Decibel ([info]decibel45) wrote,
@ 2006-02-24 19:09:00
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Mom always said, "don't trust the bank"...
Went to the ATM to make a deposit. Accidentally hit the 'quick withdrawal' button instead. What pops out of the machine? Some $20s and a sheet of stamps. Sure enough, I was $20 short. Luckily the bank was still open so it wasn't nearly the pain to fix as it would have been otherwise.

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[info]underhiswings1
2006-02-25 05:34 am UTC (link)
A sheet of stamps? Whyfor? Does your bank sell stamps?

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[info]quelrod
2006-02-25 05:49 am UTC (link)
Most of those fancy windows based atms do indeed sell stamps: Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and who knows who else. They also blue screen which has caused me on multiple occasions to not be able to use the ATM.

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[info]underhiswings1
2006-02-25 05:51 am UTC (link)
and what is blue screen? I don't think my bank sells stamps, but that's a pretty good idea.

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[info]quelrod
2006-02-25 05:57 am UTC (link)
Blue screen also know as blue screen of death and BSOD is the crash screen of a windows pc. They are no where near as frequent as a few years ago but always give quite the chuckle. I personally don't run windows on any of my systems so I can laugh at the misfortune of others I once suffered through.

Well, the mark up on the stamps is terrible. I have a private mailbox and that place sells the stamps for a much more reasonable price than the banks, though still more markup than usps (assuming you go in person bc usps charging outrageous shipping.)

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[info]underhiswings1
2006-02-25 06:07 am UTC (link)
No wonder I hadn't heard of blue screen; I've never used anything but a Mac. The one I'm using now (I've had it for a little over a year) has crashed/frozen maybe 3 times. I love this thing. (Hope I didn't just jinx it.) As for stamps, I used about 20 TOTAL last year. Amazing how the internet, for me, has basically replaced the usps...

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[info]quelrod
2006-02-25 06:15 am UTC (link)
No kidding, I very seldom have a use for stamps. I last bought a sheet (how many are in a sheet? 20? 30? who knows) just after the increase to 37 cents. I had to get the dumb 2 cent stamps this year so I could mail a card to my mom for her birthday. Hoorah for paying bills online and for that matter the automatic payments.

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[info]adranse
2006-02-25 07:23 am UTC (link)
Banks sell many things from their ATMs - stamps, movie tickets, cell phone money (for pay as you go type things), airline vouchers, many many things. In the US, though, it's pretty much limited to money & stamps. The really fun stuff happens in Europe.

And to reply to you, quel, only banks who use shitty ATM software blue screen =P. If they use good software, blue screens almost never happen (hardware related blue screens are 90% of our blue screen. let's just say that out of 8 months of doing everything I can to screw up our software, I never got a blue screen. And I was trying HARD.)

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[info]decibel45
2006-02-25 05:16 pm UTC (link)
Of course that still begs the question: why would you use an OS you had to pay licensing fees on when certainly any free Unix or Linux would suffice...? Even if you got a support contract, I'd think you'd still have to be comming out ahead...

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[info]adranse
2006-02-25 06:50 pm UTC (link)
Because the middleware layer that is used to communicate between the hardware and the application has no OSS port. There is one in java, but that's about it, and ewwww java.

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[info]decibel45
2006-02-25 09:30 pm UTC (link)
Well, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to use windows though... if you're buying equipment from them you should be able to get them to produce a driver for another OS.

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[info]adranse
2006-02-25 10:33 pm UTC (link)
It's a bit more involved than that. ATMs have a wide range of hardware made by many many companies (the big three being Diebold, NCR, and Wincor-Nixdorf). A middleware layer called XFS (eXtensions for Financial Services) is used to create a uniform API for all these different types of hardware (think DirectX, but for things like card readers, cash dispensors, depositories, etc). I know that my company, in the past, has attempted a port of our software to an OSS platform, but it's just not possible given the current state of support.

If you can get Diebold, NCR, and Wincor-Nixdorf to all support and push for an open-source XFS implementation (good luck with that), I'm sure that ATMs would run OSS operating systems.

Of course, you would also have to convince banks themselves to use an open source OS. Old ATMs (black screen, green text) run OS/2, and banks are only just now upgrading past those because IBM EOL'd OS/2. They, for some reason I don't know, basically all chose Windows XP as the platform to upgrade to. Given that most of the banks in the world chose that, the smaller banks that want other platforms are rather SOL, since the majority of the software is written for Win XP now.

If only it was just as easy to say "Run Linux. kthxbye."

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[info]decibel45
2006-02-25 10:38 pm UTC (link)
Well, the flip-side is that if you don't keep pressuring the vendors about providing drivers for an open-source OS (which, again, does not mean the drivers themselves need to be OSS), then it'll never happen. Will a single vendor be able to get them all to do this? No. But if enough folks keep asking, they'll eventually do it.

Do the banks really care about what OS is running? I'd think that they'd just treat the ATMs as a black-box (at least the smaller banks anyway...)

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[info]adranse
2006-02-25 10:47 pm UTC (link)
They care a lot, because the ATMs really aren't black box. While they look black box to the end user, for the banks, and the techs they send out, they have to futz around in the host OS occasionally, whether it is OS/2, Windows, or Linux. After initial setup (install OS, install middleware, install software), if everything goes well, then the actual forays into the host OS should be minimal, but for things like firmware upgrades, OS patching, etc, the techs have to come out and do those things in person.

The thing you have to understand about banks is that they HATE change. I mean, they stayed with OS/2 until just last year! The reason banks hate change is because they have to retrain everyone to use the new technology, and that costs them a lot of money.

Banks made the decision to move to Windows, and really, there is probably no way that they will move off of XP until Microsoft EOLs XP.

Also, most of the companies who write the software for ATMs are ATM manufacturers themselves (NCR, Diebold, Wincor). There are very few third parties who write software for ATMs (my company being one of them). A third party has basically no influence on the manufacturers to add support. Any time we wanted to get, for example, NCR to do anything, we would have to say "Well, it's for Bank x." The big-3 hate us, because we take business away from them.

So to get a manufacturer to support OSS drivers, you'd need a bank (a big bank) to demand it. And the big banks, hating change, won't do that.

Even if you get one manufacturer to write an OSS driver, you would still need an OSS implementation of XFS, which is controlled by a company called Nexus Software. So then there's another person you have to convince, and it keeps going.

I don't know if this is even addressing your points, I'm just starting to ramble. It pisses me off that banks chose Windows XP, and rejected OSS.

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[info]heidinoel
2006-02-26 01:31 am UTC (link)
woah-my thoughts too! i've never heard of an atm spitting out stamps. but not surprising i guess.

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[info]cutiepie74
2006-02-25 09:52 pm UTC (link)
Well, who told you to press the wrong button?? hehehehe

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[info]decibel45
2006-02-25 10:24 pm UTC (link)
Had I pressed the wrong button, I would have only gotten stamps. And I checked the receipt too. :P

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