April 8, 2010

Blaming hacker for intercom malfunction in Maastricht

Filed under: General,Online,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:41 pm

On Wednesday 6 April around noon, the Maastricht train station had to deal with some unrest when passengers were asked over the intercom to evacuate the station. It took station employees 10 minutes to figure out that it was all in error. So what did they tell people? They basically made up a story about a hacker breaking into their system.

Apparently a women’s voice in English told passsegers for more than an hour to leave the station. The employees told people a hacker was responsible, although the system had a malfunction, pure and simple. A spokesperson eventually explained that the station was busy installing a new system, which had a malfunction.

Interestingly enough, ‘serious’ news channel RTL4 ran with the hacker idea and are still claiming that is the case.

(Link: limburger.nl)

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January 11, 2010

Dutch railways still has no iPhone app

Filed under: Online by Orangemaster @ 6:03 pm
iPhone beaver

Way back in October 2008, we wrote about the NS (Dutch railways) not being happy about IT student Dennis Stevense kicking their butts and producing a quality iPhone application called Trein’ (‘Train’) for train schedules. Apparently, if there was any glimpse of copyright or database issues, the NS has done nothing about since then except whine that they don’t have an application after all. The NS has legally asked Stevense to stop with his application and he ignored them. What the NS has been incapable of doing since 2008 (or lied about) Stevense whipped up in three weeks.

With all the snow, delays and problems with trains as of late, ‘Trein’ has become very popular, as more and more people own an iPhone and are downloading his application. He even said he received numerous compliments from train staff that his application works better than the mini-computers they use for their work. He also claims he can live off the money he is making from downloads and will start his own business.

(Link: zibb.nl, Photo: Stevenojobs)

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September 9, 2009

Netherlands has highest train suicide rate in EU

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:51 am

Of all the 27 countries of the European Union, the Netherlands takes first place when it comes to railway suicides. The Netherlands has racked up 1,4 deaths per million kilometres of train trips made in a year, while the much sparser tracks in Germany gets 0,6 and Belgium, also a country with much track, scores 0,9.

Although some 190 people in the Netherlands killed themselves by jumping in front of trains in 2006 and some 193 in 2007, the figure was down to 164 in 2008, but was not included in the report of the European Railway Agency on this topic.

One of the possible explanations for the amount of suicides is the fact that people live very close to the tracks. In other countries people who are suicidal probably chose a different method.

(Link: dutchnews, Volkskrant)

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July 11, 2008

Virtual train compartment for restless elderly

Filed under: Art,Design,Health by Branko Collin @ 10:28 am

Earlier this year the inmates residents of a nursing home for the elderly called De Bieslandhof in Delft got a virtual train compartment to lounge in. The compartment which consists of a number of seats and screens placed in portrait position was commissioned by the home itself in cooperation with SKOR (Foundation for Art and Public Space). The screens show a Dutch landscape of tree-lined meadows gently rolling by.

Says SKOR:

Groups of residents can have a cup of tea or coffee in De coupé [the name of the objet d’art, translates as The compartment—Branko] as well as receive a hot meal. Moreover, the work seems to have an added therapeutic value since the more restless residents who used to constantly stand in front of closed doors because they wanted to escape from the nursing home, are now calmly enjoying a few hours in De coupé instead.

And the artists, Lino Hellings and Yvonne Dröge Wendel, document the process (Dutch) in their online diary:

We now have a good idea of what the video should look like. 80 % sky with cumulus clouds and 20 % underexposed landscape, preferably rows of trees. The view should be filmed in landscape mode, then cut in two, and twice recorded vertically. The same image is shown mirrored on the other side.

We discover an old steam train between Hoorn and Medemblik. The windows are perfect, as is the speed. We use old socks filled with coffee beans as a camera stand.

Via Toby Sterling. Photo by SKOR / Gert Jan van Rooij.

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June 11, 2008

A white affair at future Amsterdam Central Station

Filed under: Design,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:22 am
cs1.jpg

Maybe the small man or boy on the right is not white, but Arnoud de Jong of the Amsterdam Central Station website doubts it. Apparently, once the station will be renovated, it will be populated by white yuppies.

De Jong took a look at the municipal website and found that the ‘artist impressions’ did not provide a single identifiable person of foreign origin. No Muslims, no one even remotely religious looking or multicultural, while one in every three residents of Amsterdam fits the ‘non-Western foreigner’ bill. Maybe they’ll be riding donkeys.

And then there’s the women, as one woman pointed out in the comments. Young, thin and long-haired. The one in the foreground was probably taken from some catwalk. Not a single one of them is dressed for work, while the men are in suits. This has to have been the ‘work’ of a heterosexual white man.

If this is what Central Station plans to look like, I will continue to use the modest yet modern satellite station Sloterdijk where real people take the train.

(Link and Illustration: nieuwsuitamsterdam.nl)

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