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

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

#321

Post by Agentlien »

valvar wrote: post #319
Agentlien wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite story about him was when he caught a student sleeping in his class. He paused, mid-sentence, and asked the student if they were too tired. The student looked up sheepishly and confirmed. "Did it get a bit late last night? Can't keep your eyes open?" Again, the student agreed. Rolf flashed a huge smile and in a singsong voice said "then I have something for you!". He walked over to his bag, pulled out a st…

I have a similar anecdote which completely stunned us, but which may possibly be part of his standard routine, and thus something he does for every set of students: He always wore the same striped sweater. At one point, he took a break to drink some water and remove his sweater. But beneath the sweater was another identical sweater! I assume everything he did was very well-planned and part of his pedagogic system and…

I don't remember that but a lot of his antics seemed to be planned and part of his way of keeping people awake and paying attention. If it is part of his routine I wonder when he added it. I took his courses in 2006-2007.

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

#322

Post by valvar »

Agentlien wrote: post #321
valvar wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar anecdote which completely stunned us, but which may possibly be part of his standard routine, and thus something he does for every set of students: He always wore the same striped sweater. At one point, he took a break to drink some water and remove his sweater. But beneath the sweater was another identical sweater! I assume everything he did was very well-planned and part of his pedagogic system and…

I don't remember that but a lot of his antics seemed to be planned and part of his way of keeping people awake and paying attention. If it is part of his routine I wonder when he added it. I took his courses in 2006-2007.

I took that course in 2015 or 2016, so yeah, I guess that's about a decade in which he could have added it. I just browsed around Chalmers' course pages and am very happy to see that he's still teaching that course.

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

#323

Post by apexalpha »

qwezxcrty wrote: post #306

Based in my knowledge as a public transportation enthusiastist in China, I got really surprised to see a IT problem bring the entire system down. There should usually be some "more manual" backup mechanism that allows downgrade and operation of trains without computerized signaling system. By kinds of token signaling it will still be possible to run trains as long as the physical infrastructure is still there. The ef…

The Dutch rail network is top 3 busiest in the world. Many lines have 10+ trains in each direction, every hour.

The usage of certain lines at a certain time is calculated in periods of 6 seconds!

We're waaay beyond normal human coordination capacity.

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

#324

Post by CaptainZapp »

Robin_Message wrote: post #231
CaptainZapp wrote: post #130

Reminds me of when the entire Swiss train network shut down in 2005[0] This was, however, not due to a computer glitch, but problems in SBB's electrical grid, which lead to overload of some of the lines and then to a complete shutdown of the entire grid. Warnings were displayed on control consoles, but were drowned in 1000s of other meaningless warnings (there's a lesson for an UI designer here). I was in the ICE fro…

Aside: in case that's an eggcorn and not a typo, the day would be "fateful", as in, something momentous happened, rather than "faithful", showing loyalty.

Thanks!

Not a native English speaker. So it's easy for me to confuse the terms. You're right, of course.

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

#325

Post by nisegami »

southerntofu wrote: post #312
acbart wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if we paid those who teach better, we'd attract the best of the best to teach. Instead we drive good people out by making the job unbearable.

> Maybe if we paid those who teach better, we'd attract the best of the best to teach. I agree struggling for basic survival as a public servant is not ideal, but be careful not to turn education into a lucrative opportunity where people come for money not passion. Money is certainly not the only way to attract talent (though teachers still need to pay their bills) and in most schools i've attended the talented teach…

I believe that we should be making whatever changes we need to ensure that some of the most capable minds in our field are doing something more useful than ad tech. Speaking from experience, seeing where my classmates went to after we graduated a few years ago.

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

#326

Post by avar »

jaclaz wrote: post #224
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.

I have some experience related to cash/registers/POS. Card imprinters did exist in Europe (Italy) just fine, but they are not used since (at least) thirty years. Most cards that are presented to the cash now have no embossed numbers (most people have the national payment circuit called Bancomat/Pagobancomat, sometimes coupled - on the same not-embossed card - with a Visa or Mastercard debit). So in 99% of cases there…

> So in 99% of cases there is no way to "extract" money from cards without [...]

