A new shopping experience awaits patrons as malls set to open this Sunday

[dave s]

2 hours ago, Stadtler said:

I'm sure it will all be stored on a server in CHINA.

Would it bother you if the people's republic communist overlords had access to all of the following on your cell phone (at least this confirms it runs Bluetooth, Internet and GPS, so kiss your battery life goodbye)?

 

This app has access to:

Device & app history

• retrieve running apps

Location

• approximate location (network-based)
• precise location (GPS and network-based)
• access extra location provider commands

Photos/Media/Files

• read the contents of your USB storage
• modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

Storage

• read the contents of your USB storage
• modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

Camera

• take pictures and videos

Microphone

• record audio

Wi-Fi connection information

• view Wi-Fi connections

 

Other

• receive data from Internet
• view network connections
• pair with Bluetooth devices
• access Bluetooth settings
• full network access
• run at startup
• draw over other apps
• control vibration
• prevent device from sleeping
• Google Play license check

Updates to MorChana - หมอชนะ may automatically add additional capabilities within each group.

 

[transam]

1 minute ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

When you can point to some actual evidence or proof... then I'll pay attention.  You know something happened (apparently). But linking what happened to a particular cause is an entirely different matter.

 

Where did I say something happened......

Now come on chap....I said I have read and listened to a lot.....Here is a short list of points regarding pros and cons of being affected by the bug..

 

 Area temperature, UV, Vit B2, D, Zinc, social contact (hugs, shaking hands etc), diabetes, or borderline diabetes (fat people), I hope you ain't fat people.....????

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

14 minutes ago, transam said:

Where did I say something happened......

 

The thing I was referring to with "something happened" is the apparently low COVID death rates in the several SE Asian countries you listed. Why that something happened is a different issue.

 

[Brunolem]

19 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

Most medical experts in the U.S. that I've been reading on seem to generally agree that the official U.S. stats probably significantly undercount both actual cases and COVID deaths.

 

 

 

One could say that ALL the countries undercount the cases because there are so many asymptomatic people, and counting them would require testing almost everybody.

 

And obviously there are probably deaths that are not counted for multiple reasons.

 

Anyway, this doesn't explain the fantastic difference in mortality rate between the West and most of the rest of the world.

 

A few outliers have death rates around 10%, while elsewhere the rate is closer to 1%.

 

Now, it is hard to imagine that more than 200 countries, including Japan, South Korea or Russia as already mentioned, are all undercounting their covid 19 deaths by a factor of ten, compared with the West.

 

That doesn't make sense...

[transam]

7 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

The thing I was referring to with "something happened" is the apparently low COVID death rates in the several SE Asian countries you listed. Why that something happened is a different issue.

 

Refer to my list of possibilities.........????

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

10 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

Anyway, this doesn't explain the fantastic difference in mortality rate between the West and most of the rest of the world.

 

From Johns Hopkins:

 

 

 

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

 

The U.S. is in the top 10 worst countries in both measures above, but at least not the very worst... except in raw numbers.

 

 

PS - How come I'm not reading/seeing many articles about Belgium and COVID???

 

[mauGR1]

1 hour ago, Brunolem said:

Anyway, this doesn't explain the fantastic difference in mortality rate between the West and most of the rest of the world.

 

I read things about Italy's death count, that can send shivers down one spine, but i won't say more, it would be branded as conspiracy and deleted.

[JensenZ]

On 5/15/2020 at 12:27 PM, Mavideol said:

the more difficult to enter the better, that means a lot of us (the ones like me that don't like shopping malls)  don't have to take the wives shopping ... she has been looking forward that opening moment for quite some time  555

It didn't change a thing for me. She transferred to online shopping over the last 2 months. Most things were still available, including high end skin care products.

 

I'm not into this QR code, new normal.

 

I feel sorry for the shop owners. 

[dave s]

2 hours ago, nrasmussen said:

It's not an app that has to be installed on your phone. You simply use your phone to scan a QR code.

 

Well, that's not true. You need an "app", an application program, to do anything. The code of this program may be something you install, or it may be built into the phone's operating system.

 

An older UPC bar code, or a newer QR bar code, simply represents text in a picture or X-Y "dots" format, in a reliable way so that whatever reads the dots can check whether they were scanned correctly.

