Millennium Line - Broadway Extension: Planning & Pre-Construction

[dpogue]

Originally Posted by MIPS

Personally I have no problem with leaky coax as we have not had a cable break in....5 years? No need to fix what ain't broken.

Not arguing in favour of changing technology, but there have been at least 3 damaged ATC cables in the past 12 months.

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by dpogue

Not arguing in favour of changing technology, but there have been at least 3 damaged ATC cables in the past 12 months.

Now that I was not aware of. Were the service interruptions relatively short?

[dpogue]

Originally Posted by MIPS

Now that I was not aware of. Were the service interruptions relatively short?

Under 2 hours each, I think. The majority of the delay is getting trains moved out of the way, techs on site, and finding where the cable is damaged. Actually patching the cable is about 5 minutes of work.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Indeed solid state is less reliable, hopefully we move to radio eventually.

A broken cable can render one portion of tracking unusable until repaired but the system can handle this and still operate with single tracking.

A downed radio can knock a whole area down. Personally I'd prefer if the system remained a closed-loop pseudo wired system.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Its a LOT easier to build redundancy in with radios, and system using are indeed redundant.

Single radios don't simply "go down"

People are worried about network hacks and we're advocating for jammable radios?

[cganuelas1995]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

People are worried about network hacks and we're advocating for jammable radios?

Exactly. We live in an era where everyone with a smartphone can do nefarious things once they get connected to WiFi, provided they are smart enough. Even if the radios are encrypted and on a proprietary frequency, someone could figure it out by trial and error. Requiring physical access to a cable in a restricted area is proven to be the most secure option, decade after decade.

Last thing we need is some terrorist using the SkyTrain as a toy and playing bumper trains or worse, holding people hostage.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

i don't understand this need to change things that work. there is a reason the ICBM system in the USA still uses 8 inch floppy disks. when they did a review of the system a few years ago, they found the system is so secure and stable that there was no need to update it.

this is the same idea, the system is closed loop, cant be hacked off site, and allows for a very secure connection. this is the same idea why CCTV is generally used vs wireless when it comes to secure areas.

no matter how much you encrypt, a wireless network can always be hacked offsite and it opens up all these other issues that you don't need to worry about with physical cables. over the past 30 years, the system has been reliable and there is no need to change it to add all these vulnerabilities for no gain.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

no matter how much you encrypt, a wireless network can always be hacked...

You don't even need to hack it. Jamming is a blunt force approach that's easy to do and can cause plenty of havoc, just like denial of service attacks.

[cganuelas1995]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

You don't even need to hack it. Jamming is a blunt force approach that's easy to do and can cause plenty of havoc, just like denial of service attacks.

You could easily build your own signal generator in a few hours for a few bucks and fashion an antenna out of some random metal you see lying around and shove it in a backpack or a suitcase and wheel it into a SkyTrain station.

That's just level 1.

Whole point is, if it ain't broke and if customers aren't asking for it, don't fix it or add to it or upgrade it. The more things that can go wrong will make the system less and less reliable and unnecessarily expensive to maintain and operate.

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

i don't understand this need to change things that work. there is a reason the ICBM system in the USA still uses 8 inch floppy disks. when they did a review of the system a few years ago, they found the system is so secure and stable that there was no need to update it.

It's the stigma that older technologies are inferior and like in the case of the whole 8" disk thing, generates PR that mocks you because you are using technology older than most of the people reading the article, even if it is completely acceptable for the application and a newer system is not necessary.
Commerce and notably shareholders do not like products that get released and are never changed. They need to see movement other than sales or else they get really anxious.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[cganuelas1995]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Numerous systems are radio based and they don't suffer these kind of attacks. Intefering with these systems is not as easy as the movies might make it seem.

Floppy disc ARE totally obsolete and there is no reason we should be using them, optical or bluray would be just as "secure" from intereference and have don't have the mechanical points of failure that old floppys do. New radios will not be breaking down from age any time soon.

Dude, someone could record radio signals and decode them back at home. You do not realize how easy it is to crack an encryption. Pirates release cracks for games with DRM the very next day, if not the very same day.

We are talking about trains that are over 200ft that weigh about 20 tonnes per car, designed to travel at 100km/h but usually operate at 80km/h, that carry over 500 people, not someones WiFi network. We are talking the lives of people, not their passwords and credit card information.

It's better to be safe and stuck in the 80s than to upgrade to 2018 and risk having some terrorist run a couple of packed trains into each other during rush hour.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Relevant.

A new government report on Wednesday revealed that America's nukes are still being controlled by antique computers with 8 inch floppy disks, but a former white-hat hacker says that's not necessarily a bad thing.

