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

Post by ArnoVW » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 10:53 AM UTC

eatingcrowe wrote: post #230

ArnoVW wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have done consulting for 15 years, understand your feelings. But I'd like to offer some alternative viewpoints. Buying an off the shelve package also buys you an industry-standard business process. The idea is that part of value comes from the process that you have to shoe-horn into. Some integration is expected (and provided for) but if you have to modify heavily, You're Not Using It Correctly. Also, using an OTS pa…

> I've seen people implement SAP in a couple of months. It's possible. It's still expensive and clunky though :-) Never worked with SAP, but still coming off my burn-out hangover from $OLD_JOB - worked to migrate the nexus of the firm's accounting systems from COBOL to MS Dynamics. Unto itself, I don't really have a problem with Dynamics - I do have a problem with MS and their piss-poor available materials on the top…

Post by gpvos » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 10:58 AM UTC

niels8472 wrote: post #237

GekkePrutser wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some EU countries don't issue credit/debit cards by default but they have their own system. The Netherlands is one of them. Such cards don't have embossing. You can get a MasterCard/Visa compatible card but it's not standard, though I believe this will change soon. But of course the imprinting system is ancient and extremely prone to fraud. As is the magstripe. I wish we had a choice not to have the latter anymore. I…

The Dutch debit cards are Maestro (Mastercard) or V Pay (Visa) cards which are a pretty standard systems. There is no point in embossing because transactions need to be authorized immediately by the issuing bank for obvious reasons.

Post by gpvos » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 11:01 AM UTC

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #187

Freak_NL wrote: post #175

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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 u…

Post by throwaway48375 » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 11:05 AM UTC

burntoutfire wrote: post #281

bmitc wrote: post #115

More and more we are seeing "the computer says no" in our lives. We've replaced human activity and decision making with computerized versions, which are nothing more than the automation of stored human knowledge and routines.

A couple years ago, politicians in Poland wanted to do a quick change to the country's universal pension system. The change had to be quick to score some kind of political win. They wrote the new law and went on with quickly pushing it through parliament. To their surprise, sometime along the legislative process , the contractor responsible for maintenance and changes in the pension system informed them that they can…

Post by rocqua » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #49

postingposts wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My very good guess is that you had a database failure caused by a crypto virus. They will not wish to announce that this was the root cause until A. A plan of action to avoid a future infection can be enumerated. B. They can be certain they will restore the functionality of the trains. The other part of my guess is that they have a SQL db which is stored on /likely/ a windows server instance. I’d even surmise that th…

This is one of my leading theories as well, although I thought they usually hit on Friday night in order to catch admins off-guard and encrypt as much as possible before being stopped? "The IT failure occurred at the end of [Sunday] morning". On Sunday there is also not as much pressure to get things running as there would be on Monday. Or perhaps this is the incentive to pay now and get things fixed on time for the…