 

"QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is the trademark for a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) first designed in 1994 for the automotive industry in Japan. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that contains information about the item to which it is attached. In practice, QR codes often contain data for a locator, identifier, or tracker that points to a website or application." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code">QR code - Wikipedia</a>

 

I have used an Android app called "Screenshot Touch" to take pictures of my phone's screen, and an app called 'QR Barcode Scanner". The first attached image shows the scanner app open with the phone's camera "almost" pointed at the QR code in the Wikipedia page above, showing on my laptop screen; the app will also decode a QR code in a regular picture disk file. The second attached image shows the phone's screen after it grabs and recognizes the plain text represented in this QR code. The text is just the "URL" (a special kind of "URI") of the Wikipedia web page about QR codes, that has the picture that was just scanned. Note that QR app has recognized that the text is a URL, and at the bottom of the app screen there is a button offering to open a browser and take me to that web page. The third attached image is from pointing my phone's camera at the QR code on the Mor Chana web page in Google Play, second row on the left under the Thai guy's picture inside a circle. What does this text mean? Who knows, could be anything.

 

Another job that this scanner app will do is to prompt you for some text, and encode it into a picture file as one of those little QR squares. A shop owner will want this function.

 

Here's another article on what's going to happen tomorrow:

    <a href="https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30387842?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=internal_referral">Govt allays fears on privacy as it prepares to launch Covid-19 app on May 15</a>

 

Note that step #1 for "User" is "Constantly using the application". The Mor Chana app, or program, can give itself the permission to always run all the time your phone is turned on: in other words, with 3 pig-out things always running, your battery is dead meat.

 

If you own a store, you will have gone to the URL of the "official website" noted in step #1. What URL? Well, if the government has not gotten in touch with you about that yet, it's time to panic, because then you cannot legally open tomorrow. You fill out the information on your store, probably talking to a JavaScript program inside the web page, which will tell the database at the government's central control site all about your store, maybe with JSON, and get an ID number assigned to it. Then it will make a picture file for you that has the text of your assigned ID number. You can either print the picture file out on your printer and tape it to the store window for customers to scan, or set up a laptop in the store window with a graphics program displaying the picture file on its screen. You only have to do this once.

 

When a customer arrives at your store, he will point the camera of his phone at your little picture file, get the store ID out of it, contact the government's central control site over the Internet, and "check in", sending his phone number and your store's ID number. Maybe the picture file will have long and complicated text, as in the third image I attached, that can tell the customer's phone how to get and install the Mor Chana "app" program from Play or Itunes; otherwise, the (maybe not computer savvy) customer will have to fumble around and manually do the install, holding up the huge line outside the store for ages. Surprise! Surprise! Hahahahaha! What, you expect advance planning in Thailand? Then a huge amount of Bluetooth and Internet chattering (and battery wasting) while you are inside the store, as every phone talks to and records every other phone, and sends all this data over the Internet to the government's central control site. As you leave the store, you point your camera at the little picture shown on the laptop, or taped to window, and your phone contacts the government's central control site and "checks you out." Don't forget to do this (and wake up the security guard so he can spray you in the eyes with hand sanitizer), or the government's central control site will think that you are still around and not let another customer into the store. Note: a customer can't just look in the window to see if the shop is busy: the government's central control site must count every customer in and out of the shop, and this micro-control keeps the shop from getting crowded ("checking congestion in shop" is step 2.5 for customers and step 3.5 for shop owners, in The Nation news article. Note that the shop is totally passive: all processing is done in customer phones and the government's central control site. What if the power fails, or the Internet goes down, or the phone dies? Oh, falang ting too mutt.

 

Gasp! Choke! Pant! Is that all clear now? ????

 

I need to go make lots of popcorn for tomorrow.

[dave s]

3 hours ago, nrasmussen said:

I don't see what the language of the website that establishments use to register has to do with who are admitted inside.

The shop owner (at least 51%, if not an Amity corporation) needs to be Thai, so the shop registration page being in Thai should not be a problem -- unless you are a Westerner curious about how the system works. But the Google web page has complaints about the app that the customer must use being only in Thai: that could be bad. Immigration apps did this at first.

 

 

 

No English, so how can it be useful for those of us who don't know Thai?

 

English would be great

 

Invasive permission request.
    
Thai language only
    
Should have language choices
    
Only Thai language.
    
English verisioni is not avilabele
    
If you expect EVERYONE that lives in Thailand to use this app you should design so that EVERYONE can understand it! Not EVERYONE that lives in Thailand is Thai or can read Thai. Epic fail. App deleted.

 

English please!
 