"The biggest security issue here isn't that the computer is 40 years old, but rather the quality of the lock on the door where the computer is housed," Cris Thomas, a strategist for Tenable Network Security, said in a statement...

... Thomas said that the IBM Series/1 computer the Pentagon is using to control nukes is most likely air-gapped — meaning it's not connected to the internet or a network that would give remote access — so a hacker would need to be sitting at the terminal to actually do any damage.

He also said the machines are "notoriously reliable" and he wasn't surprised they was still being used.

"As long as they can make regular copies of the software on the 8 inch floppies so that they don't degrade, and they have a ready supply of spare parts and new floppies, there's no reason why the system wouldn't last another 40 years," he said.

[Meraki]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Relevant.

IBM probably has a mind blowing contract to keep manufacturing those drives and disks.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Numerous systems are radio based and they don't suffer these kind of attacks. Intefering with these systems is not as easy as the movies might make it seem.

Floppy disc ARE totally obsolete and there is no reason we should be using them, optical or bluray would be just as "secure" from intereference and have don't have the mechanical points of failure that old floppys do. New radios will not be breaking down from age any time soon.

see, this is what i don't understand! so what if it is obsolete? so are we just supposed to upgrade things that work perfectly fine, are very reliable, and don't need to be updated because its "obsolete?"

i would say look at the federal government Phenox Pay System issues as a perfect example of what happens when you "upgrade" to.

back in WWI, when soldiers needed to be paid, you would fill out a form, check a box if you wanted family to get a portion of your money. then you submit this form. and guess what happened? you got paid!!!! and you got paid the proper amount and the portion was properly divided up to your family, if you picked that!!! GASP!!! how did that happen?

now, the government spends 500 million on some fancy system where tons and tons of people are underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all. and why did we do this? was the old system not working? because i don't remember people having pay issues before the "upgrade" from the "obsolete" system. or if there was, it certainly wasn't as bad as it is now.

you want to change these systems because, in your words, they are "obsolete." my question is, why do they need to be updated? the system has worked for over 30yrs with very few issues relating to the software/hardware other then when it wasn't replaced because of deferred maintenance.

the majority of stable computer system, are older systems. look at all these computer issues with now the CPU hardware chips, and the software. there are always sooooooooooooo many patches and security updates needed. the USA ICBM system, you have to be physically connected. cant be hacked/disrupted. physical SkyTrain cables are the same way. you need to psychically tap into them, you cant do it from home/coffee-shop/across the street/in the station.


so, please please tell me why some old computer needs to be replaced because it is old. you know, there's an old saying that goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

[cganuelas1995]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

see, this is what i don't understand! so what if it is obsolete? so are we just supposed to upgrade things that work perfectly fine, are very reliable, and don't need to be updated because its "obsolete?"

i would say look at the federal government Phenox Pay System issues as a perfect example of what happens when you "upgrade" to.

back in WWI, when soldiers needed to be paid, you would fill out a form, check a box if you wanted family to get a portion of your money. then you submit this form. and guess what happened? you got paid!!!! and you got paid the proper amount and the portion was properly divided up to your family, if you picked that!!! GASP!!! how did that happen?

now, the government spends 500 million on some fancy system where tons and tons of people are underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all. and why did we do this? was the old system not working? because i don't remember people having pay issues before the "upgrade" from the "obsolete" system. or if there was, it certainly wasn't as bad as it is now.

you want to change these systems because, in your words, they are "obsolete." my question is, why do they need to be updated? the system has worked for over 30yrs with very few issues relating to the software/hardware other then when it wasn't replaced because of deferred maintenance.

the majority of stable computer system, are older systems. look at all these computer issues with now the CPU hardware chips, and the software. there are always sooooooooooooo many patches and security updates needed. the USA ICBM system, you have to be physically connected. cant be hacked/disrupted. physical SkyTrain cables are the same way. you need to psychically tap into them, you cant do it from home/coffee-shop/across the street/in the station.


so, please please tell me why some old computer needs to be replaced because it is old. you know, there's an old saying that goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Translation to those who just do not get it: "the fancier you make something, the easier it is to break it."

If you watched the movie Wargames, it's about a kid that hacks into a mainframe that is hooked up to the 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 US nuclear arsenal. He starts playing games with it and it thinks that the USSR is attacking and begins preparing itself to launch missiles.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[jlousa]

We can't even get our radios to work reliably in a 400ft zone downtown anymore due to the saturation of radio waves thanks to everything being connected. And that is with having a dedicated frequency via industry Canada. Hardwired is the only way to do for reliability let allow security. And no encryption is not an unhackable solution. Put anything of value worth cracking and someone somewhere will circumvent it. Heck there are probably members on here that have mining rigs set up that could brute force the keys given enough time.