12-17-2019, 08:14 PM
(12-17-2019, 07:49 PM)jeffster Wrote:(12-17-2019, 05:21 PM)ac3r Wrote: From the CBC:
Half a year later and they're only now deciding to have some staff members check whether or not the machines are working. For one, they should have been able to determine that the technology is totally messed up before launching, considering the stations were built about a year prior to the opening. Secondly, they surely knew things were not working correctly the moment the free period was over and thousands of people started to attempt to pay for things and use the products they did manage to purchase. Would it have been that hard to have the fare inspectors - as they sit at the station waiting for the next train - to get into the habit of taping some sort of testing card to determine whether a station was having issues?
They managed to built and get trains running just fine, but having something function as reliable as an Interac machine at Zehrs is somehow a challenge.
I had noticed an error code and it did look like they're running some sort of Windows OS. I could be wrong. But one should never, ever run Windows in anything critical, it's too unreliable. Normally you'd use Unix or, Linux (Unix like) system. These systems are less prone to errors and tend to be more hardy.
It's actually Windows IoT (Formerly Windows Embedded) which is different beast than Windows 10. It is designed for lightweight applications such as POS terminals, ATMs, and Card Readers where the full version of Windows is not needed. It does not have a lot of stuff that home or enterprise Windows versions have because they are not needed or useful for these types of applications. There are lots of machines out there running it that you may not even realize are running it.
As for that message that pops up on the pedestals, even though it is showing, you can still tap your card and it still works (I've done it many times). For the misread ones, usually I just tap it a second time and it works. (I have the same problem sometimes on the tap to pay interac machines in stores).