[Brunolem]

44 minutes ago, dave s said:

 

"QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is the trademark for a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) first designed in 1994 for the automotive industry in Japan. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that contains information about the item to which it is attached. In practice, QR codes often contain data for a locator, identifier, or tracker that points to a website or application." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code">QR code - Wikipedia</a>

 

 

I didn't read it all, but it seems that access to shopping centers will be limited to high level scientists, able to digest complex literature.

 

Fortunately, it will be still be possible to buy bananas on the local market without the need for a QR code, a scanner and a Cray computer...

[Brunolem]

2 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

From Johns Hopkins:

 

 

 

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

 

The U.S. is in the top 10 worst countries in both measures above, but at least not the very worst... except in raw numbers.

 

 

PS - How come I'm not reading/seeing many articles about Belgium and COVID???

 

But these charts only show the outliers.

 

What about Japan, South Korea, South East Asia, Eastern Europe, and so on?

 

Even the most enthusiastic fearmongers, such as Dr Fauci, don't go as far as saying the virus kills 15% of those infected...

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

26 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

But these charts only show the outliers.

 

What about Japan, South Korea, South East Asia, Eastern Europe, and so on?

 

Even the most enthusiastic fearmongers, such as Dr Fauci, don't go as far as saying the virus kills 15% of those infected...

 

Actually, those graphs show the worst based on those two categories of data... As with all things, there are ranges country to country. Looks like most of the case fatality rate numbers are in the 1 to 10% range.

 

 

 

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

[ben2talk]

At least they aren't talking about restricting the traffic - that means that you can still have 200,000 people turning up and driving around, double parking and forming queues of traffic around the car-park.

 

It's going to be amusing. I figured we might pop down and take a look, maybe just grab take-out pizza and go home to see what's going on. We have a discount card that means we have to physically pick up pizza... it wasn't a problem last week.

[dave s]

In case you have an Iphone and all this really is mandatory on Sunday:

    <a href="https://apps.apple.com/th/app/allthaialert/id1505185420?_branch_match_id=719443404369189740&utm_source=10april&utm_campaign=10april&utm_medium=marketing">‎MorChana - หมอชนะ on the App Store</a><br>
 

 

 

This app relies on the distribution of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) packets around and then let the app on other devices keep information of who found it. In addition, this app in Thailand also collects GPS data all the time. The app works on Android at all times, but on iOS only works when the app is opened. The data is stored on the government-owned AWS cloud.The app source code was on GitHub.

[samsensam]

On 5/15/2020 at 10:53 AM, ukrules said:

That right there is the problem.

 

There will be 100's standing in line outside waiting to get in. I've seen photos of this happening in the UK in the past weeks.

 

 

and the uk weather has been pleasantly clement recently so no issues standing waiting, not sure i'd like to stand around in the heat and humidity...

[samsensam]

5 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

Would you rather Thailand be more like the inept U.S. and be approaching 100,000 dead and who knows how many more sick?

 

 

it's pointless to compare any country with another because there is no standard way of recording and reporting virus infection and fatality data and statistics, never mind population size, medical infrastructure and other socio economic factors...

[nrasmussen]

3 hours ago, dave s said:

Well, that's not true. You need an "app", an application program, to do anything. The code of this program may be something you install, or it may be built into the phone's operating system.

 

An older UPC bar code, or a newer QR bar code, simply represents text in a picture or X-Y "dots" format, in a reliable way so that whatever reads the dots can check whether they were scanned correctly.

 

"QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is the trademark for a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) first designed in 1994 for the automotive industry in Japan. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that contains information about the item to which it is attached. In practice, QR codes often contain data for a locator, identifier, or tracker that points to a website or application." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code">QR code - Wikipedia</a>

 

I have used an Android app called "Screenshot Touch" to take pictures of my phone's screen, and an app called 'QR Barcode Scanner". The first attached image shows the scanner app open with the phone's camera "almost" pointed at the QR code in the Wikipedia page above, showing on my laptop screen; the app will also decode a QR code in a regular picture disk file. The second attached image shows the phone's screen after it grabs and recognizes the plain text represented in this QR code. The text is just the "URL" (a special kind of "URI") of the Wikipedia web page about QR codes, that has the picture that was just scanned. Note that QR app has recognized that the text is a URL, and at the bottom of the app screen there is a button offering to open a browser and take me to that web page. The third attached image is from pointing my phone's camera at the QR code on the Mor Chana web page in Google Play, second row on the left under the Thai guy's picture inside a circle. What does this text mean? Who knows, could be anything.