The card has the customer's IBAN, which you can use along with their ID and have them sign a contract to allow you to deduct the purchase via direct debit, the system is routinely used for point of sale, but is mostly known for regular recurring billing.

It's too much of a hassle and deviation from standard business practices for shops to use it in practice, so they just wait until the network is up.

But it's not because there's "no way", embossed cards were a hassle too. We've just gotten used to less manual paperwork.

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

#327

Post by xiphias2 »

randomchars wrote: post #135
xiphias2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each opposition party gets 5 minutes per 4 year election cycle by the state controlled media (and a lot of other media was bought from stolen EU money). I dare you to watch 5 minutes of news on the government media channel (the only channels that can be accessed in the free TV tear, that poor people are able to watch) and say that it's not rigged. 4 year ago the joke party used that 5 minutes for being a chicken to s…

> I dare you to watch 5 minutes of news on the government media channel (the only channels that can be accessed in the free TV tear, that poor people are able to watch) and say that it's not rigged. This is not true. While most of the channels are government media, you also get RTL, which is very much opposition media. Source: https://mindigtv.hu/muszaki-segitseg-1/csatornak/csatornakio...

Thanks, I didn't know that.

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

#328

Post by panxyh »

southerntofu wrote: post #313
panxyh wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should pay better those who teach better, not everyone. Otherwise we just make the market bigger with even more room for incompetence. Look at the software industry.

And what kind of metrics can you use to determine whether someone teaches well? Whatever metrics you use, there's probably ways to game the system without providing better services.

Exactly, and this would be just as true, only on bigger scale, if we just raised wages and tried to filter out 'the best of the best' from a now larger pool of candidates. I should write "if anything" at the start of my previous comment as I don't really believe a good solution based solely on financial incentives exists.

Your other comment efficiently expresses my intuition on the topic.

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

#329

Post by jaclaz »

avar wrote: post #326
jaclaz wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some experience related to cash/registers/POS. Card imprinters did exist in Europe (Italy) just fine, but they are not used since (at least) thirty years. Most cards that are presented to the cash now have no embossed numbers (most people have the national payment circuit called Bancomat/Pagobancomat, sometimes coupled - on the same not-embossed card - with a Visa or Mastercard debit). So in 99% of cases there…

> So in 99% of cases there is no way to "extract" money from cards without [...] The card has the customer's IBAN, which you can use along with their ID and have them sign a contract to allow you to deduct the purchase via direct debit, the system is routinely used for point of sale, but is mostly known for regular recurring billing. It's too much of a hassle and deviation from standard business practices for shops t…

>The card has the customer's IBAN

No, not really, most cards have an "own" number, not connected to the IBAN (though a few do have it), it depends on the bank or organization issuing the card and on the specific type of card, I would say (without any proof of it) that the ratio is maybe 80% without IBAN and 20% with IBAN.

And pre-paid cards are also very common, without a connection you have no way to know if the money is there.

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

#330

Post by quartz »

weq wrote: post #153
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…

I worked in defence on systems that did similiar and i remmember the one my company inherited and wow and wow it was the most complex, nested peice of SQL stored procs i have ever witnessed. It did the job, but it took HOURS to run. We had to re-write it completely to make any changes. But thats what happens when you let companies like Accenture at a system of yours! You pay them the big bux to be sueable, and they m…

A lifetime ago I did a stint as an Oracle consultant and 100% this. A gigantic sql query was always the answer no matter the question. I remember using sql queries to generate pdf and ps file output that would stream directly to printer feeds. So many “concat”s in that massive blob and nearly impossible to maintain for the next poor soul who had to own the code.

Learned a lot about db best practices to make these systems resilient and reportable but the whole “the database is the system” angle was very much a “every problem is a nail to this hammer” situation.

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