On rec.crafts.metalworking they talk about a guy they call Ali Babbin all the time. He apparently has stuck several members for big money. Here is an excerpt: > > His name is Allen Babbin. His current email that he checks is > ranckoc2.hotmail.com. His address is 33 Stafford Ave. Bristol, CT 06010. > He lives with an individual named Eddy Sczappa, whom to my knowledge is not > involved in Ali's business. The telephones numbers that he currently > answers are: 860-584-9932, 860-583-7796, 860-584-9939. The typical thing > that happens is someone else answers and says he is not there. Sometimes > Ali will do this and sometime his roommate does this. > > Ali was Connique on Ebay, Although there really is a Connie Burgos. She is > Ali's niece and she may have been involved with the Connique scam to some > degree. Her number is 860-747-6268. She is most likely under the age of 18 > and lives with her mother. > > I lost over $500 to Ali and I know he has screwed people out of a lot more > than that. I tried unsuccessfully to get Paypal to cancel his account and > never let him back, as he conducts most of his business through them, but > they were very uncooperative. We need to keep close tabs on Ali and shut > him down.
The bad thing is many of these people used PayPal for their transactions and they won't do anything about the guy either. (EBay doesn't apparently care to stop him)
Sorry, I formatted the question which is being asked incorrectly. It should be:
What is the [Fill in the blank] way of getting there? This question is incredibly difficult to answer given the current system's architecture and data models.
Actually, it is usually much harder. While it seems simple enough, the fact of the matter is when you are doing a deep recursive search through the schedule, it gets (almost) expotentially more complex. First of all, you are assuming some intelligent database structure. Allow me to assure you, there isn't one. ATPCO issues mulitple fare and schedule updates a day and they are simply too huge to get into any kind of elegant relational order before they become stale. Additionally, all World Class CRS' (Computer Reservation Systems) which descend from the original IBM/AA development (ACS?) must answer this question first: Do you fly there? All of the data structures within the system are modelled around this one question (which nobody asks anymore)! While we humans now take for granted that air travel between two points is possible (regardless of direct flights or hub and spoke systems), the computer cannot. So, it begins it's search with LAX->BOS. Then, it moves to ???->BOS. Then it moves to LAX->???. Then it goes to ???->???(1) and so on and so on. Once it has determined the available routes, it then applies fare rules and tariffs on each segment. Walla-Kazam! 50 seconds has passed. All of this to answer the questions which are being asked:
What is the way to get there? (Cheapest, fastest, least number of connections, etc.) The deal is if the WC-CRS (Again, World Class CRS) cannot provide consistency in it's results, then the government starts coming down on them big time. Also, now WC-CRS companies are content providers to the general public. This means they are held to much higher degrees of scrutiny by the average consumer.
Travel agents used to fill the gap between the limitations of the WC-CRS and the consumer's needs. The fact that they may know alternate candidate routes which do not routinely show up in searches is one area where they add value in the travel marketplace. However, as the systems surrounding the WC-CRS become more sophisticated, the agents are finding that the general public would rather reduce their cost by not paying the higher price for their involvement.
Don't let the window dressing fool you. It still is essentially the same system it was in the 70's. The emulators are talking to the same front ends that the dumb terminals were. If you ever had to "Ride the Wild Sabre", you would know that the emulator is as dumb as the terminals.
Sabre runs on a highly specialized operating system (not really but that is the closest analogy) called TPF (Transaction Processing Facility). The majority of the system is written in macro based 370 Assembly. Just now, there has been some C development deployed comercially. Sabre handles sustained message arrival rates that are insane (on the order of 6000 messages per second)! In order to do that with 1970's technology, you have to write down to the metal!
Airlines. Computer Reservation Systems. Banks. Assembly is crucial to the execution of TPF (Transaction Processing Facility) in extremely high volume, high load environments. For example, one CRS for which I worked runs at a nominal request arrival rate of 5200 messages a second! Unfortunately, most "higher level" environments simply cannot withstand that onslaught of traffic.
