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Families were separated. Vendors were barred from returning to their booths. People stood outside in a rainy 40-degrees for hours only to be turned away. Traffic was backed up for hours due to inadequate parking. People were packed into an event hall like cattle, with little room to move or maneuver, and countless photo ops that people paid for were left unfulfilled.

Some people on Facebook describe the conditions inside the convention center as unsafe. RICC has responded to some of the comments, saying, "There was no mess up. This happens a lot at large events. It is very difficult to predict the turnover flow of patrons. Sometimes, for the safety of all, we need to halt entry to let the crowd thin out." RICC Organizer Steven Perry of Altered Reality Entertainment has been unreachable by media and disgruntled fans.

People are being very supportive of the Fire Marshals who handled the mess. One Facebook user writes, "Fire marshal #9 guarding the Omni North Garage was awesome. Delt with an angry mob through the whole 4 hours." I personally witnessed that marshal do a really great job with a really bad situation. Rhode Island is the site of the worst nightclub fire in US history, and Rhode Islanders understand that the Fire Marshal was acting with restraint and responsibly.

I have not heard about the conditions at the convention center today. They have apparently already sold to capacity but are still selling tickets online.

A lot of U.S. states have 21-to-enter laws for venues that serve alcohol but do not qualify as restaurants and require the bouncer to check IDs at the door. How should an effort to change these laws be organized?

I don't know -- I doubt 14 is in any law, it's probably some balance between the cost of insurance / perceived risk and the income from under 18s.

Maybe Ticketmaster could do something. They should realise that their ticket sales trends: http://media.ticketmaster.com/en-us/img/static/ticketlogy/images/2012_Concert_Trends_v11.pdf is lacking a 14-18 category, which presumably exists for their UK market (they are possibly the biggest ticketseller here). I can't find a report for the UK though.

Last.fm or MusicMetric might also have some European data to compare to US data.

Venues either leave it for the barman to check id, or sometimes give a different-coloured wristband to anyone under 18.

Using automated means to retrieve CAPTCHAs is in violation of the terms of service to which you agree when you use these ticket sellers' websites. For example, Ticketmaster's terms prohibit the use of automatic processes to retrieve CAPTCHAs.

Just because some do doesn't mean all do. Read the fine print on some of the ones at stores you don't code for. Many of them are indeed non-replaceable.

Read Amazon's gift card policy or that of SeaWorld's gift card supplier. Wendy's gift cards cn be replaced if they are registered online before they are lost or stolen, but not otherwise. Ticketmaster will replace malfunctioning cards but not lost or stolen ones. Mom and Pop indeed...

Some stores do have much friendlier policies, but when I say that many don't I mean it and I'm right. Any easy way to get a friendlier policy is to either use Visa or MasterCard gift cards or deal with stores whose gift cards are handled as such. Many stores, however, still do not replace or refund stolen, lost, or destroyed gift cards (partially destroyed and still recognizable maybe), which is what I said and you're trying to argue against.

But can't grandma be allowed to buy credits for her grandchild, who then uses said credits to buy a ticket in his/her own name?

Yes, they can.

Actually, Ticketmaster already has Dutch auctions, or at least a seemingly well-designed variant (price doesn't go down, but you input a secret bid and multiple winners pay the same amount, with higher bids getting better seats in the section you bid on), as an option for a way for the event to sell its tickets (not for resellers). This obviously makes a lot of sense, as everyone can input their intrinsic "value" for how much a ticket is worth and those who value it most will win. Assuming perfect information (everyone knows about the auction when it happens (they can lengthen the time of it being open to make this work decently)) and no one's value changes (which clearly won't happen), you have a perfectly efficient market. Because both those conditions will not met, there will be room for resellers to try to make a profit, but for an event that sells out in the first day Ticketmaster would never be able to get any of the reseller market to begin with, so this is clearly the best way to go for events with much fewer seats than potential buyers.

