When Irish screens are borking: Ticketing trip-up for Dublin-based Windows 10 IoT terminal, but at least it's not XP

Summer time, and the borking is easy. Particularly if you're a Windows 10 IoT-powered ticket machine in Dublin. Spotted by an eagled-eyed Register reader, this Irish Rail machine is, in a very real sense, flashing its undergarments for all to see. It has revealed that lurking beneath the sheen of the usually byzantine range of …

[Pascal Monett]

Dear God

Windows 1 0 on a point-of-sale thingy. What nincompoop approved that ?

Honestly, point-of-sale machines should be on Linux. I don't care which distro, but use Linux for Pete's sake.

Linux does not have customer-facing popups that ask if you want to update Now, or Now.

[Alister]

Re: Dear God

As I've mentioned before, a lot of the common point-of-sale hardware only has drivers for Windows, so you don't have much choice, unless you can force the vendor to develop Linux drivers, which is unlikely.

[Blackjack]

Re: Dear God

Actually, both Linux Mint and Ubuntu and others distros do tend to nag about updates but do not automatically update at the very least.

My Nokia 1 updated itself to Android 10 just a few days ago and I haven't found any option on Android 10 to disable updates.

[Claverhouse]

Re: Dear God

My Linux Mint never nags. [ Mint 18 since that was the last KDE they offered; and I'm not in a position to update to a new KDE OS right now. ]

Up on the taskbar is a little shield to check for updates, with a tick on it, it turns a different colour when there's an update --- which is entirely optional to download. So one has to actively seek out updating, not have it blare it out at you or stop the machine.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

"what is hoovering up all that CPU is up for discussion"

Windows. It's Windows doing that. It's what it does on my machine. A quick look at task manager now (with nothing but this tab open) shows me >10% of my 6(12) cores loaded up doing... something. It can't give me a clear answer as to exactly what.

[druck]

what is hoovering up all that CPU is up for discussion

It's got 4 cores so the 22% will be Explorer maxing out almost an entire core for absolutely no reason.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

I have this theory...

Does Bill Gates have shares in Electricity generating companies? May be years ago, when he was poking about in the depths of Windows, he coded some CPU hogging routines that would get called periodically. Now think of the excess electricity being used by the millions of machines running Windows - Electricity demand goes up, company profit and dividends go up...

[Captain Scarlet]

I would assume Task Manager is using most cpu, new one on lower end hardware seems to tax them.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Irish Gauge

Those planning a jaunt aboard Ireland's finest will be relieved to know may be interested to know that the Irish mainline track gauge is 5ft 3in compared to the 4ft 8 1/2in Standard Gauge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_Ireland

"This unusual track gauge is otherwise found only in Australia (where it was introduced by the Irish railway engineer F. W. Sheilds), in the states of Victoria, southern New South Wales (via some extensions of the Victorian rail network) and South Australia, as well as in Brazil."

-->> I'll just get my anorak and head off to do some trainspotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Irish Gauge

But not all of Australia, some of which has Cape Gauge of 3'6"

[Allan George Dyer]

Re: Irish Gauge

Obligatory XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Irish Gauge

Given that Stephenson chose 4ft 8 1/2in as it was the width between the shafts of the colliery carts in use at the time, one can only assume Irish horses are fatter...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Irish Gauge

Or it was to allow taller heroines to be tied to the tracks by Irish mustache twirling villians

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Irish Gauge

Surely, "damsels in distress"?

[katrinab]

Re: Irish Gauge

Stephenson chose 4ft 8. When the train set arrived it got stuck in the rails, so he realised that he needed to have the rails a bit wider than the wheels. It was cheaper / easier to widen the tracks than narrow the wheels, so we ended up with 4ft 8½.

Other railway companies chose different gauges. For example Great Western Railway went for 7ft ¼. The government ultimately decided to mandate a standard gauge, and went for 4ft 8½ in Great Britain, and 5ft 3 in Ireland.

[Chris Gray 1]

96???

Why do all the numbers up top end in 96? Seems unlikely to be a coincidence.

To my eye, they flip back and forth between that and "%". Seems a poor font choice.

[Robert Helpmann??]

More Rice Pudding!

Windows reacted with all the stability of blancmange flung from a carriage window...

Second mention of this venerable dish as a standard of OS stability. I believe it is time to create a culinary-based stability scale. I propose the following:

MOST STABLE

Twinkies ... Lasts indefinitely with little to no input.

Steak and Potatoes ... A classic. Takes some effort to get wrong, but can be done.

Tuna Sandwich ... May be OK for a while, but has a definite shelf life.

Blancmange ... Will sit there, slowly spreading out and losing form. Eventually devolves into pool of mush.

Hollandaise Sauce ... Will break if you look at it wrong.

LEAST STABLE