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Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

ns.nl

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Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#181

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #179
paranoidrobot wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We extended that at a technical college I went to for a while because so many of the teachers were downright incompetent. "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach work here."

I had a professor in college teaching computer systems and design. Somehow he got to talking about the NSA. He said that back in the 60s, the NSA had computers that were running at 1000. “1000?” I asked, wondering if he’d forgotten the units. He replied “Yes, 1000.”

I've heard this joke before on HN.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#182

Post by sofixa »

mikebos wrote: post #174
t0mas88 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch railways said (in Dutch) themselves that it was a problem with the scheduling software which also has a role in safety. Apparently this is also used to route around for example a stopped train, so when it's not working it's not safe to operate anything but a handful of trains. There was a lot of extra impact because this system also feeds the passenger information so their app, website and information scree…

It has nothing to do with safety it's pure a who is where system.

Which on a train system is paramount for safety, otherwise you'd have trains crashing into each other because they're on the same track.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#183

Post by RonaldOlzheim »

Agentlien wrote: post #123
Saser wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rolf Snedsböl? :-) Agreed that he was one of the best educators (if not _the_ best) I had

Yes, Rolf Snedsböl! I absolutely loved his classes. I bumped into him a few years ago when I was holding a recruitment thing for Ghost Games and it happened to be just after his lecture. I told him how much I enjoyed his courses.

Did he wrote a book? Do you have a link?

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#184

Post by sofixa »

Freak_NL wrote: post #175
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m puzzled by the lack of resilience in retail sales. I thought “always be closing” was supposed to apply to all types of sales. A receipt pad and a credit card imprinter under the counter would be a very cheap backup. It would be slow, but at least they would be closing. It can even be considered a national security issue in the case of food, medicines and other vital services.

This is Europe. Credit card imprinters are rare if they were ever used at all. I've never seen one. The most resilient back up (especially in the face of national crises) is cash of course, but a growing group of people have stopped carrying any cash at all, and a lot of people in power are doing their best to make sure a cashless future is nearer each day. I don't mind paying with a debit card; I just want to have a…

Even for a cash payment the register still needs to work for the payment to be... well, registered as a sale. You need to get a receipt with tax paid, and all that.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#185

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

rgj wrote: post #140
quartz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the notice: > It affected the system that generates up-to-date schedules for trains and staff. ...boy oh boy did trying to look into what NS uses for crew scheduling ever send me down a rabbit hole. I don't know if the systems have changed but while poking around online I found this[1] doc about the Netherlands' timetable revamp around 2006 and it talks about the complexity of TURNI-- their on-the-fly crew sched…

> sidenote: If anyone out there is an SAP specialist ns.nl looks like a pretty great place to work: 36hr week, 5 weeks vacation, pension, and free unlimited 2nd class + low cost 1st class train travel. Those are pretty standard terms here in .NL. 36 hours is considered fulltime by most employers, including government and semi-government. Pension is offered almost everywhere and at least 4 weeks vacation is the legal…

>36 hours is considered fulltime by most employers

How standard is that in the private sector or non former state owned enterprises? I haven't looked at the NL market in a while but most tech jobs I saw back then were 40h/week.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#186

Post by tazjin »

Freak_NL wrote: post #175
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m puzzled by the lack of resilience in retail sales. I thought “always be closing” was supposed to apply to all types of sales. A receipt pad and a credit card imprinter under the counter would be a very cheap backup. It would be slow, but at least they would be closing. It can even be considered a national security issue in the case of food, medicines and other vital services.

This is Europe. Credit card imprinters are rare if they were ever used at all. I've never seen one. The most resilient back up (especially in the face of national crises) is cash of course, but a growing group of people have stopped carrying any cash at all, and a lot of people in power are doing their best to make sure a cashless future is nearer each day. I don't mind paying with a debit card; I just want to have a…

Most credit or debit cards support offline transactions, so a shop can keep a battery powered terminal that reconciles when it comes online.

