "TabId", for instance: http://www.theiacp.org/tabid/1007/Default.aspx?id=1665 or, just by using query string parameters: http://www.theiacp.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1007&id=1665 DotNetNuke uses a…

Oh god, I hate DNN. I had to use it for my fraternity's site when I was redoing it because one of the alumni is the director of training for it. The sad part is he would never respond or help. That thing was such a pain to use. Trying to actually get into the nuts and bolts (css, html, js, ect.) of any of the pages was horrible.

Re: Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

#69
post #49
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this only works in places where public transportation is effective and has been so for a long time.

Oh for God's sake! These are OLD people, they remember public transport (which also still exists in Europe). A fake cafe, a fake second hand bookshop, anything that will make them pause and get less agitated.

If you're going to go to the trouble of making a fake cafe or bookshop, you might as well make the real thing. The point of the fake bus stop is that it's trivially easy to do.

Re: Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

#70
post #2

In a way I find this kind of manipulation tragically sad, but in reality the true tragedy is the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's. I'm glad nursing homes have figured out a way to mitigate some of the problems until scientists can cure or prevent Alzheimer's for good.

What you think is tragically sad, I find very funny, very clever and a real life-hack.

Tragically sad would be to keep fighting with the patients every day.

Post reply on HN