Peter Howard wrote:
On Tue, 2008-04-15 at 15:44 +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
It looks to me that the Octopus card still requires a connection back
to a remote server somewhere to run the transaction. It's also geared
more as an ID device rather than a data storage medium.
Nope, it can be synchronised to the main servers later. In the case of
bus travel the details from the box in the bus gets uploaded at the end
of the day. T-card was working that way too.
But in the case of T-cards and buses in Sydney, there's a pretty high
likelihood of the bus getting back to the depot and the data being
uploaded safely (assuming the NSW government hasn't canceled the
contract while the bus was out driving around!). In the scenario
discussed here it seems like the motorcycle rider disappear if he
decided his motorcycle and handheld reader is worth more on the black
market than his job. Wouldn't the data be lost in your scenario, since
the card is just an ID mechanism, without record of the actual
transaction? It seems that's part of the important requirement for
read-write capability.
--Jeremy
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