Imprinters don't exist in Europe to my knowledge - the first time I saw one was on a visit to NYC a few years ago and I thought they were pranking me.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#187

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

Freak_NL wrote: post #175
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m puzzled by the lack of resilience in retail sales. I thought “always be closing” was supposed to apply to all types of sales. A receipt pad and a credit card imprinter under the counter would be a very cheap backup. It would be slow, but at least they would be closing. It can even be considered a national security issue in the case of food, medicines and other vital services.

This is Europe. Credit card imprinters are rare if they were ever used at all. I've never seen one. The most resilient back up (especially in the face of national crises) is cash of course, but a growing group of people have stopped carrying any cash at all, and a lot of people in power are doing their best to make sure a cashless future is nearer each day. I don't mind paying with a debit card; I just want to have a…

I'm in Europe too, and I have never seen an imprinter either, but I keep being issued cards with embossed numbers, so I figure they must be good for something, if not imprinting, what else?

I'm concerned about the phasing out of cash too as a separate issue, I just don't think the cashless options should have to be subject to artificial limitations like requiring electricity or a network connection to be able to be used. I guess online transactions with chip and pin are much more secure and should be the default, but retailers could keep a log of outages that they are required to submit along with the imprinted slips. They could be corroborated with the logs of the utility companies as well as other businesses in the area, and if something doesn't make sense it could trigger an audit.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#188

Post by [deleted] »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #165
Scoundreller wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There we had something of an impromptu party until there was no more power for the cash register and they stopped sales. Funny how the entire system has ground to a halt and the bartender is still worried that their cash register receipts and inventory won’t reconcile and shuts that part down too.

I’m puzzled by the lack of resilience in retail sales. I thought “always be closing” was supposed to apply to all types of sales. A receipt pad and a credit card imprinter under the counter would be a very cheap backup. It would be slow, but at least they would be closing. It can even be considered a national security issue in the case of food, medicines and other vital services.

[deleted]

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#189

Post by mnumber »

j0e1 wrote: post #148

What jumps out at me after reading this notice is how it completely lacks any apology. I am not prescribing what it should say but merely observing that having lived in North America for sometime now, it seems hard for me to imagine for such a notice to not sound profusely apologetic here. Note: I do not consider words like 'unfortunately' and 'extremely unpleasant' apologetic. Also, I understand there are cultural d…

"Due to the enormous impact of the failure in the IT system, it is unfortunately not possible to run any trains today." I think the writer is more pointing the finger at IT than feeling apologetic. Imagine getting called an enormous failure by your adjacent department, that writer wants you to know who screwed up instead of apologize for their screw up. Seems more useful than an apology in my opinion.

Re: Due to failure in the IT system, it is not possible to run any trains today

#190

Post by sofixa »

quartz wrote: post #62
miggol wrote: post #14

My curiosity is killing me as to what exactly went wrong. And as someone living in The Netherlands I'm also kind of mad at the apparent fragility of this huge chunk of our infrastructure. If this had happened on a work day, it would have been a real national emergency, rather than just a huge national inconvenience. I would appreciate one of those post-outage "what happened" reports like with the AWS and Facebook out…

From the notice: > It affected the system that generates up-to-date schedules for trains and staff. ...boy oh boy did trying to look into what NS uses for crew scheduling ever send me down a rabbit hole. I don't know if the systems have changed but while poking around online I found this[1] doc about the Netherlands' timetable revamp around 2006 and it talks about the complexity of TURNI-- their on-the-fly crew sched…

> 36hr week, 5 weeks vacation, pension

1 hour more than the standard French contract, and there are also far more holidays here..

> free unlimited 2nd class + low cost 1st class train travel.

.. okay that's actually a great perk. IIRC the French national railway company, SNCF, provide only a limited number of tickets per employee (like 10 per year? someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Their UX is also atrocious though (websites are just shit at workflows, apps are weird and break easily, ticket machines are OK but with really bad touch screens, and train announcement screens are each running Windows XP(with literally hundreds, if not thousands of them on big train stations), while from what i recall NS was acceptable.

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