Another possibility is based on an idea a mathematician friend of mine heard at a conference. The speaker claimed that even with different classes, there is generally no way for airlines to make money if prices are fixed (if you raise the price high enough to break even, the plane won't be full). The solution is to change prices all the time, to get each passenger to pay as close to their intrinsic value as possible. People whose time is valuable will do one search, choose the cheapest flight (or even a more expensive yet more convenient one) and be done with it, while people whose time is less so will search and search, day after day, till they feel that given the inherent variability in the price that they would rather lock in now than risk paying (much) more (an expected value and/or gambling/insurance test). Those who want a guaranteed seat will book at whatever the going rate is, while those who will risk it may wait till the last minute. A Dutch auction would be preferable from the airline's perspective, but with multiple routes and multiple companies, you don't have the monopoly that venues do, making it much harder to do well.

I'm not sure why more venues that already sell tickets through Ticketmaster don't use Dutch auctions (makes sense why non-online sales couldn't do it); my guess is venue promoters don't know about it, or are confused and scared of doing things and making money differently than they've done before (sounds like the RIAA).

I wish them luck. It's not like they're going after TicketMaster's evil monopoly where they would soon be crushed from existence.

Already happening.

http://www.ticketmaster.com/madonnaauctions

$2000 for a ticket to Madonna in LA.

http://www.ticketmaster.com/madonnaauctions

i used ticketmaster last week, and "bid on auction" is already an option. http://www.ticketmaster.com/auction/02003C92BB47B8 53/1/ why does the article say late this year? between this and pre-sales, we (avarage joe) will never again get a decent ticket at a resonable price. i can't wait for the roger waters show :)

Ok, first of all, as many people have already pointed out (but few seem to notice), this article is from September, 2003.

In any case, their auctions are not replacing their current ticket selling system, it is just a way for them to make some extra money, and people to be able to score a few last minute tickets at prices that they would be paying scalpers anyways (so basically it is just a way for ticketmaster to make more money). For certain big-name concerts they apparently hold a few sets of tickets and auction them off after the rest of the tickets have sold out. I regularly get concert updates from ticketmaster and it seems like once every month or so there is one of these auctions (the last few I remember are Roger Waters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Madonna...), and they have rarely been of any interest to me... for one thing, these are the kinds of concerts which often have face value prices of $100+ to begin with.

I think most everyone here agrees that ticketmaster has way too much of a monopoly over ticket sales, and their fees are ridiculous. But this whole auction thing is nothing new, and it just moves some money from money-grubbing scalpers to money-grubbing ticketmaster executives, and hardly changes anything. The fact that nobody here seemed to notice that this auction thing has already been going on for some time pretty much proves my point.

Maybe this is not a big deal, it's just "Ticketmaster", but everything has a beginning.

I think that the "new" system, only generates more profit (everybody knows this :P )... the tickets will have the "same" minimal prices (maybe somebody save some bucks some day), but they catch that people who buy tickets at EBay (at least a big part).

If Ticketmaster have the infrastructure is a really good move.
Some ppl pay more than 5 times (even MORE) the "original price".

Take a look at Madonna:
On Ticketmaster
and
On eBay

Madonna can charge $250 because that is what she wants to charge and people WILL pay it to go see her. On the other hand, look at Pearl Jam. a very popular band is selling tickets for their latest show for a whole $54 ticketmaster.com. This article is a bunch of shit.

Tell me, what major sites have been build using Ruby?

I can list several very high volume sites/applications that use Perl.

Liquor companies regularly hire models to go into hot nightspots to consume their products as conspicuously as possible. Bating guys with fake dates isn't a whole lot different, they're both just forms of astroturfing.

And not all people go on dates with the sole purpose of trying to locate their "soulmate". A lot of people, esp. young professionals who are very focused on their career, are simply looking for someone to have a good time with. e.g., the dates are about having fun, not interviewing perspective spouses.

Also... Match.com is owned by Ticketbastard--I wouldn't put anything past them.

Perl fills a 'tiny short-term need'? Is that why Morgan Stanley, RyanAir, Amazon, Ticketmaster and even increasingly Google to name but a few are using it for real, business-critical applications?

