By Jonathan Kimak
SNCF, a railway company in France, is trying out some new tickets. The tickets are part RFID, which was already a standard on France’s railway ticketing system, and USB. The USB portion of the ticket allows users to plug the small thumb drive into their PC and load money onto the ticket to make future train ticket purchases.
The tickets will have 4GB of internal memory and will also contain some advanced security to keep people’s private information secure at all times.
The tickets are 8mm thick which should make them rather easy to carry(or to lose). Currently 1,000 tickets are being used during the trial run.
Of course the device will still not make the trains arrive on time or keep them from having that unique smell.
[ The Register ] VIA [ Wired ]
Quote “SNCF, a railway company in France […]”
To be precise, SNCF (Société nationale de chemin de fer, Railway National Company) is the only one one – state owned – company. The market will soon be open for competition, but so far it's the only one we have. And for information, it works better than in England – where competition is open – and is cheaper.
That isn't an SNCF train – It's a Shinkansen (Japanese bullet train).
Yeppe. it looks like a series 300 (or another Hikari) who runs from Tokyo trough Osaka to Hiroshima…
Seems like any system which uses the device itself to store value is susceptible to hackage.
And to complete correction, trains in France (Germany, Switzerland,…) don't smell “unique”. Not comparable to public transportation in North America.
Why the Shinkansen and not the TGV?
Why the Shinkansen and not the TGV?
Why the Shinkansen and not the TGV?