On Saturday, 2 January 2016 17:00:55 UTC, Clive Page wrote:

Any why, if all you had to do to get a free trip was to claim to have an
Oyster card, would anyone during the outage try to use a contact-less card?

Lack of knowledge? My friend left for work at 0615 this morning, and said the gates were closed at Wood Green, so she touched in as normal (but a '1' flashed up on the display rather than her balance).

In message , at 16:58:52 on Sat, 2 Jan
2016, Richard J. remarked:
Why are you assuming that this
particular instance was in any way similar to Y2K?

Firstly, because a very similar incident *was* tracked down to that
cause,

You mean there was a very similar incident 16 years ago?

The Nottingham City Transport smartcard issue in around 2006.

But what is special about 1/1/2016 compared to 1/1/2015, 1/1/2014, etc?

Or 1/1/2006 compared to 1/1/2000. There's something about the range of
years for which 1/1/xxxx is recognised, which transcends xxxx=2000.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 17:00:46 on Sat, 2 Jan
2016, Clive Page remarked:

Any why, if all you had to do to get a free trip was to claim to have
an Oyster card, would anyone during the outage try to use a
contact-less card?

I think that's called "not understanding the exact nature of the outage
and not wanting to be caught deliberately evading fares, even if for a
short time TfL will decide not to worry about it".
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 16:19:53 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016,
" remarked:

It wouldn't surprise me if they are looking at introducing this in
Netherlands as the whole country is zoned.

The Dutch railway system over the whole country is about the same size
in terms of number of stations and permutations of routes as TfL is in
just London. Try Zoning the non-TfL bits of the UK and there will be so
many winners and losers you'd never hear the end of it.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 17:00:46 on Sat, 2 Jan
2016, Clive Page remarked:

Any why, if all you had to do to get a free trip was to claim to have
an Oyster card, would anyone during the outage try to use a
contact-less card?

I think that's called "not understanding the exact nature of the outage
and not wanting to be caught deliberately evading fares, even if for a
short time TfL will decide not to worry about it".

There is also the crazy notion of "honesty" and "believing in paying for a
service because it's the right thing to do", which is not in fact entirely
lost to the world...

(Back in the day when I travelled regularly between unstaffed stations with
PERTIS machines, I actually used to pay my fare in full, or seek out the
guard if I didn't have enough change. Strange but true.)

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at 16:58:52 on Sat, 2
Jan 2016, Richard J. remarked:
Why are you assuming that this
particular instance was in any way similar to Y2K?

Firstly, because a very similar incident *was* tracked down to that
cause,

You mean there was a very similar incident 16 years ago?

The Nottingham City Transport smartcard issue in around 2006.

But what is special about 1/1/2016 compared to 1/1/2015, 1/1/2014, etc?

Or 1/1/2006 compared to 1/1/2000. There's something about the range
of years for which 1/1/xxxx is recognised, which transcends xxxx=2000.

That's not the millennium bug then. It was about years being held in 2
digits so not able to handle properly to rollover of the century.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 18:47:45
on Sat, 2 Jan 2016, remarked:
Why are you assuming that this
particular instance was in any way similar to Y2K?

Firstly, because a very similar incident *was* tracked down to that
cause,

You mean there was a very similar incident 16 years ago?

The Nottingham City Transport smartcard issue in around 2006.

But what is special about 1/1/2016 compared to 1/1/2015, 1/1/2014, etc?

Or 1/1/2006 compared to 1/1/2000. There's something about the range
of years for which 1/1/xxxx is recognised, which transcends xxxx=2000.

That's not the millennium bug then. It was about years being held in 2
digits so not able to handle properly to rollover of the century.

It's the same class of problem, which is why I put the "Y2K" in quotes.
--
Roland Perry

On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:32:16 +0000
Paul Corfield wrote:
I haven't seen the precise detail of why downloads seemingly failed
but I am not as deeply sceptical as some on here about the table
testing process. All the "oh they can't have tested it properly"
comments are unlikely to be true. There were / are very well

Well they quite evidently didn't test for some condition otherwise the failure
wouldn't have occured.

This is simple. Oyster cards hold value on the card and are read,
processed and then written back to with an updated balance and journey
history. In order to work out a PAYG fare or extension fare then you

I'd love to know how many hacked Oysters or DIY cards are out there that
can be loaded with a random value and/or don't decrement the value.

--
Spud

On 04/01/2016 09:48, d wrote:
On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:32:16 +0000
Paul Corfield wrote:

This is simple. Oyster cards hold value on the card and are read,
processed and then written back to with an updated balance and journey
history. In order to work out a PAYG fare or extension fare then you

I'd love to know how many hacked Oysters or DIY cards are out there that
can be loaded with a random value and/or don't decrement the value.

--
Spud

Presumably the "read" part of the above has some form of linked
reconciliation which quickly identifies and blocks those cards?

On Mon, 4 Jan 2016 10:15:37 +0000
Someone Somewhere wrote:
On 04/01/2016 09:48, d wrote:
On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:32:16 +0000
Paul Corfield wrote:

This is simple. Oyster cards hold value on the card and are read,
processed and then written back to with an updated balance and journey
history. In order to work out a PAYG fare or extension fare then you

I'd love to know how many hacked Oysters or DIY cards are out there that
can be loaded with a random value and/or don't decrement the value.

--
Spud

Presumably the "read" part of the above has some form of linked
reconciliation which quickly identifies and blocks those cards?

Not when the original MiFare was hacked they didn't. Anyway, if its DIY
card they could easily program in a rolling Id number. I doubt if the gates
keep a list of every single valid card thats been issued, probably just
blocked ones if anything. Presumably the version 1 cards are still valid so
that hack could still be used. Which probably means it is.

--
Spud