 

Another job that this scanner app will do is to prompt you for some text, and encode it into a picture file as one of those little QR squares. A shop owner will want this function.

 

Here's another article on what's going to happen tomorrow:

    <a href="https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30387842?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=internal_referral">Govt allays fears on privacy as it prepares to launch Covid-19 app on May 15</a>

 

Note that step #1 for "User" is "Constantly using the application". The Mor Chana app, or program, can give itself the permission to always run all the time your phone is turned on: in other words, with 3 pig-out things always running, your battery is dead meat.

 

If you own a store, you will have gone to the URL of the "official website" noted in step #1. What URL? Well, if the government has not gotten in touch with you about that yet, it's time to panic, because then you cannot legally open tomorrow. You fill out the information on your store, probably talking to a JavaScript program inside the web page, which will tell the database at the government's central control site all about your store, maybe with JSON, and get an ID number assigned to it. Then it will make a picture file for you that has the text of your assigned ID number. You can either print the picture file out on your printer and tape it to the store window for customers to scan, or set up a laptop in the store window with a graphics program displaying the picture file on its screen. You only have to do this once.

 

When a customer arrives at your store, he will point the camera of his phone at your little picture file, get the store ID out of it, contact the government's central control site over the Internet, and "check in", sending his phone number and your store's ID number. Maybe the picture file will have long and complicated text, as in the third image I attached, that can tell the customer's phone how to get and install the Mor Chana "app" program from Play or Itunes; otherwise, the (maybe not computer savvy) customer will have to fumble around and manually do the install, holding up the huge line outside the store for ages. Surprise! Surprise! Hahahahaha! What, you expect advance planning in Thailand? Then a huge amount of Bluetooth and Internet chattering (and battery wasting) while you are inside the store, as every phone talks to and records every other phone, and sends all this data over the Internet to the government's central control site. As you leave the store, you point your camera at the little picture shown on the laptop, or taped to window, and your phone contacts the government's central control site and "checks you out." Don't forget to do this (and wake up the security guard so he can spray you in the eyes with hand sanitizer), or the government's central control site will think that you are still around and not let another customer into the store. Note: a customer can't just look in the window to see if the shop is busy: the government's central control site must count every customer in and out of the shop, and this micro-control keeps the shop from getting crowded ("checking congestion in shop" is step 2.5 for customers and step 3.5 for shop owners, in The Nation news article. Note that the shop is totally passive: all processing is done in customer phones and the government's central control site. What if the power fails, or the Internet goes down, or the phone dies? Oh, falang ting too mutt.

 

Gasp! Choke! Pant! Is that all clear now? ????

 

I need to go make lots of popcorn for tomorrow.

I was not commenting on the "Mor Chana" app (whatever that is), but on the "Thai Chana" platform.

[nrasmussen]

2 hours ago, dave s said:

The shop owner (at least 51%, if not an Amity corporation) needs to be Thai, so the shop registration page being in Thai should not be a problem -- unless you are a Westerner curious about how the system works. But the Google web page has complaints about the app that the customer must use being only in Thai: that could be bad. Immigration apps did this at first.

 

 

 

No English, so how can it be useful for those of us who don't know Thai?

 

English would be great

 

Invasive permission request.
    
Thai language only
    
Should have language choices
    
Only Thai language.
    
English verisioni is not avilabele
    
If you expect EVERYONE that lives in Thailand to use this app you should design so that EVERYONE can understand it! Not EVERYONE that lives in Thailand is Thai or can read Thai. Epic fail. App deleted.

 

English please!
 

It's not an app.

[Stadtler]

All of your questions are answered on my new thread:

 

 

[CrunchWrapSupreme]

On 5/16/2020 at 3:07 PM, Stadtler said:

It's going to be bedlam and disaster.  I can't wait to see the crowds gather at the doors as the nudnik's stand there downloading the app and waiting for it to install

That's what happened yesterday when we went to MBK and centralwOrld. But not too disastrous, and not an app.

 

Store employees stood around the entrances and helped you scan the QR code. Everyone's got a QR code reader already in Line. Nothing to download or install. Scanning this sends you to the Thai Chana website. Here you check in. The QR code already had the location in it. When you're done, you do the same on your way out to check out. A bit annoying, and I don't really get its purpose. Maybe they will come me get when they find a Corona outbreak at one of the locations. I dunno.

 

Over the loudspeakers, amidst their bumpin' EDM soundtrack, Central Pattana assured me that we're all going to get through this.