NTC 6752 EA - Green Alps / clones?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I remembered reading the name Landis & Gyr many years ago, before I had access to the Internet. It turns out that they're not British after all, but Swiss, so our phonecard system was Swiss:

http://www.all-cards.net/all.cards/about/gyrfact.html

That makes more sense — the technology seemed far too advanced for Britain. (I imagine we could have done it, but we would never have justified the expenditure for that level of overengineering, and would have mismanaged it to death. It's a bit like German Indusi vs British AWS.)

Assorted Landis & Gyr cards from other countries:



I have just one Polish card:



They appear to use the same hardware as Italian cards, of which I have several:



There were a number of methods used. Australian cards used punched holes:



Whether there was some other trick in place to prevent people just filling in the holes, I don't know. It seems awfully low-tech compared to the Swiss system.

BTW is there some sort of record for the most off-topic topic, that we could aim to beat? ;-)

[niubio]

Yeah, this swiss "laser system" looks extremely hi-tech compared to our magnetic cards... And as for Australian cards - maybe those holes were just an indicator for the user, and there was sth else inside of them - some microchip, like in modern "proximity" credit cards? Or it's just that Australians are honest

I've heard stories about some european cities, where there are no "tickets" nor ticket inspection in public transportation - people just put fare payment inside a small box that's located near the entry/exit of a bus. If only some crazy governor tried to implement this in Poland, not only you would rarely see anyone pay for a fare, those boxes would be long gone minutes/hours after being installed.

You've got a really good eye for details - indeed, our public phones were designed and manufactured by Urmet - an Italian company. Thus, both italian and polish phones used the same magnetic system.

Yeah, this conversation is off-topic for some time But it's really good to share some ideas, interests... It's rather hard for me to find anyone willing to do this on polish forums :/

[Daniel Beardsmore]

What, an honesty box for public transport? You serious? That wouldn't work in the UK. If it wasn't empty or stolen, the IRA would have put bombs inside them (these days it would be extremists; we actually saw litter bin removal at stations to prevent the IRA using them to hide bombs).

I did travel into London once without a ticket — the Welham Green station ticket machine was frequently broken, and it was not staffed for most of the day. Possibly because I was transitioning onto the Tube after I detrained, I didn't encounter a ticket barrier, and just bought a Tube ticket as normal.

I'm not safe with instant messaging — I go off-topic on multiple topics at once and used to demand that people keep up with several different conversations at once in real time. I am not even sure I could manage that any more … getting old ;-) I quit using IM several years back though as it was too depressing.

[niubio]

Yeah, I think it creates sort of a "danger" in case when there's a terrorist threat... But then those bombs can be placed in so many other places, on rails for example. I think one should think about the cause of terrorist activity rather than "eliminating" the effect by... removing bins! It just sounds so strange...

I quit IM myself 2 years ago. Still remember great days of IRC domination. Like when you were talking to someobody just like during the real conversation and it was considered rude to leave the chat without a notice...?

And yeah, you are a live example of multitasking person... or more of a multitasking brain I guess I don't mind at all, I rather enjoy it but I'm constantly fighting for some time to visit forum and participate in this talk

[Daniel Beardsmore]

You were expecting anything sane or reasonable in Britain? (The bombs were real though.)

I am not a multitasking person. How did "multitasking" come to describe people, anyway? It's not like normal people understand multiprogramming — many people still believe that a computer can't have more than program open at a time (which is painful to watch — always closing one program before opening another: their head would have asploded if they saw me running 26 programs at once in 144 MB in Mac OS 9.1), and the rest won't understand the significance of a multitasking operating system. They don't remember when it was a huge deal that a personal computer could finally multitask, albeit really terribly for the most part.

I used IRC a lot, but quite how, I don't know — it stopped making any kind of sense to me years ago. IRC is like trying to drink tea. By the time a cup of tea has cooled sufficiently that it won't melt and set fire to your insides, I've forgotten that I even have a cup of tea, and I only discover it once it's gone cold. By the time IRC conversation is back on topic (and not about US politics/cars/bikes, which is where it always ends up) I've forgotten that I was even logged into the wretched thing. I can't be bothered messing about with two screens purely for the sake of trying to monitor a channel for any activity at all, let alone anything interesting, and the VGA circuitry on my second monitor has died anyway (the DVI port is connected to my Mac). tinnie from Deskthority keeps trying to drag me back into IRC, but I don't belong even with Deskthority forum members.

[niubio]

That's why I immediately corrected myself to "multitasking" brain - like processing those different ideas @ the same time in parallel. I forced myself from terminal UNIX world into windows somewhere before '00 - it was quite amusing to watch people hyped about multiple tasks while it was a basic functionality in unix..

Hey, you say deskthority forums are somewhat similar to gh? In terms of this "Topre/IBM/etc." groupthink? Haven't tried it... yet. Registered only to add stuff to wiki BTW, returning to the original topic just a little I should add those pics to the wiki... And guess what, I've sold the Optimus board - and already shipped it! So I cannot make pictures of the PCB... That was dumb! I think I'm gonna ask the buyer to disassemble the unit and read the caption for me, because I'm curious about it now! Funny, I could do that easily when I had it, and now that it's gone, the curiosity is killing me!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Is there a difference? If I had a multitasking brain, what would keep me from being a multitasking person? If you want a UNIX analogy of my head, it's just two words: fork bomb.

I was referring mostly to Deskthority about the "groupthink", though that's where I'm more active. The Deskthority perception of /[Gg]eekhack/ (I'm never sure on the spelling) is that everyone here is just obsessed with novelty keycaps. My perception is that most of it is noobs asking impossible questions, which oddly enough is how I started: afraid about dropping a lot of money on my first mechanical keyboards. For some reason, Deskthority doesn't get flooded with that. I still don't have any real answers after spending at least £800 on keyboards.

geekhack is more active, I'll grant you that.