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On rec.crafts.metalworking they talk about a guy they call Ali Babbin all the time. He apparently has stuck several members for big money. Here is an excerpt:
>
> His name is Allen Babbin. His current email that he checks is
> ranckoc2.hotmail.com. His address is 33 Stafford Ave. Bristol, CT 06010.
> He lives with an individual named Eddy Sczappa, whom to my knowledge is
not
> involved in Ali's business. The telephones numbers that he currently
> answers are: 860-584-9932, 860-583-7796, 860-584-9939. The typical thing
> that happens is someone else answers and says he is not there. Sometimes
> Ali will do this and sometime his roommate does this.
>
> Ali was Connique on Ebay, Although there really is a Connie Burgos. She
is
> Ali's niece and she may have been involved with the Connique scam to some
> degree. Her number is 860-747-6268. She is most likely under the age of
18
> and lives with her mother.
>
> I lost over $500 to Ali and I know he has screwed people out of a lot more
> than that. I tried unsuccessfully to get Paypal to cancel his account and
> never let him back, as he conducts most of his business through them, but
> they were very uncooperative. We need to keep close tabs on Ali and shut
> him down.
The bad thing is many of these people used PayPal for their transactions and they won't do anything about the guy either. (EBay doesn't apparently care to stop him)
Sorry, I formatted the question which is being asked incorrectly. It should be:
What is the [Fill in the blank] way of getting there? This question is incredibly difficult to answer given the current system's architecture and data models.
Actually, it is usually much harder. While it seems simple enough, the fact of the matter is when you are doing a deep recursive search through the schedule, it gets (almost) expotentially more complex. First of all, you are assuming some intelligent database structure. Allow me to assure you, there isn't one. ATPCO issues mulitple fare and schedule updates a day and they are simply too huge to get into any kind of elegant relational order before they become stale. Additionally, all World Class CRS' (Computer Reservation Systems) which descend from the original IBM/AA development (ACS?) must answer this question first: Do you fly there? All of the data structures within the system are modelled around this one question (which nobody asks anymore)! While we humans now take for granted that air travel between two points is possible (regardless of direct flights or hub and spoke systems), the computer cannot. So, it begins it's search with LAX->BOS. Then, it moves to ???->BOS. Then it moves to LAX->???. Then it goes to ???->???(1) and so on and so on. Once it has determined the available routes, it then applies fare rules and tariffs on each segment. Walla-Kazam! 50 seconds has passed. All of this to answer the questions which are being asked:
What is the way to get there? (Cheapest, fastest, least number of connections, etc.) The deal is if the WC-CRS (Again, World Class CRS) cannot provide consistency in it's results, then the government starts coming down on them big time. Also, now WC-CRS companies are content providers to the general public. This means they are held to much higher degrees of scrutiny by the average consumer.
Travel agents used to fill the gap between the limitations of the WC-CRS and the consumer's needs. The fact that they may know alternate candidate routes which do not routinely show up in searches is one area where they add value in the travel marketplace. However, as the systems surrounding the WC-CRS become more sophisticated, the agents are finding that the general public would rather reduce their cost by not paying the higher price for their involvement.
Don't let the window dressing fool you. It still is essentially the same system it was in the 70's. The emulators are talking to the same front ends that the dumb terminals were. If you ever had to "Ride the Wild Sabre", you would know that the emulator is as dumb as the terminals.
Sabre runs on a highly specialized operating system (not really but that is the closest analogy) called TPF (Transaction Processing Facility). The majority of the system is written in macro based 370 Assembly. Just now, there has been some C development deployed comercially. Sabre handles sustained message arrival rates that are insane (on the order of 6000 messages per second)! In order to do that with 1970's technology, you have to write down to the metal!
Airlines. Computer Reservation Systems. Banks. Assembly is crucial to the execution of TPF (Transaction Processing Facility) in extremely high volume, high load environments. For example, one CRS for which I worked runs at a nominal request arrival rate of 5200 messages a second! Unfortunately, most "higher level" environments simply cannot withstand that onslaught of traffic.