I'm so sick of all this anti-Perl talk. I write powerful applications in Perl and they are definetly not 'write only'. If anyone writes a 'write only' program in any language then it is the programmer who is at fault. Perl assumes a bit of intelligence on the programmer's side, rather than adopting Java's policy of bondage. And contrary to what a previous comment said, Perl is a general purpose language (with excellent built-in data structures and regular expressions, and a convenient and expressive syntax).

This guy might have an impressive [sic] resume, but he is badly showing his ignorance about Perl.

They still say deep linking isn't allowed.

from their terms of use (illegally deep linked of course):
Permitted Use

You agree that you are only authorized to visit, view and to retain a copy of pages of this Site for your own personal use, and that you shall not duplicate, download, publish, modify or otherwise distribute the material on this Site for any purpose other than to review event and promotional information, for personal use, or to purchase tickets or merchandise for your personal use, unless otherwise specifically authorized by Ticketmaster to do so. You also agree not to deep-link to the site for any purpose, unless specifically authorized by Ticketmaster to do so. The content and software on this Site is the property of Ticketmaster and/or its suppliers and is protected by U.S., Canadian and international copyright laws. We post a legal notice and various credits on pages of the Site, which may not be removed. Please do not remove this notice or these credits, or any additional information contained along with the notices and credits.

Sounds like they still don't agree with the judge ;)

Something else I also notice in the wording of that, they tell people not to remove those notices, I wonder if they are refering to hackers, because the notice text isn't in a wiki of any sort, so surely no customer could modify or remove it?

Incidentally, if you read the article, you would know that FINAL FANTASY must be capitalized every single time that you say FINAL FANTASY. sheesh

I get sick of the 'standard' backlash every time a Perl article is posted. Why do people have such a problem with Perl? It's an excellent, high-level general purpose programming language with a huge range of extension modules available. I have personally used Perl for many projects, as do TicketMaster, ValueClick, Morgan Stanley and Ryanair and I've also learnt a lot about software engineering and computing through Perl.

Of course you are right. But let's not forget that there are also lots of completely useless Perl projects as well.

Yes, it does include a lot of symbols, but there is payback to learning them, and really most programs won't use much beyond $ % # () [] {}. Unlike some languages, Perl is not what I would describe as a 'bondage' language. If you want to program sloppy, you can program sloppy. That's fine by Perl. And this generousity is what gives Perl its bad reputation. This is funny since I and most knowledgeable Perl programmers can write perfectly clear and maintainable code. The way we do this is no secret--it's just by commenting appropriately, using meaningful identifier names and following the Perl style guidelines.

People can mock Perl all they like, but it is still a widely used powerful programming language and I am more productive in it than any other language. As a parting comment, a Cisco employee once told me (off the record of course!) that "Cisco would fall apart without Perl".

You need to get over your favorite language/technology/term you read in the trade-rag you read last week. And then you need to get over yourself.

Give it up slashdot crowd. mod_perl is not a valid technology for a large scale website! Perl was designed for a task, and that task was NOT enterprise application development.

Spoken like someone who has never had to build a very large site (doing "real" work) completely in Perl/mod_perl. I can tell you that it most certainly can scale to enterprise needs. Did this guy do it right? I don't think so either but he most certainly learned a valuable lesson. Hopefully other people will study what he has done and improve their own systems based on his work.

For the record, Java wasn't built for enterprise application development either. As with Perl, people discovered that Java had a future there and here we are today.

A properly designed website with n-tier sepperation will be able to handle a large load and scale infinitly. You'll note that large websites who actually do real things besides logging people's daily problems don't use mod_perl and a thousand servers. There's a reason for this.

You're assuming two dangerous things... (1) That you can't have n-tier and Perl. And (2) that large mod_perl sites require lots of servers. To believe any of these things is to demonstrate your horrific misunderstanding of computer science in general. I pity the company that lets you design their architecture. Wait, no I don't.... I'll gladly take their money for fixing your mistakes.

Oh yeah, and let us not forget some other languages that are showing promise... specifically Python+Zope. In fact, I know of several people implementing n-tier applications with PHP on the front, Python in the middle and PostgreSQL in the back with much success.

And for the record, here are some large companies and sites heavily using mod_perl.

Want more?

> I wonder when they'll ever figure out that suing your consumers is not an effective business

When they start losing money because of it. I don't see that happening any times soon as long as people are still paying Ben Dover $70.00 fucking dollars for a ticket to see WashedUpBackStabbers in concert. The RIAA has got to be laughing all the way to the bank. This whole "John Doe" lawsuit bullshit is just another source of revenue for them.

I hope TicketMaster is the first target, since the government never bothers to deal with them as a monopoly. I can't seem to find anyone interested in the fact that they routinely charge more than 10% above the ticket price which is a violation of Pennsylvania state statutes. Oh, silly me: they're just part of the entertainment cabal.

Ticketmaster has these terms and conditions which specifically exclude these types of screen scrapes for commercial purposes

Quote from their TOC's...

Access and Interference

You agree that you will not use any robot, spider, other automatic device, or manual process to monitor or copy our web pages or the content contained thereon or for any other unauthorized purpose without our prior expressed written permission. You agree that you will not use any device, software or routine to interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Ticketmaster web site. You agree that you will not take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure. You agree that you will not copy, reproduce, alter, modify, create derivative works, or publicly display any content (except for your own person, non-commercial use) from our website without the prior expressed written permission of Ticketmaster

This I think would be something that a lot of sites would want to do (Not that I agree)

If you want to support this ideal, snag tickets [davidbowie.com] to one of his concerts.

A good idea, except for one small problem. It seems you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

speaking of gwar, which you were, but the thread wasn't...

Violence has arrived is the best album ever created. No album can be that good. And.... if you're a true fan, i'll see you jan 16th at the norva in virginia beach for the opening tour of the Blood Drive 2002 tour, and then again on jan 17th in winston salem NC. Get tickets here.

GWAR FOREVER. yeah, i have a tatoo.

Patrick Stewart will be reprising his one man "A Christmas Carol" in LA and NYC for two weeks in December. All proceeds from the 12/28 performance will be going to a September 11th charity.

Star Trek Captains in Solo Shows

Ticketmaster link for NYC shows

I missed this the last time he did it, so I'm glad to get another opportunity to see him perform.

Take a look at TicketMaster V. Microsoft in the US District court. It deals with linking to any data on a website, and by providing that link, possibly, but not necessarily profiting from it. TicketMaster alleges that since it is charging a fee for some companies to be able to link to it's event schedules in various cities, that Microsoft cannot post a link to Ticketmaster, since they didn't pay for it, and even more so, that Microsoft might possibly profit from the fact that people use their site to navigate to the Ticketmaster one. Realize, that the pages in question on the ticketmaster site are freely avaliable to the public. Heck, have I infringed on them by providing the link above? Heaven forbid that I (or slashdot for that matter) profit by having the link here.

It's a valid concern. After all, they're giving away all their products free, gratis and for nothing. You have to, really. Unless you've got a kick-ass game, it's tough to sell Linux software.

It sounds like they want to be a combination of portal and information pusher (remember Pointcast?). I think if they can get almost all free information, plus some exclusive information, assembled in one point they can succeed. If I want to know when Courtney Love is coming to town (per the article) I can check hole.com. However, if they want to tell me that Courtney Love is coming to town on the 17th, I have no plans that evening (according to Evolution), I have enough in my bank account (according to Gnucash) to buy a ticket from TicketMaster, and it was all done on my box so their server didn't have to know any of that stuff, that might be useful.

--

Dude, do you even know what Cobalt Networks is?

Let's clear this up:
- Cobalt Networks makes "internet appliances"; makers of the all-cool "Qube"
- tickets.com and it's competitor Ticketmaster sell tickets to entertainment events.

In closing, If you don't know what you are talking about, don't say anything, you only clutter things up.