On Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:09:22 +0000
Paul Corfield wrote:
Oh you were involved in the PASS Agent Terminals. chortle Lucky you.

It was a job. I actually met the guy who did most of the programming for
them. IIRC he said they had something like 4 or 5 seperate CPUs inside them
and each had to be programmed with a mixture of some cut down version of C
and assembler. He certainly earned his money.

Well you would be wrong wouldn't you? I identified the need for

Would I?

validators at the interface points with the LUL system. When I was
involved there was no agreement about NR involvement on the scale that
is now in place. The concept for validators was to permit easy but small

Well you should have thought ahead shouldn't you. Even without NR involvement
there are still places like finsbury park where seperate in and out
validators would make things a lot less confusing and obviate the need for
this silly time out penalty charge.

register an entry or an exit for SVT (now PAYG) travel. The basic logic
is "enter" or "exit" and assuming there was a valid entry it is entirely
logical to assume someone is exiting the system. Similarly if the last
exit was a fair time in the past it is logical to assume that the card
holder is "entering" the system.

Well that logic has been shown not to work hasn't it.

There was also the practical issue that space is at a premium at some of
the interchange points and it was feasible to install ranks of entry and
exit validators. The point about Oyster is that you should be able to

Oh come off it. They're not that big and you could easily have 1 validator
with 2 seperate touch pads marked with IN and OUT in big bold letters.

system is doing. I'll grant you we've ended up some distance from that
admirable goal but then Oyster is being asked to do far, far more than
the original design.

In other words its not up to the job.

B2003