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Admission Tickets as Text Messages
lee1 writes to tell us that InfoWorld is reporting that Smartmachine and their partner Skidata have developed a new way to allow customers to purchase and receive tickets to events. The new ticketing system allows users to "have a ticket sent to their mobile phone via SMS (Short Message Service) in the form of a 2D (two-dimensional) bar code. At the gate, they slide their mobile phone display showing the bar code by a bar code reader." The new technology also claims to help combat the counterfeit, pilferage, and repeat use that can be such a problem for paper tickets.
I've seen the same system in use for public transport tickets in Helsinki. People send an sms to some number, and the fare is deducted from their phone bill. As a proof of purchase the get a text message, which can be shown to the conductor on ticket controls..
The Koreans have been doing this for years. To promote it they gave you a discount if you used the cell phone technique.
It makes a lot of sense. It's convenient to order the tickets, also via cell phone, and then you don't have to wait in line. And everyone there has a cell phone.
Funfact: In South Korea when you buy a movie ticket, you can buy a particular seat, like at a sports game.
Presumably, the "tickets" are generated uniquely by some mechanism that's "difficult" to hack. And once you go through the turnstile, your "ticket" is scanned and the database to which the scanner is connected marks it as used. This is no different from paper tickets with barcodes that are scanned at the gate.
-a
FTA:
The tickets would be delivered directly to their mobile phones. At the venue, they only need to place their phones on the sensor installed at the gates for entering the stadium. Spice Telecom and Karnataka State Cricket Association, after their "successful" and ongoing joint venture of Future Strokes, have again come together to launch the Mobile Ticketing in association with ConvergeLabs, a Spice Telecom release said.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Ticketmaster actually charges MORE for you to print your own tickets. How ridiculous is that? It's cheaper to go to their counter, use their clerk's time, and use their ink/paper.. I didn't realize that it cost so much to send PDFs out by email. They must be using Adobe Acrobat Professional or something..
I know that. I don't disagree at all. Yet counterfeiters are still able to print unused valid unique IDs (as barcodes) on paper tickets. Therefore they will be able to do the same on a cell phone.
Developers: We can use your help.
What they really need is a second barcode I can scan for a full refund if I walk out in the first half-hour because the movie is complete crap. Or the sound system is hosed. Or the theatre is populated by talking idiots. Or any of the other myriad reasons people don't like wagering $20 trying to get a little entertainment at a movie these days.
Not likely to work, imagine 50,000 tickets, and a 16-byte bar code. That gives a 50000/2**128 chance to guess one at random. If you could scan a hundred codes per second, it would take 2**128/50000/3600/24/365/100 = 2.2e+24 years to get one right, which is about 160 trillion times the age of the known universe.
Texas Motor speedway uses paper tickets with barcodes. They scan on entrance and exit to allow readmission. I am fairly certain I could take a color copy of a ticket and get right in, or even copy the barcode to a blank piece of paper. I have always had season tickets, but I believe they even offer an email delivery option for the tickets now.
The barcodes apear to be randomly generated and of sufficient length to stop anyone from brute force hacking when the validation is checked by a person standing with a PDA pressing the button on each read.
Before they started this system I lost my tickets. They will issue vouchers for season ticket holders in this event, and aparently they recorded the numbers of all the stubs collected after the event. I was told if my tickets came through I would get a bill for the duplicates.
The bar codes were on the tickets before the system was in place. What puzzled me was that it was on the main ticket, and not the stub that was collected. Now that they scan on entry they no longer collect the stubs.
It seems like the cell phone and barcodes is only a small step from the above, which has been tested and worked very will at events with attendance of nearly 250k.
It doesn't matter what the phone uses 'over the air', your SMS can still be read out of the CCITT 7 which is beamed as part of a bog standard timeslot in a completely unencrypted T1/E1 between the cell station and the exchange. (Or mulitplexed in some other standard manner) Encryption usually only happens between the phone and the cell station, nowhere else along the chain.
It'll cost a small chunk for the equipment, though all of it can be obtained off the shelf. Spec An, RX equipment, downconverters, modems, digital